[0.3] (Cold) Chronomancer Megathread. WIP.
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Notable balance changes:
1. New Stuff:
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- Support Gems limit has been lifted.
Biggest buff. - You can no longer socket multiple copies of the same Skill Gem into your main skill sockets. A no to multiple Comets w/ Hourglass. - Frost Darts: Conjures a number of icy Projectiles that launch towards the target. Projectiles that Hit a Chilled or Frozen target create chunks of ice that deal additional damage on impacting the ground. Consumes a Cold Infusion if possible to cause each Projectile to lodge into the enemy then explode. - Siphon Elements: While active, has a chance to create an Infusion Remnant when you Freeze, Shock or Ignite a target. - Ritual Cadence. This Keystone changes your Invocations to trigger skills every 2 seconds instead of all at once, but triggered skills consume less Energy. - Blackflame Covenant. This Keystone converts Fire Damage to Chaos Damage, with this damage contributing to ignite chance and magnitude, and ignites inflicted with Fire Skills dealing Chaos Damage. - Ailment changes:
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- Fire Damage no longer inherently has a chance to Ignite. Instead it inflicts Flammability on the enemy based on the damage dealt. Flammability is a debuff that lasts for 4 seconds and grants all Fire Damage against the enemy (including the hit that applied Flammability) a chance to Ignite that enemy equal to their Flammability magnitude.
- Multiple hits can stack up Flammability independently, meaning that a target being hit frequently and/or hard enough will consistently have 100% chance to be ignited. - Effects which don't Hit but Ignite targets as though they did (such as from Incinerate or Ignited Ground) also inflict Flammability, but are not able to ignite targets until the target has 100% Flammability. Anything that removes, consumes or grants immunity to Ignite does the same for Flammability. - These changes do not affect how ignite itself functions or is calculated once it has been applied. - These changes also apply to any other non-fire damage that becomes capable of igniting, and to enemies. Some enemies deal non-ignite fire damage over time, which is not affected by these changes. - Shock now lasts 8 seconds on non-players by default (previously 4 seconds). It still lasts 4 seconds on players. - Chill now lasts 8 seconds on non-players by default (previously 2 seconds). It still lasts 2 seconds on players. Chills on any target are now discarded if their magnitude is less than 30% (previously 5%). Chill rework, Shock buff, Ignite rehaul. - Elemental Exposure now has 15% less effect on Magic monsters, 30% less effect on Rare monsters, and 50% less effect on Unique monsters. Nerf to Exposure. Compensated by new Frost Bomb. - Ice Crystals will now instantly shatter from hits that could Consume Freeze. As this is now default behaviour, Glacial Cascade and Fragmentation Rounds no longer specifically call out this behaviour. Snapping walls instead of bombing them. This is dangerous. - Added a new mechanic called Elemental Infusion that many Elemental Spells interact with. Some skills create Infusions of a specific element as Remnants on the ground, which can be picked up to grant you the Infusion. Other skills can consume Infusions of a specific type to grant additional bonuses depending on the skill. Some skills consume infusions that match the skill's elemental type, while others have cross-elemental infusions. Multi-elemental approach. - Swapping weapons is now instant. - Added 25 new clusters to the Witch/Sorceress areas of the Passive Tree. - Sources of increased Area of Effect have been lowered by approximately 25%. ~~~~ 2. Chronomancer
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- The Flood of Echoes Notable Passive Skill has been renamed to Inevitability. It no longer grants the Unleash Skill. It instead now grants the new skill Inevitable Agony, which Curses all targets in an area after a short delay, causing a portion of Damage they take from Hits to be stored in the Curse debuff. When the debuff's duration expires, they take that stored damage again, all at once.
- The Quicksand Hourglass Notable Passive Skill no longer grants Every 10 seconds gain 50% more Cast Speed for 5 seconds. Instead, it now grants Sands of Time, which grants 60% Cast Speed, scaling down to 1% over 10 seconds at which point it will then scale back up to 60%. Sands of Time also grants 1% increased Area of Effect, scaling up to 60% over 10 seconds, at which point it will then scale back down to 1%. ................. Portion of damage, eh. Inevitability might be useful, esp since we are stacking curse duration anyway on the offset, and, actually, have a burst damage gameplay. Is it affected by monster rarity? If yes - pff. Anyway, to use it instead of what? Apex? Nope. Time Freeze? Nope. Now and Again? ugh... Probably yes, bc CD stuff becomes worse. And what portion? If it's like 20%, still delayed damage. Elemental Weakness sounds still more useful. ~~ About Quicksand - no comments. Decreasing Cast Speed and Increasing AoE over time, idk. Bc of AoE nerf in the passive tree, it might look ok, but ugh. We need a raw damage increase from ascendancy. Extremely petty rework. Stormweaver reworked for multi-elemental use of the infusion mechanic, obvious peak for Sorceress. A proper Elementalist in PoE2. Chronomancer, with our Slowmancer approach, got nothing from the Ascendancy rework. 2 things to test for the non-Slowmancer approach and reroll to SW to have fun with infusion. ~~~~ 3. Skill Changes
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- The base damage scaling of all player spell and secondary damage skills has been tweaked to scale better in the late game. Generally speaking, spells that do not have damage number changes called out below will have near-identical base damage at low levels, roughly 5% more damage at gem level 20, and roughly 20% more damage at gem level 30.
