Maybe less a question for advice than for opinions, but the former is also useful:
I’ve spent a day or two that I should have used for writing a paper considering various cold builds.
Specifically, 1h auto-attack ranged and things trying to utilize seru and/or leviathan.
Now, besides the fact that some of those devotions really feel rather underwhelming, it occured to me there’s a dearth of options to convert to cold, aside from hitting specific skills with it (repeatedly).
Ok, there aren’t actually that few, but I feel it’s somehow easier to convert cold or aether to another element than fire, lightning and aether to cold.
Or, when there is a solid source, it feels underwhelming in another respect, like Arcanum Frigus.
Do you feel like there’s less choice, or does the available itemization just not fit my apparent style?
Short answer: Yeah, basically. Things are a lot better than they used to be for cold damage, but there are still gaps and the concept you’re describing has next to no item support.
Long answer:
1-hand/auto attack/range is going to be very, very hard to pull off with cold damage. If you’re willing to compromise on at least one of those three categories, a lot more options will open up to you.
Best sources of cold conversion off the top of my head are Alkamos’ Sword (100% fire to cold for Nightblades), Alkamos Scythe, (100% acid to cold for soldiers, and very easy acess to 100% phys to cold when paired with other sources), and the Chains of NIghtfire Belt (50% fire to cold, but doesn’t take up a weapon slot). If you’re an Arcanist, Star pact also has hefty Aether to Cold conversion.
Otherwise…I dunno, maybe you could finagle some kind of cold Savagery build with Korba’s Hood? Maybe I’ll try something like that for fun.
You may also be interested in looking at an Infiltrator build @tqFan put together a while back for some ideas, though it does have a number of fantasy green items:
One takeaway here is that since it can be hard to convert both fire and lightning, one approach to make things easier is to start with no real fire or lightning in the first place and instead grab more natural pierce and vitality to cold conversions and corresponding devotions.
Trying to convert all/most of Attak Seru to cold, which is what I assume you’re shooting for when you say
is super ambitious and seems like it forces a lot of gear choices that can leave you lacking in stats and/or key skill points.
I think you probably have to start by ruling out all pistols except the cold or elemental ones with attack speed.
This actually works stupidly well with good greens, arcaneweaver is nuts (still/again)
Cold pistols are indeed easily the worst damage type option, with only an abb focused proc pistol for legendary options. The cold crossbow is good, but without +shaman it’s really hard to get cold savagery points, although recent ring change helps. And then you’re still savagery ranged without passthru which is also not a super hot performer unless you stack OA to the moon for upheaval.
I tried to get cold cadence to work and that was meh was well. Strongest cold gun option is either the aforementioned converted FS with arcaneweaver, or cold primal strike with vortex of souls/cold crossbow.
Don’t want to go too off-topic, but do you have a sketch of this/did you post about it in The Great Ranged Balance Discussion? I feel like maybe I saw Cold 2h ranged Purifier at one point but I have no idea where it would have been.
Thanks for those answers so far.
The original idea came from an old thread discussing pistols, and I looked at one and thought “wait, I never did a cold attack build, did I?”, so I tried. DW or 1h + shield would both be ok there, though I seem to remember that some WPS fire double no matter what. I’m sure cold firestrike can be made servicable, somehow, no thanks to itemization. The recent patch discussion asked for builds that people feel are underperforming, and I thought, are there even any builds of that archetype?
I specifically investigated Seru/Sage/Leviathan, and found a thread discussing for pages how they are kind of meh and work well with full conversion. I didn’t even try to get seru into an attack build, I’m not that much of a glutton for punishment.
The reason I mention that pistol is that it’s one of the few ways to fully convert Aether to cold, yet compared to, say, Crescent Moon, it loses in nearly every other respect.
Honestly, I also found caster glove options for cold somewhat lacking, but then pierce doesn’t even have any purple gloves.
I haven’t really messed around with that crossbow because I knew it was already on a good spot. Banana drew up the cold setup a couple weeks ago and smoked crucible with it
After I am done with my SSF projects, I will get back to test more 2H ranged builds. I have some planned that looks decent for SR, but I have not kept track of all relevant changes this and previous patch.
btw one of the SSF projects I am doing is 2H ranged so
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