Cold Chronomancer Megathread. T16 (+2) video added.

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monik390#5560 wrote:

EoW noted. I respecced out of Surge for now, need 10 more lvls to get it. Probably, can fit it instead of Cold Snap later.

About frost wall. It has more life with more +x cold spell gems. Atm, Freezing Shards take a few casts to break a wall, with icicle and passive. Frost bomb and Comet are the only reliable Wall destroyers for me.

And I don't consider using low lvl of the gem bc it's a very strong shotgunning skill against big bosses. I consider adding damage supports to it later.

thats interesting on your experience with frostwall. I do keep swapping my gems around to try out new things. But generally, I find my overall damage keeps in pace with frost wall hp.
normally don't even run icicle. just the passive. That results in about 4or 5 frostbolts, or 3 EoW to smash. and coldsnap/frostbomb 1 shot them.

I like icicle, but as always limited by links.

I have Frostwall -Deep freeze -considered casting -conc effect on my walls.
Frost bomb- mag effect, -second wind, -strip away
cold snap- cold mastery, -inevitable crit, -elem focus
Frost bolt= scattershot -arcane tempo, -acceleration.

(yea, Im back to frostbolt. ha. its just the best at freezing long range.)
I prefer it to shards too.

I think Cof+frostwall was silently nerfed at some point there.
Two frost walls had separate charges. They share charges now. I think it's still the most efficient though.
walk through a zone/map spamming frost bolt. it freezes long range, decent spread with scattershot.
spawns frost walls. icicle on those, which it then also pops for more aoe damage.

I'm not even sure how you are running archmage. hah. I was really struggling with mana even without it.

was at 105regen, 1400hp, 1600mana iirc. (135 regen when arcane surge procced). and I was really struggling with mana even in t1 maps/cruel. And was looking at the passive tree, and not seeing much, that I hadn't already taken.

I have actually swapped back out of eb/mom. It feels safer. yes, 1400+1600mana is 3k ehp when my mana is full... my mana is never full.
at best its usually closer to 50% during any combat. 2400ehp. often closer to 25%.. 1800ehp. 105 mana regen is about 16seconds to refill mana.
flasks which do like 480 over 3s.. before mom. which nukes them down to 240 over 3s I believe.

so back to the split. 24% damage taken from mana. 1500hp+600es/1050mana. 135 mana regen.
1860 ehp+600es. my mana never budges. the es helps with 1shots out of the blue.. but is not consistent enough to consider ehp. will probably actually swap to armor. Although do look prettier in ES dresses usually.


for your crit/blasphemy build, I was wondering if a malice scepter is actually a good idea.
Aoe Critical weakness in your presence. Aura, not curse.
+100 spirit.

Big hit to cold damage, spell damage, and +skills admittedly. only minion skills on them. mana, mana regen, spirit, presence area, and int as useful stats.


now.. if would could CoF mana drain...

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chobi0ne#5028 wrote:

Here are more of my observations regarding CoF-CS build and CoF in general.

I'm playing double CoF now, one with Frost Wall and another with Cold Snap. It works and it's AMAZING together. The damage is there, just need to improve my survivability. My gear is garbonzo, so I'm only at 1300 health and 1300 mana, lol.

Now about CoF itself:
- Hourglass support gem (+40% damage, but also +10 sec CD) is weird. It makes spell gem to appear grayed out, but... it still works, CoF still triggers that spell. I don't know if +40% damage effect is working though.
- It looks like any support gems which add cooldown (as negative effect) are ignored in CoF. I don't know if positive effect is applied, but it still spams those spells. I wanted to CoF Hypothermia for testing, but it costs so much mana that it drained me immediately. So I wanted to use Expanse, but it still spammed, clearly there wasn't 6 sec CD. However, I didn't notice +50% area of effect either.
- If you use two instances of same spell with cooldown - it seems to share cooldown. Basically, I have two Frost Walls: manual and CoF. And when CoF one procs, it uses up charges from my manual one.
- With Frost Bomb, if CoF triggers on a frozen mob which is not in your LoS (Line of Sight) - then Bomb will be casted close to the wall which is in the way between you and the target. Doesn't seem to be the case with Ice Nova though.

yeah, I buried in that last post..
but, the same spell thing is 100% a quiet change. that was not always the case.
I still find the 3 frostwalls+timesnap, and now and again to be enough while mapping.

its not.. bad. but not particularly helpful when bossing. just using up a charge you could manually cast against an 8s frozenboss. ha.

I got my 3rd ascendancy points (let me just say the trial is a massive pain) and Temporal Rift is for me the strongest option. In mapping in particular it helps when you're running ahead and then suddenly you're ambushed by rapid fire projectiles, it gives you quick escape button. It also takes some skill knowing when to reset to preserve your mana or energy shield.

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chobi0ne#5028 wrote:

Here are more of my observations regarding CoF-CS build and CoF in general.

I'm playing double CoF now, one with Frost Wall and another with Cold Snap. It works and it's AMAZING together. The damage is there, just need to improve my survivability. My gear is garbonzo, so I'm only at 1300 health and 1300 mana, lol.

