Arctic Armour

At first I thought this skill was terrible like many people here; however, you really need to consider things as a whole when evaluating what this skill is really doing.

1) What do I do with this insane mana regen?

Well, some skills require a ton of mana regen to support (or to be used with blood magic), otherwise linking them several times makes them unuseable. For example, Ethereal Kinves is one such skill. It's very strong, but mana cost can get prohibitive. So, by getting enough regen to support EK useage, you will be able to support many levels of arctic armour as a consequence of something you're already doing. When you're not moving your spell will be draining mana, and when you move arctic armour will. In the end though your regen should be able to cover the higher of these values.

2) High regen (generally) means you have a huge mana pool.

Then, with a huge mana pool this generally lets you run more auras than you would be able to otherwise. This is pretty significant, especially considering how much stronger inner force makes all of your buffs.

3) How much damage does this really prevent?

Against huge hits (like Brutus) the damage reduction may not seem like much. Indeed, more armour is generally way more effective against huge physical hits. That said, a level 10 arctic armour with inner force will reduce all physical and fire damage sources by 68. Against physical enemies, especially larger mobs getting hit 10 times means you just prevented 680 damage. This is huge, and this isn't even close to how strong arctic armour can get. Higher levels negate most physical and fire damage sources you'll ever run into except for bosses. This makes you incredibly safe.

4) Is ice trail any good?

With clever movement, the ice trail is actually very good. Remember increased duration increases (for no additional mana drain) how long the trail lasts. Getting bosses and rares to follow you onto the trail will chill them and significantly reduce their damage output by reducing cast and attack speed. Additionally, this adds some very fun positioning gameplay elements. It is also incredibly useful for kiting and trying to run away from troublesome mobs.

5) Quality bonus is amazing.

That's all I need to say. Up to 7% movement speed is an amazing "extra" to get for your mana.

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Avelice wrote:

When you're not moving your spell will be draining mana, and when you move arctic armour will

I will have no mana to cast after moving...

After I invest half my passive tree in mana(removing either my dps or my survivability) and still get it drained by arctic armor(because the mana cost is a joke while moving) just to create ground ice with no significant effect(for a much-more-than-significant cost) while I'm trying to avoid damage and spamming mana pots will somehow allow me to cast spells in-between?

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Avelice wrote:

huge mana pool this generally lets you run more auras

I will have to rely on auras as a defense since I have no more passive skills left after taking everything as mana while only being able to move a few feet at a time without cancelling arctic armor(and lose most of my defense) since I have reserved most of my mana pool.

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Avelice wrote:

getting hit 10 times means you just prevented 680 damage

The damage prevention can be very good but it can also be very bad... If you focus on being able to sustain arctic armor as a defense you will probably be vulnerable to the most dangerous - shock and freeze.

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Avelice wrote:

ice trail is actually very good

...............you have to pay 28.5mps on lvl1 and 191.4mps on lvl20 for the same defense-thwarting suicidal effect.

I really hoped for this skill to be usable on an es/eva character since I hate to be forced to take Iron Reflex and Grace for every single Shadow I make, which greatly reduces dynamics... but instantly died in Solaris temple cruel as soon as my Arctic Armor ran out. At the moment this skill is a deathtrap imo...

BUT, you could also toggle the skill when you need it, right? This allows for the interesting scenario where you get stunned while casting it and as a result(due to desync etc) you don't know if the skill is active or not, which leaves you confused in the middle of a battle not knowing whether your mana will drain on move or if you just don't have your defense up. I have also been in the situation where the skill shows as being active on the client where it is not active on the server (easy way to see this is that it drains no mana)

Regardless, I do very much like the new mana reservation mechanic to go for mana regeneration instead. The ice trail effect is just too harsh for what you get in this skillgem...

You completely ignored most of my arguments because you're still stuck in the mindset that the mana is impossible to sustain and that this skill is impossible to use without sacrificing everything. This is simply not true.

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epicusdingonious wrote:

After I invest half my passive tree in mana(removing either my dps or my survivability) and still get it drained by arctic armor(because the mana cost is a joke while moving) just to create ground ice with no significant effect(for a much-more-than-significant cost) while I'm trying to avoid damage and spamming mana pots will somehow allow me to cast spells in-between?

