Freeze Mine

I played with this a bit on my Shadow and it never became a main ability due to several things:

1. The radius simply isn't large enough. In the time you can throw this, detonate it and attack you could have just attacked enough using things like Fire Trap, Ethereal Knives or any other reliable AoE and killed the MoBs. If this is to find a place on the hot keys of players it really needs a larger radius and/or a greatly increased chance to freeeze.

Dont know if this has been reported or not, if you lay mines when fully surrounded they wont been laid by your feet but rather outside the circle of monsters.

Freeze duration is literally shorter than the detonation animation at level 1 against most mobs. I want to like this, but damn... the stats make it very hard to enjoy using it. It's sluggish and provides a very minimal bonus.

If it significantly froze a small group or provided a minor freeze against a small group, it might be useful, but right now I can't make it work, even with a trap-focused character taking trap and AoE passives.

I like the idea of having a skill that requires more timing and reflex than a mindless spam spell but the preparation and costs of this spell are completely out of scale with it's effects.

To even be viable this spell needs to have it's range, damage and freeze duration increased by 2-3x and detonation of the traps should be instantaneous.

Just a quick question here,

I'm going to assume the mine goes through the calculation for damage so that it may come up with the freeze value - Now enemy resistances are calculated before/during this correct? Does Cold Penetration Support come into play for calculating the amount of "As if X damage" gets through to freeze?

My train of though anyways lands me with a Yes, seeing as how there can't be a 0 for the damage value until the end as it needs to calculate the freeze duration.. From the description of Cold Pen. it seems like it'd work - Since the skill IS dealing damage but ending with 0 effective damage at the end of the calculations.

If you could explain me this mechanic that would be much appreciated - I have a feeling I'm WAY off.

Thanks!

"

Orcao wrote:

What makes it even worse is that it's VERY easy to double tap your detonate key, causing you to go through the detonate animation twice. The freeze on the mine also doesn't last much longer than the detonate animation, making it fairly useless (and potentially harmful if you end up doing the animation twice).

This is a HUGE ISSUE! Freeze mine is an integral part to many builds.

Fix Fix Fix!

hello,


i gotta say that i am a bit dissapointed from the freeze mine...

while i like the effect of the mine (slow enemys instead of dealing enemies) the mechanics to actually use the mine, makes it near useless.


first off there is the long animation to lay and detonate the mine (well "long" in terms of i could easily spam 2-3 attacks in that time^^)
but with that i could live... what i cannot live with, is the fact that i have to bind two hotkeys for the mine.
i use the mine as a support spell, when i'm surrounded by enemys i lay down a mine, detonate it and then cleave the frozen enemys. but u only have 8 quickslots avaiable, and being forced to use up 2 slots for a support spell just isnt practical.

also there is this weird "ready timer"... if u lay a mine u need the animation to end before u can activate the mine. so in a heated battle u tend to lay a mine and then spam the detonate key...wich kinda brings u to the problem of "double taping" i.e.

"

[...]causing you to go through the detonate animation twice

for me, the best way to solve this would be to make it also a proximity-mine.

it would still be very distinguishable from the fire trap, since u cannot throw the mine.
the usage of the mine would be more defensive... (kiting mobs into mines, freeze em to get away etc)

but as it is now its kinda useless... the mechanics are to time consuming and complex, plus it takes away 2 of your 8 quickslots...

You can keybind a key to Detonate mines directly, in the options. Doesn't need to waste a slot for the detonate.

ah, thats good didnt know that.

but still the clumpiness of the mechanic itself remains


maybe i have to try the effectivness of the mine in harder game-modes, but right now (3 act, normal) its not so useful. its a) easier to spam attacks (less button/time/makro-managment) and b) the actual "freeze time" vs "the amount of time needed to freeze enemys" is way out of propotion

i see it this way.

like i said i use the mine as a support spell for my melee character.
i know that the traps/mine thing isnt there primaly for melee's, but i always thought of this as the great strength of the game, to individualize and use stuff thats not intended for my "class".

so, playing as a duellist, i have the ice bite node(+30% cold damage) in vicinity.
so its tempting to go for that elemental support in general.
since the freeze duration is (will be) partly based on the damage dealt

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

This is planned. It still won't deal damage, but will perform damage calculation as though it did, and use the resulting damage to calculate freeze duration.

i assume, a (cold-)duellist would have a good base to use the mine.

but here lies the problem. if i already go for cold damage, my main skills will already slow down the enemys as a side effect. so by the time i use the mine, i could have just spammed my attacks with nearly the same result.
plus, in the time i'll lay the mine i can be attacked and interupted, causing me to redo the minelaying or detonating. having the unwavering stance node could ease up the latter problem, but the former would still be a great turn off.


well, like i said i'm lacking the experience of the harder difficultys...
but last time i played the game ('bout a year ago) the higher the difficultys were, the harder it was to freeze or chill enemys, well...ok... it also gets more important :)