- The mana cost growth of all skills has been rebalanced. Generally speaking, skills will have similar mana costs at low gem levels, potentially slightly higher mana costs at some intermediate gem levels, and lower mana costs (sometimes dramatically lower) at gem levels higher than 20. Good. Better than in 0.2. - Blink, Convalescence and Sacrifice can no longer be activated in specific weapon sets. They are now required to be active in both weapon sets, and will fail to activate if this is not possible. F to Blink weapon swap. - Higher Rarity enemies are now less affected by Curses. Curses have 15% less effect on Magic monsters, 30% less effect on Rare monsters, and 50% less effect on Unique monsters. Small nerf to all curses. Not as big as the Exposure nerf. - Archmage: Now has Non-Channelling Spells Gain 4% of Damage as extra Lightning damage for each 100 maximum Mana you have (previously 3%). Got buffed, but, unfortunately, it's the same shit as in 0.2 w/o MoM-EB. Still just an endgame alternative in competition between sceptres and foci. - Cast on Freeze, Cast on Shock and Cast on Ignite have been combined into a single gem: Cast on Elemental Ailment. Once again, a step towards a multi-elemental sorceress. - Cold Snap: Has been reworked, and renamed to Snap. It can now be used on any Orb spell or any frozen, shocked or ignited enemy, causing an explosion of the corresponding damage type and creating a remnant of the corresponding type from enemies. This explosion can chain react to a limited extent from enemies hit that are affected by the same ailment. Now deals 48-540 to 72-810 Cold Damage, 2-27 to 46-512 Lightning Damage, or 17-192 to 26-288 Fire Damage at Gem levels 5–20 (previously 70-670 to 105-1005 Cold Damage). Quality now grants 0-10% chance to spawn an additional remnant (previously 0-20% chance to not consume freeze). I don't like how GGG forced us to snap. This has a problem of removing Freeze from the bosses. - Comet: Now deals 223–335 Cold Damage at Gem level 11 (previously 205-307), scaling up to 829-1243 damage at Gem level 20 (previously 708-1062). Can now be Fire-infused to deal extra fire damage and gain base radius. Straight buff. - Frost Bomb: Now deals 7-11 Cold Damage at Gem level 1 (previously 16-23), scaling up to 238-538 at Gem level 20 (previously 467-701). Now has a Cooldown of 6 seconds (previously 3.5), and now has a 4 second Detonation Time instead of a 3 second Duration before Exploding. Now Chills Enemies as though dealing 300% more Damage, and now applies Elemental Exposure instead of Cold Exposure. It initially applies 20% Elemental Exposure, and 2% per Pulse, up to a maximum of 50%. Quality now provides +0-10% more Maximum Elemental Exposure applied (previously 0-20% increased Cold Exposure Effect). Big nerf to its damage, becomes a support skill only, which will be used by any elemental build. EoWv2 from 0.1, and another step toward a multi-elemental sorceress. - Frost Wall: Now deals 80% less damage in the first 0.5 seconds of its duration. Straight nerf. - Frostbolt: Base Projectile Speed has been lowered by 20%. No longer leaves Chilled Ground as it travels. Instead, it Chills as though dealing 100-195%% more Damage. Projectile now deals 9-14 Cold Damage at Gem level 3 (previously 15-22), scaling up to 144-216 Cold Damage at Gem level 20 (previously 201-302). This change does not affect the explosion. Nerf to the damage and proj speed (WHYYY?), better chill. Ugh... - Ice Nova: Can now consume a Cold Infusion to deal more damage and create an area of chilled ground. - Spark: Can now be Cold-infused to fire a large number of icy sparks in a circle, dealing both cold and lightning damage. - Temporal Chains: Now has a minimum Gem level of 7 (previously 13). Now has Curse Slows targets by 46-59% at Gem levels 7-20 (previously 24-28%). Wait. This is an actual buff for the Slowmancer. ~~~~ 4. Items:
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- The Effigy of Cruelty Unique Focus now has Critical Hits with Spells apply 1-3 stacks of Critical Weakness (previously 3-5)