Now about CoF itself:
- Hourglass support gem (+40% damage, but also +10 sec CD) is weird. It makes spell gem to appear grayed out, but... it still works, CoF still triggers that spell. I don't know if +40% damage effect is working though.
- It looks like any support gems which add cooldown (as negative effect) are ignored in CoF. I don't know if positive effect is applied, but it still spams those spells. I wanted to CoF Hypothermia for testing, but it costs so much mana that it drained me immediately. So I wanted to use Expanse, but it still spammed, clearly there wasn't 6 sec CD. However, I didn't notice +50% area of effect either.
- If you use two instances of same spell with cooldown - it seems to share cooldown. Basically, I have two Frost Walls: manual and CoF. And when CoF one procs, it uses up charges from my manual one.
- With Frost Bomb, if CoF triggers on a frozen mob which is not in your LoS (Line of Sight) - then Bomb will be casted close to the wall which is in the way between you and the target. Doesn't seem to be the case with Ice Nova though.

Wouldn't you happen to be able to post the passive points tree and the gems with their supports? reduce the slowness that my build is at the moment.

First of all at i am low level (44) i am still using cast on freeze comet after nerf, if it happens it happens. also have comet and the explode frozon skills and use them as well but just started using frostwall and it has 3 charges, i just put a wall and then use frostbolt. everything is frozen and frostwall + icicle does wonders. and from time to time i get comets happening. elites 0 issue as either they are frozen or attacks the wall or trying to get to me around the wall. is it the fastest to clear maps dont know but it is fun and safe. :)

experimenting with archmage.
huge damage boost even without using EB.

1048 mana, 135regen.

its not shocking anything though. odd.

"a hit has a 1% chance to shock for every 4% of the targets aliment threshold dealt"

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It is now more difficult to chain-freeze enemies by reducing the amount of Freeze Buildup applied after a Freeze has been applied.

I wonder how impactful this nerf is going to be and if the reduced amount will stack with every subsequent freeze.

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silentstack#2370 wrote:

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It is now more difficult to chain-freeze enemies by reducing the amount of Freeze Buildup applied after a Freeze has been applied.

I wonder how impactful this nerf is going to be and if the reduced amount will stack with every subsequent freeze.

This is actually fairly significant, as chain freezing is one of our main forms of surviving against tougher (rares) enemies which we do need to keep locked down and is part of what makes the build good against bosses. So this change is definitely going to affect us, how much we will have to see based on the adjustment but it isn't looking good.

Worse yet doesn't seem like they plan to compensate since frost spells aren't on the radar.

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Chaplin132000#5484 wrote:

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silentstack#2370 wrote:

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It is now more difficult to chain-freeze enemies by reducing the amount of Freeze Buildup applied after a Freeze has been applied.

I wonder how impactful this nerf is going to be and if the reduced amount will stack with every subsequent freeze.

This is actually fairly significant, as chain freezing is one of our main forms of surviving against tougher (rares) enemies which we do need to keep locked down and is part of what makes the build good against bosses. So this change is definitely going to affect us, how much we will have to see based on the adjustment but it isn't looking good.

Worse yet doesn't seem like they plan to compensate since frost spells aren't on the radar.

Yeah its not like Chronomancer has a lot of viable build options or spells that can be good with hourglass or the like. Pretty dead class. :/

Well... Currently on t10 map quest, doing with t11-t12 maps.

The secondary weapon set uses almost all freeze build-up passives but 2 small ones close to Stormbreaker notable.

It's true that it is fairly easy for me to play right now, considering that I invested about 35-40 ex on my current build. And I admit it's mostly bc of the freeze.

There are already some diminishing returns on chain freeze but they are temporary. After some time it becomes easy to freeze everything again.

So, I need clarification on the nerf.

If it becomes just harder to apply the second freeze temporarily (like now) - it's fine, we can survive unless it's totally nuked.

If it is permanent - then it's big enough to drop cold element entirely.

To elaborate on this (exaggerated):

- Heavy Frost archtype becomes dead for bossing unless the damage is sufficient to nuke in one freeze.

- Exposure/curses become the most preferred option, so Frost Bomb becomes a supportive skill only, linked with all kinds of exposure shit (atm it's my main damaging skill).

- Heavy nerf to cold Archmage (which is a must for the endgame anyway) bc of the reasons above. Slowmancer build requires blasphemy + temporal chains. W/o Heavy Frost not using both cold/lightning curses is not good.

- Heavy nerf to freeze finisher support gems. They are already not the preferable option.

- Heavy nerf to everything else related to frozen targets. Climate Change notable, Leverage support, etc.

- Heavy nerf to CoF for bossing...

- Heavy nerf to a cheap powerhouse for acts and t1-t3 maps - my beloved Taryn's Shiver T_T

Sigh...

I'm just in awe of how big can be this "small" change for my current build.

So yeah. If things are that bad, I'll just swap to arc/spark spammer then (required gold is reduced for respec, thanks GGG).

Apex of the Moment - Quicksand Hourglass - Temporal Rift - Time Freeze.