Ice Bite

Post your feedback for this support here.

Make sure you concisely state your character build, level, and other complimenting abilities you have when you talk about a support.
Please email support@grindinggear.com if you need any assistance!

Last bumped on Nov 25, 2021, 11:39:51 AM
I've been running a glacial hammer templar with ice bite now and so far Ice Bite is kinda meh.

Yes the 10% chance to freeze is great but because of the way the frenzy charge mechanic works it's kinda pointless.

Frenzy charges are only given when you kill a mob that is frozen not when you 1-shot shatter a mob. So you need to hit a mob first and freeze it, then hit it again and kill it to get the frenzy charge.

This makes the gem a lot less attractive. My 2h mace glacial hammer templar is one-shotting and shattering most white and blue mobs. And because I kill them in one hit, I don't get any frenzy charges.

So I feel the mechanic needs to be changed so that when you one-shot shatter a mob you also get frenzy charges.

EDIT: after doing some more testing, 1-shot shattering does give out frenzy charges. But not always because of the 40% base chance of it happening. So working as intended :)
Last edited by Endymion on Jul 13, 2015, 1:34:08 PM
Ice Bite only grants frenzy charges if you KILL a frozen enemy. There are several points to be made about this:

1. It means that Ice Bite is mostly only useful to casters and players who spec heavily into crit. The main way the freeze status ailment is applied is by getting crits. There are some nodes in the tree for adding chance to freeze when you don't crit, but they're mainly for casters, and even including the support gem's chance to freeze you'll still have a hard time getting chance to freeze without crit up over about 25% (35% if you have a 20q Ice Bite support) so if you want high chance to freeze you have to build at least some crit anyway.

2. It means that using Ice Bite as a support is heavily discouraged in party play, for two reasons. First, because in party play there are other players killing the mobs, which reduces your chance to get frenzy charges from Ice Bite, since at times other players will kill the mobs you've frozen. Second, because as you add more and more players to the map the health that monsters have goes up and up. The result of this is that you have to hit monsters a lot more to kill them. If you're using a skill which consumes frenzy charges, and you have to kill mobs to get frenzy charges, then this is a huge problem.

3. Since freeze is most commonly applied by a critical strike, for the most part chance to freeze will not be significantly higher than chance to crit. If you're speccing for crit, then you needn't bother with chance to freeze since high crit chance means you'll freeze all the time anyway. If you're not speccing for crit there's less chance to freeze available in the tree and from supports than you would get if you went crit.

4. Power charge and endurance charge generation via their associated supports are unaffected by the quantity of players in a party. This is, in the case of endurance charges, because the chance to stun is calculated on the basis of max life of the mobs in a single player situation, and that calculation does not change as more players are added to the party. In the case of Power charges it is because the chance to crit for any given player is local to that player, and stays the same regardless of how many players there are in the party.

Essentially, this means that I can have an endurance charge on melee stun marauder using vigilant strike as a main skill even in areas where I do not have enough damage to kill monsters in 2 hits (I say 2 because I assume that if I 1 shot them they cannot be stunned since they are immediately dead, and then I won't get an endurance charge). The upshot of this is that this marauder can do just fine in party situations even though monsters have more life simply because the stun mechanic doesn't depend on how much life the monsters have. By contrast, with Ice Bite for generating frenzy charges, it actually is dependent on being able to kill the monster, being able to 1-shot matters for getting the frenzy charges, and so my flickerstrike shadow cannot do a map with a party, because as the life of the monsters goes up, my ability to one-shot them goes down.

Thus, I have to ask, why are frenzy charge skills penalised so hard here, especially with respect to party play, where endurance and power charge skills are not? Does GGG have a particular wish for flickerstrike to be un-usable as a main skill in party situations? If it is not the case that GGG has that wish, then could Ice Bite be changed so that players gain a frenzy charge when they freeze an enemy instead of when they kill a frozen enemy?
"
Ice Bite only grants frenzy charges if you KILL a frozen enemy. There are several points to be made about this:

1. It means that Ice Bite is mostly only useful to casters and players who spec heavily into crit. The main way the freeze status ailment is applied is by getting crits. There are some nodes in the tree for adding chance to freeze when you don't crit, but they're mainly for casters, and even including the support gem's chance to freeze you'll still have a hard time getting chance to freeze without crit up over about 25% (35% if you have a 20q Ice Bite support) so if you want high chance to freeze you have to build at least some crit anyway.

