Make Ice Better! (high effort and long post)

[feral moth]

I believe that Ice needs a serious buff.

this suggestion is from a pve standpoint, i don't know much about pvp so I wont be talking about pvp

Why should ice be buffed? For many years, Ice has been the laughing stock because of its lackluster performance to normal quest or support. Although it is known as the "resist" school and not credited for its damage, it should match the potential of other schools - such as myth and death - which can achieve the same resistance. A prime example of this is how a max Myth school is able to reach 229 damage with a whopping 62 resist and 49 pierce. On the same note, a max Ice's stats with the same gear is 193 damage with 67 resist associated with a minimum of 40 pierce. The prior example clearly demonstrates this "resist" school is not special at all, making it blend in with the other schools when each school should be known for something different entirely. Ice's distinct characteristic was made to be resist, but as the game progresses, the school loses its power. To add on, Ice's strategy isn't practical during support. To compare, life is an amazing support school because of its distinct healing abilities. On the same hand, Balance and Death have beneficial utility spells such as dark pact and balance blade. Where does Ice fall into this? How does it stand out from the other schools?

[feral moth]

Ways Ice can be fixed. (Please note I am open to edit this to change it around based on feedback!)

I will begin with propositions to improve ice's stats during soloing. First, since Ice was made to have outstanding resist, it should follow through with this for the entire game. This has a simple fix: adding 1-2 resist per gear. Next, increasing its pierce will push its contribution in a battle. Recently, with Novus and Wallaru enemies having universal resist, it has become extra clear that the devs are looking to push pierce meta. Unfortunately, Ice finds it a challenge to maintain a minimum of 40 pierce with over 195 damage. The solution for this is similar to the last: adding 1 pierce per gear piece. In addition, Frost Giant's stun becomes redundant in arc 3 because the enemy's stun resists. Removing the stun will allow the damage to increase (580 damage) and thus, improving Ice's contribution.

What about through a support school/tanky stand point? Starting off with a tanky stand point, you could make a new taunt spell that is available only to ice, no tc's or item cards. This new taunt would cost 3 or 4 pips, and it would last for 3 rounds. The spell works the same as any other taunt: for the boss to target the Ice wizard. Unlike any other taunt spell, this taunt spell would completely negate AoE damage from other wizards. As a result of this buff, the damage taken by the Ice wizard. would be doubled or tripled and take away 15 resist from the ice wizard. Another way to make Ice a better tank is to make shadow sentinel exclusive to ice, or make Shadow Sentinel work better for an Ice wizard, such as adding more crit block. A better way to make Ice better for support is to make spells such as dark pact trainable, instead of having them be exclusive to their respective schools. (after all, Ice synergizes with death!)

I am open to changing some of the suggestions on ways to buff Ice, so please give some constructive criticism, so I can further improve this!

sent these seperately, issues with the filter for this discord server

HUGE thanks to @maiden remnant for making this coherable! (She revised it by making it look professional and what not. please note that she played no part in the actual points i made, so direct all criticism towards the suggestions to me

Make Ice Better! (high effort and long post)

[inland wren]

I do agree with a increased duration on threat effects, but the issues with Ice in PvE are largely caused by PvE itself.

(PvE is way too fast-paced and alpha strike heavy for anything defensive to be relevant right now)

[feral moth]

True, I should’ve mentioned that lowering pierce but increase outgoing damage for mobs and bosses so running resist could be beneficial.

[feral moth]

Yeah, these buffs are mainly QoL soloing updates + making ice viable as a support for the fights where a support is beneficial

[feral moth]

You’re right, think most of these issues are from PvE, it’s just Ice is a victim of that, so I decided to introduce ways to fix it, at least make it so Ice isn’t laughably bad.

[feral moth]

Also would like to point out that 80% base accuracy for extremely weak spells is preposterous, increasing it by 5% would be very nice so the accuracy for how powerful the spell is would be more balanced

[tulip nymph]

No

[feral moth]

?

[meager latch]

tanking in general needs a complete overhaul in the sphere of pve. As it is, even if they're viable in teams it's only because they can keep up with minimum damage requirements or there's a general support space where you're just blading. As a life, I want to be taking hits and healing/shielding, and Im sure a lot of ices would agree. Some of the most fun I've had in the game is clutching titan's trident with shad sentinel and legion shields when juju failed. I think continuing with the sentinel concept is the most sustainable way forward as taunts can be op in a turn-based game. My idea would be to make aoe damage much more widespread late game so you dont make soloing on dps schools impossible but still push the need for a tank in team play. Also, timers need to go or be greatly extended. Even if tanks arent made necessary, they should at least have a chance to tank without making your team run out of time.

[vague hound]

Switch ice and death accuracy. Death is meant to be a more offense oriented school like fire storm and myth and every one of those scholes have reduced accuracy.

[pale sluice]

The spell works the same as any other taunt: for the boss to target the Ice wizard. Unlike any other taunt spell, this taunt spell would completely negate AoE damage from other wizards. As a result of this buff, the damage taken by the Ice wizard. would be doubled or tripled and take away 15 resist from the ice wizard.

The idea is interesting, but instead of a negation, it might make sense for it to be more of an aura-barrier, which transfers the cumulative damage (reduced by a percentage) to the player. Double or Triple damage doesn't really make much sense for middle-late game bosses, particularly since they have a tendency to do massive hits, that, if doubled or tripled, could KO, or nearly KO the ice mage in a single shot.

---

A suggestion for ice/tank improvements might be to take inspiration from the Beastmoon/PvP, where you have spells that have conditional buffs (such as if the player has a trap applied to them or not), so an ice mage might have an evolved ice armour that has additional buffs (or a reflex-cast) based on the number of traps they have, for example.

But I think that ultimately, most of the issue comes from PVE basically punishing extended battles, and in so doing, rewarding shorter ones, which makes tanking fairly ineffectual, since you just need to last for that initial setup. For example, the bosses in the Tower of the Helephant become much more difficult in an extended fight (never mind the actual time an extended battle might take), which ends up pushing players to go for a quick strategy to prevent that.

[pale sluice]

I'm a balance player, but I agree on the going ham with the shields and thing to compensate for a battle not going quite as planned being fairly fun. It's nice to set up a large domino effect of buffs/debuffs, with the intent of having them all set off by big numbers, or coming back from the brink of defeat.

I'd argue that instead of focusing on DPS, it might make more sense for the game design to try and encourage extended battles and more damage over time instead, which would help with a lot of ice magic being basically made redundant

[wide meteor]

Ice is the best already

[feral moth]

Far from the best, What makes you think that?

[tough walrus]

imo for defense schools their damage should be slashed all across the board to fit the school identity. I'd say at 170 you should only be able to get to 130-140% dmg top (randomly tossed but definitely not near 200%)

[pale sluice]

I don't know, Ice's damage is already fairly low. Dropping it any farther might just mean that people avoid ice completely, just because of how little damage it does

[feral moth]

God no. Death can get way more damage with nearly identical resist.

[tough walrus]

well then have a higher limit for resist/dmg

i just threw this together and obviously isn't really thought out much but here ``` DMG:
Storm: 200%
Fire: 185%
Ice: 135%
Death: 140%
Myth: 190%
Balance: 170%
Life: 135%

HP:

Storm: 9500
Fire: 10500
Ice: 12000
Death: 10000
Myth: 10500
Balance: 11000
Life: 11500

Pierce:

Storm: 55%
Fire: 50%
Ice: 35%
Death: 45%
Myth: 50%
Balance: 45%
Life: 30%

Resist:
Storm: 45%
Fire: 50%
Ice: 70%
Death: 60%
Myth: 55%
Balance: 60%
Life: 50%```

[feral moth]

I can see why you aren't a game designer

Are these caps for advanced combat or pve?

this entire forum post is from a pve standpoint

[tough walrus]

why would i want to be one?

[feral moth]

.

[tough walrus]

PVP

[feral moth]

That'd be good to clarify

[tough walrus]

one specifically is to balance defense and offense

[tough walrus]

You cant just get everything and be the tanking school

Well you can't just do that

you'd have to unroot everything

anything changed in PVE applies to pvp

unless you're going to keep the pvp limits low like that

[feral moth]

Did you read? These suggestions I made wouldn't make a difference in pvp with the current stat caps

[tough walrus]

then you can make pve better by greatly increasing the dmg (while nerfing tankability)

i'd say make ice not tankable (similar to storm) then that can happen

other than that, you can't make it better

[feral moth]

You clearly didn’t read my original post. With the current stat caps, the changes I have proposed would not have any effect on pvp

[tough walrus]

i dont get what youre saying

im on an ice and it's fine

[feral moth]

.

[feral moth]

.

[tough walrus]

im actually on an ice rn and it's not the laughing stock 🤣

[feral moth]

Explain

[tough walrus]

it also depends on your gearset rn what do you run

[feral moth]

I’m running the meta gear set

[tough walrus]

then you're fine

[feral moth]

aeon with night more robe, my ice is abysmal compared to my other schools

[tough walrus]

thats okay

thats because you chose ice

thats not a systematic problem thats because you chose ice.

this is a solid setup for me

[feral moth]

You're level 68

Let me show you something

[tough walrus]

that looks alright

[feral moth]

one second

[tough walrus]

progression has been easy when i used my ice

[feral moth]

this is a myth

[tough walrus]

what about it

yeah that seems normal

[tough walrus]

yeah thats normal

[feral moth]

this is my ice. (he's not yet maxed so he can get a whopping 193 damage)

[tough walrus]

whats your pet lemme see it

[tough walrus]

ye if u were concerned on dmg make a quint dmg

[feral moth]

how can a myth get resist that is really darn close to an ice, while having waymore pierce and way more damage

[tough walrus]

¯_(ツ)_/¯

luckily for me i dont get paid to think about that

also welcome to the reality that pvp players dictate these changes

kind of what happens to those who have the loudest voice

^ idk if u remember when darkmoor spells were actually good back b4 the nerfs - thats one example

[feral moth]

Also look at the datamined dream reaver sets, ice gets such a minimal upgrade compared to schools like myth

[tough walrus]

i dont look at "data mined" things 😛

ice doesn't deserve an upgrade

they're already op as it is lol

Ice wasn't made to be a damage hitting school primarily :p

[feral moth]

yeah, and it’s resist also isn’t anything special

and it’s supposed to be the resist special

[tough walrus]

Thats just because of poor decisions that lead to this

what they should do is make pve gear that wont work in pvp

[limpid prairie]

I can agree with ice getting buffed, on their gear and their spells and giving them a better utility. What has happened to the ice school is just sad. When myth’s spells got nerfed, everybody was fighting for them and they got orthrus, where is the support and justice for ice? Crickets. And KI seems to have a deaf ear or hatred of the school altogether.

What good is an ice in a team setting? Nobody really wants an ice hitting, shields and taunt are useless as well as sentinel being highly outdated. Just what are they supposed to do? Nobody cares if they are still alive or not if the team’s goal is to wipe out everything in two rounds. Ice’s role 2024: (coming from a storm; “blade me.”) Soloing on ice can be a struggle due to low damage and takes forever. But now that we have damage jewels which make every school outshine ice by a good 40-50 damage and much higher health jewels in Wallaru, just about any school, other than storm, can get 12,000-14,000 health, even more with an adjustment in gear so that strength of high health and resist on an ice is pretty much a joke now.

I absolutely love my ice but I know I am the weakest one in the bunch and it stinks being left out and not considered a useful asset on a team. To get past this, I had to adapt, more so forced to adapt, to be able to be valued as a member of the team. Since many teams have a storm, I trained mass prism, mass traps, feint and have access to dragonblades, sharpens, balance blades in tc to pretty much take on the role of a supporting balance. Still in my jade gear with a measly 8k health though. Somebody even called me their swiss army knife to their storm so in a way, I guess it’s true. Just don’t ask for a heal because about 1100-1200 satyr is the best one can get out of me lol. Yeah, don’t ask. I do team kiosk to help others. Not a good day when ice learns life spells.