Slight nerf of the cheap powerhouse. Still a viable option. - The Maligaro's Virtuosity Unique Gloves now have Your Critical Damage Bonus is 250% (previously 300%). This change affects existing versions of this item. Nerf, a huge one. At least, they would be cheaper to get. - The Whispering Ice Unique Staff's Inflict Cold Exposure on Hit, lowering total Cold Resistance by 20-30% modifier now applies Elemental Exposure instead. I didn't play it in 0.2, so not sure if it's worth it or not. - Nerf to runes and Soul Core that affect us. - Damage gained as extra Elemental Damage, Increased Mana Regeneration Rate, Increased Critical Hit Chance for Spells and increased Critical Spell Damage Bonus Modifiers on Staves now have higher values than the corresponding modifiers on Wands and Foci (50% higher on average). Existing items can be updated using a Divine Orb. - Increased Critical Hit Chance for Spells Modifiers on Wands and Foci now span from 27-73% (previously 10-109%). Existing items can be updated using a Divine Orb. Staves are buffed. Wands/foci are nerfed. ~~~~ 5. Overall thoughts. - Overall, all classes got buffed by removing the limit of supporting gems. - Unfortunately, ggg put a limit on active spells. We can't use 5 comets with hourglass supports. - Sorceress becomes a multi-elemental class, the use of a single element is not welcomed. Stormweaver gets huge benefits for this. Chronomancer doesn't. - Chronomancer rework is extremely petty. Quicksand rework is meh. New curse is an endgame bossing stuff, and pretty questionable. Strongly depends on the portion of damage and how it is affected by monster rarity. - Now and Again offers fewer benefits bc bomb-walling got nuked*. It is not a first ascendancy peak anymore. CD stuff becomes not that desirable to use. Wall+Bomb was a perfect match, now it's gone. -* Frost Bomb becomes a support skill only. It got more CD and all Elemental Exposure (not just cold). Damage was nuked to the ground. -* Frost Wall deals 80% less damage in the first 0.5 seconds. - Slowmancer approach got a massive Temporal Chains buff, which will affect bosses more than prior to 0.3. - Cold skills we are using were reworked. It is impossible now to have an easy time with bomb-walling early. - GGG forces us to use (Cold) Snap. 100% for clearing. With this approach, the Role of Freeze as a defensive mechanic is reduced. ~~~~~~~~ I have a strong feeling that I will remove the "Cold" part from the thread title. Probably, I will rename the thread to the Slowmancer during the 0.3, with more skill combinations until we figure out the best one. Cold-Lightning might be worth it bc of the Spark, but all those Fire spells look good too. Still, scaling the damage is the problem, as it was in 0.2. In general, things ain't changed that much. The early game becomes harder 100% in terms of damage output. Role of AoE slow increases. Anyway, let's check new passive tree first. We've got the most wheels. Последняя редакция: monik390#5560. Время: 21 авг. 2025 г., 03:03:05
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Monik, theres new passives that grant buff that convert all ele damage to lightning, cold or fire if you meet conditions. For lightning its spending 100% mana, for cold and fire its unknown.
https://youtu.be/xIhIXv9b7Qo?t=2050 Hopefully they refresh duration if you meet condition, and hopefuly cold one not require to do some weird stuff. So then we could still be cold chrono but with way more options for skills. Последняя редакция: PaintMaster#2396. Время: 21 авг. 2025 г., 05:38:38
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" Oh, yeah, missed it. Actually, getting full lightning conversion with archmage sounds like a decent option. We can easily remove our mana pool in 0.2 seconds anyway, and scaling lightning is quite easy and pretty efficient. The problem with other elements is not having their archmage alternatives. And non-cold spells have a mediocre base critical chance. Also, we get less critical chance with wands now. Elemental conversion doesn't work with AM, if I remember right (got a bit rusty). Extra damage from it applies after the conversion. My only wish in 0.1 was an Archmage alternative for respective elements. Not just some BS like that support gem. Anyway, let's see the passive tree first. Right now, the more I speculate, the less pleasant it becomes for a pure "Cold" build. Need more info. Glad to see you again. Hope you've been doing well. Последняя редакция: monik390#5560. Время: 21 авг. 2025 г., 06:21:06
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I expect to come back for this update as well.
getting the itch again. still need to read the notes, and other responses to them. |
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ok, so my thoughts on notes first, as I read them.
