ice bite is broken.

"

FearandArrogance wrote:

You have a 20% hatred turned on, and somehow have only one passive, and that is ice bite.

How much does it hit for?

So 100 + 20 + what?

It seemingly should be 30% of 20.

Yes, that would add six damage. But in the real world you have +physical damage. If you had +100% physical damage, it would work out as so:

100 physical + 100% physical damage = 200 damage
20 cold + 100% physical + 30% ice weapon elemental damage = 46 cold damage

So in this instance, it still only added six damage. A 10% physical node on the other hand, would have added 12 damage.

They are deceptive for sure. I took lava lash on an infernal blow marauder that was doing nearly all fire damage and I think it gave me a 6% dmg increase or something, pretty bad.

Thanks for the reply mark.

The confusing part is that base damage gets converted to cold at which point it is then multiplied by physical damage multipliers.

The part that isn't intuitive is realizing that cold damage gets multiplied by physical modifiers.

I understand that it makes sense because it is cold damage that rooted from physical, but the mechanic is just a little tough to understand.




For anyone reading this that wants to calculate their dps from ice bite or the other elemental things I think it would work like this.

Assume you are pure physical with only hatred on.

So you are doing 1.2 times your physical damage. The percentage damage you get from hatred is (.2/1.2) = 16.67% you are getting 30% more on this, so 16.67 * .3 = 5%

Thus ice bite would be in this case the equivalent of a 5% physical damage node.


I imagine the passive works out better for those who have base elemental damage on their weapons or maybe if I am understanding correctly that lava lash would work well with anger, much better than ice bite works with hatred.

I was wondering why Lava Lash, Ice Bite, and Arcing Blows were so awful. Hmm.

If it says added damage, or increased damage it is additive. Anything that says MORE will be multiplicative, and worked the way you thought it would.

30% increased cold damage with weapons
VS
30% more cold damage with weapons

Abilities like ice bite are best used if you have actual cold damage coming from somewhere, like on your weapons, or even rings/amulets/uniques.

"

Dellusions wrote:

If it says added damage, or increased damage it is additive. Anything that says MORE will be multiplicative, and worked the way you thought it would.

30% increased cold damage with weapons
VS
30% more cold damage with weapons

Abilities like ice bite are best used if you have actual cold damage coming from somewhere, like on your weapons, or even rings/amulets/uniques.

Because of the way it stacks, additively, there is no reason to ever use Ice Bite. You are always going to be better off with bonus Physical damage. Even any of the 6% physical damage nodes will net you more of an increase than Ice Bite, except in the most extreme cases (i.e. quill rain w/ added cold damage support).

It really doesn't make sense that it stacks additively with physical damage and hatred.

Even with Glacial Hammer a 6% physical node will barely be outperformed by ice bite, and that's not taking into account the secondary effect of most 6% physical damage nodes.

It doesn't really make any sense to have this as a notable when its performance is so minimal. Particularly given this passive's placing (but also arcing blows).

It's funny, because 'catalyze' (30% elemental damage with weapons) was deemed OP and they had to nerf it.

These nodes are good to get if you're going past anyway; they're definitely worth 1 passive point if you deal all fire dmg, or whatever. Not sure what everyone is complaining about!

Yeah, you'd have to have a unique Sword or Axe that's dealing a buttload of dedicated flat +ice damage to make this worth taking. It's extraordinarily niche. This in the game that lets you waste a stat point on getting a +2 to mana flasks.

It's not like it's worth the two points to go there from the Frenzy Charge for Ice Shot.. the Duelist and Shadow could use a little better archery support in their backbones, at least in how they link up together with their own tree...

I think the issue is that sources of base cold weapon damage are generally weaker than base fire or lightning: there's no aura, and the mods on rare items are worse. This does make Ice Bite a bit weaker than Lava Lash or Arcing Blows in pure damage terms. Hatred aura is popular, but if that's your only source of cold damage, you are indeed better off with physical damage passives.