This topic is mostly about one particular item, but I’ll mention some others as well.
The item in question is… Beacon of the Winter’s Veil. So much is wrong about this item, where do I begin…
Far as I can tell, it’s an item straight out of TQ era, with TQ having quite a lot of poorly designed / balanced items. But I digress! What are the issues with it? Well…
- No attack speed at all on a weapon that’s supposedly should be used with RF.
- Bad skill mods and useless +skills to Absolute Zero (the most useless skill in the game) and RoH. Both OFF and RoH have better alternatives anyway, and I cannot fathom someone would use this item just for 10% cold RR to OFF.
- Absolutely ridiculous freeze res on an item that supports masteries which already provide freeze res! Yes, Arcanist, Nightblade, Inquisitor already have permanent freeze res in their skills, and OK has a temporary bonus. Why would you need 200% freeze res? It’s anyone’s guess!
I’ve put together two versions of cold RF Templar, DW:
and with a shield:
Personally, I like S&B variant more, as it has higher phys res (still low for a shield character) and fits into Templar theme better. Left greens affixless just to see the picture in general. And it looks like a mess for the most part. Although surprisingly DW version seems to have good OA/DA, decent resists (except for physical of course), and decent % cold damage.
Now to other items. They’re good except for one thing: bad skill points! Both shoulders and gloves are designed for cold RF, yet both provide +3 to Retribution, a node that’s practically useless for non-retal or DoT based builds?
Now to what can be improved:
- Add 4-5% life leech mod to RF to the weapon. Yes, really. You did that for Korvaak’s Brand (on top of extra %WD), despite it being THE medal for a lot of DW FS and Savagery builds. This would allow to drop Ghoul (and take Jackal instead) or change Ravager’s helm to another variation.
- Add 6-8% total speed to the weapon. Movement speed is low even if you take MS affixes on boots.
- Change OFF mod and points to IEE mod with % attack speed, phys res / armor, % OA perhaps.
- Add global lightning → cold conversion to the weapon to get more damage from IEE and other sources. Maybe make it a part of IEE mod ^
- Reduce freeze res to 20-30% so it won’t be extremely redundant and more in-line with other items providing CC resists.
- I asked for this two times already, and I’ll do that again: change Celestial Presence on Hyrian’s Bulwark to +1 to Oathkeeper. It is pretty much the only Templar shield and I personally haven’t seen it being used much.
- Change +3 to Retribution on shoulders and gloves to +2 to RF. On S&B variant you can’t get RF to 24 unless you go for Gargabol’s ring or somesuch. And all Retribution does is just adds some frostburn damage, basically.
You reworked Crystallum and now it’s a great weapon for melee Archon, why not make Beacon the go-to weapon for cold Templars?