Ice Storm = Huge FPS drops

Is it possible to improve the performance of Ice Storm? I don't care what the animation looks like, just make it so it doesn't fry Computers.

I know it has been an issue for a few years now...

Try disable sound effects.
guide- https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/ei3d1u/performance_tip_you_can_actually_reap_the_nosound/

Same here, don't care how it looks like but if it reduces my fps from 120 to 20 its unplayable. And please don't advice to turn off sound or reduce resolution, even all effects on the game does not look that great comparing to other games on the market which looks much better and also perform better.

So please just optimize this stupid spell!

i7, 16gb RAM, 970GTX, M2 SSD - I know its not newest config, but neither PoE is and it should run it fine...

Thanks in advance!

Upgrade Your PC. I play on laptop with RX 560X and everything works fine.

^ lmao, someone didn't play WI. Minmaxed WI build with awakened spell cascade will bring ANY pc to its knees.

On topic, this was issue for years, but it doesn't seem like GGG gives a damn about WI. Shame, because it's one of my favorite builds.

Bump!

It is pretty clear to me that the performance issues with The Whispering Ice / Icestorm is less caused by insufficient GPU, CPU or other gaming hardware and more so by how the game engine is handling multiple stacks of Icestorms with all that it includes:
- multiple stacking ice bolts
- animations
- stacking chilling grounds
- sounds

+% skill effect duration modifiers and high Intelligence builds all contribute to even longer duration of the skill creating more total stacks & total hits when channeling for more than a couple seconds in the same location.

Hardware matters, but the bottleneck is more so a software issue in this case. I can't put up a clear case with technical details as I can't peer into the code. I base my understanding on feedback from other players and my own testing.

Steps of reproduction:
1. Socket the staff with either a Cyclone or Winter Orb linked with a (high level / Awakened) Cast While Channelling Support gem. You can probably just cast it and stack faster casting but I did not test it.
2. Stack as much Intelligence as you can get. You can also get some increased skill effect duration from passive nodes (my test is with 2200 Int & +45% to skill duration from Potency of Will passives). My Icestorm duration is 7 seconds.
3. Stand in hideout and just start channelling. My FPS dropped from a stable 100 to 30 after cycloning in place for 7 seconds.
4. Now to make things more interesting, socket a Spell Cascade Support gem into the staff.
- With Spell Cascade my FPS drops from 100 to 10...
- With Awakened Spell Cascade my FPS drops to 5(!)

This test was performed with the following settings (virtually all performance settings I could find adjusted to minimum or turned off):
- resolution 1920x1080 (lowering it to 800x600 has a small effect, 10 more FPS while idle (but no numerical improvements with Icestorm) and as this makes the game unplayable due to resolution scaling in full screen it really doesn't matter, but is a significant point why this is less of a hardware issue)
- Nvidia desktop resolution is 1920x1080@120Hz if that matters, lowering it to 60Hz didn't improve anything
- full screen (this does make the game run slightly smoother than windowed fullscreen or windowed)
- all graphics options at minimum (turning them all to max instead gives me 42 idle FPS, but the exact same FPS for Icestorm as with minimum settings! the game stutters more and my GPU is working more intensively but the FPS effect of Icestorm remains the same)
- dynamic resolution enabled (lessens stuttering in some mob encounters, no FPS impact)
- vsync disabled
- predictive networking (noticeable performance improvement, indicates a networking component to the Icestorm issue)
- screen shake off

Detailed test results:
Ultra settings (frame time/latency/fps):
Idle 24/48/41
CwC 37/60/30
CwC+SC 101/65/10
CwC+aSC 207/120/5

Minimum settings (frame time/latency/fps):
Idle 10/35/114
CwC 37/60/30
CwC+SC 102/65/10
CwC+aSC 201/120/5

Edited values in production_Config.ini (disabling sound effects actually have a noticeable performance impact - even with my tests in hideout, but it is another performance issue not strictly related to Icestorm):
[SOUND]
ambient_sound_volume2=false
channel_count=low
chat_alert_sound_volume=50
dialogue_sound_volume2=350
disable_char_events=false
item_filter_sound_volume2=50
master_volume2=50
music_volume2=false
mute_in_background=false
reverb_enabled2=false
sound_effects_volume2=false

I even tried changing some graphics options in the ini file but some of these options such as raising texture_quality= doesn't appear to work (saw someone post doing it 2 months ago on Reddit, but PoE appears to ignore this option nowadays so I assume GGG did it in a patch).

I have gone through Nvidia and Windows settings making some adjustments there as well, to no avail. Steam & Nvidia overlays are disabled.

My gaming rig is not high end, but its not trash either:
Windows 7 64-bit
i5-3450 @3.1GHz turbo overclocked to 3.5GHz
16GB DDR3
PNY GTX 980 4GB overclocked model
SATA6 SSD
1080p native 120Hz monitor

If I enable audio, enable auto/lockstep & do a blighted map/legion/breach encounter or something similar with just spell cascade (I haven't, I can't - and will not - test this with awakened version) and spin around I very easily go below 5 FPS with constant stuttering and severe input lag. I even managed to crash the game client several times this way.

Before discovering the audio tweaking and predictive networking I could only do spell cascade casually when clearing regular packs of mobs. Now I can gladly even pull through some packed encounters (with 10 FPS its not comfortable but its doable). But not with awakened spell cascade - I can clear mob packs with it but I can't stay in the same place for too long at all.

With this I suggest GGG further investigates the possibility of improving the performance of Icestorm, in particular during extreme amounts of Icestorms occurring at the same time, as this is a wonderful skill that is likened by the community but puts off as many due to the performance drop.

Ok so today I went to an esports center and tested it on one of their gaming rigs and compare the performance there with my own PC.

The specs of their rig:
Cooler Master chassis IOS edition
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600
RAM: 16GB DDR4
GPU: GTX 1060 6GB (not sure if it was stock or some OC version, the staff couldn't tell)
Storage: Unknown

I had no admin access so couldn't do any config file edits, but I was able to edit settings in the NVIDIA control panel so I turned most settings to performance there.

In PoE the settings were turned to minimum, but audio was enabled.

The results of my testing in hideout while channelling Icestorm:

Legend: Frametime/Latency/FPS

Idle 7/34/144
CwC 15/37/65
SC 43/63/24
aSC 90/48/12

I did a T4 blighted map as well as a rushed T14 map with beyond mods and watchstone mods with additional mobs with Awakened Spell Cascade and it was actually playable. Well, 12 FPS is bad, and with mobs it goes even lower, but I barely noticed dynamic resolution kicking in, and the stuttering was absent as far as I could tell.

So to sum it up it seems that you can outplay Icestorm with better hardware, but the performance hit is still very real.

Considering that the GPU at the LAN center in general is equal in performance (GTX 980 / GTX 1060) except for 2GB less memory (with minimum graphics settings this shouldn't matter though) - the bottleneck in my PC must be the motherboard/CPU/RAM interplay.