Great to hear that you also prefer a comprehensive written guide In my opinion the advantage is most often that it is much easier to look up specific things. Also updating is much more easy.
Feel free to give your feedback on how you like the playstyle. You definitely have to get used to it and to learn how to manage your mana. But it is so much better than using focus and standing still
Also it still has a decent potential with legendaries (if I ever get the uniques with LP again) and better crafted items.
Playstyle… Thats probably going to be the real test of this build… but at first glance it doesnt seem as bad as some other metas I have seen…
“Still has decent potential”… for what! you are already handling 450-550 corruption bosses & t4 Julra… I think you have won… you can sit back and wait for more / harder content…
I just love min/maxing and I think I can reach 1.8k health and still more freeze chance/damage.
The build play style gets easier with more mana regeneration. Try to get this up first. 20+ feels far better than less espeically when you go for my final static orb setup.
Reddit user u/Amirax remembered me of the Gaspar’s Insight set helmet which has a super rare affix only also available on the Mourningfrost boots. It is a ‘x% increased freeze rate multiplier’ in difference to the usual ‘+x% freeze rate multiplier’ (note the missing ‘+’).
This makes it an essential up to 2.85x more multiplier for freeze rate multiplier as well as frostbite effect!!! It double my tooltip dps and due to the double dipping and freeze equation it will increase our freeze potential by more than 3x. It also has decent stats on it for the build with the only disadvantage of low armour and now health. It also cannot have Legendary Potential since it is a set item.
Thanks for the detailed guide, definitely one to try once I have the required gear. Freeze builds have recently become my favourite to play.
I’m levelling a Spirit Thorns Druid using the Snowdrift boots and Ocearon ring, that is similar in concept to your build. He is not geared yet and is nearing Empowered mono’s but freezes everything, including bosses 50% of the time. Spirit Thorns, Maelstrom, Thorn Totems and Ice Thorns all proc off of holding down the right mouse button-a fun one button build. A legendary Frozen Ire sceptre also works really well, as the Tidal wave procs often and is great at clearing mobs. I’m also using a Frozen eyes of Formosus amulet, as that gives even more freeze rate per stack of chill, and also gives my summon Spriggan a chunk of freeze chance too.
This is my freeze when stood in town, not sure how it goes with three stacks of chill.
I hadn’t thought of using the Frostbite Shackles gloves, need to get a pair of those ASAP.
Sounds great. I would expect the freeze rates to go down fast in higher monoliths since Maelstrom’s hit frequency as a DoT cannot be changed. And with more life you need more hits to get decent freeze chances. But let me know how it works. How far are you progressed?
That is a decent value. Have similar values when I used teleport in the past 8s so more or less always.
About ‘Freeze Rate Per Stack of Chill’:
This does not interact with your Freeze Rate Multiplier at all. It only increases your freeze chance. The formula for freezes is:
‘Freeze Rate Per Stack of Chill’ is an increase to your ‘freeze rate’ and thus multiplies the value provided by your skill for your freeze chance. It will not alter your damage. This means that a perfect oceareon (200 per stack) will multiply the skills freeze rate and thus your freeze chance by a factor of 7. Adding the amulet will add 3 x 80%:
(1. + 6. + 2.4) / (1. + 6.) = 1.34
Meaning, that the amulet only gives you an additional 34% more multiplier for your freeze chance. While the ring iteself already gives you a 600% more multiplier. It may not be worth it for you but could be good for your spriggian.
About ‘Increased Freeze Rate Multiplier’:
This stat is provided by Gaspar’s Insight as well as Mourningfrost. We can not make use of the Mourningfrost boots obviously. The helmet can provide up to 185% increased Freeze Rate Multiplier yielding up to 2.85 more freeze rate multiplier as it is the only source of this modifier.
Therefore it gives you 2.85 more freeze rate multiplier and due to the boots 2.85 more frostbite effect. In addition it double dips on your freeze potential:
Both bold factors are scaled by the 2.85 since frostbite effect scales the provided freeze avoidance reduction of frostbite as well. Depending on the value of health minions have (sadly I don’t have any values) this is a substantial increase to your freeze potential which can be way greater than 2.85.
