Arctic Armour and Reduced Mana

Arctic Armour has a 0% mana reserve and has its drain unaffected when placed with a reduced mana gem. I feel this should be changed!

I think the real question becomes how good is artic armor when combined with other defenses. Clearly GGG must feel its pretty darn good, and perhaps indeed it is.


I'd like to see AA more easily run at lower levels, such as levels 1-12, but then ramp up more exponentially after that.

I just feel this would make it more accessible to new players and during leveling, and then players could decide if it was something they want to keep investing into, or perhaps they want to keep running it, but only a lvl 10 or etc version.

Currently the drain efficiency gets better at high levels. To compensate for this, I'd like to see the additional mobile drain decreased at lower levels, to nearly be cut in half.

The mana drain is a debuff, not a cost.

It is mitigated by mana regeneration, just as chaos-damage drains can be mitigated by health regen and chaos resistance.

In regards to Arctic Armour's effectiveness... While it works amazingly in conjunction with Mind Over Matter, with AA dealing with small hits and MoM dealing with big hits, it's not simply the damage mitigation, but also the kiting potential. Being able to run around and auto-chill pursuing enemies is a feature one should be actively utilizing.

Arctic Armour is somewhat like a counterpart to Righteous Fire - It is obvious that it was, more or less, designed to be activated for short and specific situations (in this case, running away) - Being able to build to sustain it indefinitely is merely an option found possible with specialized build refinement.

If you feel compelled to sustain it, I don't feel that warrants nerfing the debuff but rather an increase in your dedication to upgrading your gear.

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The mana drain is a debuff, not a cost.

It is mitigated by mana regeneration, just as chaos-damage drains can be mitigated by health regen and chaos resistance.

In regards to Arctic Armour's effectiveness... While it works amazingly in conjunction with Mind Over Matter, with AA dealing with small hits and MoM dealing with big hits, it's not simply the damage mitigation, but also the kiting potential. Being able to run around and auto-chill pursuing enemies is a feature one should be actively utilizing.

Arctic Armour is somewhat like a counterpart to Righteous Fire - It is obvious that it was, more or less, designed to be activated for short and specific situations (in this case, running away) - Being able to build to sustain it indefinitely is merely an option found possible with specialized build refinement.

If you feel compelled to sustain it, I don't feel that warrants nerfing the debuff but rather an increase in your dedication to upgrading your gear.

This is what I said quite some time ago, and someone from GGG commented on it.

One way to bypass the drain of Arctic Armor is to use a mobility skill, either Leap Slam or Lightning Warp. By the time you are finishing your build, these mobility skills are almost always a faster method of travel than running. LW is usually a better choice since it can be used with any build, and two supports can make it a near instant teleport.

So AA basically has no cost, drain, or any drawback. At least, if you're playing the game to the fullest. If you're playing for fun and run around with AA on, then you are doing quite a few things wrong and should suffer for it.

As to AA's damage mitigation effectiveness, it is extremely good at it. It can nearly totally mitigate reflect from Incinerate, even at stage four, with ease. It is a must-have for builds that use fire and/or physical damage. One prime example would be CoC. I use Firestorm and never feel the reflect from it even with negative fire resistance. That is the power of AA.

But for big hits, AA does practically nothing. About 175 mitigation without Inner Force? You'll barely reduce a boss' hit. But as JunCurium noted, AA also has the trail effect that causes enemies to be chilled. This is especially effective against fast enemies that are tough because of their speed.

AA is fine the way it is.