First of all, you realize several abilities require huge mana regen to be useable with the proper supports, right? My EK is already using 106 mana/s, which is about the same regen needed for a level 9 arctic armour. Freeze pulse with GMP and other supports also gets very costly. Some abilities need a lot of regen to be sustained already. So, when you get the necessary regen to support casting them, you can run arctic armour as a bonus, since you already have the regen for it.

As for investing "half your passive tree" in mana, this is just not true at all. I'm already supporting level 10 arctic armour at level 60 with about 10 skill points being used for mana, one of which is Eldritch Battery. Consider also that enough regen allows you to ignore mana flask all together, meaning you can run another health flask.

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epicusdingonious wrote:

I will have to rely on auras as a defense since I have no more passive skills left after taking everything as mana while only being able to move a few feet at a time without cancelling arctic armor(and lose most of my defense) since I have reserved most of my mana pool.

The damage prevention can be very good but it can also be very bad... If you focus on being able to sustain arctic armor as a defense you will probably be vulnerable to the most dangerous - shock and freeze.

Again, it does not take as many passive points as you think to support this ability. Plus, the defensive attributes of arctic armour are significant. The damage reduction is not negligible, and will make it so that only rares and uniques will really do any physical damage to you. Other mobs do too little damage, so the flat damage reduction on arctic armour reduces their damage to you by a lot. Plus, getting move speed with a quality gem is incredible.

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epicusdingonious wrote:

...............you have to pay 28.5mps on lvl1 and 191.4mps on lvl20 for the same defense-thwarting suicidal effect.

This is not completely true. Higher levels of the ability give a longer ice trail, which makes it noticeably better for actually using it to chill enemies. The important thing to note about level ups of this gem is that higher levels are much more efficient for the damage reduction per mana degen. For example, level 1 has 6 damage reduction per 34.2 combined degen. This is only .175 reduction per 1 point of degen. Compare to level 20 which is 231 damage reduction per 229.7 degen, which is 1.008 damage reduction per degen point. Considering your mana regen will scale more or less linearly, you're getting better returns for your mana the more you are able to level up arctic armour.

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epicusdingonious wrote:

I really hoped for this skill to be usable on an es/eva character since I hate to be forced to take Iron Reflex and Grace for every single Shadow I make, which greatly reduces dynamics... but instantly died in Solaris temple cruel as soon as my Arctic Armor ran out. At the moment this skill is a deathtrap imo...

I already explained that Arctic Armour is doing way more than you give it credit for. You're so fixated on the notion that this ability is worthless because you have to invest way too much in order to make it worthwhile. And in doing so you're overlooking so many other things.

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Avelice wrote:

You completely ignored most of my arguments

OK, I don't think you read anything I wrote, my only problem with this ability is that the ice trail effect is not worth the mana cost and relying on a defense that could cancel while you are trying to move and then leave you with no mana is just suicide.

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Avelice wrote:

My EK is already using 106 mana/s, which is about the same regen needed for a level 9 arctic armour .... you can run arctic armour as a bonus, since you already have the regen for it

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epicusdingonious wrote:

I will have no mana to cast after moving

Maybe this ability could drain twice the mana cost while moving instead of five times, or have the ground ice deal damage to reflect the amount of mana drained(which would probably be more than any other skill in the game)

This skillgem is too restrictive, I have to base almost my whole build around mana if I want to use it, removing too many possibilities... As I said I really hoped to use this on a shadow because there is no real other defense against physical at the moment for es/eva apart from iron reflexes.

But maybe you are right, maybe 250mps drain is worth the ice trail effect, since the ice trail gets about three times better from level one to twenty where the mps drain grows to about
seven times more.

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epicusdingonious wrote:

This skillgem is too restrictive, I have to base almost my whole build around mana if I want to use it, removing too many possibilities... As I said I really hoped to use this on a shadow because there is no real other defense against physical at the moment for es/eva apart from iron reflexes.

