I am a level 77 pen shot rogue. I actually use cold imbuement, I run triple imbue + shadow step + pen shot. It works good for me, but I have to wonder what niche cold imbuement is supposed to fill. Perhaps some odd crowd control playstyle?
Currently here is how I see imbuements. Shadow is a great AOE imbuement because of the explosions, while poison is great single target. Cold seems to fall into this weird middle ground, where it is better than shadow for single target but worse than poison, and better than poison for aoe but worse than shadow.
My main use of it is to just be a gap-filler, since I run skyhunter and attack pretty fast I end up with situations where both poison and shadow are on cooldown, but never do I really bother opening with cold. I just don’t see why any build would take cold over the other two imbuements. Are there even rogue synergies with a cold imbuement playstyle, other than rolling “damage to chilled/frozen” on your items?
Yeah it’s one of the rogue moves that needs a buff pretty bad. As of right now it’s nigh useless. I’ve seen a few aspects that have to do with it but nothing that’s made me consider taking it. It might be okay with one of those cc’d enemies aspects that just deals extra damage to unstoppable enemies but it’s so niche that there’s no point to it rn. Most rogues that run more than one imbue only use shadow and poison, melee uses poison, ranged uses shadow in single imbue builds, cold just doesn’t have a spot anywhere rn.
I agree - especially with pentient greaves to provide chill - why would I use it over poison/shadow?
I use it in conjuction with an umbral ring and frost caltrops to freeze stuff for the 30% damage bonus. but I’m also crazy and use all 3 imbues
With Pentient Greaves in the game, there’s almost no need for it.
i just use poison / shadow with poison trap where you have cold imbue. Pen Shot rogues basically get 7 skills if you use the aspect that gives you dark shroud on marksman skill crits. Put 1 point into dark shroud and the one that gives movement speed with it bc the secondary skills work with it when proc’ed by aspect. So with shadow step / dark shroud i have plenty of defense and can use 2x imbue plus another damage skills I like poison trap for the knockdown. could also use an ultimate there too or whatever really
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It works good for barrage to mass spread vulnerability and do more damage then standard physical dmg but its still kinda bad
Cold imbuement is only good on multi hit abilities which is why it feels bad on pen shot. For general gameplay shadow is the best because things die so quickly but pushing higher nightmare dungeons poison and cold will start to shine. I play rapid fire and see no point in poison where one use of cold imbuement will delete any mob.
I really wish cold imb and synergies with it were better. I want to play a frost rogue but can’t justify it over the other two more viable imbs.
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There isn’t a point unless you invest in it. Shadow just starts working and doing it’s damage immediately, while Cold is the opposite - it doesn’t provide damage by itself it provides scaling.
With points in Mixed Cold Imbuement, Frigid Finesse, and Close Quarters Combat you get tons of damage scaling against Chilled and Frozen enemies. Then there’s the Control, Devious, and Frostfeeder glyphs. Penitent Greaves adds even more damage scaling to this. But if you don’t pick up any of those skills or glyphs and don’t invest in Crowd Control damage at all then yes - Cold Imbuement is pointless for you.
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I also use all 3 imbues. It’s super good, I’m soloing nightmares in the 60s tier atm 
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I am one of those guys who find cold to be useless. However, i created something I think works best for it. I created a Cold Penshot focusing on lucky hit with trash uniques. Hear me out.
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Cowl of the nameless +25LH (most people recycle them) the lucky hit is pretty high on this.
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Frostburn gloves (for instant freeze)
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Penitent greaves for chill
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Armor with shared misery aspect (important)
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Amulet with frigid finesse +3 / imbuement +3 with Barber heart, edgemaster
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Ring1 with lucky hit +9%, vul, crit chance, munition +5 grenades, frostbitten aspect
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Ring2 with lucky hit +9%, vul, crit strike/chance, tempting fate heart, trickshot aspect
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Asheara dagger +11 lucky hit
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Condemnation
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Bow +60 atkspd
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Pants, temerity or something that adds darkshroud per hit
This is my current build, it focuses anything about cold and little on poison. NOTHING on shadow like i used to since barber does everything. Add 1 point to +10 to energy when someone gets killed by shadow since barber explosions are considered shadow damage. A lot of my items have these in order from the most to least important cold > chill > frozen although everyone literally freezes due to the build. Dont forget to prioritize vulnerable damage
With Flurry, its a good nuke mixed with added bonus of CC for the mobs that have those annoying abilities. Most of the time it freezes all targets on its first cast and with frigid finesse it hits like a truck on the second cast.
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This. I am running flurry/RF with cold imbue and any time I need massive CC or a huge damage burst cold imbue fits the bill. I have more success with it in my bar than poison and with barber shadow imbue is very redundant.
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If frigid finesse wasn’t enough of a reason to run cold imbuement then the Frostbitten aspect CERTAINLY is.
Frostbitten with smoke grenade or stun grenades is insta freeZe.
Noxious Ice makes poison imbue chill 20% per tick, and additional poison damage to frozen.
Vile Apocrathy triple imbue heart makes it so I can run zero imbuements on my skill bar but still freeze with poison and do extra damage to CC with cold imbue passive.
I had been running a cold Flurry build until Friday when I got a Frostburn drop. I decided to give it a whirl and so switched out cold for shadow. I was quite surprised with how it plays. It procs way more than I had anticipated, possibly due to Pestilence Points with Puncture. Both Poison & Shadow Imbue have LH so they can both freeze. The 1st time I hit a really large pack the double booms from the Barber & Shadow Imbue were incredible but I didn’t expect to see the stragglers on the far edge to be frozen. The mechanics of this combo feel game changing for me. Can’t say how it would work for other builds though.
I use cold imbuement in HC but never once in SC.
Check this vid out… Cold imbuement can deal a lot of damage with Penetrating shot and proper CC on Eternal. This guy did 15.4 million damage with 1 shot!
I run cold and poison imbue, no basic. I use poison with twisting blades and cold with barrage. It’s a real screen clearer and it’s very safe since you only have to use your imbued hits because your damage outside of imbues is irrelevant
