Cold Chronomancer Megathread. Fully updated.

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creek#7916 wrote:

I'm just a level 70 weenie and CoF comet refugee, but I've been clearing level 5 maps pretty safely and fast with frost wall + self-cast comet. I have a second wall also CoF. Basically I just manually cast wall with cascade as a defensive tool and taunt (most) enemies and then manually cast comet on top of it. It annihilates pretty much anything I come across. For harder stuff I use a low level bomb to apply exposure and curse and then just do the same thing as with normal mobs. I haven't really noticed the nerf to repeated freezes.

For the passive tree I've chased down all the ES and crit nodes including innoculation and eternal youth. I don't really struggle to survive and just rewind occasionally for positioning or if I take a huge hit from something. I'm not really sure where to put my 3rd asc. points but I am enjoying rift and apex.

I was lucky enough to get an everlasting gaze but the rest of my gear is 1ex stuff. Lots of ES, crit and stun threshold as well as the usual. Sapphires with ES are cheap and the node for ES on helmet is amazing. I have just shy of 4k ES.

I do have to say though, I just finished act 3 cruel yesterday and a LOT of the mobs from the timeskip areas just walk through frost wall. The stun threshold helps but it is infuriating

Hello there, could you please try and share your gem setups and passive tree? I'm doing something very similar (loving the ice wall/comet explosions) and I'd like to update or change things around where needed. Thank you! :)

Casia, I won't argue on most of things you wrote, bc I partially agree that Chronomancer need a buff/rework or whatever. I too can rant about it hard bc I had different expectations before the launch, although my points are a bit different and related to current in-game interactions between some skills and supports.

However, I'm dead set on how useful Apex of the Moment truly is in my current setup. Right now, it is the only Chronomancer passive I use 100% of the time, and I can't play without it anymore. Literally, anything I want to test always includes Apex, Blasphemy, Temp Chains, Zone of Control, and Hindered Capabilities. It's literally my build enabler node and the only reason have no thoughts about rerolling. I just like it that much.

I also just 4-linked my Blasphemy and put Encumbrance there for even more effect.

All slows are multiplicative to each other, and yes, there are heavy diminishing returns on Rarity.

Diminishing returns on rarity works like this: you can apply chill to a normal monster for 50% at most, and on bosses - 25% at most.

Now let's talk about multiplicative and slow magnitude.

There is a thing you are missing. There is no cap of 50% slow for all types together. Each slow type has it's own cap. I can apply 50% Chill (it has cap of 50% tho), 58% temporal chains (manual casting to show it can go higher than 50%), 18% hinder (default is 15%, Slow magnitude actually show the difference) on 1 target.

The thing there is, I don't know exact formula, but obviously 50% chill with 58% temporal chains won't immobilize the target, but makes it a lot slower.

So, the Apex is another 24% multiplier to everything (chill, chains, hindered) w/ Hindered Capabilities wheel and some slow magnitude, and it makes drastic difference when everything is stacked.

I did another manual tests with a timer on a random mob (besides that video that clearly showed big difference). Without Apex his attack speed under Temporal Chains was about 3.6-3.8 seconds on average. With the Apex it went up to 4.7-4.9 seconds on average. I can't say precise numbers bc of my reaction speed errors, but difference, again, is that huge.

It helped me countless of times to just walk out from the danger where w/o Apex I could die. Because Temporal Chains alone just couldn't handle that shit.

Alright.. Ill look into it more. if chill is the only one thats capped. alright that is solid then.


anyway, other interactions I've been looking at.
Burning inspiration.. curses are inscriptions. I don't know why it says that..
so self casting curses can apply burning ground effect at 20% of current mana damage. does not consume the mana.

cast on crit. 100spirit. 90spirit with quality.
this is probably a very solid choice. Frost wall+eye of winter, procs CRIT even without enemies around. granted. at like 1 power.
getting 5% per crit eye of winter on a wall with no enemies around. (unsupported just the gem, no supports, no +energy.) note, that its all or nothing. if eye of winter crits, every projectile is a crit. if it doesn't, none are.
(cast on crit+frostwall)
crit arcane surge.
solid support in supercritical, and leverage. possibly mana flare.

soul offering. buff, 4s duration. more spell damage.
no mana cost.
needs to sacrifice a minion.
tried cleric 21 spirit. didnt take it into combat.. not sure how well it survives without support. 8s respawn iirc.
this seems like a potentially solid damage gain for little investment, and no real mana cost.
could take advantage of +buff duration here. the "spike" is a minion and you lose the buff it dies..but, as far as I could tell, it doesn't need to be near you.