I've been using Cloak of Flame with Molten Shell and Arctic Armor and it does ridiculous damage reduction. You can basically get by on 10% your normal armor when you bring these gems alongside determination and the effects buff. I used to need 5000 armor around cruel difficulty, but now I get by on 500 and they deal less damage than if I had 5000!! Considering you have iron reflexes it should work even better for you since EV and AR will combine for you.


As far as the gem being to restrictive. It's not really. Many people complained that this is Path of HP Nodes. Well with Arctic Armor you can get by with fewer hps. But you need more mana. Thus opening up more possibilities.

Now I don't know how it will perform at level 80. As I've only leveled any of my characters to 71.

Arctic armor is basically the replacment for your granite flasks. Freeing you up to have more quicksilvers or whatever you were interested it. Maybe if you get mana flasks with the movement speed buff enchantment it would synergize well with your CI shadow?

Doesn't matter how much damage this skill can reduce, the ice trail effect will still remain useless and be what prevents many players from ever even considering this skill.

Something like Immortal Call will make you completely immune to physical damage while being able to have a 100% uptime without draining 250mps for a useless effect. (unusable by a Shadow because the starting position is too far away from any endurance nodes)

My only problem with this skill is that it has a totally useless ice trail effect for the amount of mana it drains when compared to anything else in the game.

Level 74 Ice Shot templar 125% mana regen and 1200 mana pool.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgUAAP0CcQSzBVsMfQ5IEH8RlhRNFLAWbxa_F1AZhRo4GmwkPCSqJpUnqSlPMok26TowRtdJO0lRTC1N2E66UEJVS1XGV-JabV3GYG1h4mNDZk9nvW17cFJw1XJ-d-V-WX_GgUmBb4IegpuFfYfbiEKLjIw2jHaPRpBVm6Gdo52unjyiAKIupwinXKeErJiyOLUEtUi4k8BRwcXGns9l0NDa3dsL3fPhc-NW42rjhOQi5OvsOO0g7m_wH_DZ8-r31_yr

I find this skill to be very interesting and very useless. I made my template around it and Ice Shot and was very disappointed when I found out no mana reduction nodes or gem work with.

Too much mana. I level it no further than 7 for the gem I use and only use it on the OP dogs on the Docks. Leveled another to 15 to try each level and used 125% maan regen on jewelry and just find no use for it unless you want to run 2 or 4 linked low mana cost mult attack skills. Add in maps with smothering suffix or any other negative regen mod and it is rendered entirely pointless.

Very cool idea though like a lot of skills in this game, just not practical.

I will try it again with 240% mana regen and 48% more in mana nodes in a month or two when I am level 85 or so although by then I will be using 6 link instead of 5 and am pretty sure it wont be worth it.

you're lacking (lv 20) clarity aura, which almost double your regen roughly with your current values and passives. 47.25 (normal regen) +42.75 (regen from clarity) =90 mp/sec which is higher than lv 20 AA's (standing still, so 38.3 * 1.3 for your IF) 49.79 mp/sec loss.

you were almost there, yet you needed to move alot to position for your ice shot so the extra mp degen kicks in often. that's why you were having issues. your planned extra boosts will help with normal skill use of other things.

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soul4hdwn wrote:

you're lacking (lv 20) clarity aura, which almost double your regen roughly with your current values and passives. 47.25 (normal regen) +42.75 (regen from clarity) =90 mp/sec which is higher than lv 20 AA's (standing still, so 38.3 * 1.3 for your IF) 49.79 mp/sec loss.

you were almost there, yet you needed to move alot to position for your ice shot so the extra mp degen kicks in often. that's why you were having issues. your planned extra boosts will help with normal skill use of other things.

Ok, I am really hoping you are right cuz I love the way the skill looks and what it does; even the sound from it I find very cool! Obviously since I am Eldritch Battery build I use Clarity 24/7 but it is level 17. Thanks for reply and giving me hope this skill works when I have made my passives for more mana and clarity is leveled enough.

Would be nice if reduced mana actually affected this as it is a spell afterall. Not usuable for the majority of builds too mana intensive. Just needs an adjustment on its mana drain and its a nice all around spell.

I'd rather lose the ground frost effect + mana drain than have it on there. Needs some attention.