Frost Bomb

I forgot to mention this in my previous post.

Frostbomb is very useful for a cold damage build on Hexproof maps or magic monsters with that mod. It makes a big difference.

Some of the essence mobs nowadays feel unkillable without this gem lol

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biyte wrote:

Some of the essence mobs nowadays feel unkillable without this gem lol

100% agree with this. So many rares with Hexproof AND Life regen, Frost Bomb is perfect for these mobs.

I made a character with frost bomb as primary skill

Elementalist frost bomb trap rely on prolif mostly for aoe clearing



also using a for offhand, cheap mans doryani's catalyst (traps don`t leech anyways). Dual wield nice to have faster leap slams. I also considered for more defensive, but the atk speed for dual wield bonus felt way stronger, despite enabling shield charge (most OP skill in game right now).

Really struggling to get more life. At lvl 83 and only 4.8k life :(

Ideally want to drop the ignite cluster (6 points) for 3 jewels, each with life and ignite chance to make up for ignite cluster.



Also tried this, but i felt base life on it was too low to justify investing more in dex. All it did was give me option for blasphemy enfeeble/purity of ice for more evasion.

I think temp chains is also a very good tool for this build, since frost bomb damage is delayed on top of traps already being sort of delayed. I would definitely try to get blasphemy temp chains +1 curse without sacrificing too much life...

I don`t really use the ice trap setup, just sort of got it there cuz I had spare gem socket and I didn`t pick golems.

There are a lot of cold to fire builds and they have more powerful damage scaling on tree (can use fire damage node for double dip while hrimburn cannot) and can make use of dual golems for like +120% dmg, but I went with hrimburn cuz i like dyadus and pyre is not an option (cannot prolif if corpse destroyed!) while avatar of fire +cold to fire cost an extra support link and removes possibility to use ele eq (imo very important because resists are too strong, and I am not curse reliant)

Feel like dyadus and hrimburn are made for each other but having no base damage on dyadus feels bad, but 40% increased burn damage is sort of cool (works if you get hit with artic armour up for a short period too) and also hrimburn feels nice with elemental equilibrium. It's got problem that you can't use movement skill + fortify very easily tho cuz you proc ele eq badly with phys-> cold conversion and flat fire on dyadus. Also 25% chance to ignite is pretty huge, it's most of my source of ignite chance, sitting at a measly 49% iirc . Also did i mention how you want a 7 link, chance to ignite gem would be huge QoL for build, make that an 8link lol

Duration is still 1.15 seconds, very long. Damage is OK and frost bomb base aoe is actually very large. With conc effect it oneshots (well, however many bombs it takes to get the ignite ) most low and mid tier boss provided you get ele overload and ele eq up, though you can't chill them for that long with impact damage.

(chilled ground does not work with dyadus, if anybody didn't know. Also the 40% inc dmg is not you gaining 40% inc damage, it is enemy taking inc dmg, like shock effect/vuln curse)

In breach you can still run out of trap charges but outside of it, with just the nodes on tree and hat enchant, you get enough trap aoe to do fine. I was considering instead of inc aoe swap conc effect, try multitrap swap trap and mine damage, or if 6l do both, since multitrap throws traps in a nice spread line so you cover the most aoe with ur prolifs compard to cluster trap.

really feel like you want a 8 link to use this gem though since too many important supports. Haven't even mentioned the standard damage gem, controlled destruction.

Summary: can be pretty good if you rely on OP double dip mechanic.

P.S. Winter enchant is so op it carried me even in merciless while leveling oneshotting pretty much every white pack it came across, despite it being... WORD of winter (normal lab enchant) and my ele eq forcing cold res on mobs it hit.

Edit: forgot to mention as feedback, would like more ways to reduce skill duration. Trap duration doesn't work, for anybody wondering about sunblast.

dunno why this skill has a cooldown

I hope this skill is also being looked at along-side Cold Snap for the new update

Comparing the two
Cold snap: 462 - 693 dmg, 4s cooldown 30% chance to freeze, Vaal version

Frost Bomb: 521-781 dmg, 2.5s cooldown, 3.5s delay, -20% resist

The two skills have similar damage, but seem to have different design intents.
Cold snap is designed as something to do a large single hit of damage, freeing enemies caught as well.
Frost Bomb is designed more as a de-buffing tool, with a large burst at the end. In most cases, it is only used for the regen inhibition, as cold resistance reduction and damage are easier to achieve using Orb of Storms + Curses and other abilities.

I think that adding minor damage to the Frost Bomb pulses would go a long way to making the skill more relevant. It would provide a cold-themed curse-on-hit base, but at the same time would provide players a novel choice, since Frost Bomb would have a lower crit-rate than Orb of Storms due to the mechanics.

It also provides some differences between the new Cold snap concept and Frost Bomb.

Cold snap would trigger chill and freeze, but would not be able to do large AoE curse on hit since it would be DoT. The power change cooldown bypass also allows it to do large amounts of damage quickly.

Frost Bomb would be focused more on debuffs instead of damage, reducing cold resistance and procing curses in the area. The low pulse damage would be unlikely to trigger chill, unlike the additional effects of the prospective Cold snap.

This also means that players can build on synergies between the two skills (more than the 20% cold resist reduction), such that a player would place a Frost Bomb, which would debuff and curse enemies, followed up by Cold Snap to do the damage.

patch note ? where did they Fucking write that frost bomb can no longer be supported by minefield support or cluster trap/multiple trap support ?

they nerf and dont even talk about. nice job

Honestly, I don't get what GGG wants to do with frost Bomb, you buffed its damage so that its viable as a damage skill, but with the patch 3months ago, you made frost bomb not work with minefield/multiple traps due to the cooldown mechanics. How are we even suppose to use it as a dps skill when you can only cast it once every 2.5 seconds. Even if its viable, it just seems so clunky and awkward. Please, GGG, remove the cooldown from frost bomb.

I was using frost bomb as a utility skill in my cold snap build last league and it did its job well - lowering cold resistance. However other than link it with Arcane Surge there is not much you can do with the skill. I had available the whole chest for FB, but never had reason push it for 6-link.

It would be nice if you would either turn every pulse into hit. That way you could apply curses or other debuffs, proc Elemental Overload, gain power charges, knockbacks/pulls, mana leech?... something. But the delayed nature of the skill doesn't make sense for any of these.

Or introduce new support gems which give us more options.

Right now it's only 'nice-to-have-one-socket skill' and the place of utility skill takes something else.

Since the Agnostic and Archmage exist, it's time to update the skill again:

75% less Mana Recovery Rate

You can easily make a build that regenerate 3k mana/second, properly scaled mana flask adds yet another 3k/sec with permanent uptime. This insane recovery has no counterplay.