I thought of FO + blizzard like in d2 mephisto runs hehe
I think the enchantment slots were intended to give you a splash of the other elements.
Unfortunately, Firebolt enchantment feels like a necessity, and not a splash. Ice Shards enchantment is too strong to pass up on, and they didn’t give any obviously good reasons to splash lightning.
+3 evade on boots + Raiment means you have to sacrifice FB or IS enchant.
I think that they enable the playstyle, but are totally optional. I don’t use Firebolt at all, but that is because I am focused on cold, and use Ice Shards and Frozen Orb. Leaning hard into Chill and Vulnerable doesn’t leave points for Burning with limited sources/no utility. If I can freeze a whole room with Blizzard or Nova, the Shard enchant kills everything without pressing a button. The Orb enchant procs a lot, which is basically free extra damage and chill.
You don’t need to teleport around if everything is frozen 
I like the idea of playing without firebolt enchantment, but the amount of damage you miss out on from not picking up Devouring Blaze is massive.
Hopefully that changes in 3 days when they drop the big balance patch
Massive damage numbers are impressive but largely meaningless. Anything over the target’s HP is overkill, and most targets are trash mobs and weaker elites. It matters on bosses, but only in relation to how long it takes to kill, not how difficult it is.
Pure FO sorc from day 1 here. Tier 60 or so is the ceiling. Take ages to kill a boss.
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You dont use any additional skills to help with that?
Frozen orb is a thing alright…a thing you shouldn’t do.
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Yeah, every skill is viable. Have fun!
I tried. Double explosion w/2 avalanche procs. For some reason the enchantment function is actually better than the skill. The higher you go the more you realize how mediocre it is. Then you opt for shards or blizzard spam and your life is easier
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It being free when the enchantment procs is a big part, but a HUGE part is that…the enchantment version can actually target enemies. It can actually stop on top of nearby enemies, while the hard cast version just travels the standard duration before exploding.
I don’t know how on earth this made it through testing in this state, the skill itself is completely useless. Even to your point the enchantment is super mid.
Shame that one of the most iconic abilities Diablo is functionally garbage at launch rofl. Whoever was in charge of the class design absolutely whiffed so hard it’s difficult to know where to begin.
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For everyone saying the D2 version is better, how are they different mechanically? One of the things I’ve been enjoying about it is how much it feels like the old D2 frozen orb, complete with the fixed travel distance and sweet spot casting.
Yes, it’s not nearly as strong as other spells in D4, but that’s a matter of tuning (and making it work with D4s damage systems) not really a mechanical one with the spell.
And, I’ll say it again. If you don’t enjoy the mechanics of the spell, find one you do like instead of trying to make a spell something it’s not. I don’t enjoy the “drop a spell on a monsters head” spells like Blizzard, Meteor, and Firewall, but I’m not going to start lobbying them to change them to follow around a monster once you cast it.
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There’s no reason it shouldn’t explode where you target it, really.
Having a fixed range like that puts it at an inherent disadvantage as you need to remain in the “sweet spot” at all times to do remotely optimal damage and that’s a limitation few skills have anything remotely analogous to. With a requirement like that it should be way stronger if an enemy takes the shards and the explosion.
Which results in needing to balance around some expectation of high “sweet spot uptime” that just adds pointless depth to the skill floor and height to the skill ceiling.
It needs more damage either way since it’s really not a great spell, but if they’re going to keep it at fixed distances it really needs both a lot more damage to enemies hit by both shards/explosion and a way to differentiate the damage for the enchantment vs. hardcast versions, because the enchantment version will need to be weaker given its automatic explosion on enemies.
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The D2 version did all of it’s damage from the icebolts that fly off of it. D4 version is basically a grenade. It does practically zero damage from the icebolts instead putting the damage on the explosion. The D2 version did have something like an explosion, but it was really just a dense release of icebolts. The icebolts flew all over the screen too.
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Maybe they will buff it in the patch tomorrow… Tho I doubt it.
One of my favourite spells in the whole diablo franchise.
Sometimes you have to make a Build which is fun and not 100% effective.
Maybe if you buff it to the max you can advance a little as some said in this thread.
D2’s orb is slower moving and continuously fires icebolts yielding more hits per enemy. It’s optimal to aim it for detonating on an individual target, but it still does decent damage to those it passes by. D2 orb also does a lot more damage (via resistance penetration). D4’s orb is not only significantly undertuned in damage, but it moves so quickly past enemies while not even hitting them often enough to apply any relevant amount of chill effect. It’s next to worthless against enemies that are meleeing you because it just goes right past them and does barely anything. They could cut the mana cost on orb in half and it would still be overpriced- that’s how undertuned this ability is right now.
Cant you get it to be free of resource? With aspects and reduce cost?
Just to be clear, I’m in agreement that Frozen Orb’s damage is undertuned. (It’s way less damage single target then Ice Shards, and a fair bit less damage in AoE that Ice Shards enchant + Frost Nova.) I’m just wary about talking damage as I’m not pushing the hard content, so I’d rather leave those conversations to others. I’m more interested in “does this feel good.” (But power is certainly a part of that.) Before I was using the Ice Shards enchant, using a pure Frozen Orb build meant failing dps checks. (For example, can’t kill adds making a target immune before new adds spawn.)
I haven’t noticed issues with it hitting stuff. I was playing around with the Winter glyph yesterday just to see how the damage stacking worked in case they actually fix the primary part of the glyph. A single cast of Frozen orb on one chillable target was pretty much an instant full 5 stacks even without super careful aim, indicating it’s hitting pretty regularly. Although I will caveat that with the fact that I’m pretty aggressive with Teleport-Evade to keep some distance.
I will agree that it’s terrible in melee — anything I can’t get distance on gets Ice Shards (or Frost Nova) to the face. Again, though, I think that’s okay from a playstyle perspective. I feel like having different buttons for different situations makes for more engaging gameplay. The issue as I see it is that Frozen Orb is too weak where it should be shining. As I said, Frost Nova + Ice Shards enchant is way more AoE damage, and while the FO explosion probably shouldn’t be as strong on a single target as the single target focused Ice Shards, it should at least be in the same zipcode — which it’s not. It’s saving grace right now is that it does freeze pretty effectively, so it can get the Ice Shards enchant going at range and without a cooldown. (I can’t speak to how it compares to Blizzard on that front, as I can’t handle Blizzard’s animation/sound.)
The travel speed is interesting, and not something I’d noticed. With D4 having a faster combat pace in general than D2, I’m not sure slower would be better. (And why I didn’t “feel” it.)
The only free version is the Enchant version. I don’t have all of my mana affixes on my gear yet, but I’m still having to intersperse Frost Bolts to keep my mana up during Frozen Orb spam. With the same gear, my Ice Shards can usually self-sustain outside of some bad RNG luck.
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