Feedback on Eye of Winter, and how impossibly bad and weak it is

First of all, let's look at it. You fire projectile that shots more projectiles, it fly for a bit, then shot projectiles in circle and disappear.

No way you clearing rituals or breaches with this, at best you can maybe kill one regular pack at the time. If you get swarmed, its over.


About Eye of Winter:
- Level 20 Eye of Winter does 17-25 base damage.
Yep, 17-25 on level 20 spell that need level 90 character to use. You get this level of hit damage in act 1.
- In 0.2 base damage at level 20 was nerfed from 25-38, which is roughly current level 24.
- In 0.2 it got from 50% to 75% extra damage per type of ground effect it passing.
- To make full potential of that extra damage, you have to use 3 skill slots for Solar Orb, Orb of Storms and Frost Bomb.
- With all this, and 5 best support gems on level 90 Sorceress with decently optimized tree, wand and buffs, it does ~6k damage per hit.


In 0.1 it had some use because of Critical Weakness, and with old Archmage it could be used rarely to kill normal map mob packs. And in few cases to trigger Cast on Critical with old OP Archmage and very high mana pool.

Now in 0.2 it no longer applies Critical Weakness, it has nerfed base damage, and now it require to place 3 skills before using it.

So, 6k hit damage on skill with best available damage supports, that hit in small area, at best it can kill one pack of mobs at the time, it require to use 3 other skills.

And all this just to be one of if not worst clearing skill.

Currently looking at poe.ninja, not a single person use Eye of Winter as their clearing or damage skill. It used purely to apply Cold Exposure.

The knockback gem can really squeeze a lot of extra damage. 6K per hit doesn't sound like much but it's a spammable skill that hits each target multiple times.

Really like the buff that allows to use orbs instead of ground effects. But ground effects are still great. High tier juiced up waystones are going to frequently have ground effects and there are multiple ways to get ground effects from other gems. Additonally, you don't need 3 skill slots to summong the 3 orbs, you can use a metaskill to get them all at once.

Its slow to cast, has a very short range, and only the few projectiles hit (not the swirly bit in the middle). Its completely useless.

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vexorian#9572 wrote:

The knockback gem can really squeeze a lot of extra damage. 6K per hit doesn't sound like much but it's a spammable skill that hits each target multiple times.

Really like the buff that allows to use orbs instead of ground effects. But ground effects are still great. High tier juiced up waystones are going to frequently have ground effects and there are multiple ways to get ground effects from other gems. Additonally, you don't need 3 skill slots to summong the 3 orbs, you can use a metaskill to get them all at once.

You not going to build around this skill in any case because its weak no matter what.

6k damage per hit assuming all 3 elements, 6 link, and good gear. Its nothing. My frost bomb does 70k damage twice just with considered casting, spell echo and two utility supports. Without need of placing 3 skills, or spending spirit to do it semi automatically and not consistently.