Cold...getting buffed?

[UnstarPrime]

I'll be honest: when I was watching today's Devstream and they specifically brought up Cold while implying it would be getting some changes, my immediate guess was that they'd be nerfing its current functionality.  Because while Cold hasn't been able to get my attention with its damage-dealing potential, its CC ability is in my opinion some of the best in the game because it's one of very few methods of CC that work on "mini-boss" enemies; that's a significant part of why my Sentinel's Helstrum is built specifically to spread Cold procs!  So I was pretty surprised to hear that not only is the base functionality remaining intact, but that it's getting buffed.  (I will of course gladly accept this change)

That said, I'm sure that this decision is based on analytics that show that players aren't using Cold, so maybe I'm one of the few using it this way (or at all).  I'm curious: what has your experience with this most recent iteration of Cold procs been?

[-ShadowRadiance-]

All im curious about is if this <Frozen> state Pablo mentioned will count towards his Biting Frost augment that increases crit chance+crit dmg on frozen targets. Cause if it DOES... 

otherwise... meh.

[quxier]

23 minutes ago, UnstarPrime said:

That said, I'm sure that this decision is based on analytics that show that players aren't using Cold, so maybe I'm one of the few using it this way (or at all).  I'm curious: what has your experience with this most recent iteration of Cold procs been?

Cold competes with Viral. Heat and Electricity.

You have viral build so you cannot use cold.

You are using Corrosive (toxin + electricity) so your options are cold or heat. Heat armor strip enemies so it's imho better. Plus you have "on heat" arcane that farther increase it.

Then you have Gas (Heat + Toxin). Electricity works for melee Influence (not great but still). Magnetic for melee vortex (my favorite!). Then you have cold.

 

I guess you could work with some way, especially 1st/2nd-ary weapons, but it just doesn't have to that "something". Buff sadly wouldn't work on enemies that you need more power.

[ominumi]

Thanks to subsume Nourish, Viral doesn't need to be modded. That being said, if there was a way to have both Heat AND Cold separately on a weapon, it would show up more often. We'll have to way for the new changes to take affect before anything can be said since health and armor are being adjusted soon.

[Raarsi]

It seems more like it'd be better for just abilities that do cold damage rather than weapons doing cold damage, which leads me to three conclusions:

1. Frost is gonna feel pretty good even if it doesn't stack with his augment because other players can get that crit multiplier.
2. DE has another cold frame in the works.
3. Thermal Sunder's gonna get nerfed because hooooooooooly crap.

[Venus-Venera]

vor 34 Minuten schrieb Raarsi:

It seems more like it'd be better for just abilities that do cold damage rather than weapons doing cold damage, which leads me to three conclusions:

1. Frost is gonna feel pretty good even if it doesn't stack with his augment because other players can get that crit multiplier.
2. DE has another cold frame in the works.
3. Thermal Sunder's gonna get nerfed because hooooooooooly crap.

saryn with 2-3 buffs is much better then this strange stuff. i can even spam slams and deal much more damage

[TeaHands]

I had the exact same reaction

But you're going to be able to pull off even more CC??  I'll finally mod Frost Prime then. 

Also I'm gonna make a max range chroma and see if his Cold Spectral Scream will chain and fully freeze crowds. I'm very excited for this update.

Edited April 27 by TeaHands

[Xzorn]

Cold used to be much stronger. It not only slowed enemies instantly but it increased the duration of statuses. Bleed + Cold, Gas + Cold.

Current Cold just isn't good IMO. Not only is it near impossible to fit. It's generally inferior to Rad and the additive Crit Dmg does very little.

Blast knocked down crowds. Rad on one enemy would CC all around them. Anything that was good about Cold status died.

[Joezone619]

Yeah tbh i think DE has it wrong, we don't need buffs to cold, we need buffs to impact, blast, gas, magnetic, and maybe shock.

Edited April 27 by Joezone619

[Omega-ZX]

but i use cold on my prisma gorgon. its fun to use

[trst]

If they made it where only frozen enemies receive more crit damage then the change only nerfs cold. The current version isn't great (mostly thanks to competing with Viral) but it's better than an effect that only matters at stack cap. Since the overwhelming majority of enemies (even in high level SP) don't survive long enough for such a thing to matter. Even more so if it means enemies that can't be frozen will never get the crit debuff.

[0_The_F00l]

I do use cold on a few loadouts ,

It's not bad and works well with corrosive ,and radiation.

It's slowdown paired with other CC can really be useful as it's one of the few things that slows eximus and bosses.

And the extra crit was already great on weapons that are just slightly short of reaching full 100%.

It's gonna get better and pair that with the armor changes might be seen on more loadouts.

[ECCHOSIERRA]

6 hours ago, UnstarPrime said:

I'll be honest: when I was watching today's Devstream and they specifically brought up Cold while implying it would be getting some changes, my immediate guess was that they'd be nerfing its current functionality.  Because while Cold hasn't been able to get my attention with its damage-dealing potential, its CC ability is in my opinion some of the best in the game because it's one of very few methods of CC that work on "mini-boss" enemies; that's a significant part of why my Sentinel's Helstrum is built specifically to spread Cold procs!  So I was pretty surprised to hear that not only is the base functionality remaining intact, but that it's getting buffed.  (I will of course gladly accept this change)

That said, I'm sure that this decision is based on analytics that show that players aren't using Cold, so maybe I'm one of the few using it this way (or at all).  I'm curious: what has your experience with this most recent iteration of Cold procs been?

