Best support gem for Herald of Ice?

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ivkoto77777 wrote:

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Yggdrasil_57 wrote:

I use a lvl4 enhance.
18% increased GLOBAL cold damage is sweet for an ice-oriented build.

18% increase of my Hatred damage?

18% increased of your hatred damage, HoI damage, attack and spell cold damage.
Like Ludvator said, it's "increased" and not "more". It's worth it only if you have a heavily cold-damage oriented build and some free mana (enhance has a 115% mana multiplicator).

So then, Conc effect/Inc effect would be the best options?

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ivkoto77777 wrote:

I'm not mistaken in the assumption that HoI can crit, right?

if i remember correctly assassin's mark gave skills crit chance enabling crit for them even if they have 0 crit chance.


i don't know for other builds but with my crit spark caster i rarely get frenzy charges wih ice bite, it depends a lot on the environment and mobs density (i usually can't get frenzy charges on maps around my level but when i run lower levels map or masters mission i get a lot of shattered mobs and frenzy charges).

for herald of ice, increased aoe effect is much better than conc effect.

yes conc effect is a nice damage boost, but the aoe becomes small enough it hardly hits anything else, especially on mobs that are slightly more spread out like a lot of ranged enemies tend to be.
inc aoe will make the explosion quite significant. to a point where the aoe will overlap against monsters and thus they'll take twice the amount of damage, or more depending on the overlap. you won't get any overlap with conc effect socketed.

Thanks for the info!

I also found out that Cold to Fire gem might be a good damage increase for a smaller mana multiplier, just as an Empower could do it more cheaply, since the 140% on Inc Effect might be too costly.

That's my current setup for HOI. Works pretty well, as others have mentioned you need to keep an eye on the reserved mana, adding some reserve nodes on the tree helps.
Cold to Fire does indeed work well :)

wearing alpha's howl also helps the heralds, since its a global 8% reduced reserve. don't even need it socketed inside of it

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Yggdrasil_57 wrote:

I use a lvl4 enhance.
18% increased GLOBAL cold damage is sweet for an ice-oriented build.

You are trolling aren't you?

15% increased cold damage goes to 18.6% and the 25% reservation goes to 29%. 4% of mana is not worth 3.6% INCREASED cold damage under any circumstance. That damage is additive with all other increased damage sources. It is as close to nothing as possible.

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Fluffy_Puppies wrote:

15% increased cold damage goes to 18.6%

Calculations please?
If you had 15% increased before the HoI then with additional 18% increased from HoI you will get 15+18=33% increased, or 133/115-100 = 15,65%more damage with HoI than without it(in that particular case ofc).

It's still only 15% increased cold damage, its' not going to be that much of a damage increase if you're already invested 300% in cold/spell damage in other places