Glacial Cascade

The little testing I did seemed that the length of the pattern of explosions is linearly increased by iAoE.

The numbers I ended up with were:

- Explosion radius 6 or 7
- Number of explosions 7
- Length of pattern (from the center of first and last explosion) 36

If the radius is 6 and other numbers are correct it would mean that increasing the aoe of the skill lessens the average amount of hits on monsters. (There won't be more overlapping explosions at any amount of iAoE)

This seems like an acceptable trade-off for increasing the range and width of the spell.

My question is: What are the actual numbers though?

Finally, cold witches feel complete.

The seemed to lack "something" before. The utility of this spell neatly fits in with the other cold spells. It has never felt so satisfying to play a cold witch.

I am just 36 Witch now, playing around with it.
Went to Templar-land on the tree - took Amplify.

Placed GC in Asenath's Touch Gloves - linked Increased AoE, Elemental Prolif, and Knockback.

Wow what fun! The Temp Chains provided by the gloves give me long chills and somewhat long freezes - if I crit.

I've been wearing a 29% chance to crit diamond ring and feeling more and more pleased with the crit rate as I increase it with items, and power charges, which I build from Power Charge on Crit/Ice Spear.

I am doing well pushing this spell out in front of me in tight corridors, and on individual mobs as a single-target DD. For "I'm surrounded" situations: I'm using crit-chance > Frost Nova > Life Leech to freeze/temporal chains curse - and survive. I leap slam away from danger. I find using a scepter is a good choice, but a dagger I can't wait to try for crits.

As of now, I don't think it's overpowered - but just right.

Utility -

-The freeze chance seems just right.
-The 80% penalty to damage (when not quality,) seems reasonable.
-Knockback helps survivability greatly for a witch - but it doesn't always work on high health mobs/bosses. (It seems to occur most when crit'ing low-life mobs, like mini-squids, or unrighteous fire dudes in Lunaris.)
-This means that knockback is mostly doing it's job, keeping giant floods of mobs away from you.
-The mana penalty is steep for this spell - but again, it's powerful in damage, so it seems just right.
-I am ok with the fact that it's not a projectile, and it doesn't split in any way.
-It's super-cool on spell totems. A good alternative to arctic breath - which doesn't automatically pierce.
-It's fully-functional, although somewhat unpredictable, on Trap gem setups.
-Cast-speed and AoE nodes seem to effect the spell in positive ways.
-Conc effect seems just right too, when you want a good high-dmg single target DD spell.*

*(And that is what Cold Spell Builds seemed to have be missing until now!) :D


Cosmetically -

-The graphics are cool - but the spikes seem a little on the "big" side. If they were shorter, and a tad smaller in scale, that might fit better. (But not a big deal.)
-The spell sound effect is superb! :D
-I enjoy the "zen" of repeating the spell.

Other thoughts -
-I look forward to alternate skill effects for GC as a microtransaction down the line.

-Idea: If a character takes Avatar of Fire - it would be cool if all cold spells, instead of being white/blue, became red/orange.

Thanks for making this spell and increasing Arctic Breath too - Cold Witches are viable and fun again! :)

I love this skill. There aren't too many skills I really like in this game, but this is definitely in the top 3.

I play the game a bit differently than most seem to. I like to use a variety of skills instead of relying on 1 or 2, and I usually don't bother with power charges, cast when X gems, minions, or totems.

Obviously I'm playing it wrong but its more fun when I don't have to micromanage charges etc. and just focus on movement and skill choice/use.

I like the ice/chaos skills mostly.
Its also why I mainly play witch and ranger for any real amount of time.

The physical damage on GC certainly helps with the majority of mobs resisting elemental damage of all types.

I would have figured there would be more such skills. Like phy/fire skill that drops a meteor on mobs. Phy/lightning spellwise I can't think of anything really unless you electrified EK.

Which you could already do if you wanted to.

Sometimes I feel like many skills lack a certain unique utility due to the over abundance of support gems that take the place of it.

Short of adding a "convert elemental to physical damage" gem its cool that you gave GC a bit of a uniqueness.

Here is the key question when players build around this skill, that we would love GGG to answer:

How does AoE affect the gem:
-Does it increase the length?
-If so, does the aoe still have the same travel time, or is it sped up so that the end of the range is reached at the same time?
-Does it increase the width?
-Does it increase/decrease the range of each spike, meaning with reduced aoe, we are more likely to hit the same target more than once or even twice?

Also, how does Faster Casting affect the AoE spread (other than simply casting the skill faster), does it make the AoE spread travel faster AKA spikes come out of the ground at a faster rate down the AoE path?


Thanks!

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Illsonmedia wrote:

Here is the key question when players build around this skill, that we would love GGG to answer:

How does AoE affect the gem:
-Does it increase the length?
-If so, does the aoe still have the same travel time, or is it sped up so that the end of the range is reached at the same time?
-Does it increase the width?
-Does it increase/decrease the range of each spike, meaning with reduced aoe, we are more likely to hit the same target more than once or even twice?

Also, how does Faster Casting affect the AoE spread (other than simply casting the skill faster), does it make the AoE spread travel faster AKA spikes come out of the ground at a faster rate down the AoE path?


Thanks!

ZiggyD's video answers a lot of these questions.

I'm absolutely loving this skill so far, my favorite of the skills added in the past year or so. I don't have any specific feedback on it, just that I really like how the skill functions and feels.

"

Kenzorz wrote:

ZiggyD's video answers a lot of these questions.

excuse me for being a dick, but please give a link instead of saying "someone did this (go find it yourself)", which is equally dickish. =p

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Kenzorz wrote:

ZiggyD's video answers a lot of these questions.

I believe Ziggy's diagram of AoE placement with CE is incorrect. If distance (between AoE centers) scales linearly with AoE radius modifiers, then no more than two AoEs will ever overlap a single given point. It is still likely to score more hits with Concentrated Effect, but the way his diagram displays the overlaps is incorrect.

Note: There's a typo in the graphic below; the first diagram should read "100 AoE (0% increased)" and not "(100% increased)."


The above graphic is to scale; the AoE diameter and distance between AoE's is assumed for the sake of presentation; they are not the skill's actual measurements, but any numbers plugged in would yield the same results: if distance > AoE radius, any given point will be covered by at most two AoEs; no more than two AoEs will overlap any given point.