For hitting gear, I run full Aeon but still fall just under 200 damage. I have an ice/death set and an ice/storm set. Sad that I have had to also train storm just merely because storm spells are more damage than my usual frost giant I would be hitting with. Since frost giant won’t be buffed, croaker replaces it by far and giant has since been retired from my deck. But the thing is, I shouldn’t have to be doing this and have to rely on dual schooling just to function as my own school. And this is in the best gear for the level mind you …

[sour umbra]

the kitchen is on fire lil man

ice is unplayable rn even with having 175 dmg & 45 pierce

[sour umbra]

oh nvm this explains everything

a level 68 will know absolutely nothing about how to balance ice in today's climate

[sour umbra]

horrible take after horrible take LOOOOL idk if youve been paying attention but ice has 1 card in pvp cuz all our util is banned or not good, our damage is awful and we get passively nerfed every update especially this last one with new resist caps

if pvp players made all the decisions, pvp wouldnt be worse rn than it has been in most of the metas before this

if pvp players made all the decisions for pve, as the more "hardcore" playerbase we all sorta collectively understand regardless of what school we main that ice is straight up pitiful cuz of how bad frost giant is

[feral moth]

Exactly.

Idk if you caught it but I added that they need to remove the stun for frost giant

[sour umbra]

ye that's a common position to have

the stun is completely and utterly useless

and if giant lost it in favor of 2 more pips' worth of damage it'd have ~645 base which is totally fine and would make the last three arcs bearable 💯

[feral moth]

I thought the stun was 1 pip worth of "value"?

[sour umbra]

it's considered 2 because blinding light & choke are 2

[feral moth]

and since the 7 pip aoes are normal dpp

and ice has a dpp of around 80, it'd be 7x80

[sour umbra]

so yea lol frost giant is actually worth ~8 pips of value as opposed to 7 which should be reason enough for these devs to look at it, they always scrutinize every spell tryna look at if its on curve or not

[feral moth]

it'd be 560

[feral moth]

they're gonna fix this by nerfing the damage of ice giant

[sour umbra]

that's what I've seen some people call for actually 💀 one of which doesnt even have an ice in the 3 digit level values

they made power nova good for balance because its util was worthless, so they took that out and buffed its damage which everyone loved

[feral moth]

they also completely buffed orthrus

but frost giant is still terrible

[sour umbra]

the world some of these ppl wanna live in is a world with a 300 damage frost giant that stuns everyone

[feral moth]

600 because of epic*

[sour umbra]

ye

[feral moth]

but it'd still be bad lol

[sour umbra]

we'd be in the same situation death was in before the buffs where a 5 pip lore spell would be fundamentally better than our milestone spell

croakula would at least kinda fill the void in that scenario but you dont even get that til wallaru so 💀

when i quested my ice thru wallaru i found that it was genuinely more worth it to frenzy, croakula, then blizzard for more damage

one extra round that no other school has to deal with is better than 2 extra rounds was my rationale

[shell fjord]

If Frost Giant was a pure damage AoE it would have the same damage as Forest Lord

So it would be somewhere around 645/650

[feral moth]

Really? I thought Ice had a dpp of around 83 so it would be 80x7, which is 581?

[shell fjord]

Damage isn’t just a calculation of dpp * pip cost. It would be
83 * (7 + (6 * 0.13)) = 646

You can compare to Forest Lord, which will be using the exact same dpp as Frost Giant

[tulip nymph]

Blud acting like Ratbeard is going to see this

[plush flicker]

*the original post I 100% agree with and I think the stats of ice in general (like making it so they do actually get significantly more resist than other schools), is more important than just buffing the damage of their spells, the entire school should be reworked. Ice doesn’t even have any purpose in team up situations besides to sit there and take damage or spam legion shield, it needs more of an identity than the “resist and low damage school” that doesn’t even have much more resist than others

[plush flicker]

Ice isn’t op it’s the worst school by far

[plush flicker]

Ice seriously needs a buff in its support options, currently all it has unique is legion shield or snow drift which rarely ends up needing to be used

Really the only reason to choose ice as a school is if you want to extremely challenge yourself

[vague hound]

Make ice next utility mass armour lol

In all seriousness tough i understand them not wanting pve fights to drag on too long but with the hyper focus on offense defensive classes like ice and life dont get a chance to shine. I think the biggest buff ice could get is for the meta to shift back to more defensive play but that wont happen because all the pvp players will immidiatly scream bloody murder.

[wide meteor]

"By far" ? What about Myth? I'm not saying Myth is better or worse, but it can definitely be debated.

[shell fjord]

Myth definitely got a whole lot better when Orthrus became an AoE

[wide meteor]

Tbh my comment wasn't all that serious as I didn't really read anything else. I don't even like ice personally.

To answer your question though (again, I now know that this post is more pve based but just remember I really honestly don't think it's that deep so don't take me too serious).
Highest HP, highest resist, I'd argue tied for the 2nd best utility (maybe 3rd of you put Death 2nd)- mainly due to their ability to multitask with spells like abom, frostbite, and snowpig, they do have above average damage, I'd say they're biggest downfall in comparison to other schools is that they're the school that has the least ability to heal. Tbh as far as PVE, maybe give them more spells that involve taunt so that they can really take advantage of their ability to tank... assuming we're going for school identity in a PvE sense

[shell fjord]

Second highest Health now

Life has taken over

[oblique sierra]

Ice as a solo is not the worst school by far. However, in a team, I would agree because Ice lacks utility.

[feral moth]

Life is highest health
4th best utility
A death only gets like 3 less resist than them.

[oblique sierra]

As an Ice myself, honestly, all I want is to be able to blade into AOE to kill mobs in Novus and Wallaru

[feral moth]

It isn't hard per say, but it is the slowest.

by a mile

myth, storm, death has the fastest time questing

[oblique sierra]

Yeah I agree it is a different playstyle, but it isnt really that slow. It is only slow because Ice requires 3 rounds instead of 2 to kill mobs. This 1 round difference stacks as you need to kill alot of mobs.

Against, bosses, its only 1 round of blade or feint different from other school in term of damage

[wide meteor]

Now with that I'll totally agree that Myth probably has (debatably) better offense all around, but if that's our only metric then why wouldn't everybody get storm like spells. I'd think school identity. Which is why early game Myth is garbage. It's utility spells are geared around minions...

Not disagreeing with you just adding to my point

[feral moth]

The 1 round difference is major, because in that extra round you can get stunned,weakness, etc which can make battles much much longer

[feral moth]

eh pre lvl 48 myth is easy, its just blade into the 4 pip aoe like every other school

[oblique sierra]

Yeah for mobs that 1 round can be crucial or it will turn into 4 rounds instead of 3 for Ice, but they kinda rarelly do weakness or stun ish. I mean more in arc 4 but still not that often. Agaisnt bosses however, I kinda expect them

[wide meteor]

And I'll honestly agree, life should not have the highest health in the sense of a school identity... that's bogus. That said, I disagree on utility (balance and death are higher I'll give you that bit I think it's hard to debate any others are definitively better), and I feel like you're referring to end game gameplay with some of the specifics I'm reading rn, 3% is very specific because most of the game your Ice will have significantly higher resist and health. Not that they shouldn't make it consistent in the higher levels but it just seems that you're so cut and dry and it's as if there's no comparison. Not really tryna play devils advocate without reading more into the other comments and the points you've made but my point is that there's a debate to be had. Not saying you're wrong, not saying I disagree with you, but maybe a more moderate "rework" approach so that schools regain their identity would be better. As to your point, they stated they'd be more focused in school identity and managed to get it all convoluted and went in reverse by "dual schooling" and school pips which is cool but just seems counter productive to their state objective of identity.

Which I'm aware is hypocritical of me considering I just jumped into the thread with a "Ice is best lol," but this is my more serious opinion.

Do you think questing should take the same amount of time for all schools? From what I've heard on lives the devs would disagree I think. For example, Balance isn't supposed to be totally 100% as fast in Solo scenarios bc it's supposed to be a team player.

[wide meteor]

But again that's so general, wouldn't Ice just fall into that category? And that's kind of what W101 is in general. Blade AOE GG

[feral moth]

It takes ice an extra turn or 2 on the best conditions, those extra turns could become potentially 3 or 4 extra turns.

Because of shields, weakness, stuns, (god forbid medusa), etc

[wide meteor]

Yeah idk that's not my experience whenever I've quested on my ice. And again I don't think they're all meant to solo at the same rate anyways. I'm going back and reading your points and this stuff almost seems just as relevant to Balance, which again isn't meant to be solo. The main thing I do agree with though is the school identity issue which I've already ranted on.

I see life having to take forever usually, but I don't really have a high level life (it's not even to MooShu) and the life I quest with has pretty mid gear so.

But that's the only school I see having garbage aoe hits, at least in Wallaru

[vague hound]

personally i dont get why balance iusnt supposed to solo.as the "jack of all trades" class they should have the easyest time going solo imo because they have something for every situation. as for life having the highest health, i can kinda see that as life is the healing class so why wouldnt they be the most healthy. off course that would take away from ice their persistent nature so i do agree ice should get more health

[plush flicker]

Myth is a lot more versatile with very important roles in many team ups with shatter for example and has a very strong school identity compared to some others

While myth isn’t my personal favorite school to play it’s miles ahead of ice in terms of its development

[wide meteor]

Yeah I see your point on the Life type HP thing but I think it should be #2 to Ice because Ice is supposed to be the tanky school. Tanks always got the most health yknow

[wide meteor]

The only thing there I can outright disagree with is Myth being strong within its school identity. I don't see any part of how they play being anything "mythy." Minions/summons and stuns just don't seem very relevant to their strengths (in PvE)

[plush flicker]

I didn’t mean to say that their school identity is strong in terms of the usefulness of it just how well defined it is

[pale sluice]

It's a side effect of them being a jack of all trades, probably. Since they're designed to do a bit of everything, they're a little bit less good at it compared to a school that specialises in that sort of thing. Like how balanceblade doesn't match up to its corresponding school blade, being about 10% weaker or so

Although, something that I don't quite get is why tower shield is an ice school spell. Since it seems like the balanceblade equivalent of a shield, it seems to make more sense to be balance instead, since ice already has ice armour

[vague hound]

Yeah but if experience is any indication thats why specialists are better in a group. They are one trick ponys that are only good in 1 specific role so they are better fits for a team so the team has someone who excels in e everything

[small seal]

the only meaningful and balanced upgrade you can give to Ice is through its spell variety

[pale sluice]

Some sort of damage reflection mechanic might work for ice, where they might be able to throw up a ward that reflects x amount/percent of damage back

If the devs intend for them to tank hits/damage sponge, it seems logical to just make it so that they can make better use of that

[small seal]

altering its stats is NOT going to end well and will drastically affect the other 6 schools.

Notice how in the Alpha striking meta (Storm/Fire/Myth), the tankier schools gravitate to damage and pierce in order to keep up?
If you do the opposite and start giving Ice more resist without sacrificing pierce, tank meta starts to creep in and it will just be Ice, Life & Balance as the best 3 with the reverse suffering. Death ofc being the only school that can switch naturally.

Why have a frail hitter that could get rngd and die when a tank school can do similar dmg and consistently survive?

Its the spells that Ice need auditing, not the stats.

[wide meteor]

Agreed

[pale sluice]

Isn't the lack of tank meta part of the issue at the moment? There's no real reason for someone to go for a tank build, since a lot of schools can already soak up that kind of damage as it is

Once you get to a reasonably high level, your gear and health are good enough that you can tank a fairly solid hit, making it so that there's no real reason for there to be a tank at that point (in addition to the game effectively penalising longer battles)

We saw in beastmoon that there are a few different variants of tanking, between taunts, armour, and dot removal. Maybe the devs could lean in that direction for ice instead, such as by encouraging the use of armour, or giving ice a counterpart to incindiate that works on armour instead of dot, converting it into damage

That way, there's more of a reason to go for more of a prolonged battle, to build up those shields, rather than trying to get in and out as soon as possible

[small seal]

Ice is already tanky as is. You just havent been prone to experiencing it because its largely unnecessary and time wasting in a group setting

and the reasons you've listed will be solved with spell updates. nothing else rly matters. if you make Ice a more competent hitter, its shielding gimmick remains its biggest weakness despite it being the soul of the school

[vague hound]

Yeah ice doesnt need offense, what ice needs is for defending to become more relevant. The current meta favors offensive schools so there is no use for healing or shields and using those pretty much get punished or forbidden now (great example is all good healing spells of life suddenly being made no pvp). Making defensive schools nonexistent. What we need is a way to balance the meta to favour both offensive and defensive play equally instead of only favoring one or the other. An increase in defensive stats could help here but as abarame said they should reduce offensive stats to compensate.

