Dealing with Freeze, an in depth guide! (PvP)

I saw a lot of people recently having problems with cold damage and the freeze ailment.

The Problem usually evolves around being in a chain freeze state without being able to do something. There are things to protect you from that with some being more viable than others in certain situations. I will list several ways of dealing with cold damage and freeze lock along with the downsides that come with them:

There are 4 ways of dealing with cold damage and freeze lock with some of them having sub categories:

1.) Items with the "Cannot be frozen" mod:

Benefits: You will be immune to being frozen as long as you wear one of these items. Also, since they are items, you can use this as a backup. Since PvP is a best of 9 matchup, when you see someone relying a lot on freeze in round 1, simply replace your boots of one of your rings with either of these items, all you have to do is carry them with you. If your enemy doesnt use Freeze or doesnt use it a lot, simply go with your original ring/boots.

Downside: Even tho you can choose to only use these items when you are in need of them, you dont have much choice regarding their stats. They both increase mana regeneration rate, the shoes have minimal defensive stats (17 ES), and while the ring gives you another 30% cold resist (which is usually good since you wanna use them in case of being attacked with cold dmg) and +20% max mana (can be useful too!), the shoes give you 20% MS and a not worth mentioning +5dex.

Conclusion: Depending on how much you rely on having your boots or having both of your rings, it comes down to induvidual preference which one you are going to use. If you cannot decide on which one to use I suggest getting the ring since it comes with +30% cold resist and more mana (the +30% resist can be useful even if you have capped cold resist already if the enemy uses resist reducing curses).



2.) Resistances (Cold):

Since the amount of time you are frozen or chilled by an ice attack depends on the damage done with that attack, the less damage you get, the shorter you will be frozen.


2a) Passive skill tree resistances: e.g. Celestial Walker, Elemental Adaption, Cold Resistance etc.

Benefits: Against people who dont commit too much on freezing you, but sometimes do so, this might be a more appealing way to approach the freezing issue. These people usually dont try to specifically lower your cold resist and therefore it is quite effective. If you get Passives like "Elemental Adaption", you can even go over the cap of 75% cold resist an reach 80%. This leaves only 20% of the initial cold damage and therefore you will only be frozen for 1/5 of the original freeze duration.
Note: Due to the native of Status Ailment calculation, a frozen status that would last less than 300 ms will be nullified.

Downside: You will be using passive skill points on a defensive stat that might not even be needed in a specific battle and therefore lack skill points for other things like damage, block chance, armor, ES etc.

Conclusion: Having some passive skill tree resistance nodes is a good idea in general. However you should not over commit on those. There are quite a few "Elemental Resistance" nodes on the passive skill tree that come with other benefits (e.g. Celestial Walker comes with +10% to elemental resistances and +10% to elemental damage). I suggest you focus on those and leave out the "naked" resist nodes. I also suggest to get the +x% to max resistance, which increase the 75% max resist cap, if you can.



2b) Equipment with "+XX% to Cold Resistance" or "+XX to Elemental Resistances": Most equipable items.

Benefits: Unlike the "Cannot be frozen" mod, the "+XX% to Cold Resistance" or "+XX% co Elemental Resistances" mod can be found on most items you can equip. You can always carry some high Resist items with other good stats with you. Because these mods can be found on most equipment parts, setting, havins some backup equip with not so bad other stats should always be possible. Against people who dont commit too much on freezing you, but sometimes do so, this might be a more appealing way to approach the freezing issue. These people usually dont try to specifically lower your cold resist and therefore it is quite effective.
Note: Due to the native of Status Ailment calculation, a frozen status that would last less than 300 ms will be nullified.

Downside: Your inventory space is limited so you have to choose your backup equipment carefully and might miss out on some other things if you have to go for all resistances instead of a specific resist. This is why a combination of passive skill tree resist and equip backup resist is suggested. Also, you might get in trouble with your skill gems if your backup equip doesnt name the required slots of if you have to use several parts of backup gear in order to protect yourself against several kinds of elemental damage (in a 3on3 scenario for example).

Conclusion: Having "All elemental resist" backup gear saves inventory space more so than going for cold, lightning and fire specific gear. Also it is obtainable more easy, especially regarding the slots. If you cannot max out of lose too much resist to curses even when equipped with All your resist gear, rings an amulets for specific elements can be useful. They dont need a lot of space and therefore can be carried in all kinds of different resist forms. Also, having good all resist on your main gear isnt bad either, although its not 100% necessary.



3.) Flasks

Flasks can have "Elemental Resistances" mods which are active while they are used. Elemental Resistances are covered in 2.). However, there are flasks that "dispell" frozen/chilled. Note that flasks can be used

Benetits: Regardless of your current status, so if you are frozen, you can still use the flask to immediately break out of it using the bottle.

Downsides: You might lose out on some of the other effects the flask might have done for you. if it is a mana flask and you have full mana it basically didnt do anything aside from breaking your out of freeze. Also, there are other good mods for flasks which have to be traded in for this one.

Conclusion: While this is an interesting emergency mechanic, its not overly good for PvP. Having one might be nice to escape a freeze lock at the right time, but I prefer the above options. It comes down to personal preference I think. If you have a "Cannot be frozen" gear ready to deal with freeze, you dont need a flask for that as well.



4.) Curses: Temporal Chains

Curses like temporal chains mess with the enemies offensive capabilities.

Benefits: Using Temporal Chains on an enemy, he cannot cast as cast as be is used to. Also, spells like "cold snap" have an increased cooldown while under the effect of Temporal Chains. The enemy will therefore not be able to chains freeze you as efficiently as he used to.

