Ice Crash

For stuff like cast on crit does each hit of ice crash count or just 1 roll per attack (1 roll for all of the ice crash phases)

I see no reason for the AS penalty.

Or any penalties in actual skill gems for that regard. They are one way tickets to irrelevance due to scaling limitations.

Despite what other feedback says here, the penalties on Ice Crash (Second Stage deals 15% less Damage and Third Stage deals 30% less Damage) are understandable and forgivable since all three stages dealing full damage would seem OP to some players.

What is not forgivable is every 1% of Quality on Ice Crash adding 1% increased Cold Damage, which is completely useless considering the fact 50% of the Cold Damage (after the Physical Damage conversion) scales with any % Physical Damage increases, anyway, from the Skill Tree and whatever % Physical Damage increases gear provides.

With all the above stated in mind, why not change 1% to Cold Damage per Quality TO 1% increased Area of Effect Radius per Quality like Infernal Blow? The reason I recommend 1% and not 0.5% increased Area of Effect Radius like on Infernal Blow is because of the Damage penalties Ice Crash already suffers from.

Not only that, the default AoE on Ice Crash without AoE increases is a real joke, so either give Ice Crash more AoE per Quality or have the default Ice Crash AoE scale better.

As Ice Crash stands now, just using an Increased Area of Effect Radius Support Gem without also speccing into the Increased Area of Effect Radius nodes near the Templar and Witch areas makes Ice Crash lackluster in clear speed (especially if Concentrated Effect is thrown in at that point), and it also makes Ice Crash users have to waste precious points on Increased Area of Effect Radius nodes just to make up for ineffectiveness that can otherwise be used for something defensive on the Skill Tree.

Considering the state of end-game and the direction it is going, changes like the above stated to help make Melee a little more effective need to be made sooner than later, changes not just to Ice Crash alone, but other Melee Skill Gems new and old that need to be revisited again.

Conclusively, using Ice Crash feels very restrictive when it comes to scaling the AoE aspect of it. Player should not have to feel like they need to travel such wasteful distances on the Skill Tree to get the most out of their Ice Crashing experience near Templar or Witch area for the AoE nodes.

Thank you.
HeavyMetalGear

Ice crash is fine compared to most melee skills... it's got a solid area size and is one of the first power creep skills to enter the game, having flexibility for aoe and single target. Try any namelock skill and tell me how much better it's aoe is. If a mob moves 2 steps backwards your dps is cut by 30% since you gotta move forward. Ice crash has no such problem.

I agree that the gem quality bonus is below average though. I think best would be 1.5% increased cold damage per quality so it's better than an average gem quality (those that have damage typically have 1% damage) if you decide to scale (the few choices of) cold conversion more or just cold damage but not too much worse than average if you just scale pure physical.

I think ice crash is quite obsolete when earthquake exists, but as an elemental conversion skill it still has it's own uniqueness such as 100% conversion without stuff like hrimnors + chernobog (restricts to 1hand but not unarmed because of hrimnors) or lost efficiency from avatar of fire (you often can think up setups like 87.5% conversion...)

"

biyte wrote:

Ice crash is fine compared to most melee skills... it's got a solid area size and is one of the first power creep skills to enter the game, having flexibility for aoe and single target. Try any namelock skill and tell me how much better it's aoe is. If a mob moves 2 steps backwards your dps is cut by 30% since you gotta move forward. Ice crash has no such problem.

Pardon my late reply.

*Laughs* Ice Crash has nowhere near a 'solid area size' by default unless you heavily (and I do mean heavily) invest in a load of increased AoE nodes on the Skill Tree in conjunction with the Increased AoE Support Gem, and in the event you do not do so, and you want to Support Ice Crash with Concentrated Effect, Ice Crash's AoE gets even more absurdly 'small' so as to hamper clear speed to the point where it is not even worth using when you get near end-game.

I don't know about you, but I've already tested Ice Crash's DPS and clear speed when compared to Earthquake or even Infernal Blow (a much older Skill Gem) and it is generally poor.

Look, the thing is PoE has been projected to have 10 Acts [Source] (with Act 5 coming that is [confirmed]) and I do not see end-game getting any easier for Melee down the road, so yes, something needs to be done about the poor state of 85% of Melee Skills, not just Ice Crash.

Going back to Infernal Blow, yes, it is a Single-Target Skill Gem (that can be turned into a multi-target Skill Gem through 'Impact' or Melee Splash), and yes its explosion Damage from enemies upon death was nerfed, but at least it has 0.5% increased AoE per Quality (to me should be 1%, not 0.5%), making its clear speed better than Ice Crash because Ice Crash has a poorer % per Quality modifier.

