Arctic Breath

"

Vipermagi wrote:

On level 59, the base damage of Ice Spear is 107–160. Arctic Breath, 138-207.
Ice Spear has a 15% faster cast speed. Arctic Breath gains a +64% multiplicative damage bonus from Conc, and maaaybe hits a second target.

What I was (and still am) saying is, giving AB yet more damage is pointless. It already has the raw damage aspect down pretty decently. Give it something else that it actually needs.

----------
The slow projectile speed can easily be fixed if you find it that much of an issue. Karui Ward is pretty great if you ask me, and Faster Projectiles is still a thing. Those modifiers exist for a reason, and it's not only for EK/FP. :P

You don't have infinite supports and using a subpar piece of gear to fix one of the core issue with your main spell is kinda meh. I never said it's not fixable, I was listing all the negative aspects of the spells which its damage definitely does not balance out. The only good aspect is the ground chill thing, only that it's a very small area and doesn't last all that long(and yes I know there's a duration support).

At this point though spell balance discussion is in my opinion pointless. As long as we don't know if Freezing Pulse is too strong or if it's supposed to be the point of comparison, then it's all pointless arguments. If you remove Freezing Pulse from the picture, then Arctic Breath is an ok spell, it compares decently to Ice Nova and Ice Spear, by offering tradeoffs for other advantages. At long range Ice Spear is better, at short range Ice Nova is better, but Artic Breath can do both equally so there's merit in the spell. However, it is pointless to compare pretty much any other spell to Freezing Pulse as they're all worse. Arctic Breath is no exception and is basically a very bad Freezing Pulse.

I still feel it's a bit off even when comparing to Ice Spear and Ice Nova, my suggestions weren't specifically to buff its damage even though it'd be a simple way to make it more appealing. A non damaging buff would be to increase the chill ground aoe by a decent amount, not the damage, just the ground thing. It would let Arctic Breath cover more of the surface with chilling ground while not affecting anything else.

I ran most of the %radius node + AoE bonus dmg, and freezing pulse is still way better on my totems for doing stuff.

I'm probably going to swap to fireball so part of these points aren't wasted.

I'm curious if someone wants to test something: Basically AB + LMP/GMP + Fork. It's the same concept as Fireball, in fact, AB seems to work the exact same way.

-AB and Fireball both have horrible projectile speed
-Both spells explode on contact
-Both can, theoretically, be used the same way.

If something like that does work out, it'd be cool to see AB + LMP/GMP + Fork + Elemental Proliferation + Concentrated Effect. The damage should be pretty nice, although the lag would be pretty hard to get around.


Of course, i'd test it myself if I had any kind of cold caster.

Arctic Breath tooltip.........

So last night I added the aoe node that adds 12% area damage and 8% size and my DPS on the tooltip didn't change.

Is the tooltip or the spell broken.

it would be so much easier if there was battle text little numbers above the enemy when u hit them for people to see what is better. Do it like LoL where each element can have it's own color and white damage would be physical and maybe purple would be chaos, yellow ele, etc.

we need battle text to be able to see very easily what weapons and skills are better in what situations

Sorry to not have read everything but: Is it possible to tone down the screen shaking for this skill a little? I'm fine with crits and some nice "Boom" but I tried something last night:

Artic Breath + Faster Casting + Spell Toem + Greater Multi-Projectile (on a dual totem character)

oh boy... it was fun for me but still ridiculous. I could almost hear my roomate say "jesus, put your ice spear back!". I'm just wondering why there's that shacking everytime opposed to, lets say fireball, that got a nice explosion sound and that's it.

I dont even want to party up with other people and use this, I'll get kicked for sure :P

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

"

Gorgomite wrote:

Arctic Breath tooltip.........

So last night I added the aoe node that adds 12% area damage and 8% size and my DPS on the tooltip didn't change.

Is the tooltip or the spell broken.

Neither.
Arctic breath will deal area damage (and be affected by those modifiers) if it explodes, but will deal non-area damage (not affected by those modifiers) for any other time it hits an enemy (chain/fork/pierce).

We can only show one set of values for the skill. Currently we show the lower value as the base of the skill, and the effect of 'this is area damage' is applied at the time it explodes.
We could equally treat area as the base of the skill, display that, and take away those bonuses on any hit that doesn't explode. Both have drawbacks.

There's a definite argument to be made for the second, since the base behaviour of the skill is not to pierce enemies, but there's also a strong argument for the first, in that people much prefer getting more damage in some situations than getting less damage than displayed in some situations. Given this, we go with the first, which is also simpler form an implementation point of view.

does increasing/decreasing "Projectile Damage" change the Area damage of the explosion? or are they two different components... Projectile and AoE?

the way I read your answer they seem totally separate? so LMP/Chain/Fork do not decrease AB explosion dmg at all??

"

waffenheimer wrote:

does increasing/decreasing "Projectile Damage" change the Area damage of the explosion? or are they two different components... Projectile and AoE?

the way I read your answer they seem totally separate? so LMP/Chain/Fork do not decrease AB explosion dmg at all??

I think it works like most other things do. It affects what it can affect and doesn't what it can't. So LMP would give you more projectiles and reduce ALL of your damage with that spell. Concentrated effect gives increased damage and decreased aoe, so on fireball for instance, it wouldn't make the fireball any smaller or make it do more damage if it pierces, but it would decrease the explosion at the end and increase ITS damage. I'm right on this, right?