Here are the details for the revamped Cold Snap Skill!

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AbdulAlhazred wrote:

Well, so long Cold Snap.

Swapping charges to frenzy almost guarantees this skill will be forgotten, now. You can always bypass the cooldown by using Trap support. But what's better? Ice Trap, Vortex traps, or Cold Snap traps? I bet it's one of the former two.

Doing this kills the interesting interaction between Cold Snap and Romia's Banquet that allowed you to make a viable self-caster. Now it is impossible. How are you going to maintain frenzy charges against bosses? Will we see Cold Snap raiders in the future?

It was a good 5 year run, old bean.

Apparently the threshold jewel for it swaps the Frenzy charges back to Power charges. I posted that just before you (see last response on Page 1).

I see that now, Exile009. Thank you.

While that gives me hope, that also seems pretty lazy, to me. "Let's make Cold Snap impossible to sustain, unless players equip the threshhold jewel for it."

At least the threshhold jewel will be useful now, I suppose? I can give them that. The old version was pitifully bad. To sustain Cold Snap you used Romira's and sacrificed crit. Or went crit/Assassin and prayed to RNG (not a realistically sustaintable method of play).

The legacy jewel benefited neither approach since they relied on the on-hit charge generation rather than on-kill.

Am I less disappointed? Yes. Am I no longer disappointed? No.

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AbdulAlhazred wrote:

I see that now, Exile009.

While that gives me hope, that also seems pretty lazy, to me. "Let's make Cold Snap impossible to sustain, unless players equip the threshhold jewel for it."

At least the threshhold jewel will be useful now, I suppose? I can give them that. The old version was pitifully bad. To sustain Cold Snap you used Romira's and sacrificed crit. Or went crit/Assassin and praayed to RNG. The jewel benefited neither, really. Since you rely more on-hit charge generation rather than on-kill.

Am I less disappointed? Yes. Am I no longer disappointed? No.

Legitimate question here, not trying to talk down to you or anyone here, just curious;

It seems you're saying the only real way to "sustain cold snap" was to use a specific unique, otherwise you "prayed to RNG". Now that there's an option (when not using the tj) to have it consume frenzy charges instead, which are usually a lot easier to generate, why is this a bad thing?

I get that you might not like the rework, but unless I'm reading your post wrong it seems you're complaining that the skill used to almost require a unique to work, and now it doesn't.

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AbdulAlhazred wrote:

Well, so long Cold Snap.

Swapping charges to frenzy almost guarantees this skill will be forgotten, now. You can always bypass the cooldown by using Trap support.

Doubt it, I would assume trap support will be changed to no cooldown (because otherwise throwing multiple traps would be horrible with trap support given the 'throws additional traps' changes, which is the main reason to even use trap support), which means cold snap would no longer cede it's cooldown mechanics to trap's. It'd work with traps the same way it works right now with mines, i.e. using cold snap's own cooldown mech.

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Bleu42 wrote:

Legitimate question here, not trying to talk down to you or anyone here, just curious;

It seems you're saying the only real way to "sustain cold snap" was to use a specific unique, otherwise you "prayed to RNG". Now that there's an option (when not using the tj) to have it consume frenzy charges instead, which are usually a lot easier to generate, why is this a bad thing?

I get that you might not like the rework, but unless I'm reading your post wrong it seems you're complaining that the skill used to almost require a unique to work, and now it doesn't.

It's a bad thing if you use Cold Snap as your main skill, Blue42. Think about how many items or passives (Raider/Ascendant) allow you to generate frenzy charges on hit. If you want to use Cold Snap repeatedly (like against a boss), then you are constantly consuming frenzy charges. Charges that you do not regenerate quickly, without killing enemies. So against a powerful rare or unique monster, you will eventually have a staring contest with it, when your charges run out and you cannot generate more. You will cast Cold Snap, wait for the hilarious cooldown to expire, then cast it again, wait again... You get the picture, I assume.

What makes the charge change bad is that you could feasibly sustain power charges with on-hit generation through Romira's Banquet, or acquiring a very high chance to gain a power charge on critical strike through Assassin ascendancy + power charge on critical support gem.

Using Cold Snap as a secondary skill, and not your primary damage-dealer isn't being considered. Cold Snap was always fine, as a secondary skill. The disappointment here is in the previous work around and ability to use it as your go-to damage source. Again, the new threshhold jewel mechanic applies the old power charge mechanic, and brings it back to par.

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Shppy wrote:

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AbdulAlhazred wrote:

Well, so long Cold Snap.

Swapping charges to frenzy almost guarantees this skill will be forgotten, now. You can always bypass the cooldown by using Trap support.

Doubt it, I would assume trap support will be changed to no cooldown (because otherwise throwing multiple traps would be horrible with trap support given the 'throws additional traps' changes, which is the main reason to even use trap support), which means cold snap would no longer cede it's cooldown mechanics to trap's. It'd work with traps the same way it works right now with mines, i.e. using cold snap's own cooldown mech.

Unless I am wrong, you can currently ignore power charges/cooldown when using Cold Snap with traps. I imagine this would remain in the future. This is based off of pre-Awakening knowledge of how Cold Snap worked with Traps, though. I have not tried to use Cold Snap with Trap support for some time.

We are undergoing a Trap Renaissance with Incursion, however. So who knows what else they may change, when cooldowns and bypassing them are involved.

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AbdulAlhazred wrote:

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Bleu42 wrote:

Legitimate question here, not trying to talk down to you or anyone here, just curious;

It seems you're saying the only real way to "sustain cold snap" was to use a specific unique, otherwise you "prayed to RNG". Now that there's an option (when not using the tj) to have it consume frenzy charges instead, which are usually a lot easier to generate, why is this a bad thing?

