Arctic Armour

anyone else think that arctic armor is a poorly designed skill? POE currently employs 2 resource mechanics. Either you can use mana or life with blood magic. Thus, when one thinks of arctic armor, one would expect the mana "cost" to fall under this system. However, arctic armor operates within an entirely different resource mechanic designed specifically for this skill. This makes the skill extremely counter-intuitive and unless you look it up on a wiki, its not obvious how this skill works.

I understand that this was done for balance reasons, but I think there are many different ways to balance this skill without compromising the integrity of one of the core game mechanics. The int/dex requirements can be increased to levels that would make it hard to use with blood magic. The blood magic skill gem can be nerfed. The skill could reserve mana which would make using it with blood magic hard to do etc.

Of course this applies to all skills and not just arctic armor. If things aren't consistent then the game wont be fun to play for newcomers.

Also, the idea that the skill should be toggled on and off as needed may sound cool at first but is in practice not fun to do at all.

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randomletters543 wrote:

anyone else think that arctic armor is a poorly designed skill?

There are just so many problems with Arctic Armor it's hard to describe...

Is it really worth it to drain 5 times the amount of mana just to be able to move?
Is the ice trail effective enough to justify draining this mana?
Is it worth it to risk not keeping this skill active all the time when relying on it as a defense?
Is this skill good enough 'as is' since you can't link it to any support gems?
Is it worth it to take half your skilltree in mana and max your Clarity to keep this active while stationary?
Does this skill actually add to your survivability?

NO,nonononononono....

IMO the gem should change:
NO extra mana drained while moving (the ice trail can be removed since the effectiveness of it really doesn't come anywhere close to the mana cost which completely nullifies the reliability of the gem since you can't keep it active as a defense)

I can think of many,many,many improvements to this skill, but this one change should make it good enough to be able to use as a defense, which is something es/eva users really need...

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Vipermagi wrote:

The Buff it places on you drains your Mana constantly. This is not a Skill Cost; it's a Buff.

Is it worth it to drain 5 times that amount when you want to move without any way of being able to reduce that cost?

I love this skill! I keep it switched on all the time on my templar!

I used increased duration on it, and it works great :D

I really like the skill so far. I had played a lvl 47 Ele Hit Bow Witch, which unfortunately died to a DC in western forest :( . Basically as soon as I got EB I had enough Mana to stand with it and shoot EleHit+Lmp+WeaponEle+Chain. With a popped Mana Flask I could also move while maintaining Mana. I always leveled it and it reduced Hits by a lot (seemed like more than 60% of damage from small white mobs) and the Ice Trail is nice to kite bigger mobs. I used pure ES gear. I first went to Templar Tree and got Catalyse and all the stuff, which is why I couldn't maintain the Mana while moving.

This, however, is really dangerous in hardcore: if you don't have it on when you DC you are dead. If you lag out for a second you might be dead aswell. I dc'ed and a friend I leveled with told me I was dead within less than 2 seconds. I don't think it's a flaw of the skill, but just something to keep in mind. You should either respec into it later on or directly get the Mana for it. Not having defenses up all the time and not having enough buffer to take hits for a bit (like CI has) gets you killed.

Well when i said the skill was poorly designed, I wasn't really talking about the effectiveness of the skill. For example, searing bonds is a "good" skill because it does what one would expect it to even if it's completely useless. Arctic armor is a "bad" skill on the other hand because it uses mana in a way that is independent of every other skill in the game.

As with any game, people have a certain expectation of reality and when actual reality coincides with this horizon of expectations, theory crafting feels really good. To the extent that reality fails to conform to these expectations, the game begins to feel cumbersome and ceases to "make sense."

If for example lightning strike shot out fire projectiles instead of lightning projectiles it would make no sense. In the same way, it's reasonable to expect a skill that uses mana as a cost to use life as a cost with blood magic.

If arctic armor can't be balanced within the core mechanics of the game it probably would have been better if it wasn't introduced in the first place since it sets a bad precedent. If they keep releasing skills that compromise the game mechanics, then eventually the game will be too hard to understand and to play.

Also, having to toggle stuff on and off is really cumbersome and in my opinion is a stupid concept.

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Vipermagi wrote:

When you look at the tooltip of Arctic Armour, note that it does not list any Mana Cost or a Reserve amount. That's because it's free. Reduced Mana has no cost to reduce, hence it doesn't do anything.

The Buff it places on you drains your Mana constantly. This is not a Skill Cost; it's a Buff.

how vague, it's almost like the skill descriptions are trying to trick people sometimes

it's obvious when a player notices the huge mana cost they are going to start thinking of ways to mitigate it. And with all the variables in this game it's very likely that someone might not notice that little detail, it needs to be more apparent that taking mana cost reduction passives aren't going to help with this gem IMO

I'd care about the +7% move speed with quality very much if:

* The buff persisted across zones. Having to micro the damn thing by fiddling around with the hotkeys every 12 seconds is a non-starter.

* It didn't require a blood magic linked Clarity to use the gem level 1 version of this skill.

>1628 mana required at base regen to maintain a c.lvl 10 skill. No thanks Jeff.