How to freeze yourself?

Hi All,

I currently have these items equipped, with the gem links as shown in the gear that is linked here:



I also have these items available:



My current tree is for a flame totem build which I have not yet been able to respec and have been using for testing. The plan is to reroll after Perandus leagues and change ascendancies to Juggernaut for Unstoppable so that I can move, cast, and attack while frozen.

Here's the tree:



My current item setup gives me 55k armor while frozen for 90% damage reduction, and I have 4k life while capped on all resistances including chaos. I am still capped on cold resist even when cursed. Without being frozen, I have a measly 13% damage reduction.

I know it looks a bit weird but the shield, boots, and zahndethus's cassock were pretty much required if I was going to cap chaos resist due to the restriction to 3 slots to do it. Even with all of those I'm still going to need to take the 4 templar +chaos resist/life nodes to just barely cap it once I respec. Aurumvorax was also pretty much mandatory since there were so many uniques.

My question is, how do I freeze myself? My current setup is unable to freeze myself well despite self-cursing with Frostbite and popping Taste of Hate before self-damaging a great deal. I only really get frozen when there are a ton of mobs hitting me and ToH is up, but it never lasts for long despite using Auxium with only about 700ES.

My current build has an okay clear but I would really like to be able to consistently freeze myself to maximize the benefit from berek's pass and winterheart, which are the whole point of the build.

Ideally the build would move towards a CWDT scold's build for damage.

Please advise.

You have to have the lowest amount of ES as possible when using Auxium if you want to have a long freeze.
Another thing, why do you max chaos res? Am I missing something?

Freezing requires freeze chance or a critical strike. Scolds Bridle nor Heartbound Loop can crit, but I think if you curse yourself with frostbite use Taste of hate and cast a few fast skills it might freeze you. I would search for a replacement for taste of hate but i think there arent many options.

I think it's likely that you're not dealing yourself enough COLD damage to freeze yourself, even with only 700 ES. To Freeze yourself at all with 700 ES, you'd need to deal yourself 35 cold damage after resists are accounted for (note that this would be less if you had a 20Q Frostbite, since that increases freeze duration). That's 185 raw cold damage at 81% cold res, or 925 phys damage before conversion (81% resist from ToH included). I doubt your mana cost is that high...? You could reduce that number by running a non-ES chest. Is max chaos res absolutely necessary for your build? Degen won't a problem with Winterheart, and very few mobs deal large chaos hits.

Also note that Taste of Hate gives Freeze avoidance, lessening the chance to freeze provided by Frostbite. You could maybe augment Frostbite with some Reckless Defence jewels, so you take more crits = more chance to be frozen. I'm not sure if it works with Scold's, though. Increased Curse effect would also help, particularly with 20Q Frostbite.

As for why you're not getting frozen by monsters, I'm not sure, but maybe it's because you're running a lot of evasion with enfeeble? What monsters are you testing against? Again, you have to get hit for 950 phys damage to get frozen, and then there's a 12% chance to be frozen from Frostbite, reduced to a ~8% chance after Taste of Hate. You should only be getting frozen about once every 12 hits.

Last thing to note: It's going to be very hard to proc CWDT with Scold's when you have 50k armour, ToH or no. If you're trying to mitigate Scold's damage, I recommend using a non-CWDT setup for damage.

Edit: The phys damage I listed is the MINIMUM amount to freeze yourself. To freeze yourself for longer than .3s, you'll need more.

Welcome to why lightning coil is broken. It's almost impossible to deal yourself enough damage to shock/freeze yourself with coil/ToH since they made the durations of shocks and freezes lower. Capped lightning with coil needs something like a hit of 2/3s of your life pool to shock you (for the MINIMUM duration) and you need to be dealt more than 125% of your "life pool" in physical damage in one hit (barring an added cold damage mod) to be frozen by ToH.

In other words, get that ES down.

If you wanted to do this in standard, you could try to find a unique talisman that converts 100% of fire damage taken to cold damage then use something like the cloak of flame or, alternatively, use a talisman that converts 100% of lightning damage to cold damage to use Lightning Coil and proc your own freeze (try to lose all the ES and you should be able to freeze yourself frequently)

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Solavice wrote:

If you wanted to do this in standard, you could try to find a unique talisman that converts 100% of fire damage taken to cold damage then use something like the cloak of flame or, alternatively, use a talisman that converts 100% of lightning damage to cold damage to use Lightning Coil and proc your own freeze (try to lose all the ES and you should be able to freeze yourself frequently)

Winterheart