Ice Bite

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Calabrel wrote:

Why would I use this when I could just use another, much more useful, support on my main skill and just run frenzy as well? This support gem seems extremely lacking.

So I use it because I'm running flicker strike as my main skill, and I need to generate frenzy charges while flickering to keep the flicker going. Blood Rage helps, but it's not enough on its own, and I don't use The Blood Dance because Atziri's Step is much better defensively. So I need Ice Bite to ensure that I'm getting enough frenzy charges.

A question for GGG:

Has GGG intentionally changed the way that Ice Bite generates frenzy charges? If not, is it possible that it has been changed unintentionally? Before patch 2.1.0 I was generally able to generate enough frenzy charges with Ice Bite and Blood Rage. The exception was when I encountered lots of magic monsters. Then I often ran out because I didn't have enough damage to kill them quickly, and both Ice Bite and Blood Rage only give you frenzy charges when you kill stuff. At that time, if I shattered a pack of white monsters in a single skill use (even without Blood Rage active) I could be just about guaranteed to get 3 - 5 frenzy charges out of it, Blood rage gave me a 25% chance for every monster I killed to get a charge, and Ice Bite seemed to be giving me a 59% chance (at level 20) for every monster I shattered. The charges that I was getting from killing white packs were often enough for me to flicker my way through the magic packs most of the time. I did run out of frenzy charges on some magic packs here and there though. Usually once or twice in a map.

I was looking forward to the 2.1.0 patch because being able to run Assassin's Mark as an aura means that I no longer require power charge on critical in my Flickerstrike setup to keep my power charges up. That meant that I could replace it with increased critical damage, and that combined with the Assassin's Mark aura, I thought, would probably be enough to solve my damage problems with magic monster packs. As I predicted, the packs of magic monsters are going down much much faster now than they were before 2.1.0. I'm even shattering more of them than I was before, because of the increased critical multiplier improving my cold damage as well.

However, now I am having much worse troubles maintaining my frenzy charges than I was before 2.1.0. As I said, before 2.1.0 I could shatter a single normal pack of monsters and get 3 - 5 frenzy charges out of it, even without blood rage running. But now, after 2.1.0, I sometimes shatter a whole pack of monsters and don't even get 1 frenzy charge out of it. So I wonder if there has been a change in the way that Ice Bite grants frenzy charges? Does it now only grant a maximum of 1 frenzy charge per skill use, and that one charge only has a 59% chance of happening regardless of how many monsters you shatter, where previously it was a chance to grant a frenzy charge per monster shattered? If this change has happened, is it intentional or unintentional? If it is unintentional, can it please be fixed ASAP? It's really wrecking my build, and I was looking forward to my flicker build becoming a lot more playable in this patch.

{Edit}Generating Frenzy charges with Ice Bite is now so unreliable that I have stopped using it, even though I typically shatter 90% or more of the monsters I kill. I didn't want to stop using my Atziri's Step, but running out of frenzy charges in the middle of every other pack of monsters is a worse defence penalty than switching to The Blood Dance so that I can sustain enough Frenzy charges. Once I'd started using The Blood Dance, Ice Bite was making so little difference to Frenzy charge production that I didn't even notice the difference when I took it out of my 6-link. Now I'm using added cold damage instead. If Ice Bite isn't going to be fixed then I'll re-colour the socket on my chest piece to red so that I can use added fire damage, which scales much better than added cold damage. It's an Assassin's garb chest piece though, so getting R-R-R-R-B-G sockets is a non-trivial effort to make. Thus, I'd really appreciate it if GGG would let us know whether Ice Bite will be fixed or not.{/Edit}

Frenzy charge generation doesn't even seem to work with culling strike added in 2.1.0. Please fix!

Awesome, thanks for the fix GGG!

As another piece of feedback on this support gem though, maps which have "XX% chance for monsters to avoid elemental status ailments" pretty much wreck the usefulness of this support gem. Thus, anyone building around it will always avoid those maps.

Wrong thread for this bit perhaps, but the same goes for anyone building around blasphemy and curse immunity maps.

Curse immunity is fine as a mod on a pack of monsters, but when it's on a whole map it's horrible. I think reduced effectiveness of curses would be more appropriate for maps. Reductions in curse effectiveness would still have a large impact, but it wouldn't always be an instant re-roll like curse immunity is.

And rather than having a chance for monsters to avoid elemental status ailments altogether (which seems like an obscenely high chance to anyone relying on shattering enemies for frenzy charges), why not have reduced duration of status ailments? That would have a similar effect if it was a relatively high reduction, but it wouldn't totally prevent Ice Bite from generating frenzy charges.