"

biyte wrote:

I agree that the gem quality bonus is below average though. I think best would be 1.5% increased cold damage per quality so it's better than an average gem quality (those that have damage typically have 1% damage) if you decide to scale (the few choices of) cold conversion more or just cold damage but not too much worse than average if you just scale pure physical.

You're against the suggestion for Ice Crash to have 1% increased AoE per Quality (or 1% Physical Damage per Quality), so then you go and suggest 1.5% Cold Damage per Quality instead when 1% or even 1.5% Cold Damage per Quality is the problem. *Laughs* If not not 1% increased AoE per Quality, then 1% increased Physical Damage per Quality (like Earthquake) would be better to scale better DPS-wise when 50% of Ice Crash's Physical Damage gets converted to Cold Damage.

"

biyte wrote:

I think Ice Crash is quite obsolete when earthquake exists, but as an elemental conversion skill it still has it's own uniqueness such as 100% conversion without stuff like hrimnors + chernobog (restricts to 1hand but not unarmed because of hrimnors) or lost efficiency from avatar of fire (you often can think up setups like 87.5% conversion...)

So you admit Ice Crash is generally a poor Skill Gem that is more likely to brick before T16 Maps whereas Earthquake is less likely to brick before T16 Maps since it is clearly capable of running them with little to no problem. In fact (as said in my previous feedback), considering the state of end-game and the direction it is going, that is the problem with roughly 85% of Melee Skill Gems beyond just Ice Crash.

Funny how you went from, "Ice crash is fine compared to most melee skills... it's got a solid area size and is one of the first power creep skills to enter the game" TO a totally different extreme by saying, "I think Ice Crash is quite obsolete when earthquake exists."

What you seem to be suggesting from the above quoted from you is, "Well, Ice Crash pretty much sucks, so just run Earthquake if you have a problem with DPS." That is not the answer, and not everyone wants to run Earthquake... The solution is (and it's a small one that still will not match Earthquake's power) TO make Ice Crash have 1% Phys increase or 1% AoE increase per Quality rather than 1%-1.5% Cold Damage. Better that than no improvement for Ice Crash at all.

"

*Laughs* Ice Crash has nowhere near a 'solid area size' by default unless you heavily (and I do mean heavily) invest in a load of increased AoE nodes on the Skill Tree in conjunction with the Increased AoE Support Gem, and in the event you do not do so, and you want to Support Ice Crash with Concentrated Effect, Ice Crash's AoE gets even more absurdly 'small' so as to hamper clear speed to the point where it is not even worth using when you get near end-game.

Are you on drugs? It's aoe is fine. It's almost same size as sweep, which does less damage at the cost of having more consistent damage, which is worse because it means it is less flexible. You can't stand closer to a mob with sweep to do more damage with it, and the outer edge of ice crash doesn't even do much less than sweep.

I mean i guess if you try to use ice crash like ground slam and expect it to hit the all the mobs in front of you you will have problems. Why not complain about ground slam, for whatever radius it is, it's aoe is still significantly smaller because the arc wont reach behind you without some insane jewel socketting.

Ice crash hits in a radius around you. Different skills have different features.

You are arbitrarily saying that you want to support it with concentrated effect... do you think it is only balanced when it's base damage is essentially around 230% with AoE? Sounds absurd to me. For reference sweep does about 124% damage, ice crash currently does about 147% damage on first stage. the 2nd stage does 125% and 3rd stage 103% damage.

Why don't you use increased area of effect, like every other non melee splash melee build, and be glad that ice crash is powerful enough to let you use such an overpowered support gem, and take advantage of its flexibility to swap out to concentrated effect when you really need it. Why should ice crash be allowed to get 59% more damage with no area downside when no other melee skill can either?

And infernal blow needs melee splash in order to clear even decently. Why not take that spare socket and use a gem like increased area of effect? I assure you it will be safer to play ice crash because you don't have to namelock shit.

Sure, occasionally blowing up a huge pack will let you kill a yellow guy or a map boss a bit faster if the aoe overlap is big enough, but i assure you a melee splash supported infernal blow is similarly pathetic without the same huge AoE investment, I have played a facebreaker with over 100% increased radius on my infernal blow setup and it's not like i'm offscreening with a melee skill.
And I have to stand directly in range of at least one mob to even hit anything. You can't splash off air like you can with ice crash. Does the thought that the mandatory support gem mean nothing to you? Infernal blow is also has a rare synergy with melee splash, but take any gem like glacial hammer + melee splash and try equating that to ice crash. Not only is it worse but it's two gem sockets. In order for it even be on even grounds, try equating to Ice crash + added fire damage, then you see how absurd ice crash already is.

