Cold Snap

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Mark_GGG wrote:
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bingobill wrote:
If it didnt require line of sight it would be potentially useful in some situations.
If it didn't require line of sight it would be completely and utterly broken, and allow you to kill things with no chance of being hurt yourself.

Cold Snap is primarily intended for utility of chilling and freezing, not for damage.


Ice spear chills on every hit and crits way more, so in my humble opinion, its freeze uptime is more than that of coldsnap. Not to mention, a target is more of a threat dead than frozen, ice spear does both, and quickly, with no cooldown.

What Cold Snap do that has more utlilty than ice spear (outside of pvp)

MY suggestion to fix cold snap is raise the base crit to 6% from 4% up the base damage at level 14 from 75-114 to 90-134 (still less than all the other cold spells by alot) Increase base AOE by 15-30%

or the radical suggestion pvp only lol maybe pve: double aoe, make cooldown 10 seconds, 100% chance to freeze, no damage, freeze duration reduced by 25-50%, now its utility.
After reading the patch notes for OB and the damage buff for Cold Snap, I was thinking about implementing it in my build as a potential single target skill. There are certain gems that would be interesting here:

1) Concentrated effect to further increase the damage
2) Added Cold Damage for higher DPS and extended chill duration
3) Increased Critical Damage (higher dmg, freeze)

I believe the damage would be sufficient for endgame. The big problem I see is the 4sec cooldown. There seems to be no way to decrease it. Faster Casting just increases the cast speed but has no influence on the cooldown. As you progress through the game and its difficulties, the hp that mobs have scales pretty dramatically and therefore the freeze/chill duration of the spell diminishes. That means that your CC gets worse. We will see whether the damage buff for OB will solve this issue.

What I don't like about the skill is the linearity in terms of how to solve the problem with the annoying cooldown. Right now it seems that the only way to get around it is by using a wand with Power Siphon to collect Power Charges. That extremely limits your freedom of choice in terms of combined skills and weapons used since anything else than Power Siphon is significantly less viable. I know there is a unique chest as well that collects power charges on crits but since it takes 50% of my mana pool away (less auras possible, thus more vulnerable or lower dps) and has no resistances on it (even more important with the introduction of chaos resistance), I don't see it as a viable option. If there is another alternative, please let me know.

I think this spell could potentially be great but the very high cooldown keeps me from using it right now. I hope GGG has some ideas of changing that in the future.
Last edited by Afghani84 on Jan 23, 2013, 1:45:09 AM
Voll's is perfectly viable. Its Mana penalty is Reduced, so it stacks additively with Increased; the three Mana nodes in the Witch starting area cover more than half of the penalty. Additionally, if you're reeeaally hurting for a large Mana pool, you can roll with Life and Eldritch Battery.
Just my opinion here based on playing with and without Coldnsnap.

The AoE on this spell for the dmg and moderate cc is far too small. I would suggest literally doubling the size of cold snap and/or adding an additional effect like 5-20% increased freeze chance for enemies under the effect of cold snap that are hit by any other cold dmg.

At least that way it could become a part of a greater 1-2 combo with something like Pulse or Ice Spear to make it have a spot on someone's hot keys. Currently the time to cast, small AoE, lack of dmg and cooldown make it near useless against the large packs and waves of enemies we have at any given time.

Why would you cc 2-4 MoBs while 15 still rush at you instead of just killing all 20 by spamming something like Ice Spear, Pulse, Fireball, etc? You won't and that is why I feel Cold Snap needs some love.
ok, been giving this skill a real good workout since the buff. well done GGG! its pretty damn useful now (without 20% ele prolif). So much fun freezing entire screens.
How do you hit the entire screen with it? The AOE is so small when i use it...
because of ele proliferation has its own AoE whenever something suffers a condition dealt by linked skill.
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bingobill wrote:
ok, been giving this skill a real good workout since the buff. well done GGG! its pretty damn useful now (without 20% ele prolif). So much fun freezing entire screens.


I was waiting for someone to bring this up or I would've. Cold snap is amazing with Ele prolif. You can target the front mob in a pack and see the freeze debuff spread to the people in the back as everyone in a 20-25 mob crowd gets frozen. It is great. Couple this with a frostbite curse and increased freeze duration and you got yourself some great CC.
Why not remove the frozen tag completely, slightly increase the AOE (maybe 15-25%), set the cooldown to 5 seconds and add 'If Cold Snap hits a chilled enemy, that enemy is frozen).

Turn it from a spammable skill into a highly effective CC skill. The increase in CD is to stop selfchaining early on.
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Invarra wrote:
Why not remove the frozen tag completely, slightly increase the AOE (maybe 15-25%), set the cooldown to 5 seconds and add 'If Cold Snap hits a chilled enemy, that enemy is frozen).

Turn it from a spammable skill into a highly effective CC skill. The increase in CD is to stop selfchaining early on.


why? this skill is awesome now. please leave alone now ggg.

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