I’m level 84 at the moment, running the 90 mono’s. Basically 90% of my damage is from Spirt Thorns and Frostbite(+Tidal Wave proc from sceptre). Maelstrom gives almost perma frenzy and haste and a chance to chill/freeze but I don’t think it does much DPS. A Thorn Totem on hit idol gives 3-4 totems up all the time that freeze/chill and return mana/rage when unsummoned or killed. Ice Thorns proc when I’m hit and give me a buff to cold damage and freeze multi. Summon Spriggan has an aura that gives adaptive spell, healing and freeze multi. The other spells/totems are mainly just for freeze chance and utility.
I didn’t know this, thanks for the info.
yeah, I can see that it is maybe not the best for me. It does give my Spriggan and 4 totems a big boost for cold damage and freeze multi, which helps.
I put Gasper’s helmet on yesterday and was shocked by the increase, definitely the best mod for these freeze builds:)
Thanks again for the help. I’m useless at maths and you made it a lot easier to understand.
You can export a basic loot filter based on the build - its a feature on Dammits Build Planner… open the build above and look for the button next to skills/passives…
Gotta say, I liked your build in its original state (pre-0.8.4). Now, 0.8.4. made it absolutely monstrous with Snowdrifts, as you’ve shown in your original post.
But the interaction with Gaspar’s helmet is just fucking broken.
I’m pretty sure EHG just missed it and I think it should be hotfixed. I mean, I played a little bit in a build planner and reached 10k Freeze Multi with it. That’s x20 Frostbite Effect. Which is just nuts.
Yeah, especially since the build now triple dips on freeze rate multiplier: Damage with frostbite effect, and freeze potential with freeze rate multiplier AND frostbite effect.
Will see what happens. I’m now close to 700 corruption and defenses can sometimes get a little tricky. Have to improve my head with a focus on defense a little more.
Before the helmet I started to get trouble a little earlier. But more survivability will help both variations.
Well, it’s always triple-dipped, so to say. And I think it’s fair for a well-put build with serious gear investment to reach 400-500 corruption.
What’s not fair is having 5000-6000% EXTRA freeze multi from a single item It honestly just looks like an oversight from the older patches.
By the way, did you consider dropping Frigid Doom and Intensifying Cold and putting those 4 points into Cryogenesis? It’s x1.8 “more” damage for all Ice Barrage damage, including Frostbite ticks, after all.
I think the same but to be fair this crazy freeze rate increase was in the game for a while and we also have this modifier on the Mourningfrost boots. I considered them pre 0.8.4 for the build as well but they only provided more freeze rate multiplier. What makes this stat just crazy is the additional ‘conversion’ to frostbite effect.
I’m always thinking about how to improve the build. But I’m not sure about dropping frigid doom. Beside Frigid Doom Ice Barrage is mostly for bossing and the build already does great at bossing. Maybe when using Frozen Ire it is a decent skill swap.
Currently I consider to get a Chest with ‘frobstbite on hit’ and ‘+ Ice Barrage/Freeze Rate Multiplier’. This would allow skilling the more multiplier as well. Frostbite effect does not have a big value on chest anymore on its own, it goes up to 120 at T7 which at 6k freeze rate multiplier is only 10% more damage. Ice Barrage provides up to +4 levels → 80% more damage for frostbite stacks from ice barrage as well as 260% freeze rate multiplier (x2.8 / 10 * 2 = 140% frostbite effect).
You could alss go for the ward on hit talent. With pierce this should provide amazing additional sustain for trash.
The freeze rate per stack of chill probably is worse at least if you already have a well rolled oceareon.
I’ve been using this build for several days, although i don’t have enough mana regen so i use focus for now.
I have a question, why choose frosbite chance on hit blessing instead of cold resist shred?
That is a good question Frostbite Chance is worse damage-wise but better all around.
