Skill Rework - Arctic Breath

PogChamp

More love for cold skills? Very nice!

Shotgun potential? Please no-life streamers; dont overly abuse it so it gets nerfed for all casual players...

New support gems? Can't find a reason to critisize those; very nice!

Cold damage over time (non-ailment) multiplier added? 6 words to describe what it does in the simplest manner? Overly complex? Sure, but thats why we play PoE. Good addition which will enable more builds!

Less Gpu heavy visual on AB? Nice!

More options for occultist adding cold damage to it? You either like it or you don't, but it adds to your options and doesnt take away existing ones as far as i can tell; nice!

New mods that add multipliers for damage over time? Stat sticks. Not nice, cause if you don't use them you feel like your build underperforms. Remove stat sticks to take away the limiting fun that causes burnout. May be.

Good stuff, now i only wonder which mechanics are present to make these kind of DoT builds viable against bosses as much of the sustain mechanics present for DoT builds rely on on kill effects. New ES recharge mechanic enabling hybrid life saccing builds though, so who knows.

Why is everyone acting like AoE overlap/shotgunning is a new mechanic. It was on the skill before and it's the same as fireball. It's not new.

It is kind of funny:

"Arctic breath wasn't really up to par with other skills, So we buffed it one time"
"Then, it wasn't really up to par, so we buffed it another time"
"Since it wasn't where we wanted it at, we buffed it a third time. Now it's competitive !"
"Also, here is a new powerful support gem to go with it"

Bah. It looks fun. There is no stopping this train, so I for one will enjoy the ride.

Question what exactly triggers the burst? I see the multi-projectile arctic breath sometimes travel only a short distance before bursting despite only the other projectiles hitting enemies, does a triggered burst trigger all other arctic breaths?

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LemonVillain77 wrote:

Why is everyone acting like AoE overlap/shotgunning is a new mechanic. It was on the skill before and it's the same as fireball. It's not new.

The bursting stack isn't new, what seems new is how all instances seems to burst at the same time despite only 1 of the instance hitting the enemy, making it far easier to actually stack bursts on a target.

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Lykkoith wrote:

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kreca73 wrote:

- they are using this 'rework' feature to ditch the old skills and reintroduce new ones. on one hand they remove the old skills without removing them, and on the other they add new shit!!!; dudes are nonethewiser.
- imo, adding similar-to-ignite-mechanics to cold, is a fail attempt to bring it on par with fire as %playability. dudes prefer fire, people will always prefer fire over cold even when fire sucks because IT'S FIREEEEE!.
in this case, you'll have cold to fire double scaling igniting and cold DoTing for clear/defense; as such, this looks like an elementalist skill mostly/only. you could pathfind it, scion it or shadow it as much as you want, you'll never beat the elementalist.

tldr, people will play it as converted to fire + chill(the defense fire always desired) because ... IT"S FIREEEEE! :)

Another failed assumption to know what people plays or prefer xD A lot of people prefers cold over fire, just for the same reason you say: because it's fire AKA the most overused thing in all history of fantasy.

That being said, burning/ignite damage is ailment and cold dot isn't, so no double-scaling. Focusing one or the other will be far more efficient than your idea. The only assumption where it works is with 100% damage conversion, and it won't be because "it's fireeee!". It will be because with 100% conversion this skill can proc its own EE.

there's no fail here. go read any 'skill usage statistics' GGG is dishing out some weeks into a new league; it is heavily fire based/driven. the only reason chieftain is not at the bottom of the barrel as far as playabilty goes, it's because its fire based(totem nodes help too).

you scale cold...?; ignite will burn based on cold damage and the dot will dot based on cold damage. add it to a mine and it's the best thing ever(well not really but you get the idea).

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Edelfaust wrote:

@kreca73 Go for Trickster and stack dots. Even worked in Delve with Cold Snap and Fire Trap. Now that you can focus on cold damage i am hyped.

it's clunky. 3dots = 3casts +you need to lower resist, plus different duration timers, different aoe radii etc.
i don't know man, i guess it'll depend on everyone's definition of what 'works/worked' means.

Edit:

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Psaakyrn wrote:

Question what exactly triggers the burst? I see the multi-projectile arctic breath sometimes travel only a short distance before bursting despite only the other projectiles hitting enemies, does a triggered burst trigger all other arctic breaths?

the way i saw it, when one proj. bursts(hits a target), they all burst which is ... i don't know, sometimes good, sometimes not.

If you convert from cold ro fire and scale cold, it will increase the fire damage from the hit and thus the possible burn it may apply. But it's not new and only works as long as you stack plain cold damage.

What is new here are the cold damage over time multipliers. Burn damage has nothing to do with cold, even if the original hit is converted from cold the burn is fire by default, so it won't be affected by these new nodes/mods. Also, burn will still be an ailment, so non-ailment DoTs won't apply either. And of course, if you wanna stack burning damage, it won't apply to the cold DoT. So there's no double stacking, further than the already existing conversion. These changes will have absolutely no impact on what you describe.

Looks great

cold caustic arrow ?