Test Discussion GU 49: Ice AM Improvements

Please use this thread to share any feedback and report any issues with Ice AM improvements. Update notes follow:

• Cold Snap: Cold Snap now increases power regeneration rather than returning Power instantly. In addition to its existing effects, it now also restores power when activating Bitter Winds and Wintry Tempest.
• Arctic Gust: Damage increased slightly to bring it within range of other abilities of its class.
• Avalanche: Damage increased slightly to bring it within range of other abilities of its class.

I like the adition of bitter winds and wintry tempest to the power return, I'm not a fan of the power regen instead of power back, I'll do more testing but for my first impresion is really good.

The damage from both artic gust and avalanche are definitelly way better than it was before, I personally wonder if it's not a little bit over powered, from the quick testing i've done it's doing about 2-3k more damage per second than what it did before the update.

I'll do more testing to provide more numbers.

Arctic Gust is still too close rage to be viable if you use that range with any top tier content you will get killed and fast. But I do like that we can block now.

Why Frostblast is not update like Fireburst ? That can be great to have this power update is still useless for a long time and it is the same power than Fireburst.

Considering the extremely limited range on Bitter Winds, it should probably do more damage. That would allow swapping tempest out and putting bitter winds in on a melee build. As it is now, if you don't wanna carry tempest for whatever reason (dot overwriting or solo content where a static circle is not favorable) you're better off bringing R.Gale over bitter winds.

Preliminary tests with Arctic Gust suggest it's the top of the DPS food chain after this change, maybe too much.

Frost Blast is not part of the AM and in all reality it sucks a lot.

The range on Bitter Winds is a lot farther then it looks it's really about double the range of the animation range.

Ice's AM was pretty good as it was. Now it's excellent. First tests show single target damage is top notch.

Bitter winds is an interesting addition-- throwing a shield in could make arctic gust more viable real combat situations.

I can use 'Splosion on every boss in Happiness Home, so AG should be fine. You can always

Btw haven't been able to jump on test yet, did the WM bug got fixed where you could use WMs to boost the AMs? Like Brawling's Shuriken Storm into Arctic Gust or the SC for the crits?

There was never any bug with WM, the first hit with gust/avalanche after using ice bash is a usually a crit, WM does not affect that. As for the SC, cold snap doesn't kill WM crits while its active, don't know if that is intended but it has been that way since the AM was released. Its like battle display from gadgets, allows WM crits on individual powers, but has no effect on the performance of the AM's heavy hitters.


As for the changes. It seems that Gust could really use a wider cone, its area of effect is is very small and on top of that only hits 5 targets, i could be wrong but i think its the only close range AM heavy hitting power that can't hit 8 targets. Due to the small cone it also seems unable to hit flying targets, you can jump and hit them, but that is kind of silly since you don't have that limitation on any other power.

Ice
29040/s
28483/s
Wintry Tempest
Cold Snap
Ice Bash
Arctic Gust

Tested on League Hall 3 sparring targets in the left side. No trinket and soda used. CR 126 158 SP. Only Melee damage tested.

For that i said a Update for this power to insert in AM.

Because Frost Blast don't have the bonus of WM and is not in the AM part too. He can be a other option than Artic Gust.

I'm thinking Arctic Gust may have been boosted a little too much.

At CR 126 with 10054 Might, using this rotation:
Wintry Tempest->Cold Snap->Ice Bash->Arctic Gust->Arctic Gust->Arctic Gust->Arctic Gust->Repeat

I was consistently pulling in 29k-31k for 30 second parses on the 8 league hall sparring targets.

The best I can manage with Gadgets is an average of 27k after the latest hotfix. Munitions and Mental are averaging 26k-27k for me.

For a 1c/w2c/w3 4 4 4 4 repeat rotation it's pretty strong I'll give you that but it's even more monotone than quantum or mental ^^

In my single-target tests AG came in on top of Fire, Mental, and Quantum, but only by about 50-60 DPS in 60 second tests ( which I considered a wash).

Can you routinely hit 8 targets with both Avalanch and Arctic Gust?

I recently received a PM from "Lithium Cell" suggesting that AG's cone needs to be widened-- but if it's hitting 8 and beating mental at it it's probably ok. I really don't have the time or inclination to exhaustively test Ice because I'd much rather go back to staring at Firebursts.

The only thing I don't like about Ice now is the recent change to Arctic Gust that tends to lock you on to a target. I liked it better when it was more freestyle.

Considering Arctic Gust is the heavy hitter power with less Range + Area of Effect (compare it with emp, time bomb, mass terror, etc.) i think is fair for it to hit the hardest.

Anyway, as L T was commenting, in real raids is really difficult to optimize 100% all the time your Arctic Gust. So do not trust blindly parses with sparring dummies.

I will have to try 8 targets, but on 3 targets I was getting 33k for Ice, 30~31k for Gadgets, and 30~31k for Fire. I tried Mental and I was getting around 27k, but I chocked that up to my lack of experience with Mental. I haven't tried Munitions yet.

I think the current cone is "ok." I've learned to work with it while playing alerts and end-game raids. You eventually learn where to stand to get maximum effect while not getting yourself killed. Would I be ok with making the cone a bit wider? Sure. That would make life easier for Ice players.

I was just commenting on its damage potential in my post. My opinion is that it may have been tuned a little bit too high.

Gust can only hit 5 targets regardless of how those targets are arranged. Widening the cone and allowing 8 targets to be hit needs to be done, if not it makes it the only power that has to worry about positioning.

There's an Ice guy in my league who says the same thing. I think requesting the cone be larger is just coming from someone who needs more practice.