Freeze/cold damage/chilled ground need to be toned down massively

Right now, I think 80%+ of my deaths in maps are because of getting frozen and hit 20 times while unable to move. I don't know what you changed in regards to cold damage, but this feels terrible. I'm cold resistance capped and wearing 3 charms all related to freeze or cold damage, and I'm still getting frozen constantly. Besides that, chilled ground is nearly unplayable. It's basically like permanent temporal chains, which everyone already hated, on all maps with tight/narrow hallways.

I don't remember this ever feeling so bad in previous patches. I'm guessing you tweaked something to do with cold damage while also changing chilled ground (which I think is also disliked by the majority of the community right now, for what it's worth).

Being unable to move isn't fun. You can't keep telling us you aren't trying to slow the game down while literally freezing and slowing our character down... especially when the "enemies do extra cold dmg" mod is on almost every single map.

I agree, Freeze on the player character is an Ailment that literally makes me want to uninstall the game. There is nothing fun or good in watching your character being made helpless and beaten to death while you can't do anything about it.

Mechanics that remove player's agency are frustration generators with no redeeming qualities and the devs clearly know about it, since they introduced Charms as a mean to mitigate the effects.

Right now there are a few issues arising around the Freeze mechanics:

- Getting Frozen is pretty easy because it builds up very quickly based on damage, especially when the player encounters a pack of freezing-capable monsters. A salvo of projectiles launched from the border of the screen area is often enough to wrest the control of the character from the player and to allow the monsters to kill the PC.
Charms have so few charges that they soon become unreliable in very packed maps.

- As a Sorceress, taking Eldritch Battery leads to pain, because all the Ailment Threshold improving nodes on the "northern part" of the Passive Tree rely on Maximum Energy Shield in order to compute the increase in Ailment Threshold.
Together with the low Life Pool of magic classes, the lack of ES makes it almost impossible to build a defense against Freeze, especially since the number of available slots for Jewels has been drastically cut.

So I agree that Freeze should be toned down and that many more ways of dealing with it should be introduced in the game, so that a player can invest in the protection of the character.

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Onegar#0494 wrote:

There is nothing fun or good in watching your character being made helpless and beaten to death while you can't do anything about it.

Mechanics that remove player's agency are frustration generators with no redeeming qualities and the devs clearly know about it, since they introduced Charms as a mean to mitigate the effects.

100%. I don't mind difficulty when there is reasonable counterplay. The problem with a lot of things in POE 2 (and 1 if we're being honest) is there often is no counterplay at all for various annoying mechanics. This results in frequent rage inducing moments.

Sure, there are a few things on the tree to help deal with cold dmg/frozen ground, but let's be honest. No one wants to waste passive tree points on those things when they could instead spend them on attack/spell dmg, movement speed, or more energy shield/evasion/armor. The only players who can really afford to use points like that are the ones with really high investment overpowered characters.

SSF

Just had a very similar experience. Overall, even though I hate the chilled ground... I haven't had a terrible experience with cold interactions.

Except when monsters have +x% dmg(this is why I'm here).

Its not obvious the spells/attaks even are cold damage. I certainly didn't notice anything. Which then led me to wonder why the hell I was perma slowed.

I thought it was chilled ground.

At the moment, I think +x% cold is easily the worst mod. It does massively depend on build, but this is basically extra damage with temporal built into it.

The main issue with things that effect speed(and this is incredibly obvious), is that they also effect everything else(cast/attack most importantly). This makes getting hit once incredibly powerful- and now you're extremely likely to get hit again, which means very bad things. PLUS, you can't hit back, AND you can't move/run/escape. Interesting. I know on a two-handed warrior this would make ME rage.

Then add the very simple reality of other possible mod combinations. Chilled ground and +x% dmg cold. Great. What if there is temporal too, what if there are cold based dmg monsters too... additional projectiles... rare with a temporal bubble, gum on my shoe.

the biggest offenders are the green laser abyssal guys. it doesn't look like cold damage but suddenly you're frozen and taking a 2000 dps laser to the face.

i use a single thawing charm and never get frozen

maybe you guys need more damage

Absolutely not!

We need hypothermia for chilled ground. Makes you throw away your gear and makes you insane.

Chilled ground needs to go. With all new 6 bad affixes on waystones, this one rolls 1/3 of the time. Totally ruining the experience. It's not even about difficultty it's about waaay lower movement speed thought whole map. Monsters also much more frequently curse us with temporal chains or similar. Having both on one map is too much.