ICE WITCH GUIDE (CI + FREEZING PULSE with LIFE LEECH 0.25 Cast Spd Per Pulse.)

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darthwes wrote:

Please excuse my total newbness, but do I understand you correctly to take CI early game? My reading leads me to believe this is not the case but the early game tree link seems to show CI selected?

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Xmu wrote:

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Daarknight wrote:

XMU nice guide. I did want to make a suggestion. I see that you only run the 2 Green Gems in your 6L. You would be better off with 3 Green and using Cold Pen rather than any other dps Gem.

Excluding Frostbite...Mobs with 75% resistance to cold, increases damage by 140% (from 250 to 600 per 1,000 damage done). If mobs exceed 75% resistance (the cap) frostbite will lower their actual total but may not be enough to drop them below the 75% cap. Cold Pen reduces "effective" resistance so it will always drop them 40%. (basically sometimes frostbite does nothing).

Excluding Frostbite...Mobs with 0% resistance to cold, increases damage by 35% (From 1,000 to 1,350 per 1,000 damage done).

Including Frostbite...Mobs with 0% resistance to cold, increases damage by 23.5% (From 1,490 to 1,840 per 1,000 damage done).


So, whatever Blue Gem you are using must increase your dps by an absolute minimum of 23.5% to give you higher dps than a cold pen Gem would. That is a worst case scenario. More likely it increses your dps by 40-50%.

I know it does not look as pretty on the character sheet but the math does not lie.

Ideal set up is FP, LMP, Faster Casting, Cold Pen, Life Leech, Mana Leech GGGBBR.

One other thing is that until gear is awesome, Spell toten with Ice Spear, LMP or GMP and Elemental Proliferation will increase safety by miles. Entire screens get frozen and you can freeze and entire room before you walk in.

Incase u dont know, dropping a mob to negative value resistance will not improve ur dps much. I read somewhere that was said by a Dev that dropping the resistance to 0% is more important than trying to go beyond the negative number. I use elemental weakness which currently reduces mobs by 58% which is plenty enough. I have 40% crit chance on my fp and without a doubt i would choose increased crit dmg over cold pene.

Cold pene is nice and have a fixed amount of set extra dmg with no RNG involved but i still prefer increased crit dmg b/c it would do more dmg in most scenarios then cold pene.
And also another factor to put into consider is that its not easy to roll a 3 green 2 blue and 1 red on a ES chest.

Appreciate your input tho.

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Daarknight wrote:

I would like to see that developer quote. This is from the mechanics thread...

Resistances
Fire, Cold, Lightning, and Chaos damage each has its own resistance value (eg "Fire resistance") which is viewable in the character sheet. Resistances reduce damage taken (or increase damage if they are negative), and are capped at a maximum of 75% by default. This maximum can be modified by certain skills. There are penalties to resistances in higher difficulty levels. In Cruel difficulty, there is a -20% penalty to player resistances, and this increases to -60% in Merciless.


Mobs can far exceed 75% due to map resistances and auras. They will cap at 75 though. Your Frostbite may not even take them below 75%. Cold Pen always drops them to 35% or lower no matter what. On top of that, a mob at -1% will take exactly 1% more damage than a mob at 0%. There is no such thing as enough -Resistance%.

If you could locate that developer quote, I would be very interested as the math says that Cold Pen is far and away the best 2nd support for FP after LMP.

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Daarknight wrote:

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Xmu wrote:

"

Daarknight wrote:

XMU nice guide. I did want to make a suggestion. I see that you only run the 2 Green Gems in your 6L. You would be better off with 3 Green and using Cold Pen rather than any other dps Gem.

Excluding Frostbite...Mobs with 75% resistance to cold, increases damage by 140% (from 250 to 600 per 1,000 damage done). If mobs exceed 75% resistance (the cap) frostbite will lower their actual total but may not be enough to drop them below the 75% cap. Cold Pen reduces "effective" resistance so it will always drop them 40%. (basically sometimes frostbite does nothing).

Excluding Frostbite...Mobs with 0% resistance to cold, increases damage by 35% (From 1,000 to 1,350 per 1,000 damage done).

Including Frostbite...Mobs with 0% resistance to cold, increases damage by 23.5% (From 1,490 to 1,840 per 1,000 damage done).


So, whatever Blue Gem you are using must increase your dps by an absolute minimum of 23.5% to give you higher dps than a cold pen Gem would. That is a worst case scenario. More likely it increses your dps by 40-50%.

I know it does not look as pretty on the character sheet but the math does not lie.

Ideal set up is FP, LMP, Faster Casting, Cold Pen, Life Leech, Mana Leech GGGBBR.

One other thing is that until gear is awesome, Spell toten with Ice Spear, LMP or GMP and Elemental Proliferation will increase safety by miles. Entire screens get frozen and you can freeze and entire room before you walk in.

Incase u dont know, dropping a mob to negative value resistance will not improve ur dps much. I read somewhere that was said by a Dev that dropping the resistance to 0% is more important than trying to go beyond the negative number. I use elemental weakness which currently reduces mobs by 58% which is plenty enough. I have 40% crit chance on my fp and without a doubt i would choose increased crit dmg over cold pene.

Cold pene is nice and have a fixed amount of set extra dmg with no RNG involved but i still prefer increased crit dmg b/c it would do more dmg in most scenarios then cold pene.
And also another factor to put into consider is that its not easy to roll a 3 green 2 blue and 1 red on a ES chest.

Appreciate your input tho.

I would like to see that developer quote. This is from the mechanics thread...

Resistances
Fire, Cold, Lightning, and Chaos damage each has its own resistance value (eg "Fire resistance") which is viewable in the character sheet. Resistances reduce damage taken (or increase damage if they are negative), and are capped at a maximum of 75% by default. This maximum can be modified by certain skills. There are penalties to resistances in higher difficulty levels. In Cruel difficulty, there is a -20% penalty to player resistances, and this increases to -60% in Merciless.


Mobs can far exceed 75% due to map resistances and auras. They will cap at 75 though. Your Frostbite may not even take them below 75%. Cold Pen always drops them to 35% or lower no matter what. On top of that, a mob at -1% will take exactly 1% more damage than a mob at 0%. There is no such thing as enough -Resistance%.

If you could locate that developer quote, I would be very interested as the math says that Cold Pen is far and away the best 2nd support for FP after LMP.

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Cold pene IS increased DPS, but higher possibility to crit will make the same thing happen by using the crit mechanic (freezing and applying crit multi) to make the damage output equal or more..
in the end it comes down to your dps amount as to wich one's more beneficial.

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Prooxy wrote:

what better linked to freez pulse gmp or lmp?

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asifx3me wrote:

Please excuse my total noobness, I was just wondering does life leech from bloodrage work with ghostreaver?


So life leech gem + bloodrage = more life leech???