[lunar crane]

I'll just put this here.

[feral moth]

31 pierce ☠️ have fun in wallaru

also death gets like 65 resist and 225 damage with way higher dpp

[lunar crane]

Bruh. I beat Wallaru with no issue. Most mobs and bosses only have 30-35 resist.

Did you not see my level?

[feral moth]

that’s the first thing i looked at

[lunar crane]

You don't need 60 pierce my guy.

[feral moth]

I’m talking about at least 40 for wallaru 😭 mobs have like 40 resist and like shields, bosses same case but 50 resist

[lunar crane]

Incorrect. I was piercing all the way through with only 37 pierce.

Shields are also irrelevant, because I used Snow Angel a lot.

[feral moth]

besides, ice has to rely on shad’s to get somewhat good damage, frost giant is horrid

[lunar crane]

Also incorrect. I did not use my shads outside of non shield spamming bosses. The only shad spell I used was the Karamelle one for, like, 2 fights.

[feral moth]

in my experiences it was either hit twice

or wait for a shad for lemuria spell

[lunar crane]

That's your experience. I had no issues at all.

For shield spamming mobs and bosses, I used Snow Angel. Everything else was Frenzy, Croakula and Blizzard.

I never rush into a fight without thinking of what they might do first based on the school symbol they are. Then I prepare for that fight.

Stop trying to play Ice like a Storm and you won't have these problems. Play Ice as it was intended to be played. Ice doesn't need a buff, you just need to change how you play it.

[feral moth]

“Playing ice correctly” It’s pve, there are no play styles, just blade blade aoe.

Your strat could work but it would need to blade up for a snow angle, (4 turns because you can’t use feints because the dot, then spend 3 more rounds for the mob. To die, so it would just be better to blade blade blade feints feint, pray you have a shad or otherwise frost giant and pray you crit.

edit: The snow angel also makes your deck way bigger than it needs to be, thus making it harder to pull the cards you actually want.

You also completely missed the point of this original post, as i placed a heavy emphasis on the buff to make it good for support. Although they need to buff it offensively, they could just remove the stun off frost giant and i would be happy.

[lunar crane]

I reiterate. I have had no problems.

I'm also far more patient than most people. If you want to rush through the game, then stop playing Ice.

Here's something none of you have thought of: Buffing Ice would force KI to take away some of their tankability, thus losing resist you complaim about others having the same as Ice. Same with their Health. You cannot have your cake and eat it, too. There must be a give and take. A balance, if you will.

Also, the reason Death has similar stats to Ice is because they are next to each other on the Roshambo wheel.

The wheel is what determines the stats, it's not just random and senseless.

Instead of asking for a buff, maybe ask KI to redo the Roshambo wheel.

[feral moth]

Just because the wheel says so, doesn’t make it should be so. Death is an objectively better ice. Similar defensive stats, way better damage, way better support.

[lunar crane]

Except that's how it works. If the wheel says so, it becomes so.

[pale sluice]

It’s pve, there are no play styles, just blade blade aoe.

That is the recommended strategy for players so far, but it would hardly be the only one. You can absolutely go for other playstyles if you wanted

[lunar crane]

Revamp the wheel and the problem is fixed.

[pale sluice]

There's an actual wheel? o:

[lunar crane]

Figuratively.

[feral moth]

Well it’s the quickest one by far

[pale sluice]

ah, was thinking KI had released one for the schools

Like the Beastmoon wheel

[lunar crane]

The current dev team is using the Roshambo wheel as a basis for spells and gear.

[feral moth]

It feels like you missed the largest chunk of the post, buffs to make it viable for support

[lunar crane]

No, I understood perfectly.

[shell fjord]

It’s the same wheel

[lunar crane]

Change the Roshambo rules and everything will be fixed.

It really is that simple.

[pale sluice]

Ah. I was under the impression that Beastmoon was a separate thing from the regular typing wheel, hence the emphasis on it

[shell fjord]

Beastmoon came before Roshambo was pushed in the regular game, so for a while it was different

And Beastmoon initially didn’t assign all the same hanging effects to the schools that were decided upon for regular PvE and PvP

[lunar crane]

You don't realize that I am giving you a solution to your 'problem'. We are essentially agreeing that a change needs to be made, but I disagree on the method.

In order for the change you want to happen, the Roshambo wheel must be revamped.

[pale sluice]

Mild side tangent, but why is it called Roshambo anyhow?

Although instead of just focusing on a pokemon style typing wheel, it might make more sense for the devs to categorise the schools based on type/designated role, and work using that, since lack of school identity seems to be one of the major complaints about the game at the moment, and is also one of the reasons for this post

[lunar crane]

Roshambo is a type charting phrase.

Rock/Paper/Scissor, Pokemon type matchups, School Identity, etc.

[pale sluice]

ah, ok. Kind of sounds like a scissor-rock-paper thing

[lunar crane]

Does that make sense?

[pale sluice]

oh lol

Yep

[lunar crane]

Everything makes perfect sense according to roshambo rules, but in order for this buff to ice to happen KI would have to change the rules of Rock/Paper/Scissors.

That is not something you can do easily without breaking the game further.

Now, I will say this: Removing the stun from Frost Giant while staying true to the Roshambo and DPP rules is not difficult. KI just chooses not to do it.

[still heron]

What is your opinion on making Ice having a spell/similar functionality to Shadow Sentinel?

[lunar crane]

I suggested a while back of implementing a legion shield for Frost Giant instead of the stun and Winter Moon giving a small fortify like spell.

I think some of the lesser used Ice spells would make sense being that way as well.

[still heron]

Yeah, I agree you. Ice needs to provide defense for the team IMO

[lunar crane]

Handsome Fomori would see a lot of use if it gave a -10% Fortify instead of a mantle.

[pale sluice]

Although that would seem to go against KI's idea of having tanking be individual, rather than players being a support/team tank

[lunar crane]

Reindeer Knight already gives a legion shield.

[still heron]

Ice being individual is what hampers its usability in team play

[lunar crane]

Implement similar things in other Ice spells and the school gets its identity back.

[pale sluice]

Although Reindeer knight also isn't a standard school spell, which might change things

[lunar crane]

And that's fine. Reindeer Knight is what ice should be like.

But, I digress. I'm just a person who's been playing since 2008 and has multiple Warlrods.

[shell fjord]

I wouldn’t say that is necessarily the case. How much of each stat the schools get isn’t determined by rock-paper-scissors. Roshambo determines what hanging effects each school gets, and a general idea of how stats might be laid out, but there’s room for fluctuations and changes. They’ve already changed which school has the highest pierce at least 3 times

[lunar crane]

Yes, but they still remain within the confines of the rules so it doesn't seem too out of place.

The Roshambo prevents too much creativity, but also keeps the game balance in check.

[shell fjord]

The stat profiles of the schools have all been changing quite a lot over the past few years, and (pun intended) it doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel to do that. Things like how Life has just been getting more health now to push it to the top

[lunar crane]

I agree. There doesn't need to be a change. I was stating earlier that many people don't realize that the change they want requires reinventing the wheel and changing the rules of Rock/Paper/Scissors.

[shell fjord]

What rules are you thinking of here? Is there something you’re seeing suggested that would make Ice too much stronger against Fire and Myth?

Ice has high resistance, but Myth and Fire have high pierce to deal with it

[lunar crane]

A lot of people have stated they want Ice to have more pierce and damage to keep up. I disagree. I think Ice is fine as is and that people should not try to be like Storm and play more patiently as Ice was intended.

[still heron]

At the same time, Ice should be able to keep up with Life and Balance, right?

[pale sluice]

I might disagree a bit on that front, since I feel like the game currently punishes players for long fights, which could definitely do with improvement. Otherwise, it just pushes players to go finish up as quickly as possible

[shell fjord]

To clarify - you think Ice is fine as is stat-wise, but there is room for change spell-wise?

[lunar crane]

Just Frost Giant needs a change. That's about all I can agree on.

[shell fjord]

I think I agree with that. I’d like to see more spell additions to fill in gaps though

[still heron]

What kind of spells?

[shell fjord]

Ice needs more spells that set up negative charms. They are supposed to synergise with Death but barely have any ways to set them up.
Additionally I’d like to see Ice’s team tanking abilities improved upon by more ways to use Taunt and even intercept mechanics

[pale sluice]

Intercept would be cool. How would that work mechanically? DoT transfer?

[shell fjord]

Like Shadow Sentinel

[lunar crane]

I suggested changing Handsome Fomori to give a fortify instead of a mantle.

[still heron]

Even having a spell like Dimension Shift that an Ice could use on themselves to save their teammates from weaknesses/DoTs could be interesting

[pale sluice]

It would make sense as an extension to tanking

[still heron]

Yeah, Ice could use an audit on their utility spells in general

Cooldown, Celestial Intervention, Ice Armor should all be looked at

[pale sluice]

Would it make sense for ice to have a school-unique mechanic, as an alternative?

[shell fjord]

Make Intercept a unique mechanic to Ice other than Sentinel tbh

[still heron]

Universal shielding was that, I suppose

Shields barely see play at the moment, though

[pale sluice]

True, but balance had something pretty close to that, since they have the treble-shields. The only thing that those didn't really cover is balance damage

[still heron]

However, Isn't balance suppose to dabble in everything?

They kinda touch into every unique mechanic, don't they

[lunar crane]

We're supposed to, but we don't have a drain spell yet.

[pale sluice]

True, they are meant to be a bit of everything. Would it make sense to move the universal shield to balance, and have ice focus on armour instead? Since that's mostly unique to ice and life, and the whole "okay protection against everything" seems like it would fit with the theme of balance fairly well

Although there's still the fundamental issue of the game not really encouraging tanking mechanics or longer battles, since HP sponge is basically the current PVE meta, and ice armour is an X pip spell, compared to the 0 pips of wards

[still heron]

Yes, I was thinking about this

[pale sluice]

I can think of at least 2 - 3 bosses (not that far into the game yet) which basically punish someone for stalling/tanking tactics, for example

[still heron]

Yeaah, I don't have much to input on PvP / raids

[lunar crane]

Try soloing Azteca as a Storm.

[still heron]

Any school can Elemental/Spiritual blade onto a hitter, and most PvE matches can be ended within a few rounds

[pale sluice]

In addition to the interception mechanic, what if ice had a damage redirection mechanic added on? That way, there's suddenly more of a reason to tank, because they can deal damage that way, and it might make more sense to goad the mobs into a big hit, to rebound that damage

[pale sluice]

Not up to that yet, but doing Avalon as a balance. It goes okay, but since my build is currently very blade/trap heavy, particularly for bosses, things like Black Annie and Belloq are very troublesome, because they punish players for stalling.

Azteca is almost certainly going to be worse, going by that

[still heron]

That might punish Ice depending on the animation speed of this damage retaliation

[pale sluice]

Would animation speed be that much of a factor?

[still heron]

I think so. If you have a passive ability that is absorbing damage from other players and redirecting onto the appropriate enemy, I might pass on having an Ice teammate

Think having multiple DoTs on each teammate

[pale sluice]

Huh. I thought redirection was simultaneous, not the older style per-player tick

[still heron]

I think Shadow Sentinel is per player, might be wrong though

Even then, it'd just add to battle time unfortunately

[pale sluice]

True, there's also the chance that it might mess things up by breaking feints and things prematurely

[still heron]

I'd hope that an intercept/retaliation system would bypass traps / blades like backlash

[vague hound]

personally i feel like aplying rashambo to stats could be a good idea. ice can get resist, health and crit block, fire could get pierce, damage and crit and storm could get damage, crit and crit block. this way the stats kinda work like rock paper scissors too (pierce to melt resist, damage to overcome lack of resist, resist to block out damage). though for this aproach they do need to take a good look at the role every school plays and how stats interact with each other to balance it properly

[shell fjord]

Stats are influenced by Roshambo, pretty much in the way you are describing.
But it's not like hanging effects where only certain schools will get them - obviously Ice will have some damage and Storm will have some resist, even if they don't specialise in them

[lunar crane]

It took KI a while to give Balance a DoT.

[vague hound]

how many years? i thought it was 10 or something? XD

[subtle barn]

I'd just appreciate tanking and healing being a necessity with Ice being the best tank. What are the taunt spells for if they aren't even useful for that? I'd imagine more people would play it if that were the case.

