Arctic Armour

Yeah sorry shoudl have been more detailed as the ground effect hits squat and for minimum duration time (hence the duration increase of the ground smudge to compensate). Enfin melee attacks that hit beyond the patch of smudge says it all. Most likely if you managed to get them
caught by it the next time they swing they are no longer chilled.

Hence I am for the hit effect system as that probably works better for melee, get a f'n guarantee that the chill actually does something for melee. You know in d3 you can also turn it into an AoE chill, but at least you actually have some area coverage.

Clearly the movement speed penalty is because of range and has nothing to do with melee at all. You don't want to give ranged classes an easy to use free buff, while increasing their mobility thus making it easier to avoid, but also to mitigate damage.

The balance makes sense, but only in the flawed skil set-up. The skill needs rework, but so does the mana system.

Ozgwald; if this was a reply to my post:

"That is exactly why this skill is stupid. Instead of being tied in as an alternative to the path of health nodes, making an interesting ability for melee characters to use it is completely tailored to ranged classes who have an extra buff against the few projectiles that could still hit them"

You blindly state opinions as though they are facts, don't confuse the two.

Personally I really like the skill and yes it can be extremely powerful, yet you should also understand the sacrifices someone has to make within a build in order to run this ability always on at high level.

I for example start as Templar, take in a bit of marauder for HP/survivability but spend most points in witch and even venturing towards shadow. This large travel across the skill tree being essential to take Eldritch Battery and mana + ES nodes. On top of that I also run half AR/ES pieces and half pure ES gear, with mana/mana regen on almost all items if I can.

All of this to obtain sufficient regen to run this one skill always on; I had to sacrifice huge amounts of 'traditional' survivability and HP to do so. This to me makes for an interesting game play choice.

I feel the ice effect is mainly 'fluff' (though a short duration slow can be useful) and focus on the massive defensive capability the skill gives, the MS from quality is also extremely compelling.

My witch has currently ~195 mana regen per sec. (build, all possible items, high lvl clarity)
Love this skill. Especially since it practically gives me free +bonus movement (quality) since I never have any problem with active armor + spell spam / moving

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Mark_GGG wrote:

Blood Magic support works with the skill (you reserve 0 life instead of 0 mana), but blood magic only affects costs/reservations, it does not, and never has, affected regen or degen on either resource. The Blood Magic keystone removes your mana, and thus since you never have any, you can't have the skill going - exactly like Righteous fire (which turns of at 1 life) adn CI (only ever 1 life). This is intentional.

Mark, this doesn't make any sense...

The Blood Magic description is pretty clear: spend life in place of mana. There is no obvious reason why it can't be used with Arctic Armour (explanation to follow)

RF with CI is consistent: RF turns off at 1 life, CI makes you have 1 life so RF is always off. With AA and BM, AA should turn off when you have no life left (meaning it should kill you if you can't keep up with the cost).

It isn't that these skills can't work together like RF and CI; AA and BM can work together just fine.

Other skills that don't work together like CI and Pain Attunement are consistent with their mechanics: PA works at 35% life and lower, and with CI you are always at 100% life (or you are dead). CI works with BM too, if you want to do it.

AA has no apparent reason to not work with BM, but it doesn't. Basing this restriction on the regen/degen mechanic is a technicality, and not immediately obvious to the player. It appears that rather than subtract from your mana as in "drains mana", what AA actually does is apply a negative modifier to mana regeneration. This is a very convoluted way to achieve the desired effect, if the intent is to absolutely prevent the use of BM with AA. Furthermore, it is even more confusing that when used in a non BM character with a BM support gem AA still drains mana instead of life (it should work and drain life, since you still have a mana pool and mana regen to base the cost off, then subtract it from life as normal).


I think the skill description should be reworded to make it clear that it can never work with BM. Alternatively, you can make it work with BM, at least in non-BM characters. You can also add a more elaborate description for the BM mechanic and let players figure it out for themselves.

i like the skill, i used it with a lvl 70 freezing pulse type of build. Very good for sustaining hits from enemies who hit with a lot of hits but with low damage. I found out that the skill can actually make you immune to damage from some mobs, such as the incinerate-using dogs at the docks.
I stood in the flames of like 5-10 dogs and didn't take any damage at all.

An interesting thing about the skill is the way it constantly drains mana, but you don't need a big pool of mana to use it. So i could use my whole pool of mana on auras and still keep the skill up. If i get enough regen that is...

I'm thinking of making my build, so that i can keep the skill up 24/7 and run my main skill with a blood magic gem.

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Vipermagi wrote:

How is 'drain' different from 'degeneration'?

Completely different mechanic. Drain effects a mana cost directly on your mana pool, so Blood Magic can work with it just like every other skill: The amount of mana is removed over time (drained) from the health pool.

Mana regeneration, in this case negative mana regeneration, is a modifier to an inherent property of the mana mechanic. This is removed with Blood Magic.

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How would you implement a drain in any other way than a negative amount of regeneration, without it being horribly inconsistent with other similar effects?

As explained above, these are two completely different mechanics. Why would it be inconsistent if the cost was removed from mana over time? Other drains such as Blood Rage do exactly that (in this case via straightforward chaos damage over time, so it can even be resisted). Can you provide examples of inconsistent mechanics?

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The Buff drains Mana per second. Blood Magic does not change the Buff.

I am sorry, are you aware of what Blood Magic does? It does "change" every skill that uses mana. Spells, including buffs, cost mana. Blood Magic "changes" them to use health.

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It wouldn't make sense for Blood Magic to change the Buff, because it never effects Buffs.

Actually it always affects buffs. It affects skills that grant buffs, charges, and auras. If you are trying to say that it does not affect the buff icon, I think you will find that the mana drain is a property of the skill gem itself. The only way that could work is if the gem was only used to summon an armor entity, but this is not the case: the tooltip makes no such distinction (as I said, it should be rewritten if that is what is intended).

Started using a lvl 1 with quality. Realized that pretty much every single person who isn't BM should run a lvl 1 quality AA (at high character levels where the mana cost is trivial). Dunno how I feel about that.