Frost Wall

I think that 3 Seconds with Increased Duration passives are enough for such a spamable skill.
Cast it, cast a firestorm/skeleton (or both) Totem, and wait it out while you occasionally recast it.^^

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soul4hdwn wrote:

viable for what though? you can use increased duration passives or support gem if you feel its too short. leveling it up increases duration and width too.

Sounds like you have to have everything high lvl to barely get 4 seconds. Sounds pretty short to make it worth using.

Lv 1 ice wall and lv 1 duration support is 1.875 second duration, a full second to spare if you for some reason wanted to spam this.

Lv 16 ice wall with lv 17 increased duration support gem is 2 *1.8 = 3.6 seconds of ice wall. What people seem to want is complete lockdown, if you wanted that, you'd be using a totem support but then you didn't need the duration (saving you mana cost).

With the +45% duration passives between duelist and ranger, that gets bumped up to 4.5 seconds (or 2.9 if not using support). Anything close to 5 seconds sounds like lockout to me based on the fast paced gameplay. A player can get 4 or more actions out in time span of 3.6 or more seconds of ice wall.

A basic non-boosted ice wall is good to drop and run away with.

The quality on this item seems broken. I have a 0% frost wall and a 9% frost wall. 0% says it's 20units long, 9% says it's 26units long. Based on Proliferation units, that's quite a large difference, yet casting both they're pretty much exactly the same size, both in length and width. I also checked a 5% I had in case it was just 9% bugged, and same issue, it's exactly the same, I checked with all 3 equipped at the same time casting them one after the other and not equipped at the same time in case it was buggy.

So yeah, quality does nothing on this gem.

Question - Frost Wall + Ancestral Bond will work together?

Feedback from a level 29 summoner that's new to path of exile:

Frost wall is pretty pointless as a new skill - especially for PvE. Duration is too brief to do anything, monsters are barely affected by the knockback effect. Spamming it leaves the caster open to attack (especially since it doesn't block ranged attacks) and prevents the caster from casting other more useful spells.

Suggestions to improve Frost Wall:

a) remove the ability to block movement and replace it with a high chance to freeze anything that passes through it (around 50%) for 2 seconds. Increase casting delay to 3 seconds. Effects don't stack and can only freeze a target once.

b) add a secondary effect for when the frost wall dissipates, like a small AoE effect that chills targets caught in the explosion and has a 15% chance to freeze. (good for PvE since players can run away before the wall dissipates)

c) increase base duration to 5 seconds but increase casting delay to 4 seconds (i.e. can only cast it once every 4 seconds); frost wall can be destroyed.

I don't know why I'm still using this skill considering how horribly maimed it's been. The duration is far, far too low - it literally expires by the time I finish the casting animation. You cannot balance around the best-case scenario (i.e. max-level Increased Duration support gem) because 99% of the time they will not occur. Instead I have a piddling little wall which doesn't even last long enough for my internet connection to sync up with the server and prevent enemies from simply running directly through the wall.

Good thing you can use it to block the majority of projectiles as well.

I have to say, combining this spell with spell totem leads to rather hilarious results.

Basically putting this on a totem bypasses its 2 main weaknesses: 1) its high mana cost and 2) its short duration.

With the totem spamming frost wall non-stop, it becomes very easy to keep monsters away from you and deflect enemy projectiles (& your own as well, except certain spells). It makes many boss mechanics trivial since every time the frost wall hits them, it serves as an "interrupt" and pushes them back.

Having said this, when I used this in a 6-player group the melee players yelled at me, for making them run around like headless chickens :D (allies have to walk "around" the wall as well).