[small seal]

thats the best immediate change. removing the stun or giving the base 40 dmg to hit 500 would stop a lot of whining

as for long term, id like to see Shielding be more varied with different kinds of shields to use for certain situations

[hushed bramble]

Something like this then?

[lunar crane]

Yeah.

[hushed bramble]

sorry the card is done poorly but I think it gets la message across

i mean my Myth/ice and my basic Ice wizard would love to have Frost Gitant buffed so i'm on board with some changes

[flat quarry]

woah really neat, I would actually play ice if that were real

[hushed bramble]

Also I also agree with Ice getting more negative charms, My Myth/ice wizard loves having a lot of the Ice spells having Ice trap gambits but I think they should've just split the arc 1 spellemnt pathes to be supporting both forwards and backwards equally.

Like Myth has the problem of not enough forward synergy spellement paths on the arc 1 spells that isn't troll.

[hushed bramble]

More Ideas for Ice Lore spells

[spare leaf]

omg that looks so much better

[feral moth]

I'm mainly concerned about ice's role as a support

all the stat buff suggestions was stuff i thought of top of my head

but really if the stun on frost giant would get removed then ice would be fine offensively imo

[feral moth]

I think this is really neat

It's a frost giant buff, + it gives you shield, which could make for some interesting dps/support hybrid setup

[feral moth]

(although a pierce upgrade would be really nice and not break the game)

[hushed bramble]

Alright KI you know what to do lol

[feral moth]

Spellement path for arc 2 spellements maybe?

this can be path b

the one with just plain damage path a?

[hushed bramble]

maybe

[lunar crane]

That's pretty much what I suggested.

[pale sluice]

At the same time, doing that seems like it would hamper solo play, especially for schools that aren't able to multitask as a pseudo-tank role

[gilded vector]

.

[meager latch]

aoe would solve this. It's why Im more a fan of intercept than taunt. Increasing the amount/frequency of aoe damage wouldnt impact solo play nearly as much. That being said, I also feel that healing/tanking being a necessity is for fights that already aren't very soloable, but rn are solved just by "everyone blade hitter/do damage"

[devout cedar]

i was an ice main for years(pve only i dont participate in pvp) but with the recent changes in the spells i've been avoiding it all together because its actually painful to play, as of the 170 gear upgrade i still have no reason to play ice, my balance has over 13k health, 47 resist and 233 damage. not only that but it has so many great utility spells plus so many useful aeo spells. there is absolutely no reason to play ice right now. there are no decent aoe spells besides the shadow enchanced hits which are great but i find i get shadow pips less often on my ice. every other schools has an amazing 7 pip aeo besides ice. frost giant is actually horrible in pve plus most mobs and bosses have stun block anyways. snow angel is useless especially considering you need to wait 3 rounds to cast it. the new aeo from wallaru is nice but again not that much damage compared to everyone else. single hit spells are also not great. lord of winter and wolly mammoth both dont do a lot of damage especially considering the damage of shatterhorn. wolly mammoth does not need the stun because every boss has stun resist its absolutely useless. it might be useful in pvp idk but in pve its not useable. lets not talk about the requirement to double scion of ice because its absolutely ridiculous especially now with how most bosses have a lot of outgoing damage and pierce. plus ice doesnt have a decent heal to keep your health up and by the time you have to use the scion you can never be too sure if its going to double because you have to pull out a calculator and check if you meet the requirement which would easily go null if they hit you right before. ice spells definitely need a buff because i honestly hate using ice now even though years ago when i started playing it was my favorite. the resist it gets is not high enough compared to the lack of damage.

[subtle barn]

I do think there need to be quite a few gameplay changes that need to be made before that happens, but I think it should happen at some point. I do agree that it would hamper solo play with the game's current population, but I also think there's plenty of routes to solving the population issue. I also think there's ways to solve large level gaps for doing content together. Dungeons need some sort of scaling mechanism. Players can scale backwards in raids. Bosses like Baron von Bracken can scale up depending on level range. They're slowly implementing gameplay systems that make things more viable for a combination of tanks, supports, and dps for any boss. The biggest example of this I can come up with is what ESO does. They have 3650 levels and everything scales to the 210th level. You unlock dungeons as you level up until about the 350th level or so. You can do all the dungeons at the end of the game and find them difficult. This can also spice up challenge mode as well. There could also be incentives like something similar to the Gravulum thing. You go beat a boss and there's some sort of reward. In this case, it could be currency. This currency could be used like dream water is used for exclusive crafted items. That on top of helping someone in the Team Up Kiosk gives you double the helps if you help someone who's doing a quest in that instance (1 time only in that scenario so it wont be exploited by just not completing it and redoing it) rather than just 1 help.

The main thing that bothers me with it is when Karamelle was just out, I could tell with healing crit changes that it seemed like they were trying to prep tanking for viability like it might have been intended on initial release of the game. They wanted to make sure there were some slowly implemented balance changes first. However, I'm pretty sure that was maybe the last world that original KI had some sort of hand in I'd guess, so maybe they wanted to return it to that and the new ownership had other plans or budgeting restraints. I wont speculate further on that, but I say that to say that the game seemed to be pointing towards that and sadly didn't make it to that point.

[harsh meteor]

what gear are you using? these stats are pretty delicious. My myth is similar but with 4 less pierce, 4 less resist, and just 1 less power pip chance

[feral moth]

this could mean frost giant stun removal, boys and girls

[spare leaf]

omg hopefelly

[feral moth]

i think we won

its not gonna happen yet

[strange salmon]

erm what server is this from 🕵️‍♂️

[feral moth]

ravynwood

[strange salmon]

[feral moth]

SURELY this also means pve

[sour umbra]

ice always gets nerfed in pvp so im hopeful he means for pve

[feral moth]

@timber crown

[timber crown]

!!!

[hushed bramble]

they buffed Colossus

[small seal]

fr?

im gonna check my Ice now and have a look

[woeful sable]

https://wiki.wizard101central.com/wiki/PetAbility:Frozen_Kraken_Trained

2 round cooldown and massive damage

[stoic lichen]

looks at death

[stoic lichen]

the shield gambits?

[limpid prairie]

I don’t see how buffing Colossus helps unless we use it. (I don’t) I think Frost Giant was the main spell that was brought up needing a change.

[feral moth]

it’s a pvp buff

[limpid prairie]

Yeah, I’m done with all the attention on PVP and not the entire game as a whole since everyone PVEs but not everybody PVPs. Something needs to happen so everyone would benefit and not just those from a smaller player base just because that’s where KI’s money is, in P2W. 🙄😒

[feral moth]

i’m pretty sure that cam said that the people who pvp is 5% of wiz players

[limpid prairie]

Exactly.

[feral moth]

can’t find the screenshot

[feral moth]

I found this, its from a channel in a discord im in that logs dev messages and the person who sent it is trusted in the community

[shell fjord]

Less than 5%. I’d expect quite a bit less

[pale sluice]

Although it might be interesting to see how that stacks up to play-time

If they're a small proportion of the player population, but a larger chunk of people who spend time playing the actual game, it might make sense for the devs to cater to them

[fathom minnow]

yeah u definitely didnt read their post LOL.

[fathom minnow]

that would be decent i think.

[fathom minnow]

ice as solo isnt that bad but it could be better and yeah in a team ppl complain and whine when ur an ice in the lobby

[fathom minnow]

i dont think u fully understand OP. they dont want everyschool to have “stormlike damage”

[fathom minnow]

definitely life shouldn’t have the highest health it is dumb.
also OP’s rework is already small. they said 1-2% for some things… are they supposed to add half a percent instead?

[fathom minnow]

they arent meant to solo at the same rate, and these changes wouldnt make ice the fastest solo ever, it would just help a little.

[fathom minnow]

well adding one percent to one or two of the meta gear out of 3 probably wouldnt do much… and i could be wrong but i think OP has talked about changing the spells.

[woeful sable]

With the damage pins they have now and the learnable Wallaru spells, you can just dual school storm 🙂

[fathom minnow]

everyone thinks that tbf

[fathom minnow]

i like it too

[woeful sable]

My life character has +181% Storm dmg, 681 storm crit, and 37% storm accuracy

I do 4000 with bunyip's rage (including crit and epic)

It took me forever to get that 6th storm dmg pin though

[fathom minnow]

no offense cuz its not against you but if i play a school its cuz i want to play as the school, not as another one. when i play my ice, i want to see ice spells. when i play my death, i want to see death spells, and so on.

im glad u have what u want

[woeful sable]

You are absolutely right

I play life bc I like to tank and heal

I only have a storm build for farming

[fathom minnow]

fair enough

i feel like if i had all my wizards the same level id just use one specific wizard for farming new dungeons and distribute the gear through to my wizards.. in a perfect world

[woeful sable]

it's nice being in a battle with a hard boss that has no chance of killing the group because I just keep on healing everyone

[fathom minnow]

i want to level my life up next cuz its really useful in team and kinda a flex to say u got a max life

[woeful sable]

I still need to get the new 500+ health gems, but I'm already at over 12K health

[fathom minnow]

very nice

i will say i wish they had never introduced dual schooling

i feel like it takes away from every school in a way

and ruins my playstyle of wanting to just focus on my wizards school

[woeful sable]

right now I use the square gems for universal resist. maybe that's part of why tanking works so well

[fathom minnow]

i use universal resist jewels too

i focused death and storm resist but i got some for every school

[feral moth]

500 health > 30 flat resist

you'd need to be hit like 17 times in order for the flat res to be better

[woeful sable]

sometimes i swap outfor the square fire resist when farming a fire boss, since most of what they throw is dot, the flat resist jems are a lot more effective against those

true

that why I need to get them, but I'm not to the quest yet

I'll get there, but I'm not hurrying bc I'm already at max XP

Ironically, I was dual-schooling ice for a while bc my pet had frozen kraken willcast

I still DS ice for some battles

[small seal]

what was that in response to? message wont load for me

and yeah i agree about changing spells. thats the definitive way to fix a school imo

[fathom minnow]

you said
"altering its stats is NOT going to end well and will drastically affect the other 6 schools.

Notice how in the Alpha striking meta (Storm/Fire/Myth), the tankier schools gravitate to damage and pierce in order to keep up?
If you do the opposite and start giving Ice more resist without sacrificing pierce, tank meta starts to creep in and it will just be Ice, Life & Balance as the best 3 with the reverse suffering. Death ofc being the only school that can switch naturally.

Why have a frail hitter that could get rngd and die when a tank school can do similar dmg and consistently survive?"

i dont think that OP was trying to say anywhere close to "similar damage". i feel like ppl are not getting what they are saying

[small seal]

no i understood op pretty clearly. he mentioned adding more dmg and pierce to some gear sets

[hushed bramble]

Oui I understood what OP was saying

Life has Similiarish damage on our gear but since Forest Lord doesn't have a 2 pip utility unlike Giant its one of our bests AoEs and we don't struggle as much as Ice yet Life and ice have the same DPP and similiar pierce iirc

There are other ways to buff Ice that isn't give them more damage and pierce, some of their spells/utility are SEVERLY lacking, even on Roshambo

[small seal]

if Frost Giant was the same DPP as Forest Lord, no Ice would be complaining anymore besides PvP. Thats just a fact

[hushed bramble]

oui, 645 flat AoE and I wouldn't see any Ice complain anymore

[woeful sable]

just get storm giant and dual school

[hushed bramble]

just get Orth and dual myth 🙄

[small seal]

i rly hope Frost Giant is addressed with the future buffs KI teased that they were in the works for

[pseudo dawn]

They should buff frost giant to be similar to forest lord because life has the same dpp. Buffing frost giant to do like 620-630 would probably make it a viable school

[pseudo dawn]

Ok how does this solve the majority of the game where dual schooling isn’t viable and ice has to rely on frost giant which barely deals more damage than blizzard

[hushed bramble]

Unviable isn’t the right word, more Ice’s case I would argue that it isn’t though until 160

[pseudo dawn]

Hm?

