Ive started a Frostclaw build, and want to share my personal experience playing FrostClaw.
Im still at level 52, so no endgame experience yet. Playing a ignite FC and it starts to get really fun. It seems every projectile that hits puts up a separate ignite. So they really start to stack up making everything burn.
Frostclaw on low levels is very frustrating to me though. I guess its pretty normal for skills to be boring or low DPS until you hit a node on the skill tree that starts to fit your play style. For FC this is the Frozen Malice node. Where the skill gets an auto target. This node helps so much with what frustrates me the most, mainly not hitting anything without this node unless its standing still.
I really had a bad time leveling as this skill just wont hit anything moving. The skill obviously hit where you target at, but as the projectiles move in a upward arc, it always flies over the mob running toward you. And with its high mana cost im more or less out of mana before the mob slaps my face and finally stands still enough to get hit.
This skill would benefit so much from being targeted at the ground (Where the mob stood before running up to you) to being targeted at the mob itself and corrects it trajectory when it move. A sort of semi auto aim.
Considering the high mana cost it would be so much better if the skill actually hits it target. It might also open up some other options on the skill tree, since you already are pretty much forced to take any mana cost reducing nodes with the auto aim node. (Thats a minimum of nine points already gone.) For me, the skill became fun to play with around lvl 40. before that i was just grinding my teeth the whole time.
Yeah, it does require leading the target somewhat since itâs a ground targetted skill rather than a character/npc targetted skill.
My main issues with it is the terrain sometimes eating the 2-4 projectiles that donât arc upwards and i just take any misses as a me targetting issue.
For me Frost Claw becomes fun with Hand of Morditas (+2 projectiles ) and Volley of Glass (all projectiles hit same target, no burst). Thatâs like 5x damage. Especially up close - no need to aim.
There are many other nodes i consider essential for me.
Also Idols - that âmana efficiency and elemental penetrationâ like doubles the DPS according to tooltip and live testing. 2 of them around triples the DPS with the nodes i use. Maybe itâs a bug or something wrong with tooltip DPS calculation, but you can feel it helps.
Quickly spamming the spell also helps with aiming - not aiming, rather with hitting something by luck and reflexes.
My final conclusion and perhaps advice is - skills, their nodes and overall utility, evolve as you level up. Once in a while experiment with skills, adapt to changes of environment and your gear - thatâs actually life in a nutshell
My biggest issue with the skill (and it might just be a perception thing) is the cast delay + skill queueing. I will cast 1 (or 2 or 3âŚqueuing?) on a mob, but it will move 1/2way through the animation of the 1st cast. Then it will cast the queued casts before re-targetting to where Iâm casting again once the mob has moved. It can get frustrating. I think it boils down to the extended cast animation for the spell + the slow moving projectiles that arc.
Iâd actually argue Volley of Glass is more critical for frost claw as it changes it from a single hit to five hits drastically improving its single target (the biggest weakness in the base skill). However, doing so gives it a whooping 90% mana cost and +2 base mana cost. This means if youâre taking Frozen Malice (+11 mana cost) the cost really gets high.
Frozen Malice feels really nice, but it was hard to sustain with Volley.
Absolutely. I tried it out while leveling a Runemaster and I dropped it really fast because it felt like it took an eternity to cast and hit anything with it.
I had similar issues. The node that solved EVERYTHING was Volley of Glass (bottom right). Once I took that, FC was transformed and started seriously murdering everything. At the very least it stops âmissingâ moving targets.
Here you need to understand the tasks of the skill. In its basic (without âVolley of Glassâ) version, it serves as a meat stripper. It shouldnât hit one enemy, it should kill waves.
If you take âVolley of Glassâ, it becomes a target, this is another task of the skill.