2. It means that using Ice Bite as a support is heavily discouraged in party play, for two reasons. First, because in party play there are other players killing the mobs, which reduces your chance to get frenzy charges from Ice Bite, since at times other players will kill the mobs you've frozen. Second, because as you add more and more players to the map the health that monsters have goes up and up. The result of this is that you have to hit monsters a lot more to kill them. If you're using a skill which consumes frenzy charges, and you have to kill mobs to get frenzy charges, then this is a huge problem.

3. Since freeze is most commonly applied by a critical strike, for the most part chance to freeze will not be significantly higher than chance to crit. If you're speccing for crit, then you needn't bother with chance to freeze since high crit chance means you'll freeze all the time anyway. If you're not speccing for crit there's less chance to freeze available in the tree and from supports than you would get if you went crit.

4. Power charge and endurance charge generation via their associated supports are unaffected by the quantity of players in a party. This is, in the case of endurance charges, because the chance to stun is calculated on the basis of max life of the mobs in a single player situation, and that calculation does not change as more players are added to the party. In the case of Power charges it is because the chance to crit for any given player is local to that player, and stays the same regardless of how many players there are in the party.

Essentially, this means that I can have an endurance charge on melee stun marauder using vigilant strike as a main skill even in areas where I do not have enough damage to kill monsters in 2 hits (I say 2 because I assume that if I 1 shot them they cannot be stunned since they are immediately dead, and then I won't get an endurance charge). The upshot of this is that this marauder can do just fine in party situations even though monsters have more life simply because the stun mechanic doesn't depend on how much life the monsters have. By contrast, with Ice Bite for generating frenzy charges, it actually is dependent on being able to kill the monster, being able to 1-shot matters for getting the frenzy charges, and so my flickerstrike shadow cannot do a map with a party, because as the life of the monsters goes up, my ability to one-shot them goes down.

Thus, I have to ask, why are frenzy charge skills penalised so hard here, especially with respect to party play, where endurance and power charge skills are not? Does GGG have a particular wish for flickerstrike to be un-usable as a main skill in party situations? If it is not the case that GGG has that wish, then could Ice Bite be changed so that players gain a frenzy charge when they freeze an enemy instead of when they kill a frozen enemy?


i'm using IB on my FB in warbands, and i have to agree with you sir.
frenzy charge after kill is likely for pion mobs, when it's faced with magic/rare/unique mobs, it's solely depends on my initial DPS to bring them down.

i think it would be fun if IC gives frenzy charge for hit with cold skill, but could it be OP.? wonder...
Well, on the basis of what I've learned about the way charge generation works in this thread:
Spoiler
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1330277


I don't think it would be OP at all to have a certain chance to gain a frenzy charge when you freeze an enemy. Apparently you can still only gain a maximum of one per skill use anyway, so the requirement that you actually kill an enemy just seems overly onerous to me.
Actually, it does seem that it's possible to gain more than one frenzy charge when shattering large groups of enemies with a single attack, as far as I can tell. However, that point doesn't really make up for the fact that when playing maps with a full party of players monsters have so much health that chances are you won't even be able to shatter one monster with three attacks.
This support gem is too weak for what it does.
Perhaps, it should add some bonus per frenzy charge, too? Just gaining charges isnt worth it IMO!
IGN: MortalKombat
Molten Strike build guide: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1346504

There is no knowledge
That is not power
"
MortalKombat3 wrote:
This support gem is too weak for what it does.
Perhaps, it should add some bonus per frenzy charge, too? Just gaining charges isnt worth it IMO!


This ^

On kill mechanics = never available when you actually need them
Mark_GGG 2012
If you put on your full plate mail, and I throw hundreds of toothpicks at you, you'll basically not feel it.

If someone catapults a whole tree at you, don't expect the Armour to prevent as much of the damage.
Last edited by Auxion on Aug 7, 2015, 4:16:49 AM
Well why not have mechanics like the skill frenzy : frenzy charges on hit but on hit freeze enemies ? And maybe increased freeze duration/chance per frenzy charge ?
Why would I use this when I could just use another, much more useful, support on my main skill and just run frenzy as well? This support gem seems extremely lacking.
RIP Mjölnir

Report Forum Post

Report Account:

Report Type

Additional Info