Whats better? Freeze Chance or Freeze Crits?

Hello all, I have a question involving cold damage's weird system for inflicting the "Freeze Status".

So I am building a Cryomancer, and I am confused with the freezing status.

When I do cold damage I have a chance to freeze, makes perfect sence. And when you get more nodes that offer more chances to freeze, even better. Now here is the confusing part: when I score a critical strike, it always freezes 100% of the time. Is that supposed to happen?

It's starting to make me think crit is better at giving a chance to freeze, more then the flat freeze chance cold nodes give me. Is it?

Now I know Freezing Pulse and Glacial Cascade have a (high?) base crit chance of 6%, but the INT tree north of the Talent Tree doesnt have much Crit Chance nodes unlike the east side of the Talent Tree, but those nodes dont help my cold damage at all.

So educate me guys, whats better for a cryomancer? Getting just the base freeze chance nodes? Or focusing on getting my crit up for the 100% freeze chance per critical strike?

Cause I dont have a damn clue. And just to say, I am not a one-trick-pony build for just 1 skill like most "pro" players. I find that boring, and wanna be an all-around type of guy in damage and freeze chances preferably for solo play and some pvp.

So far this is my build I got going for myself, see below.


Any kind of help is appreciated!

Yes, that's right, crits always inflict elemental statuses if you did enough of the damage in the associated element to pass the duration threshold (except ignite which is always inflicted even if you did 1 fire damage). Crits also inflict higher damage so statuses will last longer or, in case of ignite, be more potent than when playing on status chance. Status chance is a good way to inflict statuses only if you can't go crit at all, your spell has very low crit chance or it's potentially dangerous (flameblast).

Cold spells generally have a high crit chance so if you want to build a freeze build you should go crit. North and east side of the tree has little general crit nodes, true but it has a lot of spell crit nodes, a very nice multiplier cluster and also a nice cluster with 'crit while holding a staff' which play well with taryn's shiver unique that many cold builds use. If you don't want to use a staff, grabbing a well-rolled spell crit dagger and an ES shield will give you a huge crit chance boost and some multi.

If you took area nodes the best skill for you is probably glacial cascade with ice nova totem on the side. I've seen a crit version of such build in action, it's pretty effective and safe. Looks pretty nice too, even though cascade can be somewhat hard on your gpu.

I see, I might need to view some of these plans you mentioned. They do sound interesting.

So if that is the case that crit might be better, what would be the damage difference between a large amount of spell/elemental/cold damage nodes in my current build versus taking lots of Critical Multiplier/Chance nodes?

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raysuko wrote:

So if that is the case that crit might be better, what would be the damage difference between a large amount of spell/elemental/cold damage nodes in my current build versus taking lots of Critical Multiplier/Chance nodes?

Dunno the exact numbers, I kinda avoid going batman on crit myself lately, but ending up with 50% crit chance with most spells and, say, 400% multi is pretty easy. That has you doing two and a half times your non-crit dps which would be beyond the grasp of increase stacking. Indeed, playing a same spell in crit and no-crit versions is like night and day.

For cold spells it is often a good idea to go for crit but just a little chance to freeze and freeze duration on top is always nice to have!
Damage wise you will always get more when going crit and a lot more when going full crit. By full crit i mean getting 4 crit clusters in the skilltree, power charges and a weapon and shield with spell crit on them. This will usually let you get around 10x your base crit chance so ~60% for a spell with 6% base crit. Comparing a heavily damage oriented full crit vs. a non-crit build we get numbers like the follwing:

full crit: (60% critchance, 350% crit multi, +300% damage)
leading to an average damage of: 4.0 x (0.6 x 3.5 + (1 - 0.6) x 1) = 10.0

non crit: (10% critchance, 150% critmulti, +450% damage)
leading to an average damage of: 5.5 x (0.1 x 1.5 + (1 - 0.1) x 1) = 5.775

Looking only at the average damage, the full crit build puts out almost twice as much. This is due to the fact that crit essentially adds another multiplier which, beyond a certain point, is more effective than adding more points to a single multiplier like increased damage. This holds true especially for spells with a high base critical chance of 6%.


