Spells : What is the point of cold damage, when fire/lightning is so much better?

(This is mainly in regards to spells)

You can stack massive ignite damage. Scorching ray is one of the most popular skills according to poe.ninja, so clearly, it works.

Lightning is also extremely popular and there are builds that claim to be able to shock end game bosses to do 50% more damage and builds that can get 1m shaper dps or more.

In comparison, there are almost no cold spell builds.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-forum/22?tag=Elementalist

There is literally one 3.2 cold build here and when i was reading it, the entire time i was thinking "wouldnt lightning do more damage if you are going for DPS with poet's pen?".

Every element is supposed to have some kind of advance. Fire does DOT. Lightning shocks. Cold chills/freezes.

Heres the problem as i see it : The first two is always useful. More damage is ALWAYS good.

Cold? End game bosses are immune to freeze and it is very difficult to get single hit damage high enough to freeze red map bosses.

Even if you can freeze t15 map bosses...so what? 1m shaper dps means the boss dies more or less instantly anyway. Why bother freezing the boss? Let me give you two options :

- Kill the boss instantly before it can even touch you

- Freeze the boss and kill it a lot slower

Which would you choose?

Chill : OK you can chill end game bosses. Cool! Unfortunatley you cant ramp cold damage up high enough to chill them for much anyway. Even after stacking frost bite + frost bomb + all kinds of cold penetration bonuses, your chill effect is nearly nil on end game bosses. I'm nearly maxed out on chill bonuses and the chill effect is pretty much non-noticeable on t6 elder guardians.

Even if you can hit the 30% chill cap, it doesnt matter. Why? Because in a game where bosses can easily kill you in 2s or less...making the boss slower by 30% isnt going to help at all. The game is all about outdpsing the boss. Most of the top builds used for end game bosses are all about doing 20m dps or some other crazy high number.

Realistically speaking you are only going to slow the boss by 10% and thats if you have the beacon of ruin ascendancy.

Speaking of beacon of ruin, am I the only one who finds it hilarious how the different elements are balanced in it?

Chill is 10%. Shock is 20%.

Which do you guys think is more valuable...slowing the boss down by 10% or making it take 20% MORE damage which is multiplicative? And I have no idea why, but beacon of ruin doesnt buff ignite damage at all. Biased much?

You know the funny thing is...Inpulsa is commonly used to create a secondary explosion effect to clear mobs fast...but Herald of Ice does exactly the same thing (lets you kill an entire pack of mobs in one cast)...and while Inpulsa is popular, builds utilizing Herald of Ice for end game are nearly non-existent...I think that says a lot really.

One of the strongest bow builds atm scales cold damage.

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Question2 написал:

Lightning is also extremely popular

Arc is the most popular lightning spell (thanks to Mathil, I guess) and it's still <1% of all skills in the game.

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Question2 написал:

there are builds that claim to be able to shock end game bosses to do 50% more damage

You need to get 150% increased shock/ailment effectiveness for 50%. I doubt this is achievable without going full meme.

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Question2 написал:

In comparison, there are almost no cold spell builds.

Says who - a person who plays Freezing Pulse? 9 out of 10 Sabos are GC, and every 20th character in the league uses GC as their primary skill. Well, it's only one or two builds technically (mines/totems), but still more popular that lightning. GC is the only spell in the game to have 100% phys-to-single-ele conversion almost for free (2 threshold jewels). With lightning your best bet is to waste an entire support gem and wear a lousy pair of boots. And after that you're still at 80%.

Shock is nice but the thing is - you don't need to use a lightning spell to shock, "1 lightning damage to spells" somewhere on your gear is enough for elementailst. Those few people who play elementalists use golems or attacks primarily. Says a lot about great lightning spells, doesn't it? Also Vaal Lightning Trap provides 10% shocks on 1 socket without any investments for any other class.

Cold and fire both has very strong debuff skills apart from curses. While the fire one is a bit stronger, it takes time to charge. The cold one is immediate and doesn't require any links. Lighting doesn't have anything like that at all.

Cold has the strongest off-phys aura in the game - 40% gained as extra. Herald of Ice is good for shattering - no restless dead, no corpse explosions.

