Freezing Shock Pulse Nova

Pulse is the only killing skill for cold witches in lategame, so I was wondering in comparison to shock nova, why pulse seems so underwhelming. Shock vs pulse the pulse;

1) Has lower max damage.
2) Is not an AOE spell, even in straight line the nova hits further + mobs meleeing you in 180 arc it doesn't even hit the corner mobs.
3) You need to hug the mobs to get bigger damage, my 56 witch got practicly 1shotted (500hp and 300 ES)in chaos by a rare zombie.
4) Pulse actually takes longer to cast/spam than nova.
5) Manacost, my pulse costs 71 mana/pulse while my nova cost is somewhere in the 50's. Granted the biggest manacost for pulse comes from double projectile but then again who plays cold witch without DP, even with it it's the underdog compared to nova.

Not crying for buffs or nerfs, just curious if I can't see the forest from the trees or simply gravely mistaken.

Any comments are welcome :)

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Crenssi wrote:

(500hp and 300 ES)

wtf????

why do you have 500 hp and only 300 energy shield????

i think you may be doin it wrong

my lvl 39 witch has 441 energy shield

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Crenssi wrote:

Pulse is the only killing skill for cold witches in lategame

That's false.

I do just fine with cold snap and ice nova (I like to mix it up once in a while).
My witch is 56, too.

I have 850'ish ES, but at the moment of the hit it was down to around 300.

Kiy mind me asking how much are you doing damage with ice nova and cold snap in Chaos, considering ice nova has icecold damage and cold snap is mostly used for freezing when needed. My pulse hits around 2x900 dmg for comparison.

Edit edit edit: The zombie was hiding behind a pile of white loot as i keep them constantly shown on screen :(

also, if you're getting hit by zombies you probably need to kite better. they are generally pretty slow and as a witch i don't think you should really be getting that close to them.

Well, for one, I have about 15% crit without any power charges; my crit multiplier is 240%. My haste is 60% (without power charges), which would mean 84% with = fast cold snaps.

Then I have my nifty:


That's basically how I do it.


Of course it will take longer to kill, but I do just fine.
And to answer your original question - my cold snap does 116-175 cold + 4-77 lightning.


EDIT: Oh, also forgot, I have increased crit and faster casting tied into cold snap; when I switch to nova I put those with nova.

Another edit: Sorry, those numbers were a little wrong; I had some of my item quantity gear equipped. Not much of a difference, but it's 139-209 cold damage and 4-90 lightning, without and charges. (cold snap)

Spend points in life passives....why is everyone a glass cannon?

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Sparka wrote:

Spend points in life passives....why is everyone a glass cannon?

There really is no need to. Just have a high level raise zombie and spectre skill gems and go to town.

I only have 1-2 points in strength passives to be able to use a higher level item quantity gem.

btw OP, your title is confusing as fuck

freezing shock??

pulse nova???

there are no such things. did you get confused or did you mix up the names on purpose and why??