A little rant thread hopefully provoking a meta discussion.
It’s not really arguable that cold dmg is the weakest elemental dmg type and in fact - imo - one of the weakest dmg types in general as of late.
3 full res nemeses: Kuba, Fabius, Moose. 2 strong res nemeses: Kaisan, Zantarin. Kuba is especially a problem as he heals, decreasing cold’s efficiency much more than for example Alex does to acid or aether. Anatomy of Murder which helped with Fabius was botched. And Fabius - what many ppl don’t realize - is a huge problem because if not disposed of quickly he is capable of monstrous debuffs and DoT stacking. The best times achieved by cold builds are those were these nemeses are not present or rare.
Not one top tier cast except SS on exotic fantasy green setups, Blade Spirits with Chillwhisper are good, thejabrixone’s Blade Trap build is excellent but that’s mostly due to conversions from lightning and the author’s incredibly creative solutions in many places. And that’s just about it. Cold versions of most poplar skills (AAR, EoR, FoI, PB, DE, etc.) are usually the worst possible options. Even RoH - what used to be the cold caster’s trademark nerfed to the blue sky long ago - is much worse than pierce and debatably worse than phys. Especially when cold RoH is not really seriously supported by anything except Silver Sentinel which was just nerfed for some weird reasons. Deathmarked - the flagship cold build - became a symbol of overnerf in the community. Nightblade mastery was butchered in many places (AoM, LA) but it can be felt most on cold.
Also, cold pets do not really exist in top tier and even mid-tier meta.
Despite all those things, cold is still being nerfed! What the actual dick! Who agrees? Who disagrees?
As someone who wanted to do a cold infiltrator with dual runes, dual cold auras, and an alkamos sword for conversion, I’m devastated. Silver Sentinel would’ve been my stopgap until I got runebinder from normal SR, fettan mask would’ve been my leveling helm before silver sentinel (I had both the normal and the mythical set waiting for her once I got my saboteur fill). Now the mask is trashed (why doesn’t it inexplicably become a mage hunter item? lol), Silver Sentinel is further nerfed…
In Crucible lot’s of cold builds have big problems against Kuba. Usually 154 can’t be beaten if you don’t have big DPS. And don’t forget that you don’t fight Kuba 1vs1 too. Resistant enemies is big problem for cold but if you don’t die only impact clearing time. Kuba situation is different.
I like to see more casters and better 2handers like Savagery or Cadence.
Anyway game have so many builds, can’t really complain. But wish cold offers more opportunities, since I like cold damage!
I love how -8 flat on LA’s 124 is still cast as a ‘sky is falling’ nerf.
So what, there’s no shake and bake metawhore setup for cold anymore. Perhaps dare to try single affix MIs and step outside the narrow box you’ve painted yourself into?
Viloth rings are strictly for acid, Zant shoulders mostly for acid, Lox daggers are great but it’s just one specific build that’s not all that great (relatively) without fantasy affixes. Anyway, this one exception of Fluff’s SS build with a Lox dagger does not change the fact that cold is weak.
Give you another one: Chillstrifes. Great item in the vacuum. But the fact that even when you BiS rare affixes on them you still can’t match many no-green pierce melee setups - this tells a lot about the state of cold. Cold which used to be the flagship dmg type for dw melee, standing proudly next to pierce and not ten leagues below it.
Shake and bake ease of assembly? Sure. But some convoluted justification for this easy to assemble build performing drastically outside the target area for such gear… that’s the main issue we see floating around. Cold doesn’t have a fotm outlier at the moment so it’s crippled by forum logic.
Cold doesn’t have a single strong archetype. Among others, aether got Clairvoyaint, vit got Dark One, lightning and fire got too many to count. Cold got what? The poor nerfed Silvie Zantai just quoted? Build has 8k health, no armor, res full of holes, hardly holds itself together, needs pharma, and that 5:40 is really not impressive compared to what dps setups from other dmg types can do, being 10 times more solid. Nerfmarked? Please… Octavius got better times. Even Chillwhisper, though very good, can’t hold the candle to other things within this glass cannon category.
And it’s really not about that. Harra, Chillwhisper, Korba tricksters, etc. - they are still pretty decent builds. It’s more about what is going on with the nerfs still? Like this “clever” shifting of skill bonuses on Silver Sentinel so that some niche cold builds with shoulder slot free would not get too many ranks to LA? Yeah, there was a time when cold was strong (not anywhere near how vitality, lightning, fire, aether or pierce are strong NOW - not ever did that happen to cold or to anything else for that matter as long I can remember - from 1.0.5.0) but it’s in the past patches ago. Yet, Deathmarked scored like 2-3 rounds of nerfs too many, nightblade got pretty serious mastery nerfs, and now Silver Sentinel is getting nerfed and vitality is getting a third Wendigo Totem…
That’s your problem. You’re comparing the strongest cold build which is IMO balanced, to those in the category of “should’ve been nerfed long ago”.
Chaos has been shit since vanilla and is onky starting to gain steam in this patch - no one really is that happy since chaos wasn’t very popular to start with.
Cold isn’t at it’s best for 2 patches? RAISE YOUR PITCHFORKS! WE GONNA GO ON A WITCH HUNT!
But haven’t been nerfed to any meaningful extent or quite the opposite - received ridiculous buffs. Dark One heals the entirety of his health in less than 1.5s (from Totems only, in total maybe close to 0.5s), Belgo’s back to 4:30, world record in Crucible was beaten just now, this patch, with barely scratched AAR. There are many other such revelations whose authors asked not to reveal. Things have never been so funky before. Yet, it is one of the 2 or 3 (hardly) functional cold caster archetypes that is getting nerfed. And Z is like “no 10chars” every time someone mentions breaking the RoH shackle.
This thread is confusing for me because I generally disagree with ya1’s points but I’m like physiologically incapable of arguing against a buff for cold damage.
In all seriousness, Cold has had a lot of ups and downs on the power curve, and I don’t bother with high-end crucible or SR enough to say where it’s at right now, but I’ve tried a lot of cold builds* that have held up just fine in end-game dungeons and mid range crucible. Which isn’t ideal, but I don’t think it’s quite as dire as you claim.
*usually 2H ones, so it’s not like I’m going for ~DW ChiLlStrifE InfiLtraTor MetA~ or whatever, either.
Idk man… I have no say in caster realm cause i play melee. But for me cold melee is the most comfortable out of 3 ele types. I get 6-ish mins with a Deathmarked Spellbreaker and beaten 6 mins on a Corba 2H Trickster. And that’s on dogshit PC.
I do dislike the itemization for cold. Some of the items are too good compared to alternatives.
What i certantly disagee with is the enemies. Kuba is annoying yes but as a strongest foe he is a joke (for melee). I’ll fight two Kubas as a cold build instead of fightning one Grava as fire or lightning.