If you were Gaspa’s Insight and have decent gear and 1 or 2 frostbite on cold hit idols you end up with probably less than 400% frostbite chance on cold hit. Your main skills add 150% resp. 200% frostbite chance. Let’s assume you have a total of 600% frostbite chance without blessing.
Thus, getting the frostbite blessing is getting you from 600% to 700%. The result is
700 / 600 = 1.167 → 16.7% more frostbite stacks
Cold Shred gives us 40% pen against bosses (I’m neglecting the shred against trash since it very rarely matters). We also get 25% penetration from Snap Freeze and 15% from the tree. The result would be
1.8 / 1.4 = 1.29 → 29% more damage
Now it is matter of preference: Frostbite stacks not only provide more damage but also more freeze and thus more survivability while cold shred only gives more damage against high live and long living targets. For the build I decided to better go with the well-rounded variation which does a little less damage.
It’s always possible to swap this if to cold resistance if you prefer pure damage.
First of all:
10% penetration is not necessarily the same as multiplicative 10% damage. I’ll explain later.
Second:
The blessing doesn’t give Cold Pen, like amulet affix or a passive from Sorc tree. It gives a chance to apply “Shred Cold Resistance” ailment. Which itself applies negative cold res (same like Snap Freeze) and STACKS to 20 (and with ice barrage you should be able to maintain 20 stacks quite easily on bosses)
AFAIK, resistances can be dropped into negatives, so, now, the actual damage increase depends on the initial cold resistance of the target:
If base cold res of the target is 0%, then yes, you can treat Cold Pen (or any pen) as yet another “More Damage” multiplicator. With 40% cold pen you do x1.4 more damage, with 140% pen you do x2.4 more damage (which is 71% more damage than without Cold Res Shred blessing).
But, assuming a target has 75% cold res, without penetration you only do x0.25 damage to it. With cold pen from Cold Snap and Passive you have 40% pen and now you do x0.65 damage to it. So, 40% pen actually results in 0.65/025 = x2.6 = 160% “more” damage! Which is fucking HUGE.
Now, with 20 stacks from Cold Res Shred you have additional -100 resist on the target. Now you have 140% pen! Compared to 40% you now do 1.65/0.65 = x2.53 = 153% “more” damage. Which, again, is fucking HUGE.
Honestly, I’m not sure how much base cold res monsters/bosses have. If it’s 0% for everyone, well… this is boring, I must say. I would easily believe that target dummy has 0 armor/res/whatever. But bosses — seems unlikely.
But what I’m absolutely certain of, is that x20 stacked Cold Res Shred is DEFINTIELY more than 29% damage boost. It’s noticeable even on target dummy, that it’s somewhere around x2 boost.
Usually Bosses and monsters have 0% res and 0 armor as long as you dont give them some. by monolith modifiers. There are some rare exceptions that have res (the fire scorpions e.g.).
Pen, Res Shred and (in case of Lightning) Shock - are all “minus enemy res”.
So you add them up and they are one big multiplier.
20% Pen
Max Shred
→ -60% boss res
All monsters have generic “less damage taken” not only bosses - the poor dummy has 0%.
For lvl 100 mobs the number was like 91% less afair
As Llama pointed out enemies usually have 0% resistance and only some sort of flat damage reduction which cannot be modified.
In addition, shred works together with penetration. The only “big” difference is when a target has above 75% resistance. Shred would be applied to the value before the 75% resistance cap is applied while penetration is applied after. If you reduce resistance with shred by 40% (maximum on a boss) and the enemiy would have 100% resistance it would result in an effective penetration of only 15% (edited) while 40% penetration is always 40% penetration.
Nevertheless, going for cold shred or frostbite is a matter of preference. I prefere frostbite since my damage at close to 700 corruption is still great but survivability can make some troubles. Frostbite chance provides more freezes and faster stacking of frostbite. More freezes not only hinders the enemy to hit you but also recovers ward/life on freeze.
Both blessings are decent option supporting different objectives.
In my opinion the advantage is most often that it is much easier to look up specific things. Also updating is much more easy.
No problem…
It honestly just looks like an oversight from the older patches.
Frostbite Chance is worse damage-wise but better all around.