Ice Nova

Actually I'm pretty sure it modifies the radius: "4% increased Radius of Area Skills"

Initial playthrough, level 25 Templar, speced out in strengthening minions and increasing Intelligence and MP pool.

I have found this skill to have no "umph" to it. The skill isn't even a drop in the bucket damage-wise. My skeletons who are ambling around doing nothing a lot of the time still do more damage with their swords than I do spamming this skill. It certainly needs one of 2 things to be viable as a standalone skill before I would spend precious slots to add support skills to it:

1) Increased damage: +30% or more. Perhaps scale back a bit on its overall increase at higher levels, if people are already making acceptable builds using it, but at the early level you get this skill, it should be useful. It should not be that using unmodified melee attacks are more effective than using it.

2) Increased utility: A crowd affecting move like this doesn't even need to deal *any* damage if it has a reliable utility effect. Namely, it should chill enemies to the point that they will not hurt/kill the player right after using it (because of a slow cast speed). It should be activated as a skill, and then the player can get out of a sticky situation. That alone would make speccing out for it viable.

Hi,

The spell is well build when U specc your char right. Try a critting shadow with dual daggers and use as stun and add stun dam mod. It will shine.

I chose this gem as a quest reward based on the name and website description. I was completely mislead.

"Reaching deep within, the caster of the mighty Ice Nova assaults surrounding enemies with a shivering blast of pure rime. The shock wave from this nova is often enough to slay outright, and those who survive the blast will be frozen, their very blood chilled solid. With precise use, a master weaver of frost can annihilate his enemies without suffering a scratch."

I'm lvl 11 with a lvl 4 gem and the skill hardly ever freezes things. I was expecting a crowd control spell from the description, and becasue spells named Frost Nova or Ice Nova usually have light damage and a strong freeze component in other ARPG games and even in Magic the Gathering. (The origin of the spell is D&D.) I'd suggest the website description be clarified and you consider changing the skill name since this really isn't a Frost/Ice Nova spell. Ice Blast or Ring of Frost would be more descriptive of what the spell does, or perhaps borrow Frozen Wrath (Icy Wrath?) from D&D.

Edited to add: or even better make it a real Ice Nova, with light damage and a true freeze. Though I can see where that would be an issue since you don't seem to be putting cooldowns on abilities. Hmmm...

Hi,

with lvl 11 you expect too mutch. Play the game, lvl the gem. Dont forget to skill some Crit nodes, not too high. 14% with a good 80% dagger is ok. Link the spell with ae radius, faster casting, add light gem and if u have a 5 linked with flee. U can solo chaos, any map. But u need so mutch mana ^^

Out of interest, this skill doesn't work with multiple projectiles, am i right?

Hm. Maybe it's only my feelin' but, DMG from this skill is really overpowered i have 23 lvl templar, and i can clear almost everything with ice nova. Maybe it'll be less usefull on higher lvl zones, but on low-level areas it's just overpowered.

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434955 wrote:

Hm. Maybe it's only my feelin' but, DMG from this skill is really overpowered i have 23 lvl templar, and i can clear almost everything with ice nova. Maybe it'll be less usefull on higher lvl zones, but on low-level areas it's just overpowered.

give numbers... only way i can see this being strong is via its large size. every caster class i have made, even cold snap is stronger than ice nova while nova's winning factor is its size.