- Icefall Legendary Node
- Previous: Killing a Frozen enemy grants you 15% of your Maximum Life as a Barrier (236) for 5 seconds.
- New: Your Frost skills deal x15% bonus Critical Strike Damage to Vulnerable enemies. This bonus is doubled against Frozen enemies who are Vulnerable.
Icefall was useful in alot of ways, different, provided some interesting interactions. Was also nice for helltides when under geared and pulling 2-3 packs at once as it boosted your EHP quite nicely.
Then you change it too the same boring routine, MOAR DAMAGE? Really? Iād prefer the utility of generating extra barriers and EHP to a CRIT/VULN BS in a game where the community has already told you to tone down the CRIT/VULN damage 
We had at least 1 utility legendary node. Chosing between damage node 1, damage node 2, or damage node 3ā¦ isnt fun.
Was looking at changes for S2, and you guys break as much as you fix. Seriously though, why the change?
8 Likes
Because the node needs updating. Issue is that instead of actually fixing the problems with it they went and replaced it with a simple āmore damageā. They should have changed it to something like:
āGain 5% of your Maximum Life as a Barrier for 5 seconds each time a Frost skill critically strikes a Vulnerable enemy. This bonus is doubled against Frozen enemies.ā
Not that it really matters as Andarielās Visage + Temerity should give you pretty much 100% barrier uptime. Iām more upset about the Frigid Fate change as that one was actually uncalled for.
1 Like
Walking into T4 your not going to have those items, not to mention they take up equipment slots where a paragon node is easy to just grab at that point.
I havent logged into D4 for a month+ since I completed the battlepass and was bored with the game. Im just trying to find out why they changed it. Too strong I guess? Your idea there would have been a decent change I guess since 15% was a bit too strong. I seen icefall as something thats great to help transition into WT4 esp when it came to helltides as your EHP actually went up with the larger pulls you made. Its sad to see a great utility node changed to some generic damage cookiecutter non-sense.
2 Likes
I use this as well, and it was extremely useful, sometimes I wouldnāt engage in my full out run until I killed a frozen to kick off the barrier. Seems like somebody is really out to hurt this class, they really tend to go out of their way to take away utility. This is a fairly significant part of my utility and the only hope I have is the resistance fix will give us back the damred. I dont use the pot pants donāt like spamming pots, itās not even close to the same 6k barrier the node was giving acting almost as a passive.
This change specifically was probably the worst nerf, for me at least.
3 Likes
Canāt believe they updated this node to something completely unrelated. The disrespect towards the Sorcerer is too real.
6 Likes
Because it would have been OP with a few key vampire stuff. Once you see the health stuff, it will click into place.
We are going to be the strongest class this season again I bet. At least the hardest to kill. And the best controlled CC.
AOE dot, blizzard off tank perma regen channels with the blood pool, the new way to stack poison damage, and fire healing regen and having at least two minions will be one of the key meta builds and variants.
That is not sufficient; if that is the developer rational, its completely unacceptable within their own parameters of āseasonal contextā.
1 Like
I completely missed this from the patch notes and also the change on Frigid Fate:
Frigid Fate Legendary Node
Previous: Dealing Cold damage to Vulnerable enemies increases your Lucky Hit Chance by 1% [+] for 5 seconds up to 15%[+].
New: You deal bonus damage to Vulnerable enemies equal to x10% of the total amount of your Bonus Damage with Cold, up to a maximum of x30%.
Icefall Legendary Node
Previous: Killing a Frozen enemy grants you 15% of your Maximum Life as a Barrier (236) for 5 seconds.
New: Your Frost skills deal x15% bonus Critical Strike Damage to Vulnerable enemies. This bonus is doubled against Frozen enemies who are Vulnerable.
I actually like these updates. It gives more multiplicative damage if I am playing Ice Shard build but I donāt anymore. If your build applies Vuln most of the time, you can deal massive damage with these changes.
