Cold damage has the worst scaling of the three elemental trees available to Sorceresses.
Let’s start by addressing how cold mastery works, each point reduces a monsters cold resistance by 5% and there is a hard cap of -100% resistance for any damage calculation. To get to -100% cold resistance on a sundered enemy one would need Cold Mastery to be level 36. This means that every point past level 36 is completely useless. There are also no alternatives to dump points into the cold tree to increase primary skills damage as Orb only requires 40 hard points to max out, 60 for Frost Nova, and 80 for Blizzard.
Since the most direct comparison is between Nova and Frost Nova, let me use the two nova skills to illustrate the point :
Let’s see how Nova stacks:
As you see from the above example, it doesn’t take much for Nova to surpass the damage of Frost Nova. The disparities between damage increases as the +skills increases as Fire and Lighting Masteries continue to add value whereas Cold does not.
At level 40, Lightning Mastery increases lightning damage by 518% and each additional point will raise that value by 12%. This damage multiplier is added AFTER the synergies bonuses are applied which means also amplifies the synergy bonuses.
The fact is that lightning and fire damage is substantially higher than cold damage and cold relies completely on - resistance to boost damage. At lower levels (under skill level 40) fire and cold do about equivalent damage to -100% cold resistance fully synergized skills when attacking mobs with resistance around +50% fire or lightning.
As we get higher skill levels, the break even point of when fire or lightning will match -100% cold damage get higher and higher as Fire and Lighting masteries continue to scale the skills whereas Cold Mastery no longer provides any additional benefits.
This is true for all monster types not just for sundered mobs. In fact Cold Mastery becomes useless much sooner in mobs that aren’t naturally immune to cold.
Why are you using Frost Nova as a damage figure for the sorc’s cold skills? It’s not meant to do a ton of damage. It’s a crowd control skill that does wimpy damage. I use frost nova on a group surrounding me, then teleport out and blow them away with Blizzard.
For monsters with base 50 cold or lightning resistance, Frost Nova scales slightly better than Lightning Nova through level 27. Both with full synergies…
Like I said, it’s the most direct comparison between two skill trees…
There is literally a PVE hardcap to Cold Mastery at level 37…
Out of all the skills, builds and even classes that truly need attention, cold mastery let alone any sorc for that matter need zero buffs. Give me a break, you seriously made this thread after sunder charms were announced? …
Even before sunken the best CM level is -150%, which is lv 27. It is determine to be best at lv 27 for a reason: majority of boss has 50% cold resist. It makes no sense to get that extra 10 lvls just to do “full damage” to sunkened mobs.
Frost Nova is better damage than Nova at lower levels. It costs too much mana to be a viable alternative to Nova though. Full synergies are also 80 points vs 60 for Nova.
As for why Blizzard? Because it’s the better skill in the tree similar to lightning and chain lightning in the lightning tree.
I was using the two novas to illustrate the weakness of Cold Mastery scaling.
Reality is CM is much better than what you claiming it to be. It is the only passive lower resist spell exist in game. It is more OP than what you claim it to be. Does CM has it’s limit? Sure, but it also grant Cold sorc a lot more adventage than other builds when you have no gear. Lv 27 gives -150% cold resist meaning that all I need is 2 spirits + some random +3 skills I can archive such resist. Just how much more gear do you need on your nova before you can reach that damage?
You can also comparing two skills that gives different startup dmg and scale up damae. If you truly want to demonstrate, please give both skill same damage and then punch in number in order to compare.
Sure, early on its useful. It doesn’t scale past the -100% cap while fire and lighting masteries continue to compound damage gains as better gear is obtained.
Meta will still run Infinity and 60 to 80K meteor damage isn’t hard to reach…
Either the skills need to scale higher damage at higher levels or the mastery has to be buffed. Either way, scaling has to improve past level 27…
Math don’t lie when you do it correctly, wrong set and wrong assumption result in the wrong math
First of all you are comparing Frost Nova with Nova, the 2 skills that have different skill damage and different damage scaling. Base on that you are not showcasting the difference between CM and LM, but FN and nova. If you want to compare CM & LM, the damage of 2 spells should be set at same number in order to remove variables.
Second of all. Please explain the price difference on gear between lv 40 maxxed Frost Nova and lv 40 maxxed Nova. For one Forst nova sorc does not even need infinity, for two why only nova getting unlimited buffing via gear while frost nova is just lv 40 max with no other form of gear buffing? Where’s the +15% cold dmg from Tal Rasha, where’s the +3~5% cold damage from Facets? See another variaty that affect the result greatly. You either go naked with both and compare, or you give them all full gear as realistic as possible with similar price range and compare under both skills are having same damage pre-buffed. You do NOT compare one with naked while the other is fully buffed by gear. If nova sorc’s gear is costing double or even triple of cold sorc, shouldn’t it also be expected to do at least double amount of damage compare to the other one?
