Ice Shot

Oh good, I was a little worried that Concentrated Area of Effect would work on the initial hit as well - which brings in a new boatload of OP...

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Cryxx wrote:

There's something with the particle effect of this that causes a pause/fps drop on my machine.

I'm not using shadows and medium textures.


It doesn't happen until it hits the target.

I can confirm that - exactly as the projectile hits, there is sudden FPS drop, for just a second. The FPS drop is always there, although only sometimes it's that big.

Please, could this be looked into?

ive been enjoying gmp and chain and fork. at mobs it can create some nice splash damage when the arrows start flying every which way. at level 40 with crapish gear anyway.

So does this skill have an 'end of projectile' AOE, or does it work like LA when combined with Chain/Fork?

I feel for a Ranger the mana cost is a bit excessive for the damage and minor control you get from it. I was trying to use it exclusively as a single and multi target spell. For the most part it's capable of doing the job of both but not nearly as good as either Burning Arrow or Lightning Arrow both DPS and mana wise. I am currently trying to build a Bow Witch based around using this with increased cold damage, increased area of effect, and increased elemental weapon damage to try and boost the damage output while having the increased mana pool of the witch with all the int nodes and the access to closer mana and mana regen nodes.

Another dislike I have of it, on my ranger without any area of effect increase, is how abysmally small the cone effect is. The cone itself seems to be very narrow to start with which makes it hard for using it as an effective AoE. Might test it later on a crit based build for the AoE freezing if I get done with the Witch before OB hits. The small cone effect makes it very hard to use effectively as an AoE especially when compared to Lightning Arrow. However when you can manage to get mobs lined up it does great.

Does increasing the area of effect radius increase the base width of the cone or the distance of the cone? Does it increase the patch of ice on the ground instead of the cone or does it increase both effects?

I am currently using this skill on my level 68 bow ranger, switching it between two 4L items (one with LMP, Chain, and Weapon Elemental Damage; one with Faster Attacks, Cold Penetration, and Weapon Elemental Damage). I use wrath.
I have around 30 bow damage/attackspeed/accuracy nodes, three +10% weapon elemental damage nodes, the +30% weapon cold damage node, and some crit multiplier nodes.
I've basically redesigned my Ranger exclusively to play around with this skill.

Single Target - Works well against slower targets; since chill effects tend to be rather short on magic/rare mobs because their life pools are so big, the added slow effect on the ground causes the skill to make slow mobs excessively slower when just a chill effect wouldn't do much. It does nothing against faster rares though, meaning its a lower damage spell with a high mana cost that gives a good slow when its not needed - when the enemy is already slow.

AoE - When combined with LMP and Chain, it just does tiny damage, which makes chills short, and with the small area and short duration of the extra slow, loses its utility value. It becomes a huge mana cost skill with little utility and even less damage.

I think this skill needs to decide what it's going to be. Seems like it wants to be single target damage + AoE damage + AoE utility, but does none of them well enough to warrant using instead of the other skills available. Make it either single target damage by removing the cone effect, or make it AoE damage by making it's damage area larger, and make it do that damage more proportional to its high cost and sub-par utility, then make its utility par by making its area of effect more similar to Poison Arrow.

I personally think that making the cone of damage and the ground ice effect the same area, and a larger area at that, would considerably improve this skill as it would allow it to be used as a proper AoE skill if intended (by adding LMP/Chain etc), and it's utility would become less gimmicky and more globally useful. I also think that having the AoE and single target damage the same is a bad idea. Have the initial hit ADD cold damage (an amount similar to Wrath does perhaps), then have the AoE convert to cold damge (and maybe remove any lightning/fire/chaos damage), letting the skill be used as a high damage single target skill if intended.

This means that it would be a decently damaging skill regardless of whether it's being used as single target or AoE, but would be worth using instead of higher damaging alternatives like Lightning Arrow for AoE and Elemental Hit for single target damage because of the utility. You would sacrifice SOME damage for a decent utility; as it stands now, you sacrifice a tonne of damage for a gimmicky and rather useless utility.

I personally find the visual and verbal components of this skill to be extremely satisfying, and would love for it to be made a good enough of a skill that I'd want to use it if I needed it's utility aspect even if it weren't so aesthetically pleasing.

I have some questions regarding point blank/iceshot that are kind of hard to test due to the different damage types of the arrow/cone effect.

Does the cone aoe effect benefit from point blank or will only the arrow do the point blank damage?

Is the same damage calculated for the arrow the same for the cone (except all the physical is cold damage), or are the numbers re-rolled(ant not affected by point blank?) with the physical converted to cold?

How does this skill interact with pierce? Does it make 2 explosions if it hits 2 mobs or does it just leave ground ice at the 1st mob? My speed is too fast too see.

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Horvath wrote:

I have some questions regarding point blank/iceshot that are kind of hard to test due to the different damage types of the arrow/cone effect.

Does the cone aoe effect benefit from point blank or will only the arrow do the point blank damage?

Is the same damage calculated for the arrow the same for the cone (except all the physical is cold damage), or are the numbers re-rolled(ant not affected by point blank?) with the physical converted to cold?

I think the cone effect is counted as AoE thus not affected by Projectile damage thought the AoE damage is same as the projectile damage.

It will probably be OP if both Projectile damage & AoE damage interact with one another with Concentrate effect.