Frost build op?

[Amaren]

Accidentially I switched my build to the frost one, then made up my mimd and gave it a try. I was able to outdps other fm's in the party who were using a flame build and now I'm wondering if it's really that good. I don't have any badges/elemental acc's yet so, is it worth to spec for the frost build or better stick to the frost one?

[Zedonia]

Frost damage was buffed pretty much and both builds are almost equal now. Fire is still better for short burst fights but ice catches up if the fight lasts a little longer. Outdps other FM doesnt mean much. If you can outdps good FMs you know than you know if you really playing well.

[sephy Kun]

Wait, does the BT set bonus stacks with the mystic amulet that gives additional damage to snowball?

So is it (30+11)*2 or 11*2+30?

[Zedonia]

2 hours ago, sephy Kun said:

(30+11)*2

Should be this one but I'm not sure. I dont use the chokma mystic badge for ice because cold snap uptime is too low without it. MSP8 is also better for ice build because you will use snowball only if you really have to. Dual Dragon buff from MSP is better.

[AelinAA]

Hey, i'm really hesitating between ice and fire build, switching a lot but i can't find what really suits me the best. 

What would be the pros and cons for each spec ?

Thx and sorry if it has been said a lot :/

[sephy Kun]

6 hours ago, Zedonia said:

Should be this one but I'm not sure. I dont use the chokma mystic badge for ice because cold snap uptime is too low without it. MSP8 is also better for ice build because you will use snowball only if you really have to. Dual Dragon buff from MSP is better.

That shouldn't be the case once we'll be able to combine badges. The green badge will make up for DD's CD reduction and snowball's mystic badge should be better than DD's mystic badge then

I mean 82xap every 21 seconds is amazing, that's almost on par with the legendary mystic badge (85xap every 15 seconds)

 

6 hours ago, AelinAA said:

Hey, i'm really hesitating between ice and fire build, switching a lot but i can't find what really suits me the best. 

What would be the pros and cons for each spec ?

Thx and sorry if it has been said a lot :/

Cons:

-Frost build is harder to play correctly, since you'll have to watch out for coldsnap's cooldown all the time, and you have to know the boss very well so that you won't miss it. 

 

-Frost build is very ping dependant so if you have 150+ ping or something like that then you won't do that much damage with it

 

-you'll have to get used to switching from your coldsnap phase to lb+rb+2 phase, which again makes it harder than flame build

 

Pros:

-they both deal the same damage so go with the one you enjoy the most

[Mirryn]

Are you suggesting using Green+Yellow over Green+Blue?

I have a hard time believing anything can beat the Magnum badge (Blue) for Frost.

 

For example the Yellow badge + 3pc BT is 20x AP per Cold Snap.

Magnum is is 3x AP per Glacial Beam = ~75 AP per Cold Snap.

 

So you must take the Blue badge for Frost - working from that premise, I can't see Snowball Mystic badge or Impact Soul Badge being particularly useful even though they do produce a comically hard hitting Snowball unless you really think you're going to miss most of your Cold Snap.

 

Even with Vortex Temple gear I don't think the numbers favor using Snowball?  Though I could be missing something there.

Now if HM Snowball were a thing... *shiftyeyes*

 

[sephy Kun]

No, where did i suggest using the yellow badge? It's useless o.o i just said the green badge will make up for the CD reduction of the DD mystic badge

With 3 set BT you'll get 82xap with snowball's mystic badge, so that's better than just spamming 2 for one second of coldsnap isn't it? 

[sephy Kun]

 

400k+ from snowball and like 180k/s from spamming ice rain

[Mirryn]

Check the rotation in the video you just linked...

Then let's extrapolate with a little logic and currently available gear

(+ merged badges, as I've noted several times only then does frost become really interesting imo)

 

Cold Snap every ~27 seconds there - annoying to sync it with Tiger bracelet like this and even just keeping up Dragonfrost buff is somewhat awkward, not to mention not using Tiger on cooldown feels pretty bad (but is still more DPS than trying to use it on CD and losing more than half the effect)

With Dual Dragons badge you have Cold Snap every 20 seconds and can always have Tiger during Cold Snap.

