Please, please please give Ice Nova the Incinerate treatment

This skill is terrible on players and on monsters.

It forces you to stand still in melee range. It does pitiful damage and is easily interruptable (you need stun immunity/avoidance to continue spamming this spell to kill things).

Please give it a stage system like Incinerate. You can literally copy-paste the code. The longer you stand still, Ice Nova builds up in stages, doing more cold damage at maximum stage.

Bam, easy fix.

This skill has been bad ever since it was put into the game.

It's pretty good for early races, past that though.......

Let's put it this way. Flame blast stage one, with a .3 second cast time, does more damage.

I think ice nova should get the ground ice effect of the shrine, it's probably never going to be competitive aoe, but that would make it a very viable support skill.

I find it useful for Elemental Equilibrium. Despite its slow speed, the nature of its targetting and aoe synergize well with some skills.

A resounding NO to ground ice, though this time I'll admit a great deal of bias. Out of anything else, ground effects seem to cause the worst lag for me.

All ice nova needs is about 40% more damage scaling. Boom "viable."

Of course it's already viable, it's one of the few skills that can sweep an entire screen without targeting restriction and ignoring LoS.

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Autocthon wrote:

All ice nova needs is about 40% more damage scaling. Boom "viable."

Of course it's already viable, it's one of the few skills that can sweep an entire screen without targeting restriction and ignoring LoS.

How exactly is it viable? Please point me to a build that lets you use this in clearing even Fellshrine in HC.

I agree as a pure "support" ability - if you can somehow manage to get enough cold damage to reliably chill things on a totem - it can 'work', but I highly doubt that's the desired function of this spell. Furthermore, we already hace freeze mine, which is a thousand times more effective at freezing/chilling things support-wise.

Giving it a big damage boost would fix it too, I guess, but then the spell would maybe too good, since it is a radial AOE.

Right now, the spell is just pitifully bad and unfun.

No targeting restrictions. Effective AoE radius.

I've seen it used as a primary clear tool in hardcore merc, hell I've used it as a clear tool in hardcore merc. It works. It isn't "OMG I clear fellshrine in 20 seconds" but it's not that cumbersome.

The problem is not that it is not viable, it is that there are other skills that are better. But "viable" means different things to different people, so you're welcome to your own opinion.

Just because a spell isn't 9 Charge Burning Discharge doesn't mean it's not viable.

Edit: To put it in perspective Ice Nova has 90% the base dmaage of freezing pulse and no damage drop. The problem is not that Ice Nova is in itself bad, it is that it has no real options. I recommend added cold + Increased AoE + Conc Effect myself. There are no good support options for non-projectile spells, and if it isn't EK it's base damage as a spell is absolutely terrible because you're expected to shotgun with it.

Freezing pulse has a significantly lower base casting time, so its relative base damage is a moot point. Any monster that uses ice nova is literally non-threatening (look at Water Elementals that have it). Lack of supports is exactly correct - especially with how GMP interacts with Freezing pulse to give it a huge damage boost.

Ice Nova deserves buffing. Even if you can painfully 1-80 with it at a snail's pace, it just isn't viable. The very definition of non-viable is, "Well, you can use it, but there's better shit."

The definition of non-viable is "It doesn't work at all".

If Ice nova had the damage to make up for the cast time it would be used. 40% more damage would have it at the same base DPS of Freezing Pulse. Of course I'm perfectly happy using it as-is, makes a damn good CwDT gem if you actually level CwDT.

It doesn't HAVE to be a primary spell. Would be nice if ECryWDT wasn't so broken that it wasn't worth leveling the support gem and was worth actually using a "support" spell on your support gem.

Freezing Pulse vs Ice Nova. They both serve similar functions. In my eyes, viability has a lot to do with other options available. If there a distinctly better option, the other option simply isn't viable, because it has no benefits over the other choice.

Viability: "(of living things) capable of normal growth and development"

Ice Nova has no "normal growth", it isn't a "viable species" of spell. Nobody uses it. I have TRIED using it ever since Closed Beta - I can't stomach it. It kills things at a snails pace and has no growth. I managed to at least get a shock nova character to 60 once, I can't even manage 25 with ice nova. It's not effective at anything in particular. It's practically extinct. Enemies that use it can't defend themselves in the wild.

If it's to be a support spell, it should have a more enticing chill duration increase, or whatever.

But your point about it being a "non-target" spell does make me wonder - the reason why this spell may be like it is because it is particular favorite of botters, since it doesn't need to target anything. They may be keeping it shit because they can't control botting with it.

The reason it is what it is is because it is FAR FAR better than Freezing Pulse in certain situations.

Imagine a screen filled with enemies, literally filled every which way. Freezing pulse has a ~90 degree arc of effect and is effective to about 30% of the way from the screen's edge.

Ice nova has a 360 degree arc of effect, and can be effective all the way to the screen's edge.

In that one situation Ice Nova is so much better than Freezing Pulse that, in your way of evaluating it, Freezing Pulse is non-viable.

The problem is that that situation just doesn't exist. Or rather players don't care about that situation enough to actually pack a spell good for it when they can have a 6L ANY OTHER SPELL that's enough better in the other 80% of situations that the fact it takes 4x as long to clear that one situation doesn't matter.

Ice Nova is amazing in one situation, and useless in all the other situations because if it wasn't it would be broken. See Discharge, discharge is what Ice Nova would be if it was made to be "worth it". You know, other than the fact that Discharge has such brokenly huge damage because otherwise it would be useless at 3 charges... Oh wait.

They make a spell good at the "majority" situation and it inherently becomes too good at the "minority" situation.