Ice crash is FINE. The numbers don't lie if you want to compare to other melee skills since there are really only those few mechanical factors: aoe and namelock or not, and occasionally you get stuff like projectiles which can be pretty strong but you get terrible aoe with molten strike so at least you can't do absurd damage to whole screen, and they have less damage scaling options.

"

I don't know about you, but I've already tested Ice Crash's DPS and clear speed when compared to Earthquake or even Infernal Blow (a much older Skill Gem) and it is generally poor.

The reason for this is because we likely have played different builds, have played different content. Depending on the content, how likely you are to die, if you can one-shot the mobs or not, all the results you get will be different. Obviously I too have used both all 3 skills in multiple environments and builds. Which is why I'm even commenting. For some time i think in open beta or after 1.0 , I was pretty much devoted to melee splash infernal blow builds. When Ice crash was released I felt really dumb that I was using a gem that granted negative damage just to get AoE bombing possible, when Ice crash can use a damage support and be more reliable on single target and AoE.

I also played all 3 skills for leveling (like up to level 70), ice crash consistently cleared safer and faster than infernal blow, I even had a build planned this league using non melee splash infernal blow, cast on melee kill infernal blow firestorm with 100% elemental scaling, and I ended up using ice crash to level because being in the face of mobs was just too dangerous a lot of the time, I would have to equip different flasks, need a lot more resources that I wasn't willing to spend leveling just to cap resists without a quicksilver of resistance to make up for a granite flask and lastly infernal blow had a far too snowbally effect where if I killed a mob, everything would die, often seriously overkill, but if I didn't kill one in one or two hits, nothing would die and all the mobs would swing at my face since I had to get so close.

And Yet, even with my build where I get over 100% increased aoe with infernal blow, My sub-optimal ice crash setup with 85% increased aoe clears at almost the same speed, but is far safer and I can even use a fortify gem in the main socket and therefore have less fortify downtime than I do with another setup, and I don't have to stand directly in the face of a monster to hit anything. My build is extra infernal blow synergistic as well, grabbing a lot of generic elemental damage and fire damage nodes to even boost the corpse explosion damage, yet ice crash performs almost as well. How about it, who would have guessed that melee skills with built in aoe, and don't even need namelock the way static strike and wild strike do, perform pretty good.

"

You're against the suggestion for Ice Crash to have 1% increased AoE per Quality (or 1% Physical Damage per Quality), so then you go and suggest 1.5% Cold Damage per Quality instead when 1% or even 1.5% Cold Damage per Quality is the problem. *Laughs* If not not 1% increased AoE per Quality, then 1% increased Physical Damage per Quality (like Earthquake) would be better to scale better DPS-wise when 50% of Ice Crash's Physical Damage gets converted to Cold Damage.

Keep laughing like it means something. I agree with you that the quality bonus is not good, and you keep acting like an entitled dick who wants their gem to be radically stronger than everything else.

Did you even read the post? I gave a clear explanation to why I suggesting 1.5%. Its BETTER than earthquake's quality if you decide to scale more cold conversion, while not being utter dog shit if you scale pure physical. And honestly the difference between 10% increased damage and 20% increased damage... who gives a fuck? It's less than 1 point on your tree, most players play the game with 0 quality gems because trading is a fucking chore that isn't fun. I am trying to give it a MEANINGFUL quality bonus UNIQUE to Ice crash. What the fuck is your problem? It's not overpowered enough for you? Want 3% cold damage per quality instead? That way even if you scale pure physical the same way you could scale earthquake, its STILL BETTER than earthquake's quality? Let's reward mindless choices why don't we? What is balance?

And your idea honestly makes no sense. So you want 1% aoe per quality instead of 1% cold damage? Lets assume the cold damage is equivalent to 0.5% damage because at worst, you don't even run hatred. So my idea was to change to 1.5%, which is about equivalent to 0.75%. So at worst exchange rate, for 1% aoe, you're gladly willing to give up 0.75% increased damage.

But you don't I know because you won't grab a 5% aoe node while you'll grab 12% damage node. If this made any sense you would sacrifice 3 or 4 12% damage nodes in a heartbeat for a 5% aoe node. So please at least have consistent logic for choosing a radius size before you complain about how small your aoe is and how it deserves to be larger, despite not even doing so by your own standards. Not to mention picking 12% damage nodes and not 16% damage nodes. But this thread isn't about your skill tree efficiency

You know what fine, if you insist ,let it be 1% aoe. You can arbitrarily change it as many times as you want, it will just make quality ice crash better than the rest of the melee skills, who cares? Instead of finding a unique idea for the quality, just buff it's aoe. Actually apply this change to every gem, even glacial hammer and heavy strike just in case people want to use melee splash with them too. Every skill needs to hit every mob to be efficient anyways.

