Ice Spear

Tried the reworked skill and here are my conclusions.

On paper this seems like a good skill due to it's ability to shotgun and deal massive amounts of damage as well as havintg clearing potential, but after playing a little bit I can see almost no reason to play this skill.

Starting with map clearing, it would do the job if stage 1 didn't exit. However as many mobs move fast it's all to easy to get bogged down unable to pierce through them and clear fast enough. This is further aggravated if you are playing totems or traps in which case this skill becomes even worse to use. Overall I see no reason to use this over freeze pulse which not only hs a much bigger AoE, it travels fast from the begining and even more importantly, it doesn't suffers from the need of GMP which massively lowers the damage by both reducing damage and removing the spot of a damage gem.

Then we have the boss killing potential and here it does shines a little bit more. While the first stage deals less damage, the sheer amount of hits per cast will put this skill above skills like freezing pulse which are already pretty powerful (granted it's no blade flurry). The second stage deals more damage but unless the boss has a large hit box, you may actually do less damage due to sheer amount of missed projectiles. In general I can see the use for some boss fights, but for others freeze pulse will still do a better job. Especially if we are talking the sindicate with their constant add spamming.

All in all this skill is just inferior in all senses to freeze pulse. It doesn't clears nearly as well, it doesn't bosses as well either in many cases, it doesn't even hits as hard per hit which is bad as far as freezing and chilling enemies goes and the worst part is having to lose a damage gem for a GMP to even make it work.

Don't get me wrong, it's not as if raw damage potential is everything, but the skill doesn't does anything that freeze pulse doesn't already does much much better and that is the problem. It fails to either be better in a general sense or to bring something new to the table that might be worth the possible drawbacks it may have.