Chilling/Freezing Effect doubt

Hi there beautiful people.

Just started playing the game, and as I wanted to make my own build rather than using someone else's, I chose to make an elemental Witch, because it seemed pretty straightforward and hard to mess up. I've been experimenting with spells before I choose one element to focus on. I'm halfway through the second act normal right now, and just picked up the Lesser Multiple Projectile gem. With this passive skill, Freezing Pulse and Fireball really shine, and I want to pick one of those to focus from now on.

That's where I want your help. Although Freezing Pulse deals great damage from close range, I'm pretty disappointed by the duration of the chilling and the freezing effects. While they are ok against mobs, those two effects seem useless against strong unique monsters and bosses. And since the chilling/freezing should make up for the necessity to be at close range to deal more damage, the extremely short duration of those effects against strong enemies really makes Fireball look a lot better than Freezing Pulse to me. Freeing Pulse seems great against mobs and weak against bosses, while Fireball seems more well rounded.

So, my question is: Does the chilling/freezing effect get better with the time? As I progress through the passive skill tree, will I be able to actually hinder strong monsters' movement with my Freezing Pulse? Did I just write a bunch of nonsense?

To be able to chill/freeze even bosses reliably, you will need to go crit and maybe get some extra freeze duration from passives as well if you go the LMP route.

There are two ways to apply status ailments like freeze:
1. get some freeze chance from passives
2. get a critical strike with cold damage

In this case i would suggest going crit since Freezing Pulse (FP) has a decent base crit chance and will therefore scale all increases to critical damage very well. This will also increase your freeze duration since it depends on how much cold damage you do compared to a monsters maximum life. You should also consider linking the Cold Penetration support gem so you can still do a lot of damage and freeze mobs that are highly resistant against cold damage.
Projectile speed is also an important factor for FP since it increases the range and therefore the area in which FP deals full damage. You can got some projectile speed either from a support gem, passives, quality on the FP gem, as a mod on wands or from some uniques like the low level Karui Ward.

[TL:DR]
Yes, you can freeze even some of the toughest bosses reliably but it will take some investment into damage, (spell-)crit and a few freeze duration passives or good gear.

Hi there,

If you take all the noteable nodes on the passive skill tree you basicly can perm freeze them

Cheers

Thank you very very very much. I didn't expect to get so well guided so fast :)

Now, just to help me choose, would you guys say that Freezing Pulse is better than Fireball to base the build around, or is it just a matter of personal preference? Considering I could try it on hardcore someday.


Edit: After further reading, it seems like Fireball/Incinerate is the way to go for clear speed, while Freezing Pulse/Ice Spear is survivability. So, fire seems best for softcore, and ice for hardcore.

Just wondering now, is Freezing Pulse in any way better than Ice Spear?

As compared to Ice Spear, Freezing pulse has the benefit of being a "true area skill" while Ice Spear even linked with LMP (or GMP) is essentially a bunch of individual projectiles. Crowd control will in general be easier with FP, at the cost of some raw damage per hit. Both have the benefit of 100% pierce chance, which means they will also reach mobs further back. To see how this is useful you can compare this property of FP with Fireball, which you are already familiar with. Fireball does not pierce (unless linked with the Pierce gem), and is thus quite bad for controlling "multiple waves of mobs".

That said, Ice Spear has "crit" written all over it, which certainly is a benefit over FP (which, as mentioned, isn't bad for crit either). Long story short: FP for easier crowd control, IS for bigger raw damage. There is no "better" here, just preferences.

EDIT: You should probably try leveling/buying both a Freezing Pulse and an Ice Spear, if you decide to go for crit. The gem setups are fairly similar, so you should be able to test out both without having to swap gear or respec.

FP: chance to freeze works on top of the normal damage mechanic to freeze.
5% chance to freeze regardless of damage dealt (damage dealt DOES affect
duration)

so if one focuses on FP's dps AND its freeze chance, not even act/map bosses
can properly react to you.

FP sweeps a path, and is functionally an AOE skill. one FP beam could pierce
multiple mobs, AND it can hit them laterally, ie: 3 monsters coming at you
side by side can all be hit by one fp beam.

