Replacements For Frost's 1 And 2

[Jamescell]

Introduction: Frost's 1 and 2 need to go. Because of the recent snow globe nerf it would be reasonable to buff Frost's other abilities. I have yet to see any significant or useful buffs to his ability set. No matter how much you buff his 1, 2 and 4 they all do the same thing; direct damage direct slowing and/or direct freezing. Here are my suggestions for replacing his first two abilities.

Ability 1: Even if his first ability is buffed to an AOE cone it still would t be very combat savy or unique. Snowglobe would be better for defending yourself and offensively teammates will plow through enemies seconds after their frozen and/or it would still have too small a range to be effective against anyone besides infested only because they group up

New Ability 1, Meltdown:

Description: Frost expels the sub-zero energy that imbues his suit through the vents on his arms, creating an AOE slow around him while buffing his armor and increasing his movement speed.

This ability would replace frosts first ability, and would be toggle-able with a one second cool-down between toggles. While active the ability would drain a set amount of energy per second. (If you like this idea do not make it duration based.)If it were duration based the ability would become choppy to use and not as unique.

Ability 2: Frost's second ability is just another low level damager, and despite the recent buff that slows enemies affected the ability doesn't hold up higher level. Why waste 50 energy when you can just pop Frost's uber to freeze them. An ability should not be used exclusively for low level enemies, all abilities should more or less hold up to the test of level scaling.

New Ability 2, Shatter:

Description: Frost ruptures the ground with jagged chunks of ice which then shatter and impale nearby enemies, doing minimal damage but applying an ice status effect. Enemies are thrown away from the center of the cast and pinned by ice to whatever surface they are hurled onto for a duration. Enemies are unable to attack while pinned.

This ability would be great for dispelling nearby attackers (out of a snowglobe) or in many other situations. The duration of the pin would be affected by power duration, but the ability can only be cast when no enemies are affected by previous casts, meaning that the longer enemies are pinned for the longer it takes to pin new enemies, making the ability far from OP.

Edited March 13, 2014 by Jamescell

[BrotherIcarus]

I disagree Frosts 1 and two are perfectly fine powers and ice wave is rather more useful then his other powers.

[Jamescell]

So you would be fine without snow globe and avalanche? Frosts first is a good way to throw away energy, but asides from that its an in effective ability.

Sure ice-wave is plenty op on low levels, but once you pass one or two casts to kill enemies it's garbage as well.

I would like to know your justifications as to why they're perfectly "fine"

[Wallace24]

you leave ice wave alone! that's the most fun skill to kill enemies below level 40. fireball is a close second

 

but the reason to use it over avalanche is 1) energy cost 2) range. excellent range 3) fun

 

as for freeze, AoE/splash damage would fix it. freezing a group of enemies at higher levels would be very useful if the projectile were faster, and again, froze a small group of enemies. much like the changes to fireball, except instead of lighting stuff on fire, this would allow you to shut down some enemies for a bit

 

I don't think DE will introduce toggleable/passive abilities like that. plus, you could just put coolant leak on your sentinel. if it were duration based, it would be sort of a combo between speed, iron skin, and coolant leak. interesting, I suppose

 

but I don't think just because DE's looking at snow globe means that frost needs a complete overhaul. frost was overlooked when changes were made months ago to stuff like bastille and link. DE was looking at infinitely scalable abilities (bastille holding an infinite number of enemies), and snow globe got a pass that round. which was surprising. I don't think it's like the ember overhaul, though

[Zephyric_Reaper]

you leave ice wave alone! that's the most fun skill to kill enemies below level 40. fireball is a close second

 

but the reason to use it over avalanche is 1) energy cost 2) range. excellent range 3) fun

 

as for freeze, AoE/splash damage would fix it. freezing a group of enemies at higher levels would be very useful if the projectile were faster, and again, froze a small group of enemies. much like the changes to fireball, except instead of lighting stuff on fire, this would allow you to shut down some enemies for a bit

 

I don't think DE will introduce toggleable/passive abilities like that. plus, you could just put coolant leak on your sentinel. if it were duration based, it would be sort of a combo between speed, iron skin, and coolant leak. interesting, I suppose

 

but I don't think just because DE's looking at snow globe means that frost needs a complete overhaul. frost was overlooked when changes were made months ago to stuff like bastille and link. DE was looking at infinitely scalable abilities (bastille holding an infinite number of enemies), and snow globe got a pass that round. which was surprising. I don't think it's like the ember overhaul, though

 

Ice wave can't kill lvl 40s without blind rage and/or helmet. 

It only costs half for less than half the damage than avalanche and hits a very narrow arc...line? 

With avalanche you can kill better and you'd probably be refunded with the energy most likely and (before) it had CC. 

Avalanche is just bad now. 

Freeze is bad, it needs pinpoint accuracy, no freeze aoe (unlike mod picture) and you're most likely better off just shooting the guy instead of aiming>lead target>cast>wait>shoot

To each their own but.... yeah, those two abilities aren't good.... At least compared to guns with shred. 

[Jamescell]

@wallace24 the splash freeze is what avalanche already does. In no way does frost have a balanced set of abilities, I think they really should overhaul him. The only thing that works well for his I intentioned play style that scales is snowglobe( although not as much anymore). There needs to be a shift towards more abilities that actually do something, not just AOE damagers that simply do damage. They make weapons insignificant on low levels and become useless on higher tier missions.

[Brasten]

Disagree that #1 and #2 need drastic reworkds.

====

Freeze just needs a decent AoE tacked on

OR

Need to keep its freeze duration the entire time and not Break on player damage. It has been said over and over. If Freeze froze enemies for full duration without breaking it would be okay. It should be a single target Hard Stun to take the bigger badder enemies out of the fight for a moment. If it did that job and did it half as well as Mind Control on Nyx, all would be well with this power. The reason why it doesn't need last as long a Mind Control is that it can be recast quickly and on different targets.

It could also stand to have a bit of target tracking, but so could Ember's Fireball.

=====

Ice Wave, again decently fine and the workhorse of the Attack Frost. If you can't angle your Line of Frost Damage in the mostly linear level layouts and enemy pathing routes... what are you doing playing Frost?

It only really needs its CC abilities expanding. Pushing enemies back along the wave and a Duration based Cold effect that last longer than the default Proc duration of 4 seconds.

Edited March 13, 2014 by Brasten

[LukeAura]

Ice Wave, again decently fine and the workhorse of the Attack Frost. If you can't angle your Line of Frost Damage in the mostly linear level layouts and enemy pathing routes... what are you doing playing Frost?

Apart from the slow procc, Ice Wave is completely outclassed by Avalanche. It's not an offensive work horse. It's a niche offensive ability at best, only usable when you find that rare scenario when you walk in to a room and all the enemies are conveniently lined up in a row right in front of you. 

And as for 'Linear' levels.

Each pathway and pathing route might be linear and tight but they're all broken up by many, many right angles and corners. I could hit two routes with an Ice Wave each. Or hit both and every other one I can't hit from my position with an avalanche that would deal more damage than stacking an ice wave on an ice wave. If you really want to consider it fine then you'd need to buff Frost's sprint speed way up so he can reach the optimal linear path before enemies move out of it. And even then this would increase his Avalanche even further as well. 

It's ridiculously outclasses as an offensive option.