I mean I legit never found a need to use frost giant after khrysalis. It wasn’t viable before then even cause some mobs it wouldn’t even kill. Soloing mostly everything I found snow angel more useful

And snow angel sucks

[sour umbra]

if i ever have to quest an ice through azteca again i am bugged troll detonating all the overtimes

[pseudo dawn]

OHHH you were talking about dual schooling

I mean yeah you can’t really train another 7 pip aoe until you get access to the arcanum

[hushed bramble]

You can technically build a pet for dual schooling and get through the game at a decent pace with the revampe Malistare’s, Morganthe gear. Ice’s problem is that those gear support death and since Death lacks AoEs unless your buying packs or farm gold keys your out of luck

You could technically farm some Myth pins out at 160 and run orth (cosplaying per say since there isn’t a cap in PvE)

[pseudo dawn]

I mean ice shouldn’t be put into a position where they have to do that, no other school has to do that to have a half decent 7 pip

[hushed bramble]

But they do need to buff giant

[twilit quail]

This thread is still goin 😭

[hushed bramble]

That I 1000% agree with

[pseudo dawn]

I’m gonna keep it alive until they buff frost giant

[hushed bramble]

Oui

I agree with the points that OP made but I agree with Roxy on giant buff

And Ice utility buffs as well

[pseudo dawn]

I’m fine with ice having the worst overall damage but they need something to compensate like useful utilities. Legion shield should prob be more like 60%

[hushed bramble]

Oui, if life mains like me are fine with having low damage and pierce with just spamming Forest Lord then if they buff giant, Ice’s wouldn’t complain as much

[twilit quail]

Fire IS hitting like 68 pierce nowadays

[pseudo dawn]

And if ice gets doggy dookie damage they should get more resist

[hushed bramble]

Agreed

[pseudo dawn]

Like they already have a lot but I’d say even more. Don’t be afraid KI give ice 100% universal resist /hj

Running aeon gear ice could get like 69% with a triple double

It should be 75-80%

[hushed bramble]

When I do my Ice imma run full Dream Stalker gear for 84 universal

Well stalker Hat and Boots

[pseudo dawn]

Eh that’s not very viable. Try to get nightmire robe if possible

[hushed bramble]

Mire gives more uni

Everything else is going to be Reaver though

[pseudo dawn]

Running nightmire I have 64 or 65 with my pet accounting for 11 of that

I’ll get reaver hat. Stalker doesn’t give crit so I’m not bothering. Eternal is better

[hushed bramble]

Amulet is going to Hunhaus for the 11 universal and Circle/Triangle slots

[pseudo dawn]

One piece of burrower I’d say. If you have two your accuracy dips below 25

[pseudo dawn]

I need to get that. I have nightmire but it’s not viable

[hushed bramble]

Honestly just want fat universal resist, all I want on my future Ice.

[pseudo dawn]

Do you currently have an ice?

Pain no devs or even staff in this forum

[twilit quail]

Ice should just be immune to all damage but also have -999% damage automatically applied to their base stats

[hushed bramble]

he level 3 but I have most gear farmed for him since I tend to keep everything i get

[devout cedar]

frost giant is just so bad why won't they just do something about it 😭

[pseudo dawn]

bump, buff frost giant to 600 at least

[lapis merlin]

465 is such a weak number for a Rank 7 spell even if it's an AOE

[fallen prism]

Ice needs a new utility spell. What about a spell that coverts incoming damage on teammates into dots? So instead of a massive hit it gets broken down over time? Plays into the ice “slowing/freezing” gameplay.

[lapis merlin]

And it's also a defensive tactic that when combined with Life's Triage, can reduce the total damage too by removing a round or two from said DoT

[fallen prism]

YUPP we just fixed ice lmao

[pseudo dawn]

its so pathetic

Daily post. Buff frost giant to do forest lord damage

[small seal]

Exactly this. Don't accept anything less

[fathom minnow]

slay fr

[small seal]

Same DPP, same damage. Gotta at least be consistent with spells if you want Ice to be different gear wise

[pseudo dawn]

Daily post. Buff frost giant to do forest lord damage

[lapis merlin]

That would be a reasonable buff actually as Life and Ice have similar damage tiers

[small seal]

i still want shielding to be revisited later on but Ice needs immediate fixes to solve the glaring dissatisfaction ppl having when playing it

[pseudo dawn]

i am fine with ice being disadvanteged with damage compared to storm. school identity is pretty cool. But it is simply horribly imbalanced that other tanky schools with the same dpp does 200 more than frost giant (with frost giants utility it sacrifices its damage for being as useless as taunt by the time you get it)

[small seal]

Yeah. I rly don't want them to be a hard hitter. I want to tank effectively and protect teammates without healing them. That to me is what Ice can be which I'm hopeful for

[lapis merlin]

I'm with you two on that too, but Ice currently seems too weak in general (buff maybe like 5%-10% makes a huge difference)

[sour umbra]

keep it so real, our damage can stay where it is if frost giant just gets buffed to where its not like hitting with a pool noodle

[pseudo dawn]

exactly. even if you have under 200 damage its pretty to kill most bosses. but frost giant is just straight up unuseable. Stun isnt useful even if it works which it almost always doesnt

[sour umbra]

i recommend for boss fights, any ice wizard should stack their blades and not worry about feints

then just trishield and send a snow angel and troll the boss for that juicy 2.25x

[pseudo dawn]

snow angel my beloved

snow angel should also be buffed

but it has been useful for me at one point since polaris

cant say the same for frost giant

[pseudo dawn]

ok if life can heal you for 1000+ hp quickly ice should at least be able to give all allies high absorbs pretty easily

(which btw should work on drains!!!! idk if this was changed)

[small seal]

REAL

[vague hound]

It wasnt changed but if we follow roshambo rules then yes drains should get blocked by absorb (and then not give health in return because the damage was blocked). This would give ice an advantage over death wich they need lol

[pseudo dawn]

Daily post. Buff frost giant to do forest lord damage

[thorny ginkgo]

Snow angel is so weak it physically hurts 😭

[pseudo dawn]

Daily post. Buff frost giant to do forest lord damage

[pseudo dawn]

It really is. Like

[stoic lichen]

i never use snow angel

[lethal talon]

snow angel is a joke spell, its only used to meme

used to be okay when it had the 3 round taunt -- not sure why they removed it

now that i think about it, it's just worse frostbite -- 3 more pips for only 100 more damage

[lapis merlin]

It was part of their "spell audit" to try to balance the different schools

[pseudo dawn]

Daily post. Buff frost giant to do forest lord damage

not just that but KI really needs to look at the old gear like WW and DM. Ice is supposed to have similar DPP to life but life gets far more damage from its WW gear and DM gear. 2 of the pieces of darkmoore gear GIVE LESS DAMAGE THAN WATERWORKS ITS BARELY WORTH GETTING FOR ICE

heres an idea

hood of the cold hearted gives 14 damage
Armor of the cold harted gives 17 damage
Shoes of the cold hearted give 18.

this would be a great buff that makes ice easier to quest with, especially when it comes to novus since a lot of us dont wanna spent that much time grinding out dragoon, and most people ik go through novus with DM gear

DM gear is the gear that is used for the longest if youre an ice and right now the way its stats are it so bad compared to the other schools that its an absolute joke

[pseudo dawn]

Daily post. Buff frost giant to do forest lord damage

[pseudo dawn]

Daily post. Buff frost giant to do forest lord damage

[fallen prism]

They need to update the animation also and get rid of the stun for either more damage or a different utility.

[vague hound]

I dont think spammjng the same message everyday is gonna change anyones mind. It only makes you annoying

[pseudo dawn]

Tbh utilities for this aren’t really a good idea

Like for 7 pips, maybe for storm lord only

That’s just because stormlord would do a disgusting amount of damage if it didn’t have damage removed from the stun

[pseudo dawn]

Ok

KI hates ice and won’t ever buff frost giant anyways so no point in posting here tbh 🤷‍♀️

[hushed bramble]

Welp we tried lol, giant isn’t losing the stun, even when it gets spellement pathes, I will get more damage though from said pathes though

[shell fjord]

Ratbeard’s stream this morning seemed to give a bit more hope

[hushed bramble]

Ah vraiment? What did he say?

[shell fjord]

Ratbeard seemed to agree more that Stuns are a bit of a non-effect and their role should be looked at

[pseudo dawn]

ratbeard absolutely devestated when discord user girlboss.icarus spams buff frost giant, starts crying on stream

[pseudo dawn]

@sour umbra wake up we got some hope now

[hushed bramble]

Discord user and girl boss don’t together unfortunately

[split spade]

Oh wow, Ratbeard actually is being right about something? Stop the presses!

[pseudo dawn]

https://x.com/theatmoplex/status/1758409306607878425?s=20

The Atmoplex (@theatmoplex) on X

CAM: "If you're asking if we're taking Stun off [Frost Giant], no. Not planning on it. Nope, not even on Path A. That's a change! Why would we wanna change something, you know how people would react? [...] Maybe if people are loud enough, we'll do something."

Twitter · Feb 16, 2024, 8:33 AM

CAM WHY

Cam tell me who wants to keep a stun

the dves are pretty obviously trolling

[hushed bramble]

My brother in Raven, there are so many people that scream about ridding of the stun for pure damage or a better utility that doesn’t butcher the damage

[stoic lichen]

can’t tell if he’s trolling or not

[pseudo dawn]

idk tbh, i havent really watched cams streams before but he seems pretty snarky here

[shell fjord]

For context:

I did think that the choice of saying “if people are loud enough” was probably snark given the topic being discussed

[lunar crane]

Except this is a change people want.

[shell fjord]

Yes that is why he was joking - the devs are aware it is a highly requested point

It got a bit lost as “we’re not currently hearing enough about it”, when it seems like it was more of a tongue in cheek “yes we hear a lot of discussion about it”

[pseudo dawn]

i mean i kinda figured it was at least in part a joke

[small seal]

ah it was a joke

np then

[pseudo dawn]

It’s hard to tell with these devs sometimes

Here’s the clip of ratbeard talking about frost giant yesterday

Even if frost giant was buffed to like 580 I’d be happy

[lunar crane]

I don't think anyone will complain if Frost Giant has the stun removed and got a damage buff. That's such a silly thing to say. Ratbeard L

[small seal]

actually

hes right about ppl complaining that it doesnt stun. although, id still argue the majority would be in favor of the player losing the stun to regain dmg

[lunar crane]

"The silent few that MIGHT like the stun force me to not be able to please the massively loud majority" Dumb argument if you ask me.

Literally who has stated they want it to keep the stun and have the abysmally low damage it currently has?

No one

[pseudo dawn]

Eh he’s right wiz players can be really weird and nonsensical

Someone will complain but it will likely be 3 or 4 people compared to like, everyone else

[lunar crane]

That doesn't mean he should listen to the minority. If the majorty wants it, it should be done.

[pseudo dawn]

I mean he indicated he wasn’t opposed to the buff, I think the comment on complaints was more of a response to the backlash against what Cam said

[pseudo dawn]

I mean id agree generally

[lunar crane]

Why bother having this suggestion section if Ratbeard thinks he knows better?

[pseudo dawn]

It’s possible he’ll listen to us. Just not necessarily likely but yeah it’s weird

[small seal]

yeah the deer knight backlash was a little wild

[sour umbra]

highkey i wouldnt have been mad if the deer knight thing went thru

less damage in the long run sure, but enchants would finally be frontloaded, making it a better turn 1 hit

[pseudo dawn]

i mean like frost gian buff would just be good

what im confused about is that wouldnt frost giant stun removal mean a damage buff?

to at least line up with Ice's dpp excluding the aoe deduction as is standard for 7 pips

and like forest lord and orthy are above ice and myths dpp for single hits which i think is fine (my understanding of it at least, im not to sure how dpp works)

[shell fjord]

I think it’s more likely that the stun would be swapped for a different effect

[sour umbra]

if this happens it's blatant icephobia LUL

[pseudo dawn]

i mean ratbeard did say that stun doesnt play into a 1 turn strat

and another effect wouldnt either

[shell fjord]

Does it have to result in hyperbole?

[sour umbra]

Yes.

and imma keep calling it that cuz it's true

[shell fjord]

KingsIsle doesn’t hate any school. Yes we would all like Frost Giant to be changed, yes they seem reluctant to do it, but hyperbole is meaningless.

