Can someone explain Cold Snap for me?

For what it seems like, is has 4 sec cooldown, low damage, small AoE , how can you use it as a main skill in a build?

You use power charges to bypass the cooldown. I don't know if many builds use it as a main skill. I used to use it on some builds with CwDT.

It has been made somewhat obsolete, but Cold Snap + Romira's Banquet + Resolute Technique used to see a reasonable amount of hardcore use due to being very good at freezing and thus very safe. That's the main method of bypassing the cooldown that you will see. The damage and AoE really aren't that low either - both slightly lower than similar spells, but also somewhat made up for by the fact that Cold Snap is ground targeted rather than a projectile or self-centred.

Its possible to make Cold Snap your main skill, but you end up being fairly glass cannon because of it. In order to provide sustainable Cold Snaps, you can use Cold Snap - Spell Echo, and use Voll's Protector. From there, simply build high enough crit chance, and you will generate a charge every single time you crit.

Since Cold Snap only consumes one charge per use, and Spell Echo provides an extra, free cast, it creates sustainable power charges, even against single target. The only thing it requires is sufficient crit chance to ensure that you crit, generating a power charge.

I used to use it as a utility skill on what was my main. I don't know if balance has shifted but for my build the base damage (per Hit, mind you) was pretty much the highest available for cold damage of that type (targeted AoE) and the skill was massively useful for Elemental Proliferation. I was a crit build, but since freeze chance rolls per Hit and not per Skill Use, larger groups of enemies were practically guaranteed to be frozen by 1 single Cold Snap.

Also I believe Trap Support allows you to ignore the cooldown mechanic

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adghar wrote:

Also I believe Trap Support allows you to ignore the cooldown mechanic

You're correct (it replaces the normal cooldown with the trap cooldown), but at that point you might as well be using Ice Trap. In fact, Ice Trap seems to be what completely superseded Cold Snap anyway.

Interesting, somehow I totally forgot about Ice Trap. That has quite ridiculous AoE, yes? So the main advantage Cold Snap Trap would have over that is the 30% freeze chance, 30% freeze duration, and 110% chill duration, at the cost of AoE and a bit less base damage (-100 at level 20?). Cold Snap's Damage Effectiveness is also a bit higher but nothing to write home about (120/110) Not ideal for a main skill, then, but maybe others could use it as a utility skill like I did.

The important thing about Ice Trap is that it can hit multiple times (which gets taken to even larger extremes with Cluster Trap). It actually does waaaaaay more damage than Cold Snap, especially if you stack AoE increases.

This is a very simple-minded comment, but I use Cold Snap (at this point) on my dual wield Void Battery build just so I can watch that cold snap MTX hand come up out of the ground and wreck monsters. Am I too basic here? xD if you want to see the build, it's under my character tab - character name ... Taryn_Shiver ... lol. he was once built around the item, and still has it as the alternate weapon.

When I built Taryn_Shiver, his purpose wasn't damage output, but instead teamplay utility. I stopped damage from happening to teammates. enough said. Really, with the core changes lately, taryn's shiver staff needs an upgrade. It's fallen to the wayside.

There is a niche build utilizing Cold Snap, cast on crit, immortal call and Voll's Devotion to generate constant IC uptime.

You get a cast on crit setup with cold snap and immortal call in it. You use Voll's Protector and Voll's Devotion. You will generate much more power charges than Cold Snap uses, so you'll always cast Cold Snap and remain at max power charges. Each Cold Snap expends a power charge which gets turned to an endurance charge. You only need one additional endurance charge from somewhere and, with 4 endurance charges, IC's duration at level 20 will be 2.9 seconds. It has a 3-second cooldown, so you practically get permanent and automated immortal calls.

If you combine this with a saffell's, the Alchemist nodes near Witch and surgeon's elemental resist flasks, you can get 100% phys immunity and 87% ele resists up practicaly non-stop. I saw a guy facetanking Core Malachai at 3k hitpoints with this build.

Why is it niche and why don't we see it used more often?
- voll's devotion is expensive
- you are gimping your damage by putting IC and Cold Snap in your coc setup. Cold Snap does deal decent damage but it can't compare to Arc, Bladefall or EK, for example
- it's not 100% reliable: if somethings hits you before you hit it and activate your IC, you're suddenly from immortal to squishy squish.

Apart from that, it's a fun build and could be made to work pretty well with a setup like barrage - coc - EK - bladefall - Cold Snap - IC. The damage will still be good and you'll be practically invincible if you play it right.