-limit 1 support removed. obviously very good, as pretty much all our skills were aoe/cold, etc. same scaling. granted, ideally they just needed to make the alternatives not total garbage.. -multi tiers. might be good for us. presumably lower reqs on lower tiers. -more supports all around. as noted though. honestly the issue was not being short on supports. there was always 10 options we COULD slot in.. the issue was lots of supports that just sucked. -cooldown supports not buffed... wow.. new active skill -frost darts. combo skill. aoe damage on hitting chilled/frozen target. and extra aoe explosion when consuming cold infusion. (not clear if this is a spell, or dagger attack?) that it works on chilled is solid. but still needs 2 hits to ramp up. new spirit gem. "obviously works with previous. - " sounds decent. depends on investment cost to lead up. 2s is a long time, but less energy, and with it spreading out mana cost, and allowing refreezing or casting new frost walls, etc has potential, as the comets are spread out. -cant double up on skillgems, outside of invokes. ew. I dont think any of us actually used that, but it was an option for a few things.. -lower reqs. good. might help make weapon swapping to staves, and monk spells viable. - " ooph.. why? - " oh. nice. this was one of my asks of course. wall+coldsnap. as well as ALL those "consume freeze" supports. This should be huge....(although, I did glimpse monick or paint mentioning ice crystals getting nerfed hard...) -elem infusions. dunno if any of our other spells/skills or supports will work with this. so we'll see. Chrono direct. -removed unleash... dangit... a curse.. after duration damage taken during the curse, is reapplyed. lame. slow. while yes, ought to work well with boss killing, invocations, and damage spikes. its slow and useless during mapping. and another button to press. -quicksand hourglass. far better then before. still don't love pendulums. is it MORE or just added now? even if more, it is technically mathematically less average dps increase. but the aoe is useful as well, and this version is always a buff, even if a smaller one. actually yeah. that aoe is essential. especially if we can't afford reverberation wheel. all our stuff scales with aoe. it speeds up our clear as I've noted in the past. "sands of time" is a must have. even if not very thematic of a chronomancer imho. overall here. not great. removed a fun ability. gave us a bad one that just doubles up on what we were already good at. (might work for flameblast better.) and quicksand change is pretty meh. better then nothing, but not really enough to pull away from anything else. most notable here is that stormweavers faster cast was reworked. " so.. this is probably even stronger then before? 20% damage is taken from mana before life is pretty strong. 3000 mana/25 would have been 120% increased effect. that inc effect would have added to passive tree inc effect. while this new "increased mag" I would expect to multiply. 20-200% 100% more at 50% mana averaged. so I think this is even stronger then before, and has defense tied into it. one of the main reasons people argued for chrono. passsives -eternal youth nerf. yo what? " we'll see. " ooph. again makes "sands of time" even more relevant. - " just one? skills. " this could be huge. we'll have to wait and see. " ooph... -slight rebuff to archmage. ok. really depends on mana management. -blink is no longer a dodge. nooooooo. fun police. -cast on freeze nerf. kindof lame. needs to be swapped to chill/shock/ignite with this change. freeze is not like the others. -cold snap rework. oh uh... any orb, or frozen/shocked/ignited enemy.. ok. thats a buff.. and reverbs.. ok. this seems better? still no CD? and, no mention of the consumes freeze. I presume it now consumes all 3 as needed? this should be VERY powerful with wall/solar orb combos. -comet. buffed... uh... ok.. -fireball reworked. eh. -tri elemental firestorm? maybe. -frostbomb. oh wtf... huge CD. unusable. weaker at level 1. but level 20 damage is NOT big enough to justify 6s cd even remotely. 4s duration nerf. 20-50% exposure, 2% per pulse. too slow. and too weak. exposure was nerfed. frostbomb is dead. - "ok... this sounds bad.. but hear me out. yes its a direct nerf to casting frost wall DIRECTLY on targets, and casting nothing else. which sucks. so, yeah they want us to combo. but we DO now have a means to directly cast on, and pop walls without needing to mess around with snakepit, waiting for frostbombs, or fireball, comets or anything else. snap will do it. the main problem here is then, well, now large enemies instantly popping our walls is a negative. cascade still ought to surround them, making snap work. Also, consider reaction time for casting wall, then casting snap. its .3-.8s. Hopefully there is a visual indicator for when they are ready to pop. -frost bolt nerf. strange. -solar orb now a weapon skill. oh F you. damn, that was a really strong combo for frostwalls, and the new snap. living bomb is a trash replacement with no synergy. -orb of storms. buffed. higher damage, and casts on any spellcast, not just lightning. comet would have comboed with fire infusions, I dont see much lit infusion combos. but if we can use it to shock, that would be something. " huge buff? but directly countered by the nerf to curses on magic+ so, same versus bosses I think. "might be a solid option instead of CoC or archmage. this is the current. " I'll look at items later. in general yeah, they are really trying to move away from single elements. "Flammability, Conductivity and Hypothermia have been combined into a single gem: Elemental Weakness. Existing copies of these gems have been updated but will not receive updated item art." what a weird choice instead of adding that as a 4th, but weaker % option. Also really leaning into these infusions. - I was actually more burned out on the campaign, and boring end game, then actual dislike of playing the .2 chrono itself. honestly I liked chrono unleash a lot. |
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nerfs to runes/cores, etc are more of a nerf to ssf.