The biggest issue I find is this will require updating existing builds that rely on LH and Barrier. A well-oiled system with mediocre components is still better than a random group of partial mediocre and good components but donāt work well as a system.
But I think if we can create a new build that optimizes or takes advantage around these changes, it would probably be more effective than the current one because of more damage.
True but I had never gotten an Andariel. Temerity plus Lionheart was perfect for 100% barrier uptime though but without the hearts, no more 100% uptime.
Ofc. you donāt, pretty much no one has. Thatās what Duriel is going to be there for. According to the devs the drop chance should be high enough that farming for it is actually possible and Duriel himself is also supposetly not that hard of a fight either.
But as I said Iām more upset about the Frigid Fate change. I can make up for the Icefall changes with Andarielās Visage but by doing so Iām also losing the 15% Lucky Hit chance from the helmet meaning that in the end Iām not just losing damage from the crit / vuln rework but also 30% Lucky Hit chance thanks to this with no real way to make up for it.
And then they have the audacity to give us a Lucky Hit based unique for the season. Actually adding insult to injury here.
1 Like
Just plain awful design choices being made patch after patch.
The simple fix was to leave it how it was functioning originally and just cap the total barrier amount to like 30-40% of your max life.
Simple fix but instead they decide to slam Vulnerable in our face even more. Iād love a blizzard dev to come in here and tell me how Iām supposed to consistently apply Vulnerable as a Blizzard sorc that isnt by enchanting FOrb or relying on Frost Nova which is a minimum of 14 seconds for me.
Also why do both cold paragon boards now revolve around vulnerable???
Itās like they dont even play their own gameā¦oh wait.
2 Likes
yeah they had to it feels like because after nerfing vuln and crit interaction the damage would have been too lowā¦ ? idkā¦
Admittedly, even after bringing my crit dmg to 550 and vuln to 450 the difference in damage is not muchā¦(actually, I heard a sorc friend say his ball lightnings hit for 400k, I can barely bring mines to 150k, no idea how he does it but obviously this crit/vuln thing is not working anymoreā¦) the change to the barrier node for me only meant I could drop that node altogether and go for something better to increase dmgā¦
All the choices they are giving sorcs sucks XD
Temerity VS Tibault(barrier vs mana regen)
Mana regen aspects VS xāfal and tal rashaās rings(mana regen VS cdr and dmg)
Ahavarion that doesnāt work on bosses VS 1h/offhand and CDR and two aspects
Oculus free enchantment ruined by the random curse and boots stats VS a normal weapon with an aspect
These are no fun choicesā¦ but tbh the list could continue with the blatantly slap in the face stuff:
Ice blades nerfed to he ground in beta
Esuās broken with teleport evade enchant doesnāt give any bonuses to speed or crit chance
2 less enchantment slots since beta
Fire dmg over time synergy with crit/crit dmg(this makes me laugh first they apologized for this, then nerfed the combustion legendary node from 500% to 40% lol this made me drop firewall in favor of ball lightningā¦ and I miss firewall already as it gave me 35% mana regen XD)
2 extra seconds on all cooldowns after they nerfed cdr by 35%
I agree completely, the way they are doing things messes with peopleās build and choices. Surely they coulda come up with so many ways to give players barrier differently.
I went for the barrier on kill to gain additional survivability. Now it gives vuln dmg to cold skills? (does it even work on the damage of the ice spike? Iām not going to test this sorry) fine, I took the points off and put them into the other cold node instead, at least it increases all vuln dmgā¦ ah i thought I was supposed to try other multipliersā¦ but Iām sticking to vuln I guess at least it does dmg on Tuesdaysā¦
A question, I take it the new icefall node does nothing for ice spike damage? Since it states āskill damageā? Anyone can confirm?
1 Like
Look for a thread called āice spikes and ice fall for blizzard sorcā in the sorcerer forum section; the auther did some testing. The ice spikes do benefit from frost skill damage.