Whispering Ice "Icestorm" discussion about 3.12's big changes...

I wanted to start a thread about one of my favorites skills, Icestorm and the accompanying staff Whispering Ice. As far as game performance is concerned the new graphics and less projectiles falling should really improve performance of this skill for those with slower machines and open it up as an option for those players.

I think it is a fun skill to use and with its defensive bonus effects is very utilitarian on hardcore as well. The ease of farming the staff also makes it available for SSF play.

However, Icestorm has gone through some very big changes in 3.12 and I just wanted to discuss the numbers with others who like it. I will break this down into 3 parts. Flat damage, Duration/stacks, and chance to actually hit.

First off... calculating base flat damage of the spell. I will be doing this on a per intelligence basis to keep things simple.

---FLAT DAMAGE---

Old version had an average damage of 2/INT per hit and would drop a projectile every .1 seconds.
New version has an average damage of 3/INT per hit and would drop a projectile every .2 seconds.

Old version potential 20 DPS/INT flat damage.
New version potential 15 DPS/INT flat damage.

That is a 25% decrease in flat damage per Intelligence for each projectile that hits the target.

However, damage effectiveness from other sources has gone from 45% to 60%. So Herald of Ice or added cold damage support will now add 25% more to your flat damage totals.

My thoughts are... that your flat damage will scale a little less with your intelligence but secondary sources of flat damage will increase to offset that quite a bit.

---Duration/Stacks---

Base duration has dropped from 1.5 seconds to 1 second. Additional duration from Intelligence has dropped to .1 sec from .15 sec for each 100 Intelligence. So... both duration penalties result in a 50% reduction in damage of the entire Icestorm if an enemy stays in the strike area for the entire duration.

With the 3.12 update there is also a stack limit that has been put in place. A maximum of 5 Ice Storms can be present at one time, with newer spells replacing the oldest casts.

The stack limit could potentially be a large nerf to Icestorm's damage in certain situations. This is especially true if people invested heavily into duration in the past. When channeling Icestorm you could cast about 3 storms/second and if you got the duration up near 5 seconds you could easily have 15 storms damaging non-mobile targets at the same time. For more mobile targets, or bosses you have to manually dodge it was much harder to stack that many storms effectively. For those self casting (do many people do this?) the stacking limit may not be as big of a factor.

My take: Before the update it was common to get icestorms that lasted 5 seconds. Now, I would guess closer to 3.5 seconds will be the norm. The duration and max stacks changes are a pair of substantial nerfs to Icestorm. However, both hit you in a similar way which lessens the overall effect. Since you can easily get a max 5 stacks up in under 2 seconds you can just constantly replace the oldest cast of Icestorm to keep up the 5 storms all of the time. In this case the 5 stacks is the limiting factor on damage and the duration nerf really doesn't affect your damage at all.

Investing into duration will no longer be necessary but may add QOL. If you want to fire and forget leaving storms to kill mobs as you move quickly longer duration will help. Duration would also allow you more time to manually dodge hits after you place your 5 storms against bosses. In my experience rarely did anything except unique monsters survive inside one of my ice storms for a 5 seconds, so I find the duration nerfs not as much of a problem as the stack limit which decreases possible top end damage (for stationary targets).

---CHANCE TO HIT---

Finally comes the hardest part to calculate. How often do you actually hit with Icestorm? It is impossible to calculate in general since the physical size of the enemy and their mobility play large factors. That said...

Old version ice shard radius of 10 in a storm that was 25 wide.
New version ice shard radius of 16 in a storm that is 22 wide.

Each shard has a 60% increase in AOE coverage to hit. Since the target area (the storm) decreased in size by 12% this further increases the chances of hitting monsters that are in the target area.

With the smaller area of effect of the entire storm and larger shards it should be much easier to hit single targets (Bosses) and stack damage up on them. At the same time the decreased storm AOE of 12% is more than offset by the 60% increased damage area of each shard for mobs. So clearing packs should actually be easier as well since the monsters should be getting hit much more frequently even if the AOE is a little smaller.

My take: With the new update, Icestorm's shards will hit a lot more often. But the math escapes me at this point in my life. (It has been 30 years since I took an advanced course in mathematics. If someone knows how exactly to do this please help me out) My guess is that shards will hit somewhere around twice as often. Quite a large buff.

