Understand the three dragons, unique helm

I don't quite understand this helm. I have an arc build (non crit of course) that shocks a lot from different sources. Using the three dragons I very rarely freeze anything. I'm assuming when I do freeze its from the 4% crit chance. I don't see anything on the helm to suggest that freeze will only result from crits. The helm appears to be useless for my build and I don't really see why it should be that way. Oh well.

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Vipermagi wrote:

The Three Dragons does exactly what it says it does, as per usual. It never mentions Chance to Shock, and unsurprisingly, Chance to Shock is entirely unaffected; it inflicts Shock. It does say your Lightning Damage will Freeze, and will never Shock.

Because of lack of information you have to read between the lines. Lightning damage normally inflicts shock by crit or the usual other ways like the tree nodes or certain gems. What the helm tells the player is that instead of shocking your lightning damage will now freeze, but it doesn't say HOW the freeze is supposed to be implemented. If I am shocking 50% of the time from some of those sources then how exactly do I figure out when the three dragons will cause a freeze?

The way I look at it is as follows:

Without Three Dragons if I want to make a build around freezing I find all of the ways to freeze things. These include scoring a critical strike with some amount of cold damage or the Chance to Freeze modifier. That's it. I have to first hit something with a critical strike or proc "Chance to Freeze" and I also have to do some amount of cold damage or the freeze duration will be non existent. If I hit something with a critical strike with let's say lightning damage and I have 5% chance to freeze from the shadow node I may still proc that 5% chance but doing 0 cold damage will mean no freeze. Three Dragons tells me that now instead of having to hit the critical strike and/or chance to freeze while doing cold damage I have to do Lightning Damage to cause the same effect. The Three Dragons says nothing about converting chance to shock into chance to freeze. It simply implies that freeze is now based off of lightning damage and no longer cold.

arc has a built in 10% chance to shock, with decent cast time, that is huge hence you are shocking all the time. when you use three dragons mask, that built in chance to shock does NOT convert to chance to freeze. So you are stuck with just 4% crit chance to apply freeze. You could get 5% extra chance to freeze by picking node near shadow area.

Three Dragon's power comes from Critical Strikes.

Right now, playing a Molten Strike / Cast on Crit / Flame Surge. I also run Hatred.

Cold damage on critical strikes will ignite enemies, causing any Flame Surges to deal it's 50% more damage. Molten Strike itself fires 3 projectiles, which amplified by Iron Grip + Point Blank usually grant all three shocks, meaning Flame Surge is dealing 140% more damage before critical multiplier or any other spell modifiers. Would be fun to see it in a ridiculously expensive players hands, because my paper dps may not be high, but that Molten Strike critically strikes and possibly sending multiple Flame Surges? It gets Insane. Soon, I might be able to support Righteous Fire, that should be fun.

Flame Surge can't ignite, but it sure does a great job of reapplying my shock stacks :)

On this, I've found that Three Dragons has synergy with the new Pyre ring. Use a lightning spell + Quality Added Cold Damage and / or the aforementioned Shadow +5% freeze node + whatever combo of Arc / Quality Added Lightning / Static Blows / Shadow shock + Proliferate. You benefit from high top-end damage to generate freezes via lightning, you get still shocks since all cold damage is fire, and the "ignite destroys corpses" bit is a non-facotr.

Whether or not any actually effective build can be done this way, I have no idea. I imagine Arc or Spork would work well - I'm doing it with Ball Lightning and it's surprisingly effective.

Chance to freeze/crits are the only way you can freeze. Three dragons does not convert the element of your spell or change the nature of shocking. It just allows a different element to have a different status ailment.

There is no reason for chance to shock to affect your chance to freeze.