Nerf to the winterglass was whatever, it’s the bug fix to frozen orbit that is the big nerf and I don’t see people really talking about it. I don’t think many people realize how much damage the conjuration mastery was contributing to the frozen orb build.
Explosions from the frozen orbit aspect not triggering more conjurations basically means take whatever stack of conjuration you were maintaining in ptr and divide it by 3.
For example if your setup lets you maintain 21 stacks of conjuration, that gives a 6x21=126%(x) damage multiplier with 6 point in conj mastery.
After the bug fix you’ll only get up to 7 stacks. For a 42%(x) damage multiplier, a 84% difference(!). So yeah looks to be a heavy heavy nerf. Probably knocks it out of S tier to A-/B tier compared to others s4 builds.
Hope I’m wrong, but Just wanna temper peoples expectations.
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I believe you are right. This nerf made Winter glass trash
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Frozen orb was crazy OP on PTR. I think its still a very viable build.
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First, a bug fix is not a nerf.
Why don´t you try it out before post suppositions ?
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Starless Skies is not good for sorc anymore. You need spend mana to reduce CD of ice armor
first, a nerf is a nerf, from bug fix or not from bug fix, the result nerfed
second, math is math, you can tell from path notes
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I mean it’s more of a supposition to assume everything is peachy without running any numbers isn’t it?
Anyway frozen orb will be viable just not even close to the same level as minions necro, werenado druid, hurricane etc. probably somewhere below blizzard and frosty strides for sorcs.
I just thought it was a shame since it was a featured build this season that they gutted it.
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Sad to see it gutted. Way less hyped for the season now
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Which was also nerfed by a LOT.
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You might be short selling it a bit.
Right now, on eternal server, 2x hydra, lightning spear, and 2-4 ice blades are possible with just ice blade enchant (you can ‘cheese’ a parse with the ice ult/aspect of moar flame shield, but that isnt reflected here). Thats 5-7x counter for mastery. Including this amulet will increase the ice blades until you’re kinda using iceblades as a weave with all other skills, maybe even to the point of replacing a spender in your rota. Conjuration requires a bit of monitoring and casting at a variable cadence but everything besides bosses dies too fast to really see it if you’re not familiar with a conjur spec.
It will probably still be good if a conjure build is your focus. Also we get another hard cast hydra.
The real shortfall of this amulet for me is:
A) nope to hard cast orb, unless they made it like a “hold to fire, release to trigger explosion” or “hard target to control range” control. I didnt ptr so cant speak to new control scheme yet.
B) what about my devouring blaze on ammulet tho
C) mildly obnoxious design that looked like it had some runaway math in the code, placing it directly in the crosshairs for future nerf, evidenced by the patch notes
Cant be bugged its perfect already, unless i can wear another one?
aiya just quit the game la.
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AND the fact that the FLAVOR of freebie gears give all the other classes with there most major skill changes gear for those builds… WHY DID SORC GET INCINERATE (1 change to the skill only, while orb got special unique, firebolt gear woulda be more ideal even with the changes going to basic skills) for there freebie gear ??? its such a anti-ARPG skill and it fails in power for the trade off of stopping to channel to do sub-par damage… please switch it ORB gear for SORC freebies, i feel like im being swindled by a used car salesmen here
They reeeeeeeeally want Incinerate to work; this is the third season in a row they’ve tried to juice it up, with the most extreme set of changes yet.
It makes me wonder what they’ll do if people still don’t use it in S4. Boost its damage by 1000% like they did with Charge in S3? Or will they finally give up on it and replace it with a skill that doesn’t inherently suck due to its mechanics.
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We should all boycott Incinerate build even if it works in S4 so that they juice it up even more, and in S5 it comes an S Tier buil as a result.
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Don’t knock incinerate till you try it. I ran incinerate with firewall and meteor enchants on PTR, leveled up with it to about 75.
Super easy and early WT3 and WT4 jumps. Nightmare dungeons a breeze. Low level pits just as easy. No uniques required. Don’t forget the new aspects turns it into a huge AoE, and on a 2H weapon increases damage by a sweet 180%
If only for leveling run incinerate, but I think it’ll be viable to at least P70. All without needing a single unique.
it will fail in Co-Op play though… cause your channeling on mobs and your whole party are attacking while moving ??? then you have no skill that refreshes fast enough to regain your momentum to catch up cause you wont have mobs to hit to get CDR on tele or proc a movement skill.
solo play, with no desire for speed clearing, sure you could play it… but it fails for what it is… thats why firebird set in D3 got changed to make teleport infinite refresh when you channel long enough to let wizards keep up in party play
and even math wise, like i was pointing out, the trade off to channel isnt high enough to not just chuck fireballs instead for more damage
Barb channel, lets them move
druid channel, same boat, but has more then just 1 affix to augment stuff for it, including movement speed if your wolf
rogue dont have channel skill
necro channel, gains movement speed and spawns corpses, more a utility skill then a build around skill
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Yeah, at 75 incinerate was only doing about 500K a tic.
When I swapped to a (very slapped together) firebolt build to try the new unique out I was stacking burn damage up to 1.5M a tic. That only got that high on a dummy, everything else was destroyed so quick burn could rarely get over a million on bosses.
Still, incinerate was fun for me. Setting off firewalls and meteors left and right while throwing out a huge cone of flame was very entertaining. I was extremely tanky as well, not even caring what got up next to me. Of course that will change pretty quick going down into the pit.
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The frozen orb build I followed does not use hydra, that can’t be right eh? I’ve got the amulet that has my conjugations firing off frozen orbs but I don’t seem to have any conjugations lol!
Guess S4 is season of minions and we are discriminated 
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