Regarding your passive skilltree:
Unfortunately, the build you posted will not be able to work in endgame since you made the very (very!) common mistake (as in: pretty much every single person who posts their first skilltree in the Gameplay Help Forum will make it ;p) of completely forsaking your life and defenses.
A build like that can work up to some point in the middle of the game but you will run against a wall in the higher difficulties, where things suddenly start to kill you with a single hit and by things i don't mean tough bosses but regular mobs without any damage mods.
about +100% increased maximum life from passives is the bare minimum and +120-140% is strongly recommended, even for a "pure damage build". Many players go a lot higher than that but i personally like to make glass cannon builds with around 120-140% increased max life (leads to around 3200-3800 total life at lvl 80+ in endgame with decent but cheap gear).

Another thing is that you should never plan your build with the full 120 skillpoints because that takes insane amounts of time, dedication and game knowledge to reach. This thread has a short but informative discussion about how many points it is reasonable to plan with.


edit: Regarding using multiple skills:
Do it! Personally, i find those popular one-click builds incredibly boring and my own builds usually use at least a primary and seondary damage skill for different situations or even for strong game mechanic synergies. This makes them a lot more versatile in my opinion and is especially useful if you don't want to specialize your build for any of the different endgame paths but want to do all reasonably well. By that i mean making a build that clears maps well, offers fun and diverse gameplay, can deal with most of the endgame map mods and bosses and can even kill Atziri (although not as easily as a specialized build ofc).
Just one thing to note is that you want to pick skills that profit mostly from the same passives. A build that uses Arc and Firestorm isn't going to be very effective, whereas you have great synergiy with Freezing Pulse and Ice Spear for example.

excellent information for the op.

I'll add that freezing chance will barely help, crit chance and
damage is doing the lions share of the freezing.

not every shot will crit, but with 5% chance to freeze even a
paltry strike can freeze (for a very short duration)

freeze chance stacks with cast speed to ensure that almost
every strike even against many bosses has a chance of at least
a very brief stun/chill. since you are fireing so damned fast
it will go: hard stun, weak stun, no stun, weak stun, hard stun, weak stun.
and the boss will slowly make his way towards you. you can kite
back over and over.

you will be much less interested in freeze chance if you
don't go with high cast rate, as the paltry effects wont contribute
much to your safety. (non crits will barely slow a rare/boss)

frostbite, especially quality frostbite will increase severity of damage
(therefore duration) as well as a flat duration boost.

frostbite can make all the difference on a deadly boss, but endgame
might not be the best source of damage in terms of curses.
I'm experimenting with assasins mark for that purpose.
(I no longer need the significant freezing of frostibite to
permafreeze mobs (using cold pen)... now I want more dps)

Crit also has a HUGE downside, which nobody mentioned. And it is reflect. If u have ük build and ok gear and nothing vs reflect, u will kill urself in maps, if u hit a pack with reflect rare in it.

So u also need to think, what will be ur defense. For example vaal packt is a very good one, but tricky to reach as crit spell build.

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1337fun wrote:

Crit also has a HUGE downside, which nobody mentioned. An it is reflect. If u have pk build and ok gear and nothing vs reflect, u will kill urself in maps, if u hit a pack with reflect rare in it.

So u also need to think, what will be ur defense. For example vaal packt is a very good one, but tricky to reach as crit spell build.

Not if you have resistance, dodge, block, and other ways to mitigate reflect.

If you're not going single-skill, avoiding reflect (or, say, resistance issues) can be done via another damage spell linked to the Remote Mine or Trap supports - or that skill could be a single-target option for boss-sniping (which won't completely solve reflection, but will at least lower the spikiness).

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Natharias wrote:

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1337fun wrote:

Crit also has a HUGE downside, which nobody mentioned. An it is reflect. If u have pk build and ok gear and nothing vs reflect, u will kill urself in maps, if u hit a pack with reflect rare in it.

So u also need to think, what will be ur defense. For example vaal packt is a very good one, but tricky to reach as crit spell build.

Not if you have resistance, dodge, block, and other ways to mitigate reflect.

Reading whole post ftw ... not like it is TL;DR

And if u make such post, than plz a constructive one(like one below u), not such "i'm so pro, i go combine spell block and spell dodge" ...
If u dont have something to help, than u r in wrong forum section. To geth to the right one hit alt + f4.

All i was saying is, OP should keep reflect in mind, if going crit.