[pseudo dawn]

nah theres precedent for him to say that

they have a history of targetting ice

[sour umbra]

nobody tell mayo what ratbeard said on december 9th, 2020

[shell fjord]

Because Ice was strong in PvP, not because they hate it

[pseudo dawn]

then they nerfed it to be the worst

[sour umbra]

mayo my guy. the fact that there is a case to be made that ice is still worse than storm in pvp should reeeally say a lot

[shell fjord]

Yes, so we’d like to see some buffs

[sour umbra]

let's think about colossus for example, it got buffed to be +50% traps and myself and many other ice players were thinking about using it once the whole. yk. fire shark ordeal was over

the same patch that fixed fire shark also nerfed colossus back down to 35% traps and ice scion back down to 1705

because phantastic jinn and doom oni were going CRAZY

[shell fjord]

Colossus was a shame yeah

[pseudo dawn]

maybe not hate but its clear that for the past 8 years theres been a decent amount of bias against ice informing KI's decisions

[sour umbra]

so that became "welp! time to nerf all the shield gambits because two out of the three are extremely unbalanced! too bad the last one made ice not the worst school in the entire game... cuz we're nerfing that too!"

"oh and also! you know how everyone's offensive stats went way up this update? hah! not ice's! their damage went up by 1 and their pierce by 2! suckers!!!"

"now every other school is gonna pull WAAAAY ahead of them! this'll show those dirty ice mains what for! they were good for 6 years and those 6 years only ended 3 years ago so they deserve it!"

ok the last one WAS hyperbole

but you get the general idea, it's become a default that ice gets nerfed every update we just sort of expect it now

and we could maybe live with that if pve players didn't also get shafted

[pseudo dawn]

yeah i mean the buffed shield gambit only to take it away (tho iirc its still stronger than it used to be), then undid the colossus 50 trap

i dont really get any reason behind ice being the one school to be nerfed by a debuff or utility in their 7 pip, when life a healing school with the same dpp as ice has a 7 pip that outclasses those of 2 attack schools in immediate damage

[sour umbra]

yea we can also look at power nova

it used to be meat and trash, like worse than frost giant, and all it took was the utility getting removed for it to become not an absolute meme

[pseudo dawn]

ra should be balances 7 pip but thats a different convo

[pseudo dawn]

yeah its like 660?

[sour umbra]

665

which is REALLY good and everyone loves that

[pseudo dawn]

i would be happy with an 580 giant

but like it should be at least 620 going with what the idea was behind the 7 pip audit in the first place

[sour umbra]

yea the 7 pips ignoring the 25% aoe penalty was a good choice on the devs' part and it'd be so on brand if the rule suddenly applied to us if giant got buffed lol

even if it did tbh it'd still be doing more than it currently is so maybe I'd be somewhat happy 💀

[pseudo dawn]

arc 2 ice gear is also a complete and total joke in terms of damage output (yeah its a tank school so meh damage is a given, but look at lifes stuff), that a 620 giant is kinda a necessity to leave azteca with your sanity. this is come from someone who basically one sittinged the majority of the world

[pseudo dawn]

what im confused ab is that "gaint wouldnt get a buff mathematically"

also like im confused on the dpp application to 7 pips

[sour umbra]

yea with azteca it's like

I am genuinely gonna abuse that troll detonate thing with snow angel on my OAB walkthrough if nothing gets done about giant 💀

because that'd be the only way to stay sane in that world

[ancient tapir]

what if instead of buffing ice as a whole, just make their early gear better and make it so they always have a small increase in stats but they start from big early on to compensate the low dmg and no blade

[sour umbra]

nice as that would be, most of the struggle comes from arc 2 because we're whacking azteca bosses with a pool noodle and they're immune to half the card's effect anyway

[calm lotus]

frost giant without a stun will be 650

[sour umbra]

ill take it 💯

[small seal]

we do NOT want that

i will repeat that over and over until ppl are sick of it. Frost Giant does NOT need an effect. it needs more base dmg. i wont settle for anything else

suffered 4 yrs with this nerf and i dont plan on continuing

[marble carbon]

I honestly agree with increasing the base damage on frost giant, 460 for a 7 pip does seem extremely bad compared to other non dmg focused schools such as balance and life (power nova with 665 dmg & forest lord with 620 min dmg). Even a 40 dmg increase from 460 --> 500 wouldn't be that bad of a buff and at least gives ice a small buff to their 7 pip to put it near the level of other 7 pips while keeping it in tune with school identity and ice being weaker with their dmg

[bright abyss]

If I was playing the middle man in this, I would say keep the stun but then if an enemy is "Stun immune," then either have the giant do double damage or put a blade or two on the wizard that cast said giant. Would be better for combos against a boss and they can keep their stun for adds. (Plus I dont think they want it to make snow angel COMPLETELY unused)

[vague hound]

Ice wouldnt get blades given that that is a storm thing. I could see traps trough since that kinda seems to be a death thing (feint, curse, death trap)

[pseudo dawn]

you lnow if they ever buff giant to do like forst lord damage, i will 100% throw a frost giant casting party in unicorn way

we will be casting it all day

[bright abyss]

The day they buff Frost Giant, they better release it as a mount too. Let the ICES REJOICE!

[pseudo dawn]

i will cast frost giant no less than 1000 times

[meager latch]

inb4 they give it the old long animation back and you're stuck casting frost giant for the rest of your life

[shell fjord]

Even though it would increase animation time I am kinda sad that the stun animation doesn’t play at all anymore.

Seems like a waste

[vague hound]

Maybe they could rework the stun animation to be z high damage animation (similar to how firecat or storm shark have different animations for different damage). Would have to change it so he breathes on all opponents at once instead of breathing on only 1 enemy at a time

[calm lotus]

690 for 7 pips is also bad for storm considering storm lord without the stun is 975

[small seal]

idc if storm gets their stun removed for 975. i want ices stun removed. thats it

stunning is a horrible mechanic and isnt worth trying to use. i want more dmg on my ice spell since i cant get much from my gear

[marble carbon]

That's the thing also, storm dpp is ~100 while ice is around ~75
7 pip for 690 is about 100 storm dmg per pip
While as frost giant is 7 for 460 (65 dmg per pip)

It would make sense if it was ~70 dmg per pip or something in that range to include the stun

[shell fjord]

Ice dpp is 83, Storm dpp is 125

[marble carbon]

ya i was undershooting it a bit

was on my phone lol

[shell fjord]

AOE stuns are just very expensive 😭

[marble carbon]

mhm guess the aoe stun does take a large chunk of the frost giant dmg away

[vague hound]

And they arent even good because 90% of pve enemies are stun immune anyway and in pvp you have stun block shields and conviction (and gear that can give stun block but no one uses that lol)

Why doesnt stun block get added to the gear templates anyway? Feels like it might give ice a little bit of an edge if they can also get a lot of stun resist when other schools cant

And enemies in pve can also use hit and stuns like medusa

[bright abyss]

@pseudo dawn I see you with that name change XD

[rain badge]

PvE bosses, yes

[rain badge]

e

[tulip nymph]

NET

[pseudo dawn]

the only thing i want is frost giant buff tbh

i think we have some good hitting spells its just that frost giant is unuseable and ice ends up taking lik 30 hours extra to get through arc 2

[rugged crag]

This concept of ice being weak is funny to me. I feel like this thread just asks for the problem of min maxing to be even greater. Why say ice (a tank school) is weak in damage and pierce when you can rather ask why tank/heal schools do not have any demand in PvE. The issue is that PvE is min/max oriented and always has been. An ice can easily beat any boss, but it just does it slower. That's where your problems stem from; not being able to blade into aoe and 1 shot like a storm does. You can blade into blade into aoe as an ice and get the job done.

[bright abyss]

Have you leveled an ice before?

[rugged crag]

Only to level 76

That's because ice is boring, because of the issue OP brought up; it being weak

[bright abyss]

My main has been an ice since 2009 and thats when we had a 40 blade.

Its not a matter of "WE CANT ONE SHOT WAHH." Its a matter of: we don't have a 40 blade anymore, our main AoE is really really bad until we get enchantments (aka 52 and even then), stuns are only good till maybe avalon, and finally we since we take longer to kill off things that just means the more likely we get hit with a critical in later worlds. I have soloed a lot dont get me wrong but I did that when I had at minimum darkmoor gear and I even had to use life mastery to do that.

[rugged crag]

You have a 35 blade now, which IMO is not such a drastic change in damage. I can agree stuns are bad and if you're rather talking about ice's 7 pip aoe is bad then I can agree with you

But when you talk about ice as a school being bad, then the solution isn't to just give it more pierce and/or damage

[bright abyss]

5% can mean killing an enemy or spending another turn to finish it. I never said Ice was bad

[rugged crag]

Yeah but that's how ice is

Storms can kill enemies faster, factually

Ice kill slower, as they inheritantly should

[bright abyss]

Just make it not a bore at lower levels and give mainly frost giant that upgrade it needs.

[rugged crag]

If the the how slow is a matter of a round or 2, then that's just how being the lowest damage school is. If your problem is that ice is boring (like what I have with ice) then that's because the meta is always just fast pace attacking

[hushed bramble]

I say buff giant and give Ice more negative charms to its spellement pathes

[rugged crag]

take a look at the dungeon or raids. it's timered meaning ice is really not the best school to be having as a fast pace hitter

[hushed bramble]

Oh and buff its tanking stuff

[rugged crag]

You can buff ice's tank as much as you want, the matter of fact is ice will always be in this "weak" and boring state because the meta has always been to defeat as quickly as possible

[bright abyss]

Its not boring at 110, we get a tempest that makes giant useless then.

[pseudo dawn]

ice being weeak is fine but frost giant should be comprable to other schools 7 pips, bc otherwise ice is disproportionately painful to quest on

[bright abyss]

So we lose 2 AoE spells by that time

[rugged crag]

If you're talking about buffing frost giant I am all for that

but this post is about making ice better in general

[bright abyss]

That does make ice better 😛

[pseudo dawn]

giant being horrible is like, what makes ice go from a mid to terrible for questing

[rugged crag]

That is a bandaid fix

You know what else makes ice better? Using storm pins and acting as a storm

[pseudo dawn]

7pip is the most important spell for questing, giant is unusable

[rugged crag]

You can 5 pip deal 900 storm damage as ice

[hushed bramble]

Ice having low damage on their gear? Sure I can agree with that. That’s Ice’s shtick. But giant doing 465 iirc while Forest Lord is doing 680 on a high roll? That’s wack to me

[bright abyss]

You rely on dual schooling at level 48? So just remove ice spells then XD

[pseudo dawn]

Dual schooling isnt practically usable until 160 LOL this is a mute point

[pseudo dawn]

yeah literally, ice and life are tending toward like the same damage for gear

[rugged crag]

If you're talking about making ice better for it to do blade into aoe

[hushed bramble]

Debatable on the last point but even if you want to dual school on a Ice your stuck with Death and you can’t get scarecrow since it’s untrainable lol

[rugged crag]

You can buff ice giant, but I honestly don't see how this in general makes ice such a standout school

[hushed bramble]

So your stuck with Deer knight or Ship of fools until Wallaru if you decide to go down the dual school route

[pseudo dawn]

it wont make it a good attack school

[rugged crag]

ship of fools is one of the reasons why death is the best pve school

[pseudo dawn]

i dont thnk anyone wants it to be storm tier

or even myth or death tier, we want it to be useable for questing

[bright abyss]

The fact they heal off attacks in general is why thats the case, they dont need ship for that

[pseudo dawn]

i mean also PVP but im PVE focused, i dont touch pvp

[hushed bramble]

This is why I said buff the tanking stuff Ice gets. Ice is the tanking and should be having as much damage as storms but giant should be buffed

[rugged crag]

What I am saying is this fix of just buffing damage is a bandaid fix. Ice doesn't make up for what it lacks (health/resist)

[pseudo dawn]

id 100% agree that ice needs more tanky stuff, i dont think we sufficiently tank considering the damage we lack

[rugged crag]

ice level type of health and resist aren't really a necessity in PvE

[pseudo dawn]

i mean tbf we have like 3 really solid hitting spells id say

i think ice needs more utility not more damage

[hushed bramble]

Oui

[pseudo dawn]

like im happy with barrage and freeze ray and shatterhorn for my atacks

[rugged crag]

Even then utility is not needed

[pseudo dawn]

i think like buffed legion would be niec

[rugged crag]

Everybody is set on blade into aoe, which is why frost giant is the center of making ice good or not

Why shield when you can buff another 30% damage

[pseudo dawn]

i mean i think devs are somewhat moving away from like, encouraging that meta outside of mob fights

a lot of wallaru bosses you couldnt feint on

and a lot of other ones still required a different strat

[rugged crag]

In the end that only delayed another run intod efeating

take a look at the most end game boss fights

[pseudo dawn]

i hope my interpretation is right at least im getting tired of blade frenzy double feint being the meta

[rugged crag]

It's legit just 3 people buffing a hitter school, no need to shield or heal

[bright abyss]

Well since we had Aeon gear and I could just TC scarecrow, that world was just I couldnt solo the "last boss" of that world. But I also never use giant so

[hushed bramble]

Oui I kinda hate how that’s what every school does

[rugged crag]

It's only the meta because you do not get penalized for not shielding

[pseudo dawn]

idk, outside of just standard pve, i think ice should have like, utilities that fit into its roshambo, like wouldnt a version of cleanse charm and disarm make sense for ice?