---My conclusions on the buffs and nerfs included with 3.12 Icestorm---

Icestorm's flat damage/second/shard will only take a small overall hit as long as you are adding the improved secondary sources of damage to offset the less frequent shards. The decreased duration is not as much of a factor (the way I play) as the 5 max stacks which is a big nerf against certain large/immobile bosses. However, since I rarely was able to stack 10 or more storms against the toughest bosses, the fact that it looks like almost twice as many shards "projectiles" will hit seems like overall Icestorm may be stronger than ever for my play style.

And... More playable on low end machines to boot! I will be tryng it out on an old character and if all goes well I may just make a new occultist in Heist. It has been a while since I played POE in a league.

I've been posting about this one alot today as there are whole bunch of maths failures going on but you need to go post post the chance to hit bit over on reddit so they will shutup about it being an 80% nerf :p

That aside I think its better to break it down into usage scenarios, however realistically there isn't any point the new one comes out ahead in any setup until you get to high cast rate, small radius single target setups with extremely high int.

if you only use WI as a boss killer with pinpoint storms expect a big nerf, anything else should be pretty good from eyeballing the numbers.

Selfcast with Archamage / Unleash was easily the best way to play given you could use INT to scale damage with an insane mana pool.

Over all Icestorm is seriously stronger after these changes. The smaller AOE / increased explosion radius alone is going to break this skill.

I've played WI builds multiple times and am confident it will be one of the best boss killers this league. The AOE changes will massively buff the single target damage.

The real issue is going to be mapping.. Explode chest or weapon swap will be mandatory.

"

jedininjaman wrote:

The real issue is going to be mapping.. Explode chest or weapon swap will be mandatory.

Its supposed to come down quicker and with the much improved radius it should be OK, the damage per explosion itself is up remember and you'll no longer run it with unleash or spell cascade in most cases which is even more frontload.

I'm sure they posted that the maximum radius was now fixed but maybe I'm thinking of a different skill I keep trying to find the quote but not managed to yet, maybe i'm thinking of GC

"

it should be OK

Um no. This skill will continue to require a weapons swap as it always has.

Even with your swap you will still be left in the dust by mediocre projectile builds.

GGG has proven they dont give a fuck how broken projectiles are in this game.

Clearspeed is going to suck, but WI will shine when DPS matters.

thats called OK, it isn't binary your not a 3 screen proj build or nothing lol, if you clear the screen with a cast and don't have to wait past when you've moved to the next screen its OK

It'll be faster than melee skills, if your gonna weaponswap in that situation just cut out the middleman and play a fast build as its clearly more important to you than anything else :p

The last time I played WI unleash didn't even exist. Now I will have to look things over thoroughly.

Seriously, it's tiresome that people are talking all the time about damage effectiveness, yet no one is able to properly talk about it.

And this thread is again another example of it. You do a proper calculation about base damage, then you say that:

"

That is a 25% decrease in flat damage per Intelligence for each projectile that hits the target.

However, damage effectiveness from other sources has gone from 45% to 60%. So Herald of Ice or added cold damage support will now add 25% more to your flat damage totals.

My thoughts are... that your flat damage will scale a little less with your intelligence but secondary sources of flat damage will increase to offset that quite a bit.

Alright, little question, then. Let's say you get 20 added cold damage. What is the most damaging setup? 9 damage every 0,1s? or 12 damage every 0.2s?

"

Seriously, it's tiresome that people are talking all the time about damage effectiveness, yet no one is able to properly talk about it.

I think it is tiresome talking with trolls who do nothing but insult people.
This is especially true when they are making false claims.

Your comparison is faulty. I know for certain that 9 damage every 2 seconds is less than 12 damage every 2 seconds. And that is the comparison that is applicable to the "damage effectiveness" changes, which is what I was discussing at that point in my post. I didn't say that damage effectiveness was going to totally offset the fact that there are less projectiles and the resulting decreases in flat damage?

You literally fabricated and example suggesting that the 25% increase in damage effectiveness is in itself a nerf by attaching it to another mechanic in the new release that actually is the nerf. The 25% increase in damage effectiveness is a buff... period.

Moreover, Damage effectiveness from secondary sources is kind of hard to calculate precisely when not everyone is going to run the same set of skills. Hell, several different character types and ascendancy classes can run with Whispering Ice. If you run several sources of secondary damage it will replace more of the flat damage you lose with the new mechanics. Whether those sources of secondary damage are worth the trade off of mana reserved or support skill gems is another subject all together.

Conflating multiple nerfs and buffs together to try and make some point you hold is not honestly looking at the individual changes. I stand by my original post.

I'm the bad at math. Why is going from 45 DE to 60 DE a 25% more increase?