If, however, GGG wouldn't consider applying this mod to duration rather than applying it as a chance to avoid, then it might be good to shift the range of chance to avoid for the mod. I think at present the chance to avoid status ailments is 40% for white maps, 60% for yellow maps, and I'm guessing 80% for red maps (I've never played, or even found, a red map, so I don't know). If the range was lowered 20% to 20% for white maps, 40% for yellow maps, and 60% for red maps that would be another way that could make this mod less detrimental for ice bite. 60% chance to avoid status ailments is high enough to be a very serious challenge in red maps, but low enough that it might - just MIGHT - be doable, whereas 80% is just always going to be an instant re-roll.

Of course, there's always the other alternative available - just use The Blood Dance and then it doesn't matter whether monsters avoid status ailments or not because the only thing that matters is their death. I Guess it depends on whether you want players to have a serious choice to make between the Ice Bite support and The Blood Dance, or if you just want most players to just go with The Blood Dance. I suppose one way you could make that a more serious choice would be to also put a bit more damage on the Ice Bite gem, since 10% increased damage against frozen enemies at 20% quality is nowhere near the extra damage I would get from using Blood Dance with an added fire gem instead.

Speaking for myself I have plenty of damage even without the added fire gem for the time being, and I like the extra defences I get from not having to use The Blood Dance. So I'll probably continue to use Ice Bite for a while yet, but as I try out higher level maps, which I'm certainly going to be doing at some point, I might need more damage, and then the choice will have been made for me by the amount of monster life. If monster life gets high enough I'll have to stop using Ice Bite and switch to added fire and Blood Dance to kill enough monsters to get enough frenzy charges. I'll post again if/when I get to that stage.

I just want to chime in and voice my disappointment with this gem.

I've tried several times to put it into my Witch builds, since this seems more aligned with a spellcaster for generating Frenzy charges. For whatever reason, it's unreasonably difficult to generate Frenzy Charges as a spellcaster, so I really wanted this gem to work, but in practice, it's terrible.

It either provides zero charges at all, or is incredibly unreliable at providing one or two randomly. The requirement that it must kill a frozen enemy is far too restrictive, and seriously needs to be relaxed. Otherwise, as mentioned above, Blood Dance is far more useful, and even in builds where it's not possible, not generating charges is probably more useful than trying to accommodate this gem.

Even if it was conditional, having to make a kill on a frozen enemy is too stiff. It might be better if it worked more like Power Charge on Critical, providing a chance of Frenzy Charge on Freeze effect, or something.

As it stands, I've had zero success trying to use this skill in my builds.

I agree with the above post. I tried it in my Freezing Pulse build which freezes mobs reliably but for a short period of time due to small but high frequency hits. I used Freezing Pulse + Culling Strike + Ice Bite to try and generate charges. The problem is that lesser mobs will die in a few hits anyway before I can generate charges, and bosses or tougher rares don't freeze for very long anyway (and if you do enough damage to freeze them for longer, do you really need to generate charges)? I full cleared a couple of Strand maps and never generated a single charge.

The suggestion of changing it to have a chance at a charge with every freeze seems very good.

Regarding the gem not reliably building charges, has anyone tried linking it to Herald of Ice in a fashion similar to how folks use Herald of Lightning with Curse on Hit? I've noticed that when Herald of Ice's explosion procs it has a tendency to shatter multiple enemies. Granted Curse on Hit doesn't have a cost multiplier, but Ice Bite would only raise the reservation cost to 30% which is still lower than many auras.

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Marikhen wrote:

Regarding the gem not reliably building charges, has anyone tried linking it to Herald of Ice in a fashion similar to how folks use Herald of Lightning with Curse on Hit? I've noticed that when Herald of Ice's explosion procs it has a tendency to shatter multiple enemies. Granted Curse on Hit doesn't have a cost multiplier, but Ice Bite would only raise the reservation cost to 30% which is still lower than many auras.

I have, and it's shit.

As noted prior, the biggest issue is that you do not get a frenzy charge ever if the monster is one shot frozen+killed. It's extremely rare that you would freeze and not kill, then hit again, and kill with the SAME SKILL linked to Ice bite.

Really a very, very sad support gem.

Works wonders for my build (Ice Shot with Chain, GMP, etc and gear/jewels that grant chance to freeze plus decent crit), I get a full stack of charges pretty much from every mob pack. The issue comes from stuff that you can't freeze and bosses but you usually use Frenzy for those anyway.

Overall I'm happy with the gem, I do think that the mana reservation could be towned down to 110% since it only works for a few niche builds.

I feel like changing the chance to gain a charge on killing a frozen enemy to chance to gain a charge on hitting a chilled enemy or, similar to how Oro's Sacrifice works with ignited enemy, chance to gain a charge if an Attack chills an enemy wouldn't make it too op (tweaking the chance % so maybe you'd need 7 frenzy charges to never run out on unlucky RNG when using with Flicker) but would still make it far more interesting.