Downside: None, really, aside from using up a gem slot and some mana when casted. Temporal chains is a great PvP tool not only against freeze.

Conclusion: This Spell is nice to have. It is not only good against freeze, but messes with the enemy all the way. Use it or not, its not mandatory, but if you can slip it, slip it in!



I hope you learned something about PvP today, especially about being frozen. Feel free to ask any questions. I can do more PvP Theorycrafting if you want me to!


Aswan

I'll try my best. One guilde a day should be enough tho, I will deal with it tomorrow or the day after :)

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daiguitarist wrote:

Great guide, but i have a question, my first character was going to be a cold crit caster, and it seems like they can be easily countered. How viable are they in endgame pvp if people follow this guide?

Thanks for your input, daiguitarist.

To find out the viability of Cold (crit) Casters in PvP, we have to first compare what the build can and what it cannot with what can be countered / not countered and what you can make up for, or not, regarding things you dont naturally can do or have.

Things Cold (crit) Casters do:

- cold damage
- causing frozen ailment
- causing chilled ailment
- ranged
- lower cold resistances
- (Crit)

What they usually dont do:

- Other Elemental damage / Chaos damage
- Physical Damage
- Evasion
- Stacking Armor


I am sure there are a lot more things, but I just want you to get a general Idea of how to find out about the viability of a build.

So which of these things can be hard-countered (nullified) and which of them can be soft countered (reduced impact)

- cold damage can be lowered by increasing ones cold resistances. Note that, even though 75 is the max of any resistance (except if you have special nodes/items increasing the cap), you can still stack 105 Cold resist to make up for the 30 % (at lvl 1) cold resist reduction caused by a curse. However, if you realize someone does that, just switch your curses and use temporal chains instead. His 105% cold resist will still cap at 75 so you will always deal 25% of the damage regardless of using the resist lowering curse or not. Your enemy essentially wasted an equipment mod that does nothing .... until he chances it again because you use temporal chains now. You see how this game is all about mind games? :)

- Freezing an enemy is something you cannot rely on! There are ways to completely nullify any freezing strategies, meaning they are not viable at all. However, this doesnt mean cold (crit) casters are not viable in general, you just cannot build a character based on a freezing strategy anymore.

- Chilling an enemy is always possible, even if they have the "Cannot be frozen" mod on a item! Chill slows the movement, attack, and cast speed of your enemy by 30% and can be stacked with temporal chains. Its a great way to control enemy movement. However, since its based on damage done (compared to enemy HP), its duration can be reduced by having more cold resist. Note that the Slow effect is always 30% regardless of cold resist.

- Being ranged obviously cannot be countered. However, it comes down to experience and practice to position yourself in a way to utilize being ranged to its full potential.

- Lowering cold resist is something that can be made up for by overstacking cold resist just as described above under "Cold damage". However, this comes with the usual downside of using a mod on an equipment part and wont do anything if you just stop using this curse and switch to another one instead (Cold Curse increases cold damage ---> overstacking resist counters cold curse ---> switching curse counters overstacking ---> stopping overstacking to get another good mod kind of resets the circle). Oh how I love this game with all its mind games and adaption. Its just so good!

- Crit: There are some nodes lowering crit damage. Aside from that there isnt much counter against getting critted. Unlike physical dmg vs armor, crits with spells get reduced by the same % amount than non-crits regarding resistances.


Conclusion: Cold (crit) Casters are still viable even if the enemy uses a variety of things to adapt to their cold damage and the caused status ailments. However, you cannot rely on freezing but rather on movement control due to the chill effect. Also, fighting a good opponent will eventually come down to a lot of mindgaming, but that will be the case more and more with ppl getting better and having access to a lot more equipment in the future. Also keep in mind that things may change over time with the meta game shifting in some direction. Since it is always a best of 9 in PvP, the one winning the first round, where you cannot yet adapt to the enemy, has the advantage of not having to adapt yet, yet being able to adapt to have an advantage in an even game once the enemy wins game 2 with his adaption strategy.


Now talking about mind games: How can YOU catch your enemy off guard as a cold (crit) caster?

Lets look at the list of stuff a cold caster usually doesnt do that much.

physical damage? I dont think we can fit that in. Stacking armor? That wouldnt have an effect against casts, only on physical damage opponents. Its still possible to do some fun stuff with it. Evasion? I dont think its viable at all in PvP (might change my mind if someone can prove it indeed is viable :P ).
So what we have is other elemental damage. Imagine your enemy overstacking cold resist after round 1 to compensate for your cold curse. What if you start throwing fireballs at him? what if you (against a melee) switch your clarity to tempest shield for this round to make him take a lot of damage when he attacks you? What if you even add punishment to make him suffer more damage? Theres no cold involved in that. You can throw arc and firestorms at him to find out if he dropped another resist in order to overstack cold. You could make up for the lack of mana reg due to dropping clarity (too much reserved mana with temp shield active) by using your mana bottle you saved in round 1(because in round 1 you still had clarity active).
Now that might catch him off guard. Again, its all about mind gaming and adaption. Yes a cold caster is viable but no, you cannot just go in and use the same strategy against every enemy.

Go with your cold caster, especially if you already started it. Try out stuff in lvl 28 PvP once you get there and see if you like the playstyle with slowing and positioning etc.

If you are playing hardcore then I would gladly help you out in game. We could play some 1on1s and work on the builds. My chars are "Aswan"(PvE char) and "RandomPlayer"(PvP char)

Some Cookies: There are also items to prevent yourself from getting shocked or burned at all, so the ailment resistance it not a problem of cold damage exclusively. In fact getting chilled is the only thing that cannot be prevented by a single item.


Aswan