FP does not benefit from ANY aoe damage nodes... but the skill actually is AOE
in reality, so you can clear mobs fast.

:D

"

AgnosiousD wrote:

FP: chance to freeze works on top of the normal damage mechanic to freeze.
5% chance to freeze regardless of damage dealt (damage dealt DOES affect
duration)

so if one focuses on FP's dps AND its freeze chance, not even act/map bosses
can properly react to you.

FP sweeps a path, and is functionally an AOE skill. one FP beam could pierce
multiple mobs, AND it can hit them laterally, ie: 3 monsters coming at you
side by side can all be hit by one fp beam.

FP does not benefit from ANY aoe damage nodes... but the skill actually is AOE
in reality, so you can clear mobs fast.

:D

Yeah between FP and Ice spear you should always take FP.

Ice spear is nice to generate power Charge against ranged Monsters but it's crappy since
it hit 1 time (no pierce)

Cheers

"

Ice spear is nice to generate power Charge against ranged Monsters but it's crappy since
it hit 1 time (no pierce)

Correction: The first form of Ice spear has a 100% pierce chance.

General idea of multi skill caster builds:
Many people seem to think it has to be one or the other, but i would disagree! A FP and an Icespear user will usually have a very similar passive skilltree so why not use both at the same time? The only question is which of them you make your main skill and which to use for support but in a regular playthrough, that decision can be made rather late in the game.
I usually like to play builds with multiple skills for different situations like having a main skill in a 5L (or 6L if i get extremely lucky) and 1-2 secondary skills each in a 4L. It is something i rarely see other people doing in public map groups but it allows for greatly different approaches in different situations which adds a ton of utility and survivability as well as more effective power. This is mostly due to the fact that a specialized 4L setup will usually have a lot more power in its specific application than the usual 'allround 5L setup' you see most people using in endgame.

An example would be my non-crit Arc Templar (current main). He uses Arc as a main skill but also has a secondary setup with: Ball Lightning + Faster Casting + Incr AoE + Blind,
which i use against very large, tightly clustered groups or single, hard hitting bosses. The ability to apply blind to any enemy in an area almost guaranteed in less than a second has saved me and my map groups many times.
Another example would be the multiskill Ranger i made in Rampage. She used Split Arrow as a main skill, Puncture against bosses and Rain of Arrows against tightly clustered groups and for 'around the corner'-shooting. This setup gave her insane clearspeed and good survivability since i had a different skill ready for every situation.
It takes some time to get used to multi skill builds but i really enjoy the more active gameplay and the increased versatility.


Specific Freezing Pulse / Icespear build
I currently level a FP/Icespear crit/staff Witch (almost same build could be done with the Shadow and a similar one with the Templar btw.) who is using two 'main' skills for different situations:
Clearing Skill: Freezing Pulse + Lesser Multiple Projectiles + Faster Casting + Cold Penetration
Boss Killer: Icespear + Cold to Fire + Crit Chance + Crit Multi

The FP setup allows me to clear groups of mobs quickly and safely while the Icespear setup is in a +2 to cold gems staff and deals massive single target damage. Even with the cold to fire support, the cold damage is enough to permafreeze pretty much all bosses while the burning damage from the fire crits deals some nice extra DPS.
The Icespear setup also works great with Elemental Proliferation against bosses that summon minions since it kills everything around them from the burn/freeze prolif, but that doesn't work too well against normal or magic mobs since they will usually be one-shot and shattered anyway, so i only switch in the prolif gem for some boss fights.

Will have to see how my build does in endgame but so far it was a blast to level and if you are interested in seeing it in action ingame, just message me.
If it does what i hope it does in endgame, i will probably make a detailed build guide for it later on - unless i get too lazy as usual ;).

Thank you all very much for the help. I did decide to go for a crit Cold Witch, and I've been using both spells. I don't think I could've picked a better build to start playing this game :)

It does seem pretty easy to build a tree that will fit both spells just as good. I just have one little doubt at the moment. Do you guys think the increased freezing duration nodes are worth the investment?