Freeze pulse and the shotgun change

Freeze pulse is obviously a skill that was made to shotgun. While removing shotgunning from the game makes sense from a balance standpoint, the way that freeze pulse is just generally designed obviously lends it self to shotgunning in some fashion.

My advice on a way to help the skill feel more fluid is do one of three things:
1) make it scale like flame totem does now, where it gains projectiles as it levels, this would naturally give it more AoE while allowing it to do more damage with out having to link it to LMP.
2) make it behave like fireball in that if the 3 separate projectiles (or 5 in the case of GMP) each hit an enemy, they share partial or full damage if they overlap onto the other enemies. THis would allow it to shotgun after a fashion in an AoE clear situation but wouldn't effect the current damage of the single target of the skill when linked to LMP or GMP.
3) make the skill naturally have a natural larger spread when linked with LMP or GMP. This last one would just be a quality of life style change.

Anyhow that's just my two cents from watching some of the beta footage from the streams. I dont know how well the skill scales into the later part of the games in relation to other skills or if even with the changes putting LMP or GMP will be beneficial at all over other support gems, this is just the feeling I get from seeing the skill in action vs other spells.

Good thread.

Imo, the shotgunning global removal is good, but the mechanic should still exists in some cases. And freezing pulse is the perfect example of it. Add a line to the skill that says "FP can shotgun", and make it do so. Shotgunning is a good and clever mechanic, it just shouldn't apply to anything (and you can then still have the advantage of removing it, thus making easier the creation and balancing of new skills, while still retaining the mechanic within the game).

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Faatality wrote:

Add a line to the skill that says "FP can shotgun", and make it do so.

^
This right here


Tt's almost too good to be true, I'd imagine after taking a mechanic out of the game entirely they wouldn't just put it back in. I think GGG would be a bit more stubborn then that but I hope I'm wrong

Personally, whether freezing pulse has higher over all DPS then it had before is irrelevant, it's the way the skill was used was what made sense, and was fun to use.
Correct me if I'm wrong someone, but I feel FP got hit by collateral damage

I'm not sure if these were ZiggyDs words or Chris's words, but i heard from Ziggy there is 2 reasons for the removal of shotgunning

#1. New skills being planned cannot enter the game with shotgunning present
#2. It's OP




Well for 1, sure can't wait to see them. Although shotgunning is now gone and the new gems are not yet present, so I'm expecting during the closed beta
2. Eh.. yeah well we've seen all kinds of weird **** from Ghudda and all messed with vaal spark gmp/lmp etc. I'm really not sure how much the statement of it being OP applied to freezing pulse, so like i say, it's collateral damage FP took from other re-balances unless someone can say otherwise

Freeze Pulse is actually a perfect example of a spell which shouldn't shotgun. It already has a built-in mechanic which does more damage to enemies which are close than it does to enemies which are far. Shotgunning just makes Freezing Pulse decision-making even more binary: point blank good, ranged bad.

I see where you are coming from, but name me one other skill in the game that can do what you just described. To me, as someone that uses freezing pulse, the skill ACTUALLY now just sounds more like other skills already present.

Just to add further, that yes this is very early days, but in it's current form, I'd like to hear of people that enjoy gem switching for the wider range.

You might even say using GMP should NEVER be used in the current state (high mana consumption for little return) , it's gone from the list of gems you can use, it was never like binary as you say.. you still had at least the choice between LMP/GMP Kappa ... let's just see. I'm already skeptical - clearly

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Freeze Pulse is actually a perfect example of a spell which shouldn't shotgun. It already has a built-in mechanic which does more damage to enemies which are close than it does to enemies which are far. Shotgunning just makes Freezing Pulse decision-making even more binary: point blank good, ranged bad.

Omg, do you mean the spell mechanics synergizes well with the possibilities offered by support gems? That's truly shitty and should be removed from the game immadiately!
No, for real, I've seen a lot of people which uses FP with 2 fp setup: one "usual" with multiproj, and one "unusual" without to face bosses or monsters too dangerous to be right next. Yes, FP is meant to be used close range, but that also means you're exposing your character to the same danger than a melee one. It's clever, it's well thought.
Now the spell does more damage close range, but does not add up that bonus with the shotgunning one, which means it's better to not link it to multiproj, but by doing so you lose aoe capability thus rendering the skill way harder to use in close range (the proj spreads out but is really thin at the beginning). How is that a good thing for a skill that is supposed to be used in close range to have maximum efficiency.

I support this.
Freeze Pulse is a very boring skill and overlaps with Glacial Cascade.
It had a very nice interaction where you ran into melee range for concentrated damage on 1 monster and spread your AOE from far for multiple monsters
I think it would be worth adding it as an exception simply because how nice it synergysed.

Removing shotgunning is stupid. Projectile spells - Like a shotgun if shot with all the BBs coming out of a 12 ga shotgun at point blank you're fucked. But at 50 meters you take light damage. just made sense. Now it's like you get shot with 00 buck at point blank is like being shot at 50 meters. lame.

This change is even more lame than EB nerf IMO.

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Aim_Deep wrote:

Removing shotgunning is stupid. Projectile spells - Like a shotgun if shot with all the BBs coming out of a 12 ga shotgun at point blank you're fucked. But at 50 meters you take light damage. just made sense. Now it's like you get shot with 00 buck at point blank is like being shot at 50 meters. lame.

This change is even more lame than EB nerf IMO.

But it's true that it made it harder for GGG to introduce new spell gems and to balance it out. Not that it was the most unbalanced thing but still.
Imo, the best option is really to implement it as a feature of some skills that need it as part of their core mechanic (such as fp), but removing it for every other skill.

Damage at lvl20 now
255-382
Damage at lvl20 CB
413-619

Plus you get the free gem slot where GMP was.