Impending doom
self cast curses. trigger doom blast on cursed enemies when the curse expires.
.15s cd(3 uses) deals base chaos damage equal to 15% of current mana. doesn't actually consume mana. But still gains archmage, etc damage. cursed ground instant effect.
repeat casting insantly pops it. spell echo.. doesnt work well with blasphemy.

A bit more.

so got trial 3, and was testing out temporal rift.
Im pretty bad at it. ha. regening your mana back, then resetting back to being empty is how its supposed to go right?

It is super fun and looks cool though.

mechanically, there is a danger. it resets ES back to the original point. including ES DELAY. reseting not just the value, but also the delay from taking damage is pretty rough. I definitely wish it didn't do that.

it does NOT reset recoup however. you can take damage get mana/life recoup. temporal rift to reset life/mana, and that recoup will still be ticking.

no great ideas on how to make use of that. the general reset ought to be good with mana tempest/sigil of power.

Quality-
class skills DO list quality.. anyone have ideas on that? temporal rift, timesnap, time freeze.

cast on crit- 0-10% reduced reservation. so we could get it down to 90. allowing clarity.

cast on freeze- 0-15% energy gained.

Blasphemy 0-10% reduced reservation. 54 per. 108 for 2. the odd number probably makes this not so great.

Small update.

Lvl 90 now, breaches and deli are good for exp.

Nothing much, getting used to the build. I found myself still using Frost Wall literally always now. I still exploding them, but with the Frostbolt instead of Frost Bomb. This way gameplay is significantly faster, bc Frost Wall always has the damage and aoe to delete everything, unlike Frostballs alone. Snakepit does a double job.

The gameplay is very close to that of Frostball + Ice Nova, doing literally the same but with the wall on top of the balls.

Barely using Frost Bomb outside of bosses. And here's funny fact.

I got my 4th ascendancy passive set through Ultimatum (the build performs extremely well here due to massive aoe slow - I always choose enemy-on-hit buffs like grasping vines or poison on hit instead of turrets and whatever).

And during the final bossfight, the majority of the damage was done by Frost Wall and Frost Bomb, with the occasional Comet on a frozen boss. Here is the problem - it is hard to freeze pinnacle bosses. It shows the downside of Heavy Frost wheel and all supports related to frozen targets loud and clear. However, outside of pinnacles - it's good enough.

About the changes - I respecced from Time Snap for Temporal Rift for the challenge, and it is extremely useful for MoM.
It saved my ass several times during the ultimatum run in general, and I always had enough mana to cast spells or take hits during the final fight
Somehow, I regret not playing with it all this time.

I wish I had both rift and cd reset vs Trialmaster. The bossfight was prolonged a bit bc I was waiting for CDs on Wall and Bomb. In general, extremely easy fight bc of slow, and temp rift. Got hit? Boom - full mana again. Used a lot on manastorm? Boom - and its here again. Love it.

My current Ascendancy choice:

Apex of the Moment - Now and Again - Footprints in the Sand - Quicksand Hourglass.

The reason behind 4th point is simple - it speeds up mapping on frostbolt w/ snakepit spamming. More castpeed provides more movement speed on practice too, so it's 1/3 of the map duration under this buff. Basically, it's 4 seconds with the buff and 8 seconds w/o. The mentioned CD is 12 seconds long, and it starts the countdown after the buff is triggered, not at the end of it (like CDs in PoE 1).

Time Snap is definitely the node of choice for bosses or the gameplay w/o Snakepit. But big bosses ain't that accessible rn. Even map bosses are not on every single map.

Also, I've never tried to use time freeze. Not sure if I need it, slow does its job good enough.

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Casia, thanks for the insides. I've checked burning inspiration and impending doom a while ago. Fun af, but scaling is the problem. Burning inspiration is obviously about Flammability curse and fire dot scaling, but impending doom does chaos damage. Both can't get gem lvls or quality.

About quality on Asc skills - idk how to get it. Gemcutters don't work.

Still haven't tried EoW too. Dunno, don't like how it looks.

Temporal shift being super good with MoM is a really good point.
Its probably a heck of a lot easier to time it right and never shift back to the wrong spot with MoM+eb, compared to life and ES.