Cold helstrum is slept on. A little rad sprinkled in there can make the cc even more stupid because enemies will not only be slowed but generally busy shooting eachother ie not you. 

Nautilus can group a bunch of enemies and basically bringing them to a complete stop. 

Shivering contagion is a thing.

Im surprised that set up hasnt been nerfed already and im waiting for this change to cause a nerf wave somehow. 

[(PSN)lhbuch]

I kind of feel that this will turn into a nerf buff hotfix festival after release. 

Nobody specs for cold alone because viral would be much better in most scenarios. If using corrosive, heat is just better as a proc because you can apply a gazilion procs on the Enemy. So the rework will make cold procs better than applying tons of heat procs or heat procs will get nerfed? 

The hole damage - status - enemy resistances is a complicated matter. Most players were just using viral heat for almost every scenario till the green shards arrived.

I really hope this update makes all dmg types really impactful but its something that never happened in this game.

[Greysmog]

You have to remember this is about Cold as a proc you'd use over others like Viral or (potentially) reworked Blast. I guess what I'm expecting is;

Heat: Has heat inherit outright nerfed or adjusted in some fashion. Currently it seems a little too easy to spread en masse, but I'd leave it alone for now and look at the other base elementals first. It's definitely the most likely to be changed.

Electric: Hopefully gets adjusted to have inherently higher range to maybe 5-6 meters, 3 meters is dog water and forces you to rely solely on grouping abilities to fulfill its core function. If DE buffs it to be stronger against Armor in general I'm sure it'll be fine.

Toxin: Hard to say really, if you take away its ability to just completely ignore Shields with raw damage and procs it's completely useless. You might be better off just investing Corpus health across the board, and then removing base damage ignoring Shields as well, so it's not such an obvious pick. 

Cold: Honestly the most I'm expecting to happen with Cold is the actual Freeze duration getting reduced. Slowing enemies to a crawl already happens anyways, and they've already established the Freeze can be ignored by certain enemy types like Bosses so I don't think much will change. Cold is a raw damage Element so I'm willing to bet it and Radiation for instance will be getting looked at to help them keep up with AoE or DoT statuses.

I would say it just really depends on what the breakdown between Armor, Health and Shields actually is for each element. That's mostly what I want clarification on personally and it'll make balancing it all much easier.

Edited April 27 by Greysmog

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

I like and use Cold a fair bit. There are quite a few different set ups I might use it, likewise, I find "Combo Element" + Cold great on Verglas for a few different Sentinels. Its amazing for slowing certain enemies, and for priming. There are certain weapons I enjoy having to aim, and so a slowed tough enemy can bring about certain advantages. Like say being able to snipe heads easier, or slowing a tougher type of Demo down after Magus Lockdown, or slowing down certain mini bosses that may have resistances to certain other statuses or certain types of damage, so on. Plus I get and use a bunch of other elements/elemental combos as strong if not clearly stronger and or more meta, but also we get quite a few different weapons. 

Primary, Secondary, Melee, Archgun, Sentinel weapon...  So I am pretty fond of Cold, didn't necessarily think it needed buffing but pretty interested to see its being buffed. More intrigued to see what might happen to Blast though. 

[(PSN)robotwars7]

Frost mains are gonna be eating GOOD with these changes.. Cold Chroma builds too perhaps!

personally I'm more interested in blast though: it's basically never been viable, so the only way is up, right?

 

[Greysmog]

19 hours ago, (PSN)robotwars7 said:

Frost mains are gonna be eating GOOD with these changes.. Cold Chroma builds too perhaps!

personally I'm more interested in blast though: it's basically never been viable, so the only way is up, right?

 

I'm personally hoping Blast just becomes a more universal debuff option. We already know some stuff is off the table, like; 

- Secondary explosions like Acid Shells

- Separate procs like Impact

- Strong CC like knockdowns

Since DE has already said no to all of these, why not just make Blast better at softening up Shields and Armor while dealing higher damage to Health? Blast now reduces the effectiveness of Armor and Shields up to say 75% right off the bat. So you'd gain 25% higher reduction than Heat while losing out on the DPS, it now combines better with Toxin or Electric as well as Corrosive, and maybe consecutive procs increase the chance to stagger enemies.

This would also mean making other combined elements generally useful against more factions, like making Magnetic increase the Status Chance of all other Status Effects. It has its specific use, and a more universal use, and it's the main difference between good elements and bad ones. 

Radiation already has multiple uses as an example, it should probably just have a buff similar to Viral but only for Armor, and have it so the enemy damage buff is just baked in instead of needing to be scaled. Make it great against Armor, neutral to Health and weak against Shields.

Want to improve Gas? Well just have the clouds last for a set duration after the enemy dies, remove the weird ten stack limit and make it benefit properly from elemental mods. Gas is strong against Health, neutral to Shields and weak to Armor. Now it makes you want to use stuff like Electric and Cold to compensate.

Edited April 28 by Greysmog