Ice Arrow is garbage

PTR Feedback
#1

I’m glad they are trying to make the Bowazon work, but most of the buffs have been for Physical.

Meanwhile, fire is weak still, and frost only has 1 skill (Freezing Arrow).

IMO, Make Ice Arrow do double or tripple the dmg of Freezing Arrow, since it is single target only.

  1. We’d be able to use it for bosses, instead of spamming the same skill forever. Just like how Physical bowazon uses Strafe or Multishot for minions and Guided Arrow for bosses. (Guided Arrow does triple the dmg of Multishot, just to 1 enemy).
  2. It would change the way we build for synergies, as it would be worth it to invest more than 1 point in Ice Arrow.
  3. It would be one more good skill that could be added to the Rogue.

Additionally, I would definitelly also increase the Projectile Speed of all elemental arrows.

  1. This makes the gameplay a lot smoother, especially for the current resolutions.
  2. It makes the arrows more reliable, and increases their dmg without actually adding more dmg because you miss less often.

Fire bowazon could also use some buffs, but Ice Arrow is completely unusable garbage and that should be addressed.

Physical seems fine after the last round of buffs, but please make elemental Bowazon a good choice.

4 Likes
#2

It would be nice to see some variety with the elemental arrows.

#3

Would you say the same about fire bolt? Or ice bolt? Should they have a big dmg buff because otherwise fire ball and ice blast are stronger or do aoe dmg?
I think there is a difference between lvling skills and skills what are intended to be used late game. Multishot works differently from strafe. Its not just a higher tier of the same spell. I would compare cold arrow and ice arrow to fire bolt or ice bolt. These spells are used when lvling and then are used as synergies for the others.

Ice arrow has his personality, it might not be used alot, but still has something different. The freeze lenght is much longer than the other spells.

Frost maiden are already a super strong build. Same for pure fire with explosive arrow or hybrid builds. The new runeword Mist open alot of possibility for new elemental or hybrid elemental/physical builds.

I played a SSF fire/cold bowzon, in D2LOD just before D2R released, it was much easier than for my current playthough of SSF physical bowzon.

I dont think buffing ice arrow is a priority. People complain about imolation arrow because it’s the tier 3 fire missile skill. It should be stronger than explosive arrow, but it doesnt work as intended.

#4

Not every skill should be end game usable, but I think the devs can better control the proportion of the cold/fire arrow sub skill trees that are usable in end game to introduce some more choice.

To your example, fire bolt and ice bolt are useless in end game, but the remaining half of the fire and cold skill trees for sorcs are still useful:

For fire

  • Fireball
  • Meteor
  • Firewall
  • Hydra
  • Enchant
  • Fire mastery

For cold

  • Ice blast
  • Glacial spike
  • Blizzard
  • Frozen orb
  • Frost nova
  • Cold mastery

For example, they can boost the damage of ice arrow and/or add a component of ice arrow that reduces cold resistances.

For immolation arrow, everyone is saying the casting delay should be removed… but then they will make exploding arrow useless. Why not let the 2 fire skills remain useful and be able to be cycled together?

2 Likes
#5

Physical IMO is still bad.

In one sense true but low end skills should have been to make a hybrid for immune monsters I think.

#6

Early game skills have their purpose in both leveling and low level pvp. You CAN’T make early spells BOTH end game and progression viable unless you dramatically buff the skills at 20+ which really is sort of a dumb way to do it. A skill like Ice Bolt deals 3-5 dmg at level 1, and 38-49 at level 20. Even if you were to max out 4 of it’s synergies at 15% a pop, that is 1200% enhanced damage. Your final avg dmg would be 512. Kind of crap for Hell and for 100+ skill points. Even if you were to double that damage by giving 30% synergies, you are looking at just over 1000 dmg, something Blizzard can achieve on far less skill points.

1 Like
#7

What is the purpose of Ice Arrow? Being a noob trap?

Have you ever played Ice Maiden? We just skip from Cold Arrow to Freezing Arrow. 1 point in Ice Arrow only because it is a pre-requisite. It’s just a weak skill with a weak synergy.

#8

That is because you min-max and hold skill points until the skill you want to use, something experienced players tend to do. This is one of the reasons synergies were added into the game back in 1.10, to slow down this gimping to take higher level skills process. The original, classic game, which the skill trees have always been designed around, was a very open ended skill system, where you placed points as you seen fit. There was no hand handing on builds, as build choices and character permanence were based around complete user input and the rng of gg items. You, as the player, were supposed to level progression skills as you deemed fit for the content presented to you, and then level the end game skills as you seen fit.

With most classes, this wasn’t an issue. Wanted to build a WW Barb? Level Double Swing, Masteries and Warcries until you opened WW and go to town. Zeal Fana Pally? Level Zeal and Holy Shield until you hit Fana, then dump skillpoints into whatever secondary or utility skills, such as Salvation or other useful party based auras or even a skill like Fist of the Heavens for a ranged attack with AOE undead and party healing utility (and people argue this is a PvP only skill, yet it has a holy bolt spread, and originally was a completely viable pvm option to mix with a primary pvm skill due to having the skillpoints to spend).

Sorc, and other elemental abilities is what the issue was though. You had too many players gimping themselves to multi spec into all high tier elemental dmg, which hurts multiplayer because they tend to get carried instead of being able to contribute to party dps.

As the game progressed, many skills were left behind due to lack of synergies or useful synergies, whether fueled into or fueling, as well as overall purpose such as a Barb’s Find Potion skill once mana pots were purchasable in 1.10.

