Icestorm

The problem with Icestorm and some other similar skills is the same - AOE. Increasing AOE will decrease your single-target dmg and reliability. Using max-concentrated on single-target dmg will decrease your clearing speed because you'll need to cast it for every small pack or even single mob. Still quite a few impacts will miss target even with conc effect and zero "increased aoe" since conc. effect will decrease each impact radius too. But at least it gets more reliable versus single-target.
I decided to go inquisitor CI crit WI trying to get aoe from HoI. Still not there yet at 75 lvl since I need that 140% multiplier "Increased AOE" support for HoI but I'm close to it. Seems like it's the only way to get both reliable single-target and AOE for clearing packs.
But with all those investment in crit and mana reserve Int is very hard to obtain. So overall dmg is okish (thx to crit at least) but not really good.

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Vipermagi wrote:

Empower, Enhance and Enlighten apply only to Supported Active Skill Gems. Icestorm does not come from a Gem.

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Vipermagi wrote:

They could call it the Wiener Festival but that wouldn't make Icestorm a wiener.

You don't have to agree with the logic behind this interaction, but just to save you some time: no amount of argumentation will change the facts.

Pardon me, I was providing feedback on a skill provided by an item which is affected by other socketed support gems, but not empower.

While your first comment was logical and factual, it does not change my feedback suggesting empower's applicability to Icestorm.

Your second comment was elitist bloating of your own vanity, which serves only you, and not the forums intent.

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Vipermagi wrote:

You asked a question: "Why doesn't empower work?"
I gave you the answer to that question: "It only applies to Gems"
You decided to get snippy at that: "Well it's the GEM FORUM RIGHT"
I make a snippy comment in return: "It's a name for a forum, it's not definitive, duh"
Reap what you sow.

(my own definition of 'feedback' also seems to be different but w/e)

Hi vipermagi,

your depiction of events above does not accurately portray what unfolded.

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waskely wrote:

Why doesn't empower work for icestorm? seems like it should...

I have bolded and underlined my feedback you omitted.

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Vipermagi wrote:

Empower, Enhance and Enlighten apply only to Supported Active Skill Gems. Icestorm does not come from a Gem.

Somewhat helpful, it only applies to gems. Sure. However, there is no better place to supply my feedback than this very forum I provided my feedback in, and is negated of any reasoning for empower not working when other support gems DO affect Icestorm.

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waskely wrote:

And here we are, in the SKILL GEM FEEDBACK forum for Icestorm.

My intent was not to be snippy, reading this now, I do not read it that way, merely reiterating this is the place to provide feedback on the skill Icestorm regardless of the lack of an Icestorm Gem. Reiteration was necessary to prevent a small mindedness technicality from dismissing my proposed interaction with the empower support gem.

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Vipermagi wrote:

They could call it the Wiener Festival but that wouldn't make Icestorm a wiener.

You don't have to agree with the logic behind this interaction, but just to save you some time: no amount of argumentation will change the facts.

"

waskely wrote:

"

Vipermagi wrote:

Empower, Enhance and Enlighten apply only to Supported Active Skill Gems. Icestorm does not come from a Gem.

"

Vipermagi wrote:

They could call it the Wiener Festival but that wouldn't make Icestorm a wiener.

You don't have to agree with the logic behind this interaction, but just to save you some time: no amount of argumentation will change the facts.

Pardon me, I was providing feedback on a skill provided by an item which is affected by other socketed support gems, but not empower.

While your first comment was logical and factual, it does not change my feedback suggesting empower's applicability to Icestorm.

Your second comment was elitist bloating of your own vanity, which serves only you, and not the forums intent.

I used actual quotes, and described your negative input in hopes to bring you back to the level which got you "Valued Poster" but was unsuccessful as we lead into your most recent reply...

CwC release breaked up all self-cast WI builds. There is no practical reason to use Icestorm w/o CwC.

Skill cast time and mana cost are too high and should be tuned down as well as skill duration int scaling.

There's no enchantment for Icestorm? :(

So, would you please finally fix the skill animation performance.
Was it meant to be like that?

Watching the gif from 1.5 years ago:

"Oh look I had 105 fps in hideout with my old graphics card, now I'm getting 80 fps at best with RX570"

"PoE is pretty well optimised ©" (for Turing architecture. maybe)

I really wish this skill wasn't so completely awful for performance.

I love the skill and the item thematically, but once you get situated in maps you get to the problem of being limited not by your in-game budget to upgrade your character, but your out-of-game budget to have a stronger PC that will be able to handle the skill. I can't even imagine how this skill feels on console.

With CwC, some duration clusters on the tree, and 2k int you can have dozens of overlapping icestorms. This is mostly manageable for regular maps, but begins to become a problem in areas with high monster density, particularly blighted maps.

With a bit better gear you can have individual icestorms lasting over 10 seconds and the new awakened support gems can allow you to get many times more stacking storms. With awakened CwC and spell cascade for coverage you are casting 5 icestorms every .3 seconds that each last 10+ seconds and that each hit every .1 seconds. All this combines to having somewhere in the region of 1800 bolts hitting every second.

This may be manageable if these bolts only did damage, but the real GPU killer is the chilled ground that these create. These ice patches turn the game into a 160p slideshow rather quickly.

Personally, I would be fine with losing the innate chilled ground from the skill if that led to a significant improvement to performance.

Please GGG fix this skill performance, even without spell cascade with awakened CwC fps drop to 40 and with spell cascade it goes to 20 (wont event try with awakened spell cascade) and its not like we have an old gpu, even those 2070 rtx suffer with this skill. Is it that hard to optimize it?