Herald of Ice

This is super cool buff skill that synergizes extremely well with cold skills with areas of effect, for obvious reasons. I especially like it paired with Glacial Cascade, Cold Snap, and Glacial Hammer + Melee Splash.

I have some questions, though:

1) Does the explosion have a base critical strike chance? What is it?
2) Can the explosion be scaled with spell damage increases (i.e. Iron Will)?
3) What is the explosion's area of effect radius?

Thank you in advance!

its tags are spell, AoE, and cold. yes spell damage boosts it
no it cannot crit, it doesn't have a crit value to it. it has a damage effectiveness however so supports won't go that far.
both of the above is for the explosion on kill. the added damage is boostable by cold then either spell or attack respectively.

Can i support it with Cold to Fire to increase dmg for free ?
Can i support it with Iron Will to increase dmg for free? Will those supports increase the bonus Dmg part aswell as Explosion part ?

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soul4hdwn wrote:

its tags are spell, AoE, and cold. yes spell damage boosts it
no it cannot crit, it doesn't have a crit value to it. it has a damage effectiveness however so supports won't go that far.
both of the above is for the explosion on kill. the added damage is boostable by cold then either spell or attack respectively.

Tags aren't reliable and neither are my tooltips so I just want to make sure with a developer. Herald of Ash has the tag too but it doesn't even have an explosion.

The reason I ask about critical strikes is because apparently, according to my friend, Power Charge on Critical works when linked to it without using Assassin's Mark. I don't imagien there's any way it would unless the explosion had a base critical strike chance other than 0%.

And I was only wondering about the explosion. Yes, the added damage works the same way it always has. :p

Herald of ice is affected by Power Charge on Crit but has no chance to crit. Is it bug?
Edit: looks like Curse on Hit is not working too, but it shows on tooltip that it works. (tested by adding ass mark and making 10 ledge runs, 0 power charges earned)

My guesstimate of the explosion AOE is around 6-9, it looks to be about the same AOE as a firestorm fireball, but thats just my eyeballing the animation, which could be too big for all i know.

By the looks of it, the damage will be scaled by cold, aoe, and spell damage nodes, the added damage simply gets increased as an added cold damage gem would after being linked.

It also works similar to other reservation gems, if you link increased aoe to it, 25% * 150% = 37.5% reservation, so its best to use AOE nodes and only link gems if you have reduced mana cost gem and reduced mana reservation nodes. Taking all AOE tree nodes would result in 52% increased AOE,so thats 80% increased AOE with a level 15 increased AOE gem. (FYI if its a 9, then the AOE would reach 16, the size of an unaltered cold snap)

While it cannot crit because it has no crit chance, critical weakness can give it crit chance, much like incinerate. Don't know how much that will do tho.

Those are my observations for yah until they tell the officials.

If I use it with Three Dragons and Chance to Ignite attacking with Flame Surge, can the shattering AoE ignite making Flame Surge stronger? Or the "Can't ignite" affects it too?