Ice Spear

Did this get the same treatment other projectile spells got in 2.0? Damage seems to fall way behind the likes of Freezing Pulse now.

IS used to work great as a map clearer with GMP because you would shotgun and pierce at close range or get guaranteed crits on final impact.

Now it seems relegated to an off-screen sniper niche with mediocre damage.

Tried to level with the gem (again) but it doesn't deal any good damage and has no real aoe, LMP just gimps it even further.

Ice spear seems very bad right now i tried to do crit ice spear totems but the speed they cast them and not rly doing offscreening is so bad. I have like 15% qual ice speer and proj is veeeery slow, definetly needs a buff in further patches.

Ice Spear seems like one of the worst skills now.

It seems like it should be a skill that does a lot of damage for someone new that doesn't have the gear for high crit chance without it. But it's just bad. Bad bad bad.

The tooltip says it "explodes" on its second form, but it actually has no AoE at all.
Maybe it SHOULD have AoE, as that'd make it a lot better. That, or it needs far higher base damage.

Pushing enemies in the first phase then exploding in the second phase, so those pushed enemies take damage if there is something behind them for it to explode on, would make it an awesome skill.

This skill is quite underwhelming in the current meta. It looses to any skill which has some kind of AoE effect and even some other singletarget abilities with LMP/GMP.

One of these two would make it fine in my opinion.
- Give the second form of the projectile area damage (Maybe something like Fireball, which is viable)
- Give the skill overall higher base damage. (It should at least be equal to Arc if supported by GMP)

Ice Spear is an interesting skill and i've used it on several chars before and plan on doing so again for the one-month race.

That being said, the damage is very low! even featuring in the huge crit potential of the 2nd stage, it merely equals the damage output of fireball, which, as i experienced first hand in Warbands, is just too low to feel good to use.

A slight buff to all cast speed, damage and damage effetiveness would be more than appropriate in my opinion. Maybe something like 10% more damage, 0.8 cast speed and 110% damage effectiveness.

Still going to test in in the upcoming event to see whether it is really as bad damage wise as it seems judging from the numbers.

Went ahead and started the Ice Spear char for the 1m event (currently lvl 58) and i must say that the damage is extremely low!

Ice Spear is about the only real single target skill out of all the spells (except for the low-range piercing part). Therefore, i would expect some huge single target damage - or at least pretty big damage when consiering its ability to chill/freeze enemies.

I currently use it in a 4L +2 to cold gems staff with LMP, Cold Pen and Faster Casting and switch out LMP for Hypothermia on bosses.
Still, it performs so bad on bosses that i tend to get close and switch to my 4L Freezing Pulse (without any +lvl on that setup btw!), which performs a lot better, even for single target.

When playing with my friend yesterday, he repeatedly pointed out something like:
"Oh wow, the (kill-)speed is totally different when you switch to FP!"
after we killed a tough rare mob or boss.

Will have to see how Ice Spear performs in endgame when i can get the 2nd form to 90-95% critchance and stack up crit multi like crazy but for leveling it mostly felt like "meh, this skill could have 100% more damage and still perform mediocre :/".


Don't get me wrong, i like the mechanic and style of the skill but so far it seems really tough to make it work due to the very low damage and missing AoE potential.
Currently i am trying to make up for the missing AoE by using Herald if Ice supported with Inc. AoE and Cold Pen, which is ok against large groups of weak mobs but not very good against tougher ones like blue mobs, Beyond demons, etc.

So much for the leveling part; i will post again when i get the build closer to being finished.


[TL;DR]
leveling performance:
* very low damage
* ability to freeze bosses very limited due to the low damage and the (semi-)recent freeze balance changes
* needs LMP/GMP and secondary skills to get decent clearspeed
--> significant damage buff on low levels would seem appropriate

endgame:
to be tested
(i am currently going for a high crit multi on IS and a heavily supported HoI for "trash mobs")

Playing the build to lvl 85 further consolidated the impression i got while leveling the build. Since the website unfortunately does not work correctly for me currently, i cannot link any gear but here is my passive skilltree.

Considering the very low base DpS of Ice Spear, i focused almost entirely on damage and only grabbed whatever life nodes i could reach without spending a lot of extra skillpoints. For added survivability, i invested a bit in some armor and evasion scaling to increase the defense bonus from the Granite and Jade flasks (both crafted with extra defense and +charges on crit) i used whenever facing more dangerous opponents.
Due to the immense critchance of IS in its 2nd form and the "surgeons" mod on the flasks, i could keep them up for prolongued periods whenever necessary.

To make up for IS's complete lack of long range AoE capabilities, i used HoI supported with cold pen and increased AoE, which proved to be very effective against large groups of weak mobs. Together with the AoE nodes and the Carcass Jack unique armor, i got a total of 95% increased AoE on HoI.


Even with that much investment into offense, the damage output was mediocre at best. Once i bought a lvl 19 IS, brought it to 20% quality, got a good staff with +2 lvl of socketed cold gems (+60% crit base maraketh with spell damage, cast speed, spell crit and additional spell crit crafted on) and finally managed to 5L said staff, the damage output was ok'ish around 8.9k tooltip.