" staves were wholly inferior to wands/foci/scepters. buff to staves is nice. nerf to wands/foci is not. The big issue here is no mention to changing how weapon skills work. we need to be able to invoke them. Cast on crit mana leech. or, cast on freeze mana leech, or cast on /crit freeze freezing shards, etc. a big factor in making staves viable, would be making weapon skills viable. (lets be honest, tieing skills to weapons was a terrible anti-poe1/2 idea.) it forces you to stick to a single kind of weapon. if we got RID of socketing skill gems for that reason, why did you bring it back here? weapon swapping to stave for solar orb might be viable I guess. wall+solar orb. snap. cast on crit comets. monik is not wrong about consuming freeze on bosses. so, for that we might wall+solar, +manual cast comet. coc+comet. Последняя редакция: Casia#1093. Время: 21 авг. 2025 г., 11:33:49
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" there's obviously a ton of changes here that could have some major impact. |
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" Archmage is effectively "More" damage, as it is basically like having that free weapon suffix that adds extra damage as Lightning. That's exactly what Archmage does, except it being 26-30% (or about 700mana), it scales about 3x harder. Archmage with 2100 mana is effectively 84% more damage as Lightning. We don't yet know if Ice Crystals will be "snappable" for sure. The context was using physical damage breaks the walls, it may not apply to snap. I doubt it does. PS: I really, really hate the name of new "snap" spell. I would have called it "Elemental Burst" or "Elemental Break" or something. Foci + Wands were nerfed only at the high end. There is a new keystone that gives us back 40% crit chance. GGG giveth, GGG taketh. It's more like removing the necessity of tier 1 crit chance on weapon. Mixed bag. It also allows us to use Wand + scepter without losing anything at all. I suspect we're going to need the spirit. A rough calculation is we're going to need 30 (Arctic Armor) + 200 (two Cast on...Gems), another 30 for Mana Remnants, 30 for Siphon Elements, and maybe another 10 for Clarity. That's 300 spirit, before Reservation quality. I Figure about 240 spirit will necessary for high end content to get everything. That means Wand + Scepter is likely still the way to go. The Force of Will Notable Passive Skill no longer grants 1% increased Effect of Arcane Surge on you per 25 Maximum Mana. Instead, it now grants 20% of damage is taken from Mana before Life, and 20% increased magnitude of Arcane Surge on you per 10% missing Mana. " No, it's more or less a wash I think. First and foremost, it's an Stormweaver Ascendency. Chronomancer will not get this ability. We can shut that down right now. Secondly, right now on Live, Force of will with 2100 mana, it's about an 84% boost (2100/100x4) ALL THE TIME. So, at 50% mana, it's a tiny bit stronger, but the 20% damage taken to mana may end up hurting us, as if we pick Eldritch Battery to scale up our mana really high, we a) pay double mana costs, and b) lose scaling from energy shield recharge rate, which was put in place to fix our terrible mitigation. This is really hard to mind-think how it'll end up, particularly not knowing if they changed MoM or Eldritch Battery. I hope they did, they needed to. (Also, a request, please use better grammar to write your posts, it was kind of painful to read) They also nerfed how much energy shield we started out with at the low end, by nerfing Iron Runes, which further sucks. We get most of it back with Exceptional socketed gear, but only at the extreme high end. Something that may also be relevant is Minions using Arctic Armor now get a Damage reduction boost from Arctic Armor. This SHOULD extend to us, as it is sorely needed. Our mitigation is terrible as pure ES. Последняя редакция: Venaliter#7965. Время: 21 авг. 2025 г., 13:36:18
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Correct me, but I see the Stormweaver being reworked, and the Chronomancer seems to remain some kind of inferior class, without its own specialty and personal synergy, despite the fact that it was one of the most unpopular classes in the game.
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