I get that you might not like the rework, but unless I'm reading your post wrong it seems you're complaining that the skill used to almost require a unique to work, and now it doesn't.

It's a bad thing if you use Cold Snap as your main skill, Blue42. Think about how many items or passives (Raider/Ascendant) allow you to generate frenzy charges on hit. If you want to use Cold Snap repeatedly (like against a boss), then you are constantly consuming frenzy charges. Charges that you do not regenerate quickly, without killing enemies. So against a powerful rare or unique monster, you will eventually have a staring contest with it, when your charges run out and you cannot generate more. You will cast Cold Snap, wait for the hilarious cooldown to expire, then cast it again, wait again... You get the picture, I assume.

What makes the charge change bad is that you could feasibly sustain power charges with on-hit generation through Romira's Banquet, or acquiring a very high chance to gain a power charge on critical strike through Assassin ascendancy + power charge on critical support gem.

Using Cold Snap as a secondary skill, and not your primary damage-dealer isn't being considered. Cold Snap was always fine, as a secondary skill. The disappointment here is in the previous work around and ability to use it as your go-to damage source. Again, the new threshhold jewel mechanic applies the old power charge mechanic, and brings it back to par.

That makes more sense, ty

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AbdulAlhazred wrote:

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Shppy wrote:

Doubt it, I would assume trap support will be changed to no cooldown (because otherwise throwing multiple traps would be horrible with trap support given the 'throws additional traps' changes, which is the main reason to even use trap support), which means cold snap would no longer cede it's cooldown mechanics to trap's. It'd work with traps the same way it works right now with mines, i.e. using cold snap's own cooldown mech.

Currently you do not have to worry about power charges/cooldown when using Cold Snap with traps. I imagine this would remain in the future.

Although we are undergoing a Trap Renaissance, so who knows what else they change.

Yeah, and the reason for that is because all traps, including ones from trap support, have a cooldown system of their own right now. GGG had to make one of the two take priority when using trap support on a skill that already has a cooldown of its own, and traps take that priority.


Once 3.3 hits, if trap support no longer has a cd, there'll be no clash of cooldown mechs anymore, meaning there's nothing about trap support that will override cold snap's cooldown. So cold snap traps will work just like cold snap mines or self-cast cold snap, they'll be gated by cold snap's usual cd.

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鬼殺し wrote:

Threshold jewels are a whole other rant though. You can argue that fireball *only* starts acting like a real fireball with two Rolling Flames equipped. And to date, that's a drop-only threshold jewel. At best, threshold jewels act like D3 runes, transforming the skill in an interesting but not necessarily superior way. Typically, they're a half-measure where a genuine skill revision would be better.

In this case, PoE has done their usual have-cake-will-eat approach: a skill revision that strips the skill of its identity and functionality *and* a threshold jewel that partially restores that functionality.

Ugh.

Still back at the loss of built-in freezing. Hm. Maybe they should just get rid of 'frozen' as an ailment altogether and just give chilled a chance to shatter. Make cold damage on crit 'chill'.

...That'd be a full measure. It would require a lot of work though. A lot.

Ignoring the threshold component, since I do not want to go too off-topic in this thread (I feel a rant on threshold jewels would eat up too many pages/might as well be its own thread).

I think I understand why GGG have moved away from the high freeze chance and the new DOT. Making this, as Hemming put it, a ranged Vortex (yeah, it basically is).

During its original implementation Cold Snap had its use as a secondary hard CC skill against clusters of enemies or even a powerful enemy for a momentary respite. Its cooldown was warranted. But as we've grown, we've seen our status ailments change dramatically over time.

Cold Snap's freeze chance, while high, is still limited in duration based upon cold damage done on initial hit. And unless supported with a lot of added damage, or many more modifiers, this usually wasn't long enough to warrant using the spell anymore.

Of course, if you could bypass cooldown with charge generation, this made it a VERY powerful freezing spell. But even then, GGG reduced its effectiveness significantly with map mods like "Monsters have a 90% chance to avoid elemental ailments".

I see the move from legacy hard crowd control to "ranged Vortex" as a quality of life improvement. Cold Snap, as mentioned, was left behind. Again, and again. Now, it will still act as crowd control in the form of a guaranteed effect, with its chilling DOT. Previously you needed to grab clusters of freeze duration/effectiveness from the tree to combat increasingly powerful map mods/freeze's reduced effectiveness over the years and iterations of ailments.

Moving forward, in our new RPG shooter, this is definitely an improved Cold Snap. It fits the pacing PoE has set for itself over the years. That is not to say that I won't miss the ability to permanently lock unique enemies or map bosses in place with the 30% (+all additional item/passive increases) freeze chance on legacy Cold Snap. But I do believe I understand the design decisions that went into reworking it.

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鬼殺し wrote:

RIP Freeze and shatter fun.

Boring.

And giving aoe cold snap a DoT? Uncreative and illogical. Fire is your DoT realm when it comes to elemental damage. Lightning is your damage spike realm and ice, your CC realm. DoTs can be applied after the CC but shouldn't really be part of it. That's just lazy. I am okay with Vortex doing it because it's less a cold spell and more a freezing wind constantly sucking the enemy into its whirls of pain...but this? It's just a 'Turn your world to Ice' shrine situation. Pulses of ice. BORING. Sorrynotsorry.

But switching from power charge to frenzy to overcome the cooldown? Saw that coming, what with how Ice Bite works, and that 'green' typically mean 'cold' in PoE (see herald of ice) while blue increasingly denotes 'lightning' (herald of thunder).

On the other hand, a sapphire ring (cold resistance) can be crafted with an iron ring and a blue gem...so...as usual, PoE is about as consistent in its rules as English.

+1