EoW. yeah. Idk, I tried it repeatedly during leveling, and kept going back to frost bolt. at some point, it feels like it took off though. maybe I have to look the numbers and scaling. maps and after the +3skills/+2 skills wands its doing much better for me now.
The critical weakness then boosting wall/bomb/snap damage.
with careful assassin node, near 100% uptime on the 10% chance for arcane surge node.

I wish I had better ideas on setting up ground effects for EoW's damage gain.
theres the chilling ground on freeze. theres burning inscription/spell echo. ritualistic curse cursed ground doesnt seem to do anything. I want shocking ground. but lit warp is not viable.
flame wall is actually not burning ground.

cast on freeze/cast on crit frost wall automation. yeah, this is the ideal.
CoF is just quite not consistent enough. have not gotten quality up, or energy passives, etc to fully test if it can be made viable.
Cast on crit I think has a higher top end potential. costs more spirit, but scales more, since it can proc before freezes, and we can proc it on our own walls. and you can't proc freeze, on frozen targets. you can crit frozen targets.

I almost wonder if a +spirit, Malice scepter is not ideal. cast on crit, blasphemy, AND archmage. or CoC, AND CoF.

Cold exposure support is on crit. Lightning exposure support is on shock.
mana flare is on crit.

crit casting frostwalls, and self casting frostwalls, with Eye of winter. less bomb direct use. second wind can be moved to either wall, or timesnap. this reduces bombs cd back down to 3.5s default,(less with cdr) Wall even gets CDR as quality. bomb gets more exposure.

swapping ingenuity and second wind in general. ingenuity on bomb=2.46s cd.(with chrono 12%, without forthcomign 10%) gives time snap 2 uses, but 57.8s cd. this reduces the auto double casting bombs. and reduces the quad bombs... but, is way more consistent overall.


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Quicksand Hourglass.
yes, this is something I was going to comment on in the balance post. it actually scales. it might be wholly worse then stormweavers arcane surge line. but, hourglass at least scales with gear, compared to the chronomancers, CD line which ultimately gets locked down by hard cooldowns.
part of the frustration.

Meanwhile, i fit CoF - Comet back. With the help of corrupted Oaksworn Sigil Crest Shield, got +55 to spirit (9ex), it's enough with quality on blashemy. Bought a cheap +5 cold wand (30ex), which is a bit weaker than my offset staff with freezing shards (10ex a week ago).



Insane shit.

Tomorrow will record smth to share. I hope for breach in open area.

Tested Cold Fireball (Blueflame Bracers). 20% chance for fun (Wildshards). 80% chance to be shit in comparison to frostbolt overall (I never expected i'd say this). (Edit: Have to say, it's for my current build and how I use it. For other builds, fireball might be better. Probably.)

Anyway, I can't complain about mapping anymore. It's definitely in "decent" area now.

neat. I was going to suggest trying blueflame bracers again.

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Seventh Zodiac#8341 wrote:

Hello there, could you please try and share your gem setups and passive tree? I'm doing something very similar (loving the ice wall/comet explosions) and I'd like to update or change things around where needed. Thank you! :)

No doubt not very optimised or probably very good but I'm enjoying the damage and defenses from all the crit and ES nodes. Obviously everlasting gaze + EB/MoM/CI is an overpowered combo and I have zero mana issues whatsoever. I dont even use clarity.

Rift - Second Wind
Time freeze - Persistence
CoF - Wall, EoW, Impetus, Font of Mana
Comet - Spell Echo, Unleash, Considered Casting, Magnified Effect
Wall (Manual) - Arcane Tempo, Arcane Surge, Spell Cascade
Bomb - Inevitable Crit, Supercrit, Strip away
Hypothermia - Heightened Curse, Expanse, Hex Bloom
Cold Snap - Execute, Elemental Focus, Concentrated Effect
Blink - Ingenuity

There is a build going around that is pretty similar to this but with cascade on Comet instead of on wall, but I find cascade annoying and not great for bosses and uniques, at least with my (other than gaze) crappy 1-3ex gear. I really like unleash + spell echo on comet because the four comets dooshing down is extremely satisfying and fills the hole in my heart where CoF comet used to be.

Basic rotation is ice wall -> comet x 4 and repeat. Anything that survives that (ie. tougher rares/bosses) gets curse and bomb and more walls and then more comets and then temporal freeze if they're still up and then some more comets. Casting speed is extremely good for this build and makes it feel a lot better. ES + casting speed sapphires are pretty cheap too.

How do you guys inflict Shock with Archmage? I can't seem to make it work.