Freezing/chilling does increase your passive defences in maps, especially if you're squishy/easily interruptable.

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Question2 написал:

You can stack massive ignite damage. Scorching ray is one of the most popular skills according to poe.ninja, so clearly, it works.

This probably isn't the best example to show that ignite is good. In fact, it's the worst possible example. Nobody makes ignite builds because burning DoT builds have much better options available.

You also forgot frostbolt totem.

Outside of spells, both fire and lightning are relatively useless since you one shot most trash mobs anyways where as cold damage can help proc HOI.

Scorching Ray does no ignite damage and is not affected by ignite damage at all.

You guys are missing the point.

If you cant freeze the boss and are just going for DPS, why even go cold when lightning does more damage? Please explain this to me?

A 10% chill is irrelevant. A 20% damage bonus from shock is massive.

Theres literally one cold elementalist build in the witch forum...compare that to the fire/lightning builds posted...obvious difference in popularity due to effectiveness.

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Question2 написал:

You guys are missing the point.

If you cant freeze the boss and are just going for DPS, why even go cold when lightning does more damage? Please explain this to me?

A 10% chill is irrelevant. A 20% damage bonus from shock is massive.

Theres literally one cold elementalist build in the witch forum...compare that to the fire/lightning builds posted...obvious difference in popularity due to effectiveness.

If an elementalist has the 20% shock node, then they also have the one that means they shock half the time regardless of what damage type they are using.

Also, who goes elementalist to be effective? Elementalist builds are about having fun. So of course they won't pick the cookie cutter skills.

Glacial Cascade is one of the strongest skills in the game, and frostbolt and freezing pulse are hard to beat for clear speed and dps. Compare Ice Nova with Shock nova as well. Or the whispering Ice vs firestorm.

Also, 20% shock is decent, but you can easily get 10% or 15% shock with Vinktar or Vaal lightning trap, and you can get 20% with Ylfeban's Trickery. Many ascendancies get an 'enemies take 10% increased damage' node as well, which stacks with shocks from these items.

Also, 10% chill is not at all irrelevant.

I feel like you probably should know all this since you have a level 92 Elementalist in Bestiary League. Did you not realise you were shocking the bosses for 20% with your FP half the time?

My point was that fire/lightning is obviously better than cold in every way.

Glacial cascade is a weird skill. Its really bad for freezing since the damage threshold for freeze is based on per hit and GC does multiple hits.

And again, if you are not freezing the boss....why are you even wasting your time with cold? Fire/lightning will kill the boss faster. If you are going for a full DPS build with no regards to ailments, then shock is obviously the best choice because it results in higher DPS and doesnt require you to

Due to the way support gems work, you need to invest a lot into DEX to get cold penetration and other essential support gems. DEX as a stat does NOTHING for you if you dont need accuracy or evasion.

And most of the evasion nodes are on the ranger/shadow side of the tree which is gated by nodes that buff physical damage or accuracy...meaning you waste a lot of points going there.

STR at the very least gives you HP.

I am heavily restricted in gear choices now because I absolutely need a massive amount of DEX on my gear to use my cold support gems. It is VERY hard to upgrade my gear because of this. It would be so much easier if I didnt have to bother with DEX at all.

Sure, im shocking bosses thanks to beacon of ruin. But the thing is...I could be doing that if I have gone fire as well...and kill the boss faster. Or I could have gone lightning and kill the boss even faster.

To make matters worse, the cold trees require you to spend more points to get to them as they are farther away.

A 105 chill is irrelevant. Nobody picks 10% chill over 20% shock. Come on. I had practically every chill bonus within reach of the witch tree and the chill effect on bosses like uber izaro and t6 guardians was basically not noticeable.

In a game where bosses can easily kill you in 2s or less, who picks 10% chill over a massive damage boost from shock?

The fact that almost all the cold builds are totem DPS builds says it all really. Nobody cares about chill/freeze in end game because its irrelevant, especially as freeze is the ONLY ailment that end game bosses are immune to.

Apparently freeze is considered OP but 20m shaper DPS builds courtesy of stat sticks are not. Great logic.