[hushed bramble]

Ice’s lack of negative charms is baffling to moi

[rugged crag]

You don't need to be ice to even use utilities

You can just train ice roshambos or use TC

You can tc shield

You can wear pack gear to heal at a level similar to life

[pseudo dawn]

I mean

Idk, I just think ice should have more utilities given to it

[hushed bramble]

Death gets all of this great utility to the point that they became the best healers in the game at a certain point when Pigsie first dropped

[pseudo dawn]

Like I feel like we get shields absorbs (which don’t work against drains even) stuns taunts and that’s kinda it

[rugged crag]

because drain is op

[meager latch]

also sacrifice isnt pvp banned unlike most of life's spells so they literally are the best healing school now

[austere geode]

Idk what y'all are on about, ice is imo the best school all around, the jack of all trades if you will. Certainly it's a pain in the first arc, i almost dropped the game cause of it but it gets better. I have never experienced any problems after the first arc, spells are a bit unfair but if you want to speedrun the game then ice isn't for you. Just chill and enjoy the game. ||talking about pve||

[sour umbra]

balance is supposed to be the "jack of all trades"

the bit about not using ice to speedrun is fine but once we get to the end, farming is a pain in the neck with 460 damage frost giatn

[pseudo dawn]

i think you kinda know what we mean if you almost dropped the game bc of it assuming you were maining ice at the time

frost giant is ice's worst PVE problem

it does like 200 less than all other aeos besides scarecrow which is a drain

this makes mobs a lot slower

[austere geode]

I know it sounds stupid, but just don't use it and forget about it

For me personally, in my deck i only have pingu

[pseudo dawn]

ok

its kinda hard to when ive played other schools and get so much more damage on a spell thats supposed to be a mileston

[austere geode]

yes, it does take a lot of time and rounds compared to other schools, but at the same time it does deal enough damage

[sour umbra]

"don't use it, just pack barrage" is crazy but true

that's evidence that giant desperately needs a buff

the absolute best gear setup rn for ice involves the nullity robe, xibalba boots, and xibalba wand because of all the shad rating it gives

so that you can get a shad turn 2 so you dont have to use that pool noodle of a spell for most fights

and even still sometimes you dont get the shad

[austere geode]

It doesn't let me post images, but for clarification this is the deck that still carries me https://imgur.com/a/rVyHaU5

Stopped using frost giant as soon as i unlocked pingu cause it sucks, but for early game it's not that bad

[pseudo dawn]

Snowball barrage is probably one of the best hits in the game. And that’s great and why I don’t think ice is really bad after level 108

[pseudo dawn]

But it would be nice if it wasn’t like unplayable before that

[rain badge]

i hate relying on shads

it’s pure rng

[hushed bramble]

sameish, i used them in Wallaru since i felt like I was always pulling them

but a school should never have to rely on Shadow pips to be good

espically in a mode where you do the samething on repeat

[ocean latch]

Fire dragon does 690 and a dot. Frost giant does 760. Frost giants better

[sour umbra]

and other fun jokes you can tell yourself

[bright abyss]

We're also talking about leveling, where a dot will most likely finish off enemies if the initial doesnt kill, where frost giant has one chance and then you have to wait for a blizzard or another giant (depending on the player). I got people that play multiple characters and they play like its 2008 with no enchants. Im not excusing that as a way to make ice stronger endgame, more to make it better for leveling since you dont get a better AoE till Polaris and that requires a shadow pip.

[ocean latch]

They both need a buff theyre both weak

[rare knot]

Fire dragon is fine how it is. Best case scenerio: Bottom path spellement dot, top path pure damage.

[silk hawk]

Ok NEW suggestion: make this thread it's OWN channel 🤣

[pseudo dawn]

theyre never doing that but i wish

[meager latch]

heck yeah, the make ice better channel

(and give players a reason to tank)

[bright abyss]

When it comes to tanking on an ice I really liked it when Storm Titan was still just its normal "challenge" mode! Made me feel like I was actually doing something! I then realized that death just dominated tanking so much more...

The fact that Virulent plague is just the equivalent of 4 legion shields and its 2 pips... (not to mention juju but they've added a few cheat counters to that)

[umbral bridge]

It’s better than legion shield because bosses can’t pierce through any of it

[meager latch]

this is literally my entire thoughts on tanking. Tanking can be fun, it was fun with titan's trident... but death is way too broken as a tank... high resist, high damage, good healing options, the most powerful mitigations in the game, good support options, and drains on top of that... holy cow, death is even more ridiculous than I thought.

[hushed bramble]

Don’t forget, when Pigsie dropped, they were better healers than Life’s because Life lacks utility

[sour umbra]

yo why are u calling my friend slurs

[ocean latch]

Ice could use a buff but fires 7 pip needs one more

[hushed yacht]

Yall moan about them destroying school identity and then forget that ices identity is low dpp high health.
I agree it needs a nerf but you’re expecting a frost giant to do storm damage?? Let’s be real the stun isn’t going to be removed no matter how much you complain. The most that will happen is a dpp increase with the spellement path. They devs have already said they’re looking at improving ice and looking into their spell library to make changes

[cloud jacinth]

Absolutely!

[cloud jacinth]

I think the sad part about the stun is how later worlds no one is stunnable

At least as it applies to frost giant

Because it genuinely stinks to be on the receiving end of a frost giant, whereas it doesn't have the same impact for the pve enemies because they all resist the stun

[meager latch]

they're a better healer than life now because sacrifice and mass sacrifice arent pvp banned

[small seal]

if they allow you to stun, i guess current frost giant would feel better although its not exactly feasible to combo as an Ice

it already takes a while to set up 1 hit so itd be better to remove the stun on that and have Forest Lords dmg

[sour umbra]

I see this "low dpp school" argument all the time

1. Forest Lord
2. Ice is the only school that has this problem
3. People propose solutions all the time that involve getting rid of the stun to do damage that's in line with DPP

I've seen Cam say the stun is gonna stay because people would apparently be mad if it went, but this whole thread disproves that

get the feeling we as a community are gonna need to "get loud" as he put it in the very near future

[sour umbra]

this would in fact allow me to run xibalba boots for 3-piece shad so i can use snowball barrage quicker

[pseudo dawn]

Spitting. If you wanna do that argument you gotta argue for nerfing forest lord and supernova

[sour umbra]

which shouldn’t be nerfed at all 💯

[sour umbra]

https://gyazo.com/6169bfb09fa15fe16d41fe3f855f9bd0

cam I need yall to stop insulting us

[rain badge]

why

just remove the stun PLEASE

btw i’m op but on anew account 💀 same cat on pfp

i do pvp now and holy bottom path looks great

[sour umbra]

bottom path will be good to counter bladestack with

but let's be real fellas. nobody is gonna spend 7 pips to use this in pvp when banshee & wyvern exist

[sour umbra]

REMOVE THE STUN, BUFF THE DAMAGE

[ember flint]

Doesn't life have more health and the same DPP but forest lord does like 200 more damage lol

[lunar crane]

bUt sOMe PeOPlE wAnT tHE sTUn

No they don't. They're lying.

[pseudo dawn]

This official?

[lunar crane]

No one wants that blasted stun.

[sour umbra]

anyone who does either never took an ice thru azteca or got on their friends' accs to scald incindiate for them

[pseudo dawn]

Cam how hard is it to listen to us

Find 10 ices that want a stun

[lunar crane]

Just flood the test realm with the change we want.

[pseudo dawn]

I’ll find the other 50 of them who don’t

[lunar crane]

Once test realm hits, make your voices heard.

[pseudo dawn]

I will

It being buffed by 90 damage is nice but it’s so much lower than the damage of forest lord (WHICH IS FROM A SCHOOL WITH THE SAME DPP)

[ocean vale]

Sort of off topic but me and my sister (longtime players) were talking literally this morning about how weak ice is LOL, I'm glad it's being rooted for to juice up

[pseudo dawn]

It’s so bad

[ember flint]

Stuns are cringe and are worthless in pve which is what the top path is for. Remove the stun

[pseudo dawn]

Even ratbeard wants to give stun the stink eye

[ocean vale]

Yeah we haven't played in 2 years so idk if there's been changes since, but I'm definitely rooting for yall ice school people to get what you deserve

[strange salmon]

i want a stun

[split spade]

Koga you're a very very small minority of people who do, the stun is basically useless against bosses because of the fact that most if not all bosses in the game are stun immune so there's no point of having it

[sweet mango]

Remove stun block, buff it to like 580 base for ice, or idc 530 base something for FG

[split spade]

^

[sour umbra]

koga's trolling

[rain badge]

i take no part in this revolution

[small seal]

stun rly needs to go

[quartz hearth]

Always the low dpp argument, what about life? Or balance? They arent hitting schools either but they have 200 more dmg on Ice because yes. And Ice doesn't even have the most health like life, or good utility for healing. The icephobia is rampant, they just don't want ice to be competitive.

[small seal]

^^ literally

[hybrid halo]

Balance and life both have higher dpp than ice.

[quartz hearth]

life has the same dpp, 83

[sweet mango]

You do realize that they won’t listen right for this part?

[small seal]

if Life isnt 83 anymore, they need to disclose it as such

cause of right now, it is tied with Ice at that number. so Ice deserves whatever Life gets for base spell damage

[hybrid halo]

Okay I do apologize, it is the same DPP. they changed it. Balance is defintely higher

It doesn't feel that way though, I do feel like life's spells have a higher dpp.

[small seal]

Balance and Death are together i think?

[quartz hearth]

they havent changed anything, its been like that since 2008

[hybrid halo]

Yeah balance and death have the same dpp usually

[small seal]

it did feel weird seeing how storm fire and myth was 125 100 90

[quartz hearth]

yep both balance and death have 85

[small seal]

then u have 85 and 83 awkwardly next to each other for 4 schools

[hybrid halo]

Also the main reason the developers are keeping frost giant the way it is because they want to keep legacy spells the same. They said this in the 1 hour stream and I believe ratbeard has made this comment before. Don't think it's some vendetta against ice lol

[quartz hearth]

they changed orthrus tho? and crow?

and many other old

[small seal]

is the legacy argument for the sake of nostalgia? cause i sorta understand it seeing as its a big buying factor for playing the game today

[quartz hearth]

they did a massive buff to death some years back with enchants and crow etc

[hybrid halo]

They've flip flopped on many things in the past. It seems like them not wanting to change things is a new standard from what I understand.