Links i used were:
IS, Cold Pen, faster casting, GMP, crit damage
for bosses, i switched GMP for Hypothermia

92% critchance in the second form, 447% crit multi, a lvl 21 gem (19+2), 2.32 casts per sec and every cold/elemental/spell damage i could crab as well as 41% cold penetration and an ofensive curse - in short: a full glasscannon build and still only mediocre damage output in a 5L.

Considering all this, i feel that Ice Spear really could use some love!

If it had 100% more damage, it would probably be OP in a 6L.
If it had 50% more damage, it would be strong.
If it had just 30% more damage - it might be viable in a 4-5L?


Don't get me wrong, i love the skill; its look, style and mechanic. With quality and some projectile speed scaling, it is really fun to use and i am well aware that both its ability to freeze as well as the insane difficulty of the 1m race on the last weekends have to be taken into account here.
But why does the only true single target skill of all spells have to be one of the weakest damage dealers of them all?

I am just one of these stubborn guys which does not like just to leave the game because something not working properly,. I am still trying to say and defend it, disregarding that it seems like that this information probably is never reach the developers, but we are just blabing here, and no one cares actually ( this is my impression so far ).

ANYWAY here I go again :

- I just love cold casting, I like the projectiles, and this is my favorite spell. Actually to be honest - I do not like anything else. I were playing Diablo 2 probably for a too long time with my cold sorcs, and I wish to continue playing it in here into this Uber version of Diablo 4 ;)

Anyway the life of the caster seems like reach a dead end.
I am not speaking about these cross-class cross-skill guys which is flooding the youtube with "cheap builds" just worth over a billion $ having 5 auras, walking with heavy armor like they carry nothing, weaving a sword and an axe while casting a heavy thunderstorm and fire, and shoot around firetrap exploding their summons.
I am talking about the clean a still funny for probably not just one person - clean builds.
Actually a game is usually remembered by it's clean builds. I very doubt the thing I've described above will be even mentioned a year from now by a someone which left the game. Nope. It's very doubtful.
The game will be remembered as it's most clean part of it - the main skill of the character and the why he is using it, and very likely it's look and feel overall ofc.

back to the topic :

- Ice spear someone would say were OP in 1.x, but I can clearly state - it have never were more than a map clearer one of the preferable skill, sometime even supportive. Only in a exceptional cases it could be a good idea against the bosses.
It were pointed as a hype train, while actually not much people were using it, instead just trolling with it to fulfill their own needs and empower even further their builds.
I have asked a numerous time for clean casters review, but so far none took an action.
The peoples which prefer to play not like a overwhelmingly cross-class smash-blast-while cursing-and fireballing around build rarely succeed to kill on their own the uber bosses without sell their right kidney to a random person for the best in-game items, and even then it might be a tricky part.
And what it does mean "broken build" - i believe that true clean focused build shall meet the obstacles which a cross-classed build could a bit easier avoid, but at the end of the day the both shall be a viable and equal more or less.
Do we need all ultimately turn into multi-classes looking like spectral zombie spreading around 6 different elemental damages, while discharging it's flame totems and beating meanwhile the fock out of the mobs with a great hammer ?!

In 2.0 the love toward the clean casters and especially the Ice Spear continue to deteriorate, going even further - making it nearly impossible for a considerable high and not badly clothed character to complete the game main story line without die significant amount of times on Malachi.

In 2.1 I've expected really in passionately to feel the love back toward Ice Spear, but nope - the love were mostly toward the supportive cross-class spells and skills, boldly marked as "casters fix".

It fixed nothing, it just making the long goodbye even longer and awkward.

I am asking for nothing else - just finally confirm on official note "Ice Spear is Dead, do not chose it as a main skill, It is not a beat-the-boss stuff, move to the cross-classing and play for a month more without fun." so we can move to something else, and spend no more pointless time trying to make the fun which we came for originally into PoE.

Hi. I'm going to finally reveal my ice spear build.
haven't tested it after this patch, but it should remain quite similar.
There was no direct buff to this skill, but I see some increased potential in this patch.

Its extremely glassy glass cannon and even then it just reaches the level of firepower of other endgame skills imo.
Was able to do (deathless) village ruin, volcano, academy, haven't tested on higher maps yet.

Here it is:
very expensive,
life zero, low life-pain attunement
es 4.4k,
triple curse:
temporal chains for defense and increased freeze duration,
frostbite for increased damage and with quality increased freeze duration,
assassin's mark- ice spear always crits in second form, so assassins mark more damage multiplier works at full effectiveness, and more damage=more freeze duration too
Auras used: blood magic clarity, blood magic purity ice, herald ice, discipline.

tooltip damage in five link when charged(9 power, 0 frenzy, 0 end) ~42k, in second form ~60k

Items:


skill tree (outdated):
https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwMAAW8C_gYjBx4N0Q5ID8QQWBEPES8RUBGWFkAXVBhqGyUdFB1PHdkfQR_HIG4igSepKworeCycLR81uTt8O-NCw0NURKtE-0lRS65MLUyzTm1QMFPUVa5WSlgHXGtcil3yXypjQ2QJZp5tGXBScNV0VXgve9d85X5Zf8aCEIRIhX2IQonTiiiLeow2jYKOPI5kj0aPpo_6kyeVIJUumZqboZwynqGfAaKjpcSnK6yYr5u1SLb3tvq3MbjKuZPBxcHzwwnDbdHk2VvbXt-E34rfsOL36QLrY-v18NXyHfRx96b31_rS