Lastly, let’s also talk about if you really want to convince people that CM is inferior and need a buff, you also need to compare them under different damage points (both spells at 1000, 2000, 3000 etc) to showcase that CM is always worse than other methods instead of choosing one specific damage point and attempt to convince people.
The Ancient Tunnels apparently once served as a sewer for the Lost City. Their dungeon architecture is identical to that of the sewers underneath Lut Gholein]. Random Unique Monsters spawn toward the bottom of the tunnels, and your reward is a sparkling treasure Chest of possible high-ticket items.
The Ancient Tunnels are a popular Magic Find location, since they are one of the few area level 85 zones and contain no Cold Immune normal monsters on Hell difficulty. Cold Immune unique monsters on the other hand, can spawn, though the frequency is very low, making it ideal for builds like Blizzard magic find sorceresses. Builds that use Lightning, however, might find the area difficult due to the Lightning Immunes which often spawn there.
You realize that calculations on +% cold damage is linear and can just be added together?
+15% Cold damage increase is just +15% damage.
-% resistance isn’t linear. It provides greater value early on and decays.
Going from -95% to -100% is a 2.56% Damage increase whereas going from 50 resistance to 45 resistance is a 10% increase in damage done. -resistance provides the greatest boost as resistance is being lowered to Zero. 0 to -5% is the only time you will see an exact 5% boost in damage.
Any fire or lighting skill at Zero resistance will far exceed the damage of any cold spell at -100% resistance. Cold Mastery only doubles damage whereas lightning and fire increase base skill damage by upwards of 400%…
You insist I am wrong but have failed to prove any proof or reference to my errors.
Please do show how cold mastery provides higher utility than lighting mastery at higher levels.
At specific skill levels would be more practical. When comparing fully synergized Blizzard to Meteor without masteries:
Level 27:
Blizzard = 3740-3960 cold damage
at -100% cold resistance, cold mastery only doubles that damage to 7480-7920 (7700 average)
Meteor = 4296-4512 fire damage
at 0 resistance, fire mastery increases damage by 212% to 13403-14077 fire damage (13740 average)
Meteor starts to do more damage to monsters than Blizzard at resistances of 46 or lower
Level 37:
Blizzard = 6300-6564 cold damage
at -100% cold resistance, cold mastery only doubles that damage to 12600-13128 (12864 average)
Meteor = 6780-7056 fire damage
at 0 resistance, fire mastery increases damage by 282% to 25899-26953 fire damage (26426 average)
Meteor starts to do more damage to monsters than Blizzard at resistances of 48 or lower
Level 47:
Blizzard = 8900-9204 cold damage
at -100% cold resistance, cold mastery only doubles that damage to 17800-18408 (18104 average)
Meteor = 9270-9606 fire damage
at 0 resistance, fire mastery increases damage by 352% to 41900-43419 fire damage (42659.5 average)
Meteor starts to do more damage to monsters than Blizzard at resistances of 57 or lower
Getting to 57 resistance from 95 only takes an additional -38 resistance. Flickering Flame + 3 fire facets gets you to 65 resistance. Add Infinity and you are at -20%…
The main point is, when you compare them you didn’t add that into the formula. Rather it is linear addition isn’t the main point, main point is that you didn’t add thato cold sorc while you are doing that to lightning sorc, resulting wrong math data for comparison.
Now we are onto something, however, important data is still missing here.
Let’s go with your data sets, when both blizzard and meteor facing cold/fire immune with sunken GC attached, how is CM and FM performting?
Lv 27 (based off the lv 27 blizzard) CM gives -150% cold resist, so this is the damage a 95% cold resist mob will received
This is the power of Cold mastery. It can almost guarantee Cold Sorc to archive max damage without any outside support, aka gears, as long as the mob isn’t immune. If fire/lightning sorc wants to give out a similar performance, you need to spend way more in order to archice such potential. While Fire/lightning sorc gives out fancy number on the paper, it’s real performance is greatly hindered by mob’s resistance level, and you can’t counter that without outside support, unlike cold sorc, all it needs it cold mastery
Your data isn’t completely wrong in a sense, once you spend an endless amount of resources, fire and lightning sorc could out-perform cold sorc; however, that does not translate to your claim: CM is too weak and needs a buff, because your claim is based off unfair economic requirement between 2 builds. The only way to determine if that spell needs a buff/change is to compare them under the same circumstances, which is what you lack of, and without real world scenario to support.
You can comparing them when both mobs are at -100% resist, however, do cold mastery and fire mastery perform the same way? How does cold sorc and Fire sorc archive -100% resist for the spells?
All cold sorc need is CM, while Fire sorc needs all kind of expensive gear such as infinity, LR wand, Facet and other gears that gives -resist.
That is the difference, and exactly what I have been trying to tell you. You are comparing both builds under different variables, which create a unfair assumption toward cold mastery
