Arctic Breath

The only good thing it had is badass look and you took that away... Spell felt and looked much cooler than it is now.

I tried it on a deadeye hoping that chains would cause additional explosions and it didn't so now I am using it as supplemental dps for my vortex occultist. It is just easier to use the insta cast vortex to get the same dot effect as with arctic breath. The damage is fine but ultimately, it is too slow.

Does the arctic breath and vortex dot stack? Sometimes it seems like it does and other times it seems like it doesn't...

Tried it on my character Glove_IceDots and in PoB it looks great, but it feels awful. The base area is considerably smaller than cold snap and you can further boost cold snaps aoe with spell cascade to off screen mobs. Arctic breath deals more damage since GMP doesn't negatively effect the dot but the damage isn't needed to clear trash. Even in T16 maps cold snap spell cascade instantly kills packs, and if you want boss damage Vaal cold snap + vortex is still better than wasting a link on arctic breath.

It feels like playing an ED contagion build.... without the contagion. The area would need to be considerably buffed and the projectile would need to be much faster to consider using the skill over cold snap/vortex.

Level 87 Cold damage over time focused Occultist with a generous helping of spell damage too, using elemental overload, frostbite, bonechill + chill effect stacked.
Arctic breath is overshadowed by Cold Snap and Vortex reworks, which are quite powerful and satisfying.
The projectile portion doesn't do enough damage to care about, and is fairly slow.
The slow projectile and cast speed combined with the wait for the projectile to make the DoT makes it directly inferior to the instant, significantly stronger DoT of Snap and Vortex.
The chilling ground it leaves travels very slowly to the point of uselessness, and that's the killer for me. No point in waiting for it to creep when you can cast it three times before it gets there.
If it moved about four times faster, actively chasing enemies, it would feel pretty good.
As it stands, it's only good for stacking another source of cold damage over time.

The old visuals, especially the explosion it made when impacting an enemy were also superior.

Currently sitting at level 85 on my Cold DoT Occultist.

I started out using Cold Snap, as well as using Arctic Breath in conjunction with it up until I finished Act 10. While doing so Arctic Breath mostly took the role of an added DoT for single target, as Cold Snap out-performed it when it came to clearing mob packs.

Around Tier 2 Maps I decided to try out Vortex over Arctic Breath, and it's immediately become my main skill and Arctic Breath was soon removed from my build as it was simply too slow.

I really like the concept and mechanics of the new Arctic Breath, however I feel as though it gets overshadowed by both Cold Snap and Vortex in terms of both feel and strength. It's DoT damage is relatively low compared to both Vortex and Cold Snap, the AoE of it's chilling ground is rather small but it moves too slowly both as a projectile and as a ground-effect in order to really make up for it's lack luster AoE and Damage.

I, personally, think Arctic Breath is fine as is mechanically. But just needs a small nudge of extra damage, and either a Radius increase to it's Chilling Ground, or an increase in the speed at which the Chilling Ground moves.

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Jess_GGG wrote:

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I’m sorry, I have not played the new Breath before but I hope this feedback will still be read, it’s not related to having played it before.

My opinion is that a skill called “Arctic Breath” is the PERFECT opportunity to fill the spot of “AoE cone channeled skill” that is fitted in every other aspect. Lightning has Tendrils. Fire has the reworked Incinerate. Chaos has Blight. And physical has Blade Flurry. Scorching Ray and Winter orb being channeled but not in that category.

For a skill called Arctic BREATH the name itself Sounds like something that sprays. Like Tul. What comes to mind when someone says “arctic breath” is not “a single projectile that then creates an AoE that then tracks enemies”. So. Reworking it in that sense should be something that happens. Even though it just got changed :(
On top of that, think thematics. For example the new Incinerate is about powerful ignites. How about ways to stack a direct chill effect on enemies? When Superman uses his freezing breath, enemies freeze. When you use Arctic breath, enemies should “feel the cold of the arctic”?
Hope that made sense. That’s what I keep thinking of. But the gem never lived up to the fantasy of its name.

Currently playing Trickster and using Vortex as main skill with Cold Snap/Vaal Cold Snap for additional clear for far away targets while Vortex is on cooldown, etc. Tried to use Vortex plus Arctic Breath earlier, with LMP.

Arctic Breath's cast time is too long and its projectile speed is too slow. This combined with the fast that it's a dot skill, means that it takes far too long for the skill to have an impact from the moment you make the decision to cast it. It's absolutely not competitive with Vortex or Cold Snap (which are scaled the same way), as those skills appear instantly when cast. Vortex is even instant cast, vs the long cast time of Arctic Breath. Arctic Breath feels way worse than either of those skills, which feel great.

The closest skill mechanically to Arctic Breath I feel is actually Fireball with heavy ignite investment. But compared to Fireball, Arctic Breath has a longer cast time, slower projectile, less aoe (with Fireball's threshold jewel), less damage on the initial hit and on the ignite portion, is unable to proliferate to additional targets, and doesn't have a sick Vaal Skill component that clears several screens with a single button press.

If you want to improve the skill while keeping it thematically similar, I recommend a few different options:

Improve the AoE, the projectile speed, and/or the cast time.

Make the projectile pierce all targets and have its full aoe while its still traveling, so it deals the full damage over time to targets while the "field" is passing through them. Then when the projectile reaches the end of its life, it explodes and applies the chilled ground which chases down new enemies.

Greatly increase the speed at which the chilled ground moves and the range at which it seeks out new enemies.

I havent played the skill but i have to get this off my chest:
When i heard about an arctic breath rework, i imagined something like this. When you use the skill, you breathe cold air in a cone in front of you(narrower and longer than incinerate cone). This chills and creates the ground dot effect. Could also be a channeling skill.

This skill doesnt make any sense from a design perspective because it doesnt have anything to do with beathing.

I hope if the skill gets reworked, it will become something like this.