It’s not as though the build stopped being good it’s still beastly, especially since they fixed Blue Rose.
But now they’re adding a new Temper for weapons that gives a chance to double Ice Spike damage. That’s completely nuts alongside Blue Rose, looking at a potential 4x multiplier.
Good, all builds in the tree need to be viable. Otherwise what is the point.
This is a huge problem with diablo.
Spiritborn is the new meta 
On a serious note, I wish the new meta will be Burn based. We already havd Cold and Lightning as meta multiple times. I don’t know if anyone would consider Firebolt as Burn meta. I wanna see Incinerate, Firewall or Meteor to be meta level.
I think the new Sorc meta will still be based on Conjuration or specifically with Familiars.
Blizzard sorc is still on B tier list in every category. Blue rose still is a blue turd.
Thanks for the Sunday laugh. Let us know when youre doing pit 140 against non cherry-picked pit bosses and then youll have our attention
Agree spritborn is going to eat everything on release. This dev team has all the nuance of a sledgehammer.
ice spikes wouldn’t make it to top meta simply because that IH 3 council members keep monkey jumping around rendered lots of blizzard stacks ineffective. thats how ice spikes wouldn’t be consider.
I’m pretty sure the chance for double damage will stack, not multiply. In other words, if you temper a 15% chance to do double damage and have Blue Rose at 30%, what you’ll end up with is a 45% chance for double damage, not two separate chances that each independently double your damage - this is just like how the double cast tempers work. The chances stack together when you temper them on multiple pieces, it’s not X separate chances to double cast.
Ice spikes is still a fun and efficient build. It’s what I use to start each season, until I get the items I need to start running the build I want to do endgame with.
For instance this season, I ran ice spikes till I was able to get a decent Fractured Winterglass.
Starting a season with ice spikes… running around with fireball and ice shards enchants and Iceheart Brais and Shattered passive while Frost Nova’ing everything is still fun to play up till level cap.
not sure it’ll work like that. Ice Spikes deal double damage is NOT the same thing as exploding twice.
What?
No you’re fundamentally misreading the item. Blue Rose makes Ice Spikes explode twice.
The new temper makes them deal double damage, so it’s a 4x multiplier if both go off
You’re right, I failed to fully explain my thought process.
While there was no “cast twice” weapon temper for Ice Spikes this season, there’s this new one now. I figure that the Blue Rose affix was always designed to be equivalent to the double cast weapon tempers that the Core skills got, and which got applied to all their supporting Uniques.
Now there is an equivalent weapon temper - the one for double damage instead of double explosions. Regarding Axial Conduit specifically, it was updated so that its double cast affix was changed to match the new version of the Chain Lightning weapon temper. Thus it’s my suspicion that Blue Rose will be similarly updated to match the new temper.
That said, it’s not specifically in the patch notes, so you may well be right. Perhaps that’s intentional, perhaps not. It did feel like Ice Spikes fell a bit behind this season so maybe this is their plan to buff it.
I would imagine they would have mentioned that in the patch notes given that would be a substantial change, but as it stands currently it looks indeed as though Spikes are getting a huge buff.
I wonder if it would be worth it to split the difference and take one temper for double casting and one for Blizzard Size (probably not)
Not if the current problem with increased Blizzard size persists, which is that it reduces Ice Spike density since more area does not equal more spikes. They end up being spaced further apart which can decrease the number that actually hit any given target.
This issue is the reason why i never specced to blizzard; i want a big one but i want it to be a mathematically sound choice, lol.
looks like any less-than-meta build of sorc will becoming pseudo-meta if just slot in that andariel visage poison thing. 
chance to double damage? thats nothing, give us at least chance to triple damage, quadruple dat sheesh then it’ll be viable. Honestly I’m a blizz ice spike loyalist but the way the other builds with tiny tweak does like billions of damage compare to a puny buff on the blue rose on us is disgusting.
Tempering ice spike damage is barely noticeable, 85-105% on gloves? r you kidding me? should be at least 200% now you introduce a new temper then now we gotta pick between those two offences?
whos in charge of blizz ice spike? this is rubbish!
Deals double damage will be a weapon temper only. You will use the Ice Spike damage on other offensive slots.
So now that VoH is out and we have the stat squish etc. Has anyone tried Ice Spikes yet ?
I was curious about this myself. S3 was so good for the Blizz build. I just found a GA Blue Rose (Chance for Ice Spikes to Explode Twice) and a GA Ammy to Dev Blaze… So, I may test it out later today.
Please let us know!
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