Yes earthquake is in this game, and no it is not balanced. But the idea that we should bring every up to it's level is horse shit that is in short, for entitled casuals who don't care about an underlying design ethic and instead prefer instant gratification, quick temporary appeasing for the masses, and will quickly be forced to repeat the same 'buff across the board' once the shallowness of the change is felt by the players after the designer has inevitably 'buffed across the board' monster life and damage...

"

So you admit Ice Crash is generally a poor Skill Gem that is more likely to brick before T16 Maps whereas Earthquake is less likely to brick before T16 Maps since it is clearly capable of running them with little to no problem. In fact (as said in my previous feedback), considering the state of end-game and the direction it is going, that is the problem with roughly 85% of Melee Skill Gems beyond just Ice Crash.

Who admitted what? Yes earthquake is a better skill gem. It just does more damage and has a larger radius and physical damage is generally better than elemental, and you can scale elemental via conversion despite it being less efficient than ice crash's elemental scaling.

A skill gem cannot inherently 'not brick before t16s'. A player's build does. And the concepts that go into reaching t16s are far more than 'skill gem choice'. Of course you want to pick a good gem but why they are good is often due to far more reasons than just 'it's aoe is 10% larger than the next best gem'. Something like blade vortex fucking crits a hundred times and can stack single target damage incredibly high for infinite flask charges and safer boss killing which has become increasingly relevant, or having been able to hit a single mob like TWENTY times with one attack, like early chain gmp lightning arrow, or later 100% gmp pierce lightning arrow, and to lesser extends, or being able to dodge very efficiently with cyclone and scale it's aoe through weapon range and 2 handed weapons. Most of them are defensive related reasons, which ice crash has pretty decent ones when it comes to melee. That is range, and aoe, so you can dodge and still fight.

Go stand in a bosses face and infernal blow it to death with one less link because you won't swap out melee splash like you won't swap in increased area of effect for ice crash, and tell me how much faster and safer it clears than ice crash.

Obviously I agree that '85% of melee skills have problems for end game' but just straight up buffing them all to be incredibly safe because of huge aoe is not a reasonable solution.

And it seems to be arbitrarily decided that all skill gems deserve to do t16s? I'm not saying I disagree but there's no inherent reason why all skill gems should be able to do highest level content. Like I said it's up to the player to make a build that can do the highest content. There are plenty of other points of debates to begin with, such as insisting things such as 'clear speed' are important just because the game has happened to change that way. Your account seems old enough to remember that people once used exalted orbs on maps.

"

Funny how you went from, "Ice crash is fine compared to most melee skills... it's got a solid area size and is one of the first power creep skills to enter the game" TO a totally different extreme by saying, "I think Ice Crash is quite obsolete when earthquake exists."

What you seem to be suggesting from the above quoted from you is, "Well, Ice Crash pretty much sucks, so just run Earthquake if you have a problem with DPS." That is not the answer, and not everyone wants to run Earthquake...

I literally didn't go from whatever weird meaning you are ascribing to my out of context words to another weird meaning you are ascribing to me words.

My whole point was that ice crash is good. If glacial hammer didn't exist, it's like an overpowered compared to melee, but otherwise balanced skill. But glacial hammer exists, so ice crash is too strong. But earthquake is more subjectively more efficient that ice crash, but heres the main point... it's more efficient than earthquake AND it plays VERY mechanically similar, which is why I claimed it is mostly obsolete. You hit the floor, don't have to namelock a target, and with a slight delay, and an unprecedentedly large aoe occurs centered in front of your character. When ice crash was introduced to the game, for the damage it dealt, it's aoe was more than respectable. Ice crash's delay is very short but I assure you it is relevant

This is true for both skills. You're never going to have phase run damage buff on stage 2 and 3 of an ice crash, and probably not even on stage 1 unless you have extreme attack speed. Earthquake also is optimal with a relatively a slow attack rate, has and a big aoe, centered in front of your character. Earthquake was of course more obscene compared to existing skills than ice crash was.

I kept saying, but ice crash still has unique points to it that earthquake cannot match up to. You can do 100% elemental conversion with ice crash with minimal investment due to its 50% base conversion, in case you want to play something like inquisitor, but with earthquake you are forced to use chernobog's pillar and hrimnor's glove thing, forcing you to use a 1hand weapon.

