Will SHOCK and FREEZE still be viable in 3.0?

With the new changes to life on bosses in 3.0 (basically they will have twice the health), do you think status ailments like shock and freeze will still be viable?

You will need twice the required threshold to inflick shock and freeze. That is a 50% nerf to status ailments.

Yes and no.

Shock will remain viable and valuable through Vessel of Vinktar and Lightning Trap.

Freeze, while receiving a slight buff (Bosses previously immune to it no longer are: They just receive reduced effectiveness), will not be viable because of how the ailment works.

However, chill will still be viable. And I expect we may start to see a lot more usage of skills that create chilled ground to deal with increased health. It's a debuff without being a curse, similar to Hinder, and so bosses don't reduce its effectiveness or duration by over half its original value.

Will 3.0 be the rise of Ice Shot, Arctic Breath, Vortex and Whispering Ice builds?

Oh who am I kidding, no one is going to play WI after the global ES nerf. At least not until a popular streamer does it successfully despite the changes. Then people will do it "as a challenge".

And breath's ground projectile exploding on anything and everything will still deter players from creating a build around it, despite it being a high damage skill.

I'm sort of sidestepping your main question though, by answering an unasked question: "Are ailments still viable?". Yes, ailments are still viable. And anything that creates a ground effect like shocked ground/shock aura or chilled ground/chill AOE (Hi Vortex) will be as useful and viable in 3.0 as it is in 2.6.

Are self-inflicted ailments from player hits still viable against bosses? Not as much. You will need large hits or actual tree investment (read: Criticals or ailment duration nodes from the tree).

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AbdulAlhazred wrote:

Will 3.0 be the rise of Ice Shot, Arctic Breath, and Whispering Ice builds?

Will it be time for my love, Aquamarine flask, to shine?

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Erecpyle wrote:

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AbdulAlhazred wrote:

Will 3.0 be the rise of Ice Shot, Arctic Breath, and Whispering Ice builds?

Will it be time for my love, Aquamarine flask, to shine?

For melee? Yes. For ranged? As useful as tits on a radscorpion.

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AbdulAlhazred wrote:

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Erecpyle wrote:

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AbdulAlhazred wrote:

Will 3.0 be the rise of Ice Shot, Arctic Breath, and Whispering Ice builds?

Will it be time for my love, Aquamarine flask, to shine?

For melee? Yes. For ranged? As useful as tits on a radscorpion.

I'll get what i can. Also, when are we getting an OP Unique Aquamarine flask GGG?!?

What do you mean with "still"? They aren't viable now, lol.

Vinktar and/or other similar stuff does not count.

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Perq wrote:

What do you mean with "still"? They aren't viable now, lol.

Vinktar and/or other similar stuff does not count.

Agreed with this, Freeze is viable on a 100% crit ice spear character you can freeze everything up T15 bosses but apart from that isn't that useful (it freezes all the trash but damage that high one shots things anyway)

Shock has the problem of requiring you to hit a certain damage threshold to actually apply which makes it useless on what you want it for (bosses) and useless for what you don't care about it for (trash). There is a reason why vaal lightning trap is so heavily used guaranteed shock on a target is pretty hard to come by.

Once duration isn't tied to crit multi its going to take heavy point investment to freeze or shock targets and I just can't see anyone doing it unless the nodes value is drastically increased. Chill is gonna be very common however.

Some people define "viable" to mean that anyone with no skill at all can take on any of the content. Under this definition, very little is "viable".

Others define it as being able to finish the game and try out a few maps. With this definition, pretty much anything is.

So the term is pretty much useless in discussions and annoys the hell out of some of us that would like to have more meaningful discourse.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

Some people define "viable" to mean that anyone with no skill at all can take on any of the content. Under this definition, very little is "viable".

Others define it as being able to finish the game and try out a few maps. With this definition, pretty much anything is.

So the term is pretty much useless in discussions and annoys the hell out of some of us that would like to have more meaningful discourse.

meaningful discourse is no longer viable

Shock shouldn't be an issue. Unless I have had it wrong the whole time. Just crit with lightning dmg and you shock. Didn't need to be an amount just a crit, which as i understand it is still perfectly intact.