Is Herald of Ice any good?

I've seen some people describe it as "meh", but I'm not sure why. I'm using Hatred/Herald of Ash/Herald of Ice (added last) combination, and honestly, I'm not feeling much difference when HoI is added to the former 2.

Is there some mechanic to it that renders it bad, or are criticals needed to shatter (I run RT with a marauder)?

Thanks.

Do you regularly freeze mobs?

If yes, then yes.

If no, then no

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TheGrixxitt wrote:

Do you regularly freeze mobs?

If yes, then yes.

If no, then no

I use Hatred, is that good enough?

Looks amazing for Incinerate, don't have a high level one to confirm if its worth running over Haste or something though.

Depending on the build, you can get more output from running both HoI and HoA together than a single 60% aura like Haste. All a matter of preference though really

Edit: From my own experience, HoI is great when you're a caster and HoA is much more useful when going melee

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Hayrich wrote:

"

TheGrixxitt wrote:

Do you regularly freeze mobs?

If yes, then yes.

If no, then no

I use Hatred, is that good enough?

The mobs that you fight. Do they freeze?



Most of Herald of Ice's DPS comes from shattering frozen mobs

http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Herald_of_Ice

"If you shatter an enemy, they explode and deal AoE cold damage to enemies near them"


To freeze a mob you need to do a significant portion of your damage as cold damage (as relative to their max HP)

http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Freeze


If you don't do a lot of cold damage just use Herald of Ash.

"

TheGrixxitt wrote:

Most of Herald of Ice's DPS comes from shattering frozen mobs

http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Herald_of_Ice

"If you shatter an enemy, they explode and deal AoE cold damage to enemies near them"


To freeze a mob you need to do a significant portion of your damage as cold damage (as relative to their max HP)

http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Freeze


If you don't do a lot of cold damage just use Herald of Ash.

I use both HoI and HoA with Hatred. I use groundslam. I'm not sure if they freeze (white mobs die kinda fast), or if there is a shatter explosion. But I do see stuff like frosting/smoke in the area I attack, not sure what to make of it. Is that the explosion?

Problem is I don't deal crits, so I'm not sure if that means my cold damage cannot freeze.

or one can use 'free shatter' from Glacial Hammer

but for GH it is better to do Ash

it adds close to 1k tool tip dps to my gmp freezepulse, so it is good for that at least

"

Hayrich wrote:

"

TheGrixxitt wrote:

Most of Herald of Ice's DPS comes from shattering frozen mobs

http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Herald_of_Ice

"If you shatter an enemy, they explode and deal AoE cold damage to enemies near them"


To freeze a mob you need to do a significant portion of your damage as cold damage (as relative to their max HP)

http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Freeze


If you don't do a lot of cold damage just use Herald of Ash.

I use both HoI and HoA with Hatred. I use groundslam. I'm not sure if they freeze (white mobs die kinda fast), or if there is a shatter explosion. But I do see stuff like frosting/smoke in the area I attack, not sure what to make of it. Is that the explosion?

Problem is I don't deal crits, so I'm not sure if that means my cold damage cannot freeze.

You can freeze with or without RT, but you aren't going to be freezing anything using ground slam and just hatred and Herald of Ice anyway, so the 25% mana reserved from HoI is only giving you the ~50 base dps on the tooltip.

There are probably better uses for your mana