Cold Chronomancer Megathread.

The guide is updated.

Will record some gameplay a bit later. I'm still at t4 maps tho, would be a bit boring.

Also, I'm still considering Spark with the Archmage and Call of the Brotherhood ring. Spark clear is just too good to ignore.

"

monik390#5560 wrote:

The guide is updated.

Will record some gameplay a bit later. I'm still at t4 maps tho, would be a bit boring.

Also, I'm still considering Spark with the Archmage and Call of the Brotherhood ring. Spark clear is just too good to ignore.

How will the sketches of wood points and bundles of skill stones appear - can you publish?

I don't know, I've been trying to make CoF cold snap work, even with all the trigger nodes, and it doesn't feel strong to me. The main issue is that the CoF cold snap NEEDS to kill the pack - if it doesn't kill it then the resulting freeze resistance makes you a lame duck until you get to apply the next freeze on it. If you don't have enough +levels then the damage isn't enough.
I tested manual astral projection-glaciation-frost nova with cold snap-controlled destruction-considered casting-concentrated effect and it's more reliable, but there's of course an insane amount of clicking.

been busy. got to act2 cruel. started getting end game gems/supports, and t3 ascendancy. but, have not had a chance to fully test it all out.

test 1 eye of winter. I've seen it in vids, and it looked surprisingly bad.
in practice... yep bad.

tried chain, fork, peirce, nothing worked.
Fire ground, chilled ground. no noticeable difference. I don't quite understand this yet. is it even getting 50% more damage on chilled ground?

I was HOPING it would interact with frost wall. eye of winter+fork into a frost wall for just an explosion of forks. nope. tried freezing shards as well. nope.

Frostbolt still wins. haven't tried wildshards yet. not going full +projectiles in the passive tree.


cast on dodge+blink. have not been able to test this yet.
had someone in global chat testing it for me, and they insisted they were getting ball lightning to cast, on every blink.
The math doesn't seem to add up to me on poe2db. I have to get around to testing it myself.


https://poe2db.tw/us/Cast_on_Dodge
2 energy per m dodge. 10max per .1s of socketed spells. 3% increased energy gained per skill gem level. (reduced spirit on quality)
https://poe2db.tw/us/Blink
4-4.9m dodge. (4.5s cd.) CDR on quality.
so, lets say 4.5 average. we'd need level 21 gem for 5. 9 energy per blink
39% at gem 14, 40% impetus, 24% for energize. 31% dyna.=134% =21.06 energy per blink

https://poe2db.tw/us/Ball_Lightning
1s cast time. so should need 100 energy.
(we'd want ice nova I think)
https://poe2db.tw/us/Ice_Nova
same 100 energy.

5blinks on average for a cast on dodge. 4 when fully upgraded to 5m blink, and 57% energy gained on gem.
idk, is this what everyone is getting, or am I missing something?

blink itself probably is still great for us. CD based. might be "needed" for a certain end game boss.

"

thespeech#4888 wrote:

I don't know, I've been trying to make CoF cold snap work, even with all the trigger nodes, and it doesn't feel strong to me. The main issue is that the CoF cold snap NEEDS to kill the pack - if it doesn't kill it then the resulting freeze resistance makes you a lame duck until you get to apply the next freeze on it. If you don't have enough +levels then the damage isn't enough.
I tested manual astral projection-glaciation-frost nova with cold snap-controlled destruction-considered casting-concentrated effect and it's more reliable, but there's of course an insane amount of clicking.

I know what you mean. It does require you to keep up with your gear in order to make it work. Also I guess the reason why it works for some, but not for others is because we are talking about different content.
For example, with adjustments to my gear I was easily shredding Cruel Act 1 and 2. But in Cruel Act 3 I'm experiencing something similar to what you described.
As I'm progressing I can see that I deal less and less damage to packs and now Cold Snap leaves those packs at very low HP.
I wouldn't call myself a sitting duck, because I can still finish those packs, but to make it smoother experience I'm missing about 5-10% damage, and I suppose this will scale up with content.
My gear is far from ideal, I don't even have +% Cold Damage and only +3 Lv to Cold spells on my staff. And I only have 3 support gem sockets on my spells.
After optimizing all these I suppose it will become as powerful as it was in Act 2 (Cruel). Main reason I like it is that it doesn't involve too much manual clicking and it feels "balanced", as in I have to improve my numbers in order to keep up with the content.
This missing damage can be easily acquired if I can add another support slot to my CoF, at least for now.

yeah, I decided a while ago, I preferred to keep targets frozen, and just manually cast cold snap, when I knew it would kill them.

cast on freeze coldsnap. I absolutely do not want to cold snap bosses,when I could instead keep them frozen for 10s+

Random t4 map: https://youtu.be/zZbjI9NXgsg

Mana problems, yes. Could easily solve with EB, but kinda reluctant. It's better to have ES.

Didn't get used to the new staff yet, forgot to properly use Sigil of Power and Mana Storm. Didn't swap gems on comet during the boss fight (spell echo from frost bomb to the comet). Noticed after the 1st comet hit T_T.

"

monik390#5560 wrote:

Random t4 map: https://youtu.be/zZbjI9NXgsg

Mana problems, yes. Could easily solve with EB, but kinda reluctant. It's better to have ES.

Didn't get used to the new staff yet, forgot to properly use Sigil of Power and Mana Storm. Didn't swap gems on comet during the boss fight (spell echo from frost bomb to the comet). Noticed after the 1st comet hit T_T.

I forget your current tree. are you trying something like this?

"

Casia#1093 wrote:

I forget your current tree. are you trying something like this?

Very close.

Updated in the guide under the "Passive trees and Builds" spoiler (build mechanics banner).

https://maxroll.gg/poe2/passive-tree/4sk4i03h

I decided to completely ignore Cold Pen and Exposure bc of Heavy Frost and go for Crit for damage. Also, I 5th-linked the Frost Bomb and it's my main damage skill now for clearing. I took some ES nodes to get the pool - works well. Didn't go for meta energy.

Skill gems:

Frost Bomb: Second Wind - Spell Echo - Supercritical - Considered Casting
Comet: Elemental Focus - Hourglass - Concentrated Effect - Biting Frost
Frost Wall: Deep Freeze - Spell Cascade - Icicle
Frostbolt: Glaciation - Scattershot - Arcane Surge
Cold Snap: Cold Mastery - Leverage - Execute
Blasphemy: Temporal Chains - Clarity - Magnified Effect
Mana Tempest: Inspiration - Premeditation
Cast of Freeze: Comet - Impetus - Inevitable Critical
Sigil of Power: ...

Frost Bomb with Spell Echo is for clearing. Comet is a freeze finisher here.

For Bossing I intend to put Spell Echo to the Comet instead of Biting Frost, and fill empty socket with Cold Mastery from Cold Snap (i don't want to use CS on bosses at all).

For now, I honestly consider leaning toward your semi-mom build. Simply bc of the mana pool.
+x level to skill gems and increasing number of support gems put heavy mana cost too. Atm a single cast of the Frost Bomb costs >350 mana, while I have 830.

I found 3k ehp to be fine for now, so it's either life + ES or life + mana.

Also, my current staff is



Heavy Frost doesn't specify elements, it says All hit Ignore Elemental Resistances, so, in my case that Extra Damage works well.