Ice Spear

I'm a level 46 witch that has focused passives on as much crit chance/damage as possible(as well as spell power) and I have ice spear paired with the increased crit chance and increased crit damage support gems. Base crit is something around 33% with +470% crit damage and I'm assuming that is BEFORE the spell projectile reaches it's more lethal state, because in merciless it often 1 hit crits at a distance...

Everyone says shock nova in the best spell, and it is nice for some situations but I find ice spear to be the most powerful with all the crit stacking. Just kite enemies into a line and fire away.

I switched my build to a crit based build based solely because of this skill. Makes finding suitable bodies for zombies harder, but I've got no real issue there, its the price I pay. I used to use freezing pulse (0.9.2) but made the switch to spear and never looked back. The damage is comparable, just miss the width of the pulse, but the range, increased crit the second phase of the spear, as well as the drop off of damage on the pulse makes the spear an obvious choice.

I find this spell perfect for targetting single monsters and enjoy trying to get the range necessary for the target to get the second phase hit, and also the right angle to catch a few extra targets with the first phase.

I would like to know what the increased crit chance on the second phase is though, maybe add it in the tooltip for the skill, or at least on the character sheet, or better yet, both! That way I can see exactly how my passive crit chance affects it etc.

In .9.3, I believe Mark said that the increase to Crit. Chance in the second phase of the projectile is +600%.

Also playing with this skill as my primary damage skill at lvl 36. Just got my hands on a multiple projectile gem. While lowering the damage, it is great one it levels up I will be like god mode.

I did not find this skill gem very effective, but I didn't play on a witch either. Can you Devs make the Ice Spear cycle from enemy to enemy or just have a larger radius, like tripled or doubled?

Not a witch, but seen it on one with great gear and knew how to use it. Multi+addeddam+fastercast and this was OP. Didn't notice it get the nerf in 9.5 notes so I'm gonna try it for my next build. Biggest problem is no bodies for zombies/spects. Gonna be tough to lvl up with it and stay alive without minions. Inc Run speed will be a must.

0.9.5 feedback below this post

seems that crit is broken on this skill after patch or is it working as intended and changed for projectile spells maybe?

(just checked my legacy chars first)

Nova has 44% crit and 5% base ...
Ice Spear has 12.8% crit now and has a 8% base for the spell (down from like 67 % to 13% seems strange)

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Deathtiny2266 wrote:

seems that crit is broken on this skill after patch or is it working as intended and changed for projectile spells maybe?

Are you using Multi-Proj?

That received a crit penalty, for each extra projectile.