 

Overall Snowball Mystic Badge appears to produce a small DPS bonus when a weapon reset occurs, but in return it makes the regular rotation rather awkward.

Comparatively Dual Dragons Mystic badge loses its utility every time a weapon reset occurs but produces a much smoother regular rotation.

 

[sephy Kun]

Yeah true

 

Tbh im having a hard time deciding which is better, and im not sure if the legendary one will be better either. 

 

And yeah i agree on the merged badges, it synergies really well with the build

[Zedonia]

11 hours ago, sephy Kun said:

That shouldn't be the case once we'll be able to combine badges.

I didnt talked about months in the future. I talked about now. Having all badges isnt hard so of course it will change later.

11 hours ago, sephy Kun said:

The green badge will make up for DD's CD reduction and snowball's mystic badge should be better than DD's mystic badge then

Thats the combination later, yes. Its the only useful ice combination anyway.

6 hours ago, Mirryn said:

Magnum is is 3x AP per Glacial Beam = ~75 AP per Cold Snap.

Nah, not exactly. Magnum is only for 6s. In that time you can do 12-15 glacial beams. So it's 36x - 45x AP. It's better anyway and the best badge for ice.

 

For dual dragons or snowball damage:

 

DD is 18x AP -> + 70% (MSP 8) -> 30,6x AP

SB is 11x AP -> + 100% (BT 3) -> 22 AP

 

with mystic SB badge:

 

SB is 11xAP + 30x AP -> +100% (BT 3) -> 82x AP

 

You can use DD twice as much so it's 30,6x AP + 100% -> 61,2x AP for DD. But: You can use 1 to reduce the cd of SB but this a dps loss of 8,25x AP (9,25x AP from 2 -1x AP from 1). So it's 82xAP -8,25x AP = 73,75x AP for SB. The mystic SB should be dps increase of 73,75x AP - 61,2x AP = 12,55x AP. For using this you lose the 8s cd reduction of cold snap by using DD.

 

The whole rotation is something you have to test because it's a little complicated.

 

Normal LB/RB/2 rotation is 18,75x AP. (Edit: That's not correct. It's only 16,95x if the target isnt burning.) 1 second 2 spam in cold snap is around (lets say 2,3 hits/s based on my experience) is 23,775x AP without magnum and 31,575x AP with magnum. So with the DD mystic badge you can reduce cold snap cooldown by 8s. In the video you can see that he has some cold snap cooldown time so it wouldnt be useless. In 8s (and here is the complicated part because of magnum badge duration) you will lose 87x AP (Edit: It's 101,4x without burn) (6s magnum spam + 2s without magnum = 237x AP - 8s LB/RB/2 spam = 150x AP (Edit: It's 135,6x without burn). Sounds better than 73,75x AP on snowball but is it really better? I dont know. It depends on cooldown resets and soul proc for example. We dont have a short cd soul yet and spamming 2 with soul is even more dps than normal rotation with soul.

 

I might have done some mistakes because I'm little confused now so pls correct me if something is wrong. The SB badge is definitely worth to test but only if you really can afford the 50 raven feathers. Otherwise I recommend using the DD badge. Without raven weapon it should be even better to use DD badge because of not so many resets.

[Mirryn]

Quote

Nah, not exactly. Magnum is only for 6s. In that time you can do 12-15 glacial beams. So it's 36x - 45x AP. It's better anyway and the best badge for ice.

Are you sure about the Magnum badge?

I'm still farming mine to mess around with but it says Magnum effect on Cold Snap Hit.

Which would suggest a 16 second duration for each Cold Snap ?

 

Also on the Vortex Temple gear... it honestly confuses me, none of it looks like a significant gain over MSP + Blue+Green unless the purple badge can be merged.

[Zedonia]

14 minutes ago, Mirryn said:

Are you sure about the Magnum badge?

I'm still farming mine to mess around with but it says Magnum effect on Cold Snap Hit.

Which would suggest a 16 second duration for each Cold Snap ?

On Cold Snap hit, increase Frost Damage for 15 seconds
On Cold Snap hit, enable Magnum effect for 6 seconds
During Magnum effect, Glacial Beam (new ice rain) does 300% Additional Damage

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tpgl2YdB6cNjsb2CTrIRqesa1wVs4x0fHfAnzLtgisw/edit#gid=0

 

Maybe it's not good translated in the game. In german the 6s are not mentioned anywhere, for example. But in the posted video above you can see that it is 6s.

