Ice Nova

im respecing my failed witch into crit-cold-selfcaster (yes, yes, i know..)

and trap+multitrap+crit chance+ice nova seems to 'work' as a crowd clear

Personally I've made about 10 or so characters, just trying to get Ice Nova to work as a main damage source. I do fully understand that your probably not supposed to be able to kill rares or uniques with Ice Nova. That I have no problem with what so ever, using say a four link Freezing Pulse or Glacial Cascade instead is fully doable.

My main issue with the skill is that it's impossible to scale (this is speaking from a Hardcore perspective, if that even matters) the damage of the spell in any way, shape or form, because the base damage of the spell itself is very bad.
Not to speak of the manacost either. I believe I was at about level 58 or so, on a Templar, using a four linked Ice Nova, with Faster Casting, Increased AoE, Conc Effect, doing moderate damage at best, perhaps 3 shotting packs of white Skeletons / Zombies in act 2 Merciless, with a manacost of about 80-90.

I do understand that the spell itself probably is designed for early leveling or for some sort of support skill, triggering Elemental Equilibrium, mostly used when doing a Righteous Fire builds.

But it makes me a little sad that there is no way to make the skill usable, as a source of damage, unless you have perfect gear. And even than, there's no point in using it as a damage source, cause it doesn't deal damage. I've even tried doing low-life with Solaris, Dual Redbeak, Pain Atunement. But with that you can't take hits from mobs in Cruel without dying, I did manage to deal some damage, but it was still meh at best.

It is very good until somewhere near the end of act 2, it becomes almost unplayable, I do understand if or why the damage of it wonder be changed, ever, seeing as it probably is thought of as a support skill. And that increasing it's damage in early levels would make racing very weird if it started one shotting everything.
But that's not what im looking for, im hoping that it will become viable to use, perhaps not "top tier" or flavor of the month, but that it atleast becomes usable in the end game.
And not as a trapper or RF type build, but with self casting.

TL;DR Please GGG read this and try considering buffing the damage of it in later levels.

Try using Added lightening and chaos either is better than using faster cast,in fact you get nearly as much damage as the main damage(cold) from these gems.

The thing with Ice Nova is its strength is in its large AoE (even the quality gives more AoE)which when enemies bunch around you can be excess where a skill with smaller but higher damage can be more effective because its just enough to cover bunched up enemies.

Ice nova is best where enemies have low life but are dense in packs.Maps with things like Beatle lava,sandspitters and monkeys.Enemies that run about or even archers who stand on the spot.

It's like in D2 tomb runs in act 2.Often you'd get a high level hammerdin going around with a party to help level but really it was a terrible build for that situation,holy freeze aura was far better despite being puny for high level content(it is better as a utility skill then) it was perfect for this.The low damage was still plenty to kill low level enemies,you never had to stop to fight and it had a huge AoE compared to a hammerdin.

In conclusion I'm not saying it doesn't need a buff but consider it's AoE and how if it's damage was raised to match more 'concentrated AoE' skills it might easily become OP.

I find this skill completely useless for anything past the ape forest in act 2 normal. Isn't there SOME WAY we can make Ice Nova an actually viable skill to make a build around? Perhaps some way of allowing it to "chain" (so to speak) where each time it hits an enemy there's a chance it casts another Ice Nova?

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sym wrote:

I find this skill completely useless for anything past the ape forest in act 2 normal. Isn't there SOME WAY we can make Ice Nova an actually viable skill to make a build around? Perhaps some way of allowing it to "chain" (so to speak) where each time it hits an enemy there's a chance it casts another Ice Nova?

vall ice nova "chains" 4 times all the time.

currently ice nova's only redeeming quality is its extreme size. however discharge has same radius and ground slam is "longer". http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/11707/page/226#p5041495

I started using my ice witch again after the patch. I'm doing around 8-9k damage with Ice Nova now, with 16.8 percent crit, meaning stuff is always frozen in place. I have a huge blast radius, even without Carcass Jack.



I only put "Knockback" on there instead of a damage support because the Pledge is for my incinerator build and I don't wanna screw up the colors. I was clearing level 66-72 maps pretty easily yesterday. I use ice spear as my secondary attack.

The damage increase is huge on this thing now. I don't think it would work if not for crit, though.

With Carcass Jack, I can basically ice spam the entire screen. However, I switched to CI and I need more ES so I'll keep everything as is for now.

I should note, killing bosses on higher level maps is difficult, but I use ice spear for bosses and rares and my defense is pretty low. Ice Nova is my favorite crowd clearing skill bar none.

EDIT: I should also note I'm running Ice Herald too. I'm going to select the Aura increase nodes (plus 6 and plus 14) near CI and we'll see how much more damage I can get out of this.

Well crap. On my incinerator build, i tried inner force but it was causing my Artic Armor to drain mana too fast. It will be difficult for me to reach Inner FOrce with this Ice Witch. :(

Do CoDT or Cast when stunned work with these?

CoDT/CwS=IceNova=Knockback

CoDT/CwS=IceNova=CurseOnHit=TemporalChains

Just survived Jungle boss with this build only 2 of us left,freezing whole screens definitely helps survival with this skill.Still don't see many people using it though.

Funny with Elreon quests this skill makes it a breeze especially feeding ones.