Vaal Ice Nova

I enjoyed this skill at early levels, before I replaced it with an element that suits my main skill. I might actually go back to it, because this was certain death to anything in a room and was great for killing bosses if you clumped together every nearby enemy.

I haven't been able to absolutely tell from using it, due to it just being a wall of spell effects, but it'd be nice to know whether or not the 5 chain cap is per skill use, or per chain from an enemy hit. I think it may be the latter but could be wrong.

Hopefully this doesn't suffer from the same issue regular ice nova does, being useful early on then around level 20-30 becoming very weak in comparison to other skills. I'm still levelling it though wanted to get a good grasp of how good vaal fireball is first. I'll be sure to try it later, though lack of any cold passives might not help, I'm specced in fire.

By the way, is the description meant to be "repeating from every enemy hits" or "repeating from every enemy it hits"?

Really horrible skill.
Want multiple Ice Novas without the souls cooldown and reduced area penalty? Put it on Trap+Multiple Traps.

This skill only really works when the mobs are literally stuck together which is a bit of a contradiction since Ice Nova encourages you to position yourself such that mobs are around you in a circular fashion, not grouped together in a small area.

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Kenzorz wrote:

Really horrible skill.
Want multiple Ice Novas without the souls cooldown and reduced area penalty? Put it on Trap+Multiple Traps.

This skill only really works when the mobs are literally stuck together which is a bit of a contradiction since Ice Nova encourages you to position yourself such that mobs are around you in a circular fashion, not grouped together in a small area.

just add some aoe in there? ice nova already has massive aoe, if you spec into aoe and add more it can reach full screen. it should chain as long as it can hit the next target.

Need a lot of enemy to be effective. But, it is a fun spell. Without support gem, it can still clear a screen with enough enemy. By the way, a vaal gem only works when a charge is up (meaning no normal ice nova). So it is good to keep one vaal gem and use it when it is charged up. You don't lose anything.

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Percy2012 wrote:

Need a lot of enemy to be effective. But, it is a fun spell. Without support gem, it can still clear a screen with enough enemy. By the way, a vaal gem only works when a charge is up (meaning no normal ice nova). So it is good to keep one vaal gem and use it when it is charged up. You don't lose anything.

You do lose 1 gem slot.

Ambush league, solo self-found, up to Act 3 normal. A summoner witch, and an ST Scion. Have been using Vaal gems: Ice snap, Ice Nova, Fireball, and Spark. For me, they are useful for difficult large groups of mobs. Even with the patch buff for fewer souls, the fact that they reset to 0 greatly limits their use.

Examples:
Southern Forest: charge souls, head into corrupted zone, reset to 0 souls. Not enough mobs in zone to recharge. Boss summomer has access to Flesh Offering, which my summoner won't have until Act 3. Impossible to beat. With charged Vaal gems, might be possible. Same with Scion.

Large zone: Can charge souls, save for strongboxes. Very helpful.

For later, my summoner certainly won't have a single gem slot available for marginally useful skills. Not sure about the Scion, but unlikely.

Suggestion: Allow some type of relatively expensive crafting (gcp) to corrupt a normal gem to the Vaal gem state. Can use that as a normal gem until charged, then detonate. Only requires 1 additional hotkey (Detonate). Also, no resets entering sub-zones or on death.

Your souls are split between vaal gems equiped, so if you have 2 equipped, they will fill at half speed.

Level 66, still using this for my vaal gem. I've stopped supporting it with remote mine, as it was a real buzzkill to lay down 64 souls worth of kills only to have it get blown up and lost. Currently the only support is added lightning.

I'm still finding the skill to be slightly useful here and there. I have all AOE passive clusters on the tree other than the scion ones, but no added cold damage of any kind. It rarely kills a pack of enemies anymore without a crit, which happens maybe once a half hour.

I may end up switching the skill out for cold snap, because offensive vaal gems don't seem to be keeping up damage wise as this level. Without killing enemies, instead spreading damage to all of them but leaving them alive, ice nova doesn't have much defensive useage. Cold snap seems much better defensively due to freeze and chill, which ice nova doesn't do often.

Vaal gems so far are a bit of a let down for me. I think I'll write up a post in the feedback thread with ideas for improvements.