14 minutes ago, Mirryn said:

Also on the Vortex Temple gear... it honestly confuses me, none of it looks like a significant gain over MSP + Blue+Green unless the purple badge can be merged.

The mystic badge from there should be bis. Complete vortex 8 set together with the badge will be great because you get a free 52,5x AP every 15s on frost build.

[Mirryn]

9 minutes ago, Zedonia said:

On Cold Snap hit, increase Frost Damage for 15 seconds
On Cold Snap hit, enable Magnum effect for 6 seconds
During Magnum effect, Glacial Beam (new ice rain) does 300% Additional Damage

Cold SnapMove 1

Focus Generation 3

Deals 300 ~ 350 [25.00x AP] frost damage over 10 sec 

Generates 3 focus per hit

 

Again... to me that would mean 16s duration on Magnum effect...

Have you tested it?

[Zedonia]

Ah I see how you mean it. Hm, I dont think it is like that. 6s should start after initial use. I couldnt test it yet but I will on wednesday (could farm enough today but I dont like that ToI shit).

 

Watch the video. After using cold snap he has the 6s badge icon in the bar. And when it's gone the damage reduces by more than 10k/hit. Thats the magnum effect. Having it the whole duration + 6s after cold snap ended would make frost build so much better than fire.

 

 

Btw: I just saw that the AP modifier on bnstree for LMB on frost build is wrong. It's not 3,2 without burn it's much less. Without elemental gear my RMB deals almost 4x the damage of LMB without burn. And even with burn it's only around 60% of RMB damage. That makes the uptime for cold snap even more important.

[Mirryn]

On a completely random and unrelated note...

 

Anyone else notice that you can ani-cancel RMB+LMB in frost build and it fires 1 frost, 1 fire, then 2 more frost shots :D

[Zedonia]

5 hours ago, Mirryn said:

Again... to me that would mean 16s duration on Magnum effect...

Have you tested it?

Ok, because ToI went good today I did a few more runs and bought the badge. It's as I said. You use cold snap and get the 6s magnum effect once. It's pretty good and increases burst power of frost build. It also boosts awakened ice rain if you might ask. The loss of cd reduction from snowball is not too bad and with some lucky weapon resets it's no problem. The blue badge is definitely better than the green one. Together they will be great.

[Mirryn]

That actually changes my calculations quite a bit.

Then assuming Tiger bracelet, almost every combination of Frost badges right now should produce the same damage output overall and...

BT+Magnum wins out for burst but doesn't reduce Cold Snap CD at all.

BT+Snowball and MSP+Magnum both work on 27s CD Cold Snap CD but produce ~10% less burst during Cold Snap.

MSP+Snowball uses a 20 second rotation but produces ~20% less burst during Cold Snap.

 

With Merged badges MSP+Blue+Green should pull ahead overall ~5% but remain ~10% behind BT+Blue+Green for burst during Cold Snap.

 

However obviously decreased Cold Snap cooldown provides better resilience against a target moving out of Cold Snap.

 

 

It also makes the Vortex Temple items make more sense (they are better, I think, but favor a 36s CD Cold Snap?)

[hwalien]

using ice build now.

I'm still spamming RMB/LMB mindlessly. 

[chewz]

using coldsnap and glacial and frost fury only, no other skills...

 

[Zedonia]

2 hours ago, chewz said:

using coldsnap and glacial and frost fury only, no other skills...

...and doing no damage probably with it.

[sephy Kun]

It seems people still play the builds wrong even with the skill changes xD

[Foster]

Did anyone try to test dps on fire and frost build after patch?

Thx.

[sephy Kun]

47 minutes ago, Foster said:

Did anyone try to test dps on fire and frost build after patch?

Thx.

Yea alot tried, i don't have screenshots though.

They do the same damage almost.

Fire does alot more for me because of my high ping (200+) but at low ping they should be about the same damage

That changes when you get raven weapon and legendary bracelet, then fire does more damage on soul burn, and you'll have soul burn in nearly every party.