Well the sad fact that a 87.5% conversion earthquake is maybe strong enough to compete with ice crash is a whole different matter. I don't play earthquake either but I'm not gonna call everybody who uses it a scum of the earth devil either, I am fundamentally against earthquake but who the hell would blame players for playing good stuff in a video game? Their parents would have to have been killed by earthquake...

"

(continued) ... The solution is (and it's a small one that still will not match Earthquake's power) TO make Ice Crash have 1% Phys increase or 1% AoE increase per Quality rather than 1%-1.5% Cold Damage. Better that than no improvement for Ice Crash at all.

I never claimed this was "the" solution and certainly not to have it compete with earthquake, I honestly think no melee skill should be at earthquake's level, and neither should earthquake. You may think otherwise, that every melee skill should be incredible, but I'm playing melee and i'm fine having shitty clear speeds and weak builds unable to do red maps safely, and I play in HC leagues too. I was making an, although conservative, fair and objective suggesting for Ice crash's quality bonus.

Lastly nowhere in your original post did I see such a conservative suggestion for a quality bonus change to 1% increased physical damage. It's honestly like 0.25% damage difference from my suggestion at worst, and you shit on my suggestion so hard? What's the deal man?

Do you not see the huge difference between AoE and Damage? AoE is a highly coveted thing for all top tier builds, whether its in the form of more projectiles or raw Radius of Area of Effect numbers, or having insane movement speed, it's highly relevant to the balance of the game.

But truthfully, GGG have changed radiuses massively many times questionably and after that type of radical change it makes it feel like debating a a buff or nerf or 5-10% radius feels pointless if GGG just seemingly on a whim changes shit that's already subpar, or buffs the already powerful blade vortex by 60% damage, which is why I honestly wouldn't care if they did give ice crash aoe on quality bonus, aside that if I ever make an ice crash build, i'd just feel like an idiot using a 0 quality gem and feel unreasonably punished for not trading for 1 chaos gems.

I think you are expecting very extreme changes. They will happen in time, chill out, GGG has said they have a large melee overhaul planned but it will take a long time. My suggestions were taking into account status quo.

Anyways I'm out, didn't expect such a condescending reply filled with *Laughs* when I basically tried to say Ice crash is not terrible and is rather GOOD compared to the majority of melee attack gems, and it's quality bonus could be better without being generic,.

Ah ice crash. The earthquake which gets concussive effect.... but a lot less damage as well lol.

Horrid skill gem, needs to do much more damage, have the attack speed penalty completely removed or a much bigger AoE to be on par with earthquake.

1)Change that eye-crashing texture already! i cant play long because of it, ice crash texture destroying eyes.
2)Remove stupid AS penalty or increase base AOE size a bit
3)Quality on gem is just.... nonsense, hope for 0.5% inc. aoe per 1% quality.

After the melee changes I figured I'd give Ice Crash a look again as I had fun with it previously. So I started a duelist with intent of picking up some AoE increases through the Templar and scion trees but made the mistake of running Ice Blades as my initial leveling spec.

I say mistake but that's only in the context that I wanted to play Ice Crash. It turns out Ice Blades with the range buffs is stupidly fun with the sword that causes it to chain. I've swapped back to a two hander since then but it's one of the easiest builds I've played. I did try Ice Crash at 28 for half a level but it's retardedly underpowered right now. The AOE barely clears my sword range, you have to be stupidly close to the enemies for it to do good damage so you're taking more hits, and it takes FOREVER to cast. I absolutely love the animation though which is why I want to use it, but I just can't bring myself to run around with such a gimped ability. (Alternatively, Nerf Ice Blades, but then you need to nerf Blade Flurry again as that's even stronger).

My original thought was to suggest that it triggers where your weapon strikes (as that would make sense) which would at least take advantage of the new weapon ranges but people seem pretty defensive about keeping this ability as is. I already figured that would be the case so I was going to follow up with suggestion for a support gem that gives some AoE bonus, some AoE damage bonus but the effect always centers on your character to give people classic ice crash back, but reading some of the back lash at people that just want a simple shift in the quality bonus makes me unsure of what to do. It's obvious to me the AoE needs to be bigger and that the Quality on it is one of the worst I've seen.

I ended up changing my spec completely because of how disappointed I was with Ice Crash. I know some people love it but honestly, after reading that wall of text defending it, I seriously think I'm playing a different game.

Obviously your mileage may vary;
_WAter_

Wow ice crash became even worse and less unique with this patch. My cycloner has almsost as much aoe as ice crash now. Nghamu flame = ez conversion with 2hand...

Still gonna make an ice crash char cuz roleplaying but i already know its gonna suck for multiple reasons, sadly its still one of the best unarmed attack skill that isnt warchief totem (which i won't use out of principal cuz it's so fucking stupid)