Very stupid Decision to kill Frost blade of katabasis

4 mil would be fine but I suspect if i look at the PoB its an extremely scuffed defensively challenged character.

The skill itself isn't that bad that isn't what i'm arguing, just that its on the weaker side and wouldn't have hurt to be poked in the right direction when they were slapping its damage effectiveness.

I've got a tentative tree for katabasis that i've had sat in PoB for a few leagues but i've been waiting for the right moment to give it a good run - if the builds legit post it I'm interested.

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Aynix#7757 wrote:

Not even 300 bilion DPS? Literally unplayable

On a tank build with higher investment gear. Can go much higher if people wanna chase DPS. :)

(I know it's a joke.)

Only downside is that, just like Corrupting Cry and similar skills, it heavily relies on extra gem levels. Very unplayable to a degree, indeed.

Honestly sucks ass early on, hence why I get why people are upset about the nerf, though I think this skill was always meant to be a DoT alternative anyway. Though they need to buff a few DoT skills, that's for sure. Only good with +level gear.

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Draegnarrr#2823 wrote:

4 mil would be fine but I suspect if i look at the PoB its an extremely scuffed defensively challenged character.

You'd be very wrong:



Though you are correct that it's a more optimized PoB with +level gear. High investment and not worth the tradeoff. I briefly pursued it in 3.24, but ultimately dropped it and never released a video, simply because it sucks complete ass without extra gem levels.

A +4 chest is like 76% more damage, about the same as with Corrupting Cry. Let that sink in for a moment. They seriously need to buff these gems.

Ehhh lets agree the one you posted looks good on paper and leave it there :p If you want me to admit i'm "very wrong" you'd have to actually post it. Even if its expensive what you showed looks promising.

As to gem levels i don't think i've ever mocked it up without a +4 chest, its easier to get 9 gem levels than it is to get the ~400% more damage its equivalent too but I quite like that part. It makes gearing for it cheaper in a way, only gets mega expensive when you want a great chest with +4 rather than a passable one.

The more interesting question here isn't whether the skill is still usable, ofc it is, though there is basically no reason to do so now.

The question is why it got this treatment. LS, FB, LSoA, FBoK all work rather similar and had very similar damage numbers up until now. Each has their quirks but in the grand scheme of things they are interchangable. Also, Fbok is barely even top 10 in terms of usage with 3%, compared to LS 14% and yet it got nerfed several times harder than LS. It just doesn't make sense at all. It's another one of those completely out of this world balance decisions that GGG makes sometimes that seem to lack any kind of logic or reason.

You wot? LS got its damage halved. How is FB nerf several times harder than LS?

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Baharoth15#0429 wrote:

The question is why it got this treatment.

The reason is pretty clear: They want you to play this skill as 'intended'; a DoT skill. So the main question (IMO), is; do we have enough tools/paths to scale FBoK as a DoT skill? And I think the answer to that question is "no".

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Aynix#7757 wrote:

You wot? LS got its damage halved. How is FB nerf several times harder than LS?

LS has two components. Melee and projectile. The projectile got hit by a 50% nerf. Given it's double hit mechanic that's more along the lines of 25%. Meanwhile FBoK got dumbed from 409 down to 240 which is roughtly 41%. I guess "several times harder" was an exaggeration but it got hit much harder than LS and all the others which is weird to say the least.

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The reason is pretty clear: They want you to play this skill as 'intended'; a DoT skill. So the main question (IMO), is; do we have enough tools/paths to scale FBoK as a DoT skill? And I think the answer to that question is "no".

I dunno, would require more grey matter than i am willing to spend on it to really figure this out but even if we have, it's going to be weird as hell.

You'd basically have to scale gem levels with +2 from weapon, +1 or 2 from armor, empower, admirals arrogance for +3, and ashes/rare amu for another +1/+2. Tree probably would have to focus heavily around cluster jewels, likely to the point where you have to use 12 node large cold clusters because there is hardly any support for it on the bottom end of the tree. Cold dot multi has like 5 nodes on the entire skill tree. There are nodes that support cold damage with attack skills which would affect the dot as well like fangs of frost but that also has pen which is useless for dots. Can't even use perfect agony because that only applies to ailments and cold dot is not an ailment.

If forcing us to use it as a dot skill really is the intention then this honestly feels a bit like that "We nerf bleed weapons into the ground to free up design space" bullshit they pulled years ago followed by years of not doing jack shit about bleed until this league. And that was an entire archetype. Here it's literally just one single skill, i don't expect support for it to show up any time soon.

It might be possible to make it work somewhat if someone skilled put their mind to it but i doubt anyone is ever going to waste their time doing that. Why would they. There are plenty of other skills around that won't cause you as much of a headache to get off the ground.

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Baharoth15#0429 wrote:

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Aynix#7757 wrote:

LS has two components. Melee and projectile. The projectile got hit by a 50% nerf. Given it's double hit mechanic that's more along the lines of 25%. Meanwhile FBoK got dumbed from 409 down to 240 which is roughtly 41%. I guess "several times harder" was an exaggeration but it got hit much harder than LS and all the others which is weird to say the least.

Just like FBoK is two parts skill - hit and DoT, people just decided to completly ingore DoT part of it and pretend it doesnt exist.
Also when it comes to LS, during map clear melee part doesnt matter as you kill everything from range.
Both got simillar nerf. Thinking that Frost Bolt nerf is "several times harder" is just throwing a tantrum.

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Baharoth15#0429 wrote:

LS has two components. Melee and projectile. The projectile got hit by a 50% nerf. Given it's double hit mechanic that's more along the lines of 25%. Meanwhile FBoK got dumbed from 409 down to 240 which is roughtly 41%. I guess "several times harder" was an exaggeration but it got hit much harder than LS and all the others which is weird to say the least.

Just like FBoK is two parts skill - hit and DoT, people just decided to completly ingore DoT part of it and pretend it doesnt exist.
Also when it comes to LS, during map clear melee part doesnt matter as you kill everything from range.
Both got simillar nerf. Thinking that Frost Bolt nerf is "several times harder" is just throwing a tantrum.