[small seal]

ppl who knew about wiz and never got to play are still coming back with member to finally try it

so i can understand it being mostly the same for said players

[hybrid halo]

Iirc the argument is that people would hate that they're changing the spell. People flipped their lid on deer knight if I recall despite it doing more damage as a base hit

[small seal]

yeah deer outrage was pretty big. i didnt even realise it was that serious

[split spade]

Mmm not sure I buy that

[hybrid halo]

I mean it's what they said, just relaying the message. Not saying I necessarily agree with it

[split spade]

.> Whatever

[quartz hearth]

if theyre worried about that, which i dont see as a reality cause the vast majority wants this, they can do a 3rd path like they did with other spells like spiritual tribunal

also wasn't deer knight changed in a way that did 300 and no dot after?

i dont remember if it was that exactly but anyway ofc people wouldnt like that that would just make it a worse ship of fools, which many would say already is

idk just seeing excuses by the devs to keep ice low, with its many glaring problems

[small seal]

yeah lol i still see deer this way today

[quartz hearth]

first time i come around here to talk about this but i started my ice walkthrough in september again, im now in polaris, and its so bad compared to basically every other school i have which is all except balance

[small seal]

Balance is a fair bit smoother then Ice in my experience

[quartz hearth]

yep, im sure it is lol, soloing khrysalis with an ice was an experience

[small seal]

ive reset a lot on bosses on my storm back then but overall, i was able to blitz past areas

Ice taking a long set amount of time to win 1st time definitely adds up

[quartz hearth]

i have my storm in azteca rn and it's leagues above my ice in polaris

and death man, i had more dmg on my lvl 60 death than my lvl 110 ice

now my death is basically at my ice's lvl

and its so much better its not even funny lol

i have same resist also basically, i have like 5 more res on my ice if that

well, bottom line is, and devs gotta listen cause this is fax, buff frost giant and snow angel so they are usable, give ice some useful utilities, make tanking and getting the aggro of enemies possible with taunt or some mechanic, so the tank class can actually tank. Those 3 things would be enough to make ice not useless.

also rework celestial intervention so i dont wanna jump off a cliff whenever i see it

any thoughts?

also life shouldnt have more health, they already have so much sustaining ability with heals its insane

[small seal]

celestial is horrible, angel is trolling and giant is usable but still... undesirable for the most part

[quartz hearth]

yeah frost giant at least doesnt split the enchant

but it still needs justice and be comparable to forest lord

[small seal]

the undesirability is the main issue here. it cuts into the enjoyment of the school which imo is a huge red flag

[quartz hearth]

true

celestial intervention is like they thought well ice doesnt have a heal despite being a tank, lets give them one:

proceeds to do the most deranged concept to do a healing spell with

but myth gets a decently good heal with grendel's amends, which i realy like btw on my myth

and they arent even a defensive school lol

[lunar crane]

Myth is a defensive school according to the Roshambo wheel.

[quartz hearth]

well i meant they arent a support school in pve normally

they are the 2nd best hitter

tbh myth is my fav with ice and maybe death, but i still dont want ice to be done wrong you know what i mean

so yeah back to what i was saying, they could've made celestial intervention a let's say 4 pip 650 heal for 1 target which isnt too much but its definitely ok. But no, just make the worst spell possible cause we hate ice lol.

[sour umbra]

Ice & life are 83, balance & death are supposed to be 85

[quartz hearth]

yep

[sour umbra]

They may want to keep legacy spells the same but 90% of ices want the stun gone in favor of more dmg

[sour umbra]

Deer knight thing made no sense lol but giant is way different than deer

[rain badge]

what have i started

[quartz hearth]

yeah, and if they are so concerned with the legacy thing, they just need to do a 3rd path

[quartz hearth]

a good thing xd

[rain badge]

also yall if you really want your voices heard maybe ping the devs that worked on these spells

although they probably already seen this theeas

[quartz hearth]

im just ranting for a bit here

[meager latch]

i just have to laugh.

[rain badge]

thread, most commented on thread

[quartz hearth]

after months of playing this

school

[quartz hearth]

that is good tbh, maybe we got some noticing

[pseudo dawn]

if they were so concerned with legacy spells why did they buff nova

[rain badge]

if they didn’t do it in the teasers the chances are low

[sour umbra]

@tall gull @sacred dawn there’s a reason why this thread has the most messages out of any - many of us are open to working with you on a solution that would satisfy everyone

[rain badge]

[quartz hearth]

lol

[rain badge]

i apologize

[rain badge]

also iirc its calamity that does this

[pseudo dawn]

like omg even if 640 was like, the end of path A id be happy

[sour umbra]

@potent flicker !

[quartz hearth]

power nova is doing 725, who knows how much forest lord is gonna do, it needs to be comparable to forest

[bright abyss]

I dont even remember the last time Snow Angel was even used, I saw an npc use it and I completely lost my mind. It was like a long lost set of keys you replaced 10 years ago and it even had the taunt on it! Im pretty sure I didnt even use it before it got nerfed... for some reason....

[quartz hearth]

yep it got nerfed like frost giant lol

like i dont understand how they buffed significantly most schools like balance life death etc but saw ice at 475 dmg and were like hmm too op gotta bring it down to 460

475 was clearly pushing it lol

[quartz hearth]

which is such a disappointment cause snow angel has some of the nicest animation in the game

[bright abyss]

Ahh the good ol days when taunt did nothing...

[quartz hearth]

it does something now?

[bright abyss]

Oh yeah I use it when I attempt to tank

and its really nice since all single targets HAVE to target you

[quartz hearth]

huh, it never worked when i did it maybe i was doing smthing wroing idk

[bright abyss]

Use it with empowerment and you get that 5 pip taunt or the Karamelle spell give you a free pip.

[quartz hearth]

ah nice ty

[bright abyss]

Or just make a death and laugh at anything ice has to tank with as you cast virluent plague spam

[meager latch]

^

[quartz hearth]

yep already have a death, hes leagues above my ice in everything basically

even the resist is very similar

[bright abyss]

Im pretty sure Death is just leagues above everyone, they might even be as strong as storms at this point but with more health and self healing. Im at the point where Im just using aeon gear on my ice just to use scarecrows, just a death with more resist now...

[quartz hearth]

not everyone tbh, my storm and myth hold their own, even my life is good

[sour umbra]

lol yea they made death a damage school and a resist school for some reason

far and away the best school in the game without question

[quartz hearth]

yep but i still pick storm for farming

[bright abyss]

Dont get me wrong, storm can be insane...

But when I show someone new in the game my storm, they go WOW thats AWESOME. I show them the death, a minute later after talking with them... "Hey I made my new character a death!"

[quartz hearth]

but yeah the best no question, it has no weaknesses

[bright abyss]

Im pretty sure its all weaknesses

[quartz hearth]

lol true, tbh im the type of guy who like having all schools, but for someone who goes for just 1 school they are gonna go for death most of the time

[quartz hearth]

lol yeah vp spam is nice

[bright abyss]

Any time I hear a new player say, "I wanna make an ice they look so cool!" I tell them, if you like pain, suffering, fighting one boss for long times and have no social life, you got this! I just say make a death to make their lives easier...

[quartz hearth]

nah we gotta get people to play it so they join our cause lol

[bright abyss]

I will admit though, over the last couple years I think they have made some silent nerfs to past worlds just to make them easier to solo. I dont just meant the "Challenge" dungeons.

[quartz hearth]

yeah the hp nerfs and such

who wants to bet forest lord does 700 dmg top path?

like bruh

[sour umbra]

I promise we’re open to working with y’all devs 💀 we’re just a bit frustrated that we get nerfed every update and the one time we get an obligatory buff it’s nowhere near the right amount

[quartz hearth]

if you want me to delete the comment i can

[pseudo dawn]

yeah

[quartz hearth]

k ill delete it no biggie

that guy (we know who) just rubs me the wrong way

keeping it anonymous

[pseudo dawn]

ok

[bright abyss]

Well if this is like the discord I was helping run a while ago, they can see what messages you delete so

[quartz hearth]

oh well sry then

[pseudo dawn]

its whatever lol

[quartz hearth]

i wouldnt wanna ruin your chances guys xd

[bright abyss]

You're free to any opinion, they know that and they dont seem like they're spiteful... except to the person who made ice to begin with... JUST KIDDING JUST KIDDING

[quartz hearth]

lol

what do you main bro? tbh im playing myth and death mostly rn

[bright abyss]

Ice....

[quartz hearth]

you pvp?

[bright abyss]

Been playing him since the dawn of time

and not really anymore

[quartz hearth]

i dont pvp so i just parked my ice to lvl up my others

my first wiz was myth back when it was the worst lol around 2011

i always end up maining whatever is in its worse state at the moment xd

[pseudo dawn]

p sure this is the most liked thread after free arc 1 which is kind of a given

[quartz hearth]

i dont wanna be a bad omen but i dont think theyre gonna make arc 1 free, specially if they make a graphical update

[bright abyss]

I mean ice late game is way better, not dissing that part. Leveling through the years is what made me talk about this and seeing that they want to make older spells relevant again my hope is they work on things like volcano and Snow Angel and yes even Frosty the snowgiant.

[pseudo dawn]

like literally theres like 3 specific buffs i want for ice but the big one that i will sacrifice the other two for is frost giant buff. My take 640 frost giant, that can be upgraded to like idk 675-680

[quartz hearth]

preaching rn

[quartz hearth]

tbh ik this is an ice thread but it needs a big buff

volacano i mean

volcano* lol

[pseudo dawn]

but if we have to settle for lower ill take it as long as its like comprable to other schools aoe. 550 just isnt. Its lower than crow which loses a lot of damage to drain. Just one path with no stun please. From what i understand of the philosophy to the 7 pip audits a few years ago, its kinda antithetical to the point of 7 pip aoes being a milestone to hold frost giant back with stun. It does significantly less than colossus, and the aoe factor isnt supposed to hold the spell back in terms of damage.

[bright abyss]

I would rather they change it to how dragon works tbh, leave the stuns to the myths...

[quartz hearth]

nah forest lord is gonna be doing about 700 top spellemented for sure, it needs to be at least close to that top spellemented

[pseudo dawn]

^

[quartz hearth]

i would say 675 top spellemented is pretty fair, i say its ok if it does a little less than forest lord, but it needs to be comparable

[bright abyss]

I truly think they just need to make PvP and PvE separate, that means make all the spells have a PvE version and a PvP version and put a button like how you change to TC cards and just do that with a PVP symbol. Will make both parties happier in my honest opinion.

Cause they just want a balance for every spell so it doesnt break PvP.

[quartz hearth]

i think the paths are ok, it should just cost 100 gold instead of 100 crowns

to swap

and tbh none of the spells that affect ice this badly are used in pvp or would be used there anyways if they were made decent

were about to hit 1 k comments guys

btw, any thoughts on how snow angel should be buffed?

i was thinking of maybe doing it like the defensive aoe, putting a shield on everyone and casting taunt so you get aggroe'd, i think they took it off

[bright abyss]

Well they need to make it helpful for leveling, they can make something like that a side spell you get along the way.

[quartz hearth]

well frost would be the main one

[bright abyss]

Or they can pull a rebirth and replace it with something else.

[quartz hearth]

but tbh i wouldnt mind if they just said sike and made it do pure dmg lol

or maybe smthing else lol idk

.

can you see my messages?

[dim hollow]

ice is the only school i invest into the shadow pip rating for just to be decent at hitting

gotta cope with snow barrage with my 200 dmg and 42 pierce

[quartz hearth]

snow barrage is very nice

thing is, cant reliably hit round 2

i got hit by a bot saying my message wasnt sent is that true?

[bright abyss]

slowmode is enabled

[quartz hearth]

yeah ik i got some other thing idk, well if it works it works

can we comment on youtubers here?

well gonna do it anyway, just saw awesomethesauce post a video on the spellement leaks and he doesnt even mention the fact frost giant is in shambles hes like wow great changes frost looks op lol, i mean maybe he doesnt know it's bad but i doubt it

eh im gonna chill out im hating too much

cya gtg

[sour umbra]

he's peevbrained

the spell will prolly be good if team pvp comes back, he didnt really look at the pve side of things

[rain badge]

a

[inland carbon]

remove the stun buff the damage

[pseudo dawn]

this

[sour umbra]

devs and balance mains alike - we don't want to do the same damage as a storm using storm lord. we want to do the same damage as a life using forest lord, surely that isn't too much to ask?

[obtuse night]

my main concern is why does the path that is supposed be for pve not even work in pve? As bosses are often stun immune, and its more important to end the fight in one hit making it not useful even if they weren't stun immune. I think we all agree that the stun has to go.

[quartz hearth]

apparently it is, i see so many people say that life should have more dmg, when it should be equal dpp

[dim hollow]

ice isnt good for anything now and its sad

life can heal, do more damage, and have more HP
why even play ice aside from the aesthetic
its sad

[pseudo dawn]

Wait omg I just realized frost giant isn’t even buffed in the bottom path

KI WHY cam what are you thinking that’s genuinely insane

[sour umbra]

something something "legacy", which is likeeee

that typa thing gives off the impression that they go out of their way to ignore us

[pseudo dawn]

Ok then nerf power nova

[pseudo dawn]

Yeah this is why we think they don’t listen. I haven’t seen a dev try to engage in a conversation with someone about buffing frost giant