Since the ability to respec was added in 1.13, many of these leveling skills have purpose to level through normal then respec to the build you want to play. Ice Arrow is fine.

#9

Since the ability to respec was added in 1.13, many of these leveling skills have purpose to level through normal then respec to the build you want to play. Ice Arrow is fine.

Ice arrow is not a leveling skill… sane people use exploding arrow or some kind of javelin skill. No one walks around using ice arrow, like, ever.

1 Like
#10

no one uses Ice Arrow for leveling (or for anything for that matter). You are spewing nonsense. Long, elaborate nonsense… but still nonsense.

#11

And again, that is because people min-max. Fire gives more damage than ice, as ice damage is primarily a utility. Since 1.10, the idea was if you were speccing towards Freezing Arrow, you can level Cold Arrow until you hit Ice Arrow, switch to Ice and the Cold Arrow skills would synergize into dmg for Ice Arrow, which would then both synergize into effects for Freezing. Before synergies, the idea was you just leveled what you wanted, based on what you needed at the time.

Even currently, if you were building a Frost Maiden, your road to Freezing Arrow is pretty set. Level Cold Arrow and whatever other skills you needed, use Ice Arrow at 18 since it was better than cold arrow, then continue leveling cold arrow until Freezing Arrow. Lets say you dumped 10 points into Cold Arrow, that is 80% synergy into Ice Arrow. Even at level 1, Ice Arrow is still better than your level 10 Cold Arrow due to Ice Arrow being freezing and having a lower mana cost to use for very similar damage numbers.

#12

Freezing Arrow does more dmg than Exploding or Immolation arrows.

Blizzard does more dmg than Fireball, Meteor or Hydra.

Yes, and that’s dumb. All other characters can have more than one usable skill per tree.

That’s like saying no fire druid skill should do any dmg except Armaggedon. And no wind skill should do any dmg except Hurricane.

#13

Even currently, if you were building a Frost Maiden, your road to Freezing Arrow is pretty set. Level Cold Arrow and whatever other skills you needed, use Ice Arrow at 18 since it was better than cold arrow, then continue leveling cold arrow until Freezing Arrow. Lets say you dumped 10 points into Cold Arrow, that is 80% synergy into Ice Arrow. Even at level 1, Ice Arrow is still better than your level 10 Cold Arrow due to Ice Arrow being freezing and having a lower mana cost to use for very similar damage numbers.

But this is not how a normal person plays the game… cold arrow/ice arrow are not skills that people would use while leveling up. They are single target, low damage skills in comparison to things that people would use, such as poison javelin, exploding arrow, charged strike. If people are twinked up with poison damage jewels/elemental charms, they may even use multi-shot for leveling. But never, ever would anyone use cold arrow or ice arrow as their primary attack while leveling, because they may as well just spam normal attack in order to save mana for actually useable skills.

1 Like
#14

That is because Freezing Arrow has one damage number and utlity, where the fire tree has tick fire damage and is geared towards alternating Exploding and Immolation, as Ona has mentioned.

That is because Bowa is using 3 damage types in one skill tree: Physical, Cold, and Fire vs Sorc who has an entire tree dedicated to each of her 3 damage types. Druid is unique as it was a class designed later, and was sort of the jack of all trades, master of none kind of deal.

Doesn’t matter how people currently play the game. This is how the skills were originally designed and part of the reasons synergies very much hurt this skill system, because the skills were never designed with this philosophy in mind. We went from a very open ended system, to a specialized build system. No matter what you do, there will be flaws in the skills because the system was never originally designed to merit synergies. However, tier 1 elemental skills were never meant to be end game skills. For many folk, simply beating the story in normal is enough, and skills like Cold Arrow and Ice Arrow can achieve that.

This game was originally designed from the standpoint that you would create multiple of each character and push them as far as they could go, learning as you went to better skill out the trees. It was meant for infinite replayability. With Diablo 2’s system, a tier 1 elemental skill will never be end game viable due to damage scaling. To achieve the scaling possible would be an impossible balancing act, as you would negate mid game difficulty, which would affect all classes.

#15

This is also where Diablo 4 is going to be an issue with balance, as they are bringing back set skill damages. However, they are also tying them into weapon damage. This is part of the reason Diablo 3 is a bit more of a balanced overall game, because everything ties into weapon damage scaling, which gives the ability for early game skills to be viable at end game. With D2, most non-physical damage has a set damage range, which scales based on percentage numbers.

#16

The only way I see this maybe working is if Ice Arrow gets Freezing arrow synergy so it unlocks single target damage late game.

#17

Fire bolt actually out damages Fire Ball with synergies. So, kind of.

1 Like
#18

It out damages a Fireball with no synergies perhaps, but full synergy Firebolt is only 672 dmg. A full synergy Fireball is 1529. No Fire Mastery involved. And even then, Fireball will still deal more damage overall because of aoe. Firebolt will full synergy of 672 vs Fireball with only full Firebolt synergy is 630 dmg + AOE effect.

#19

With maxed synergies, at least as far as LoD goes, Firebolt did more damage than Fireball. I could get much higher max damage (25K+) with firebolt. It has stronger synergy bonuses.

#20

That math doesn’t add up.
Firebolt at level 20 is 45-60 dmg (52.5 avg) with 640% ed (16x40) = 336 dmg (I was wrong on my initial math, must have actually hit the button on my phone twice, drunk and sleepy)
Fireball at level 20 is 227-258 (242.5 avg) with 560% ed (14x40) = 1358.

Numbers straight from Arreat Summit