05-19-2012, 11:41 AM
(This post was last modified: 05-19-2012, 11:42 AM by Skandranon.)
(05-19-2012, 10:03 AM)MongoJerry Wrote: It's funny. Just two minutes after I made my post, Frag (tank barbarian) and I ran into a boss pack that was Arcane/Jailor. Nasty combination, right? After some laser beams spawned, I moved back a little to avoid the beams and one minion got away from the pack on Frag and came after me. I Frost Nova'd it and you guessed it, Ray of Frosted it down. I proceded to do the same thing to another minion who also later got away from the pack. A moment later, we were down to the boss only, and I Ray of Frosted it to finish it off. (After using Arcane Orb as my aoe during the fight as much as I could).
Ah, this is exactly what I was hoping for. A concrete example so I could actually try to figure out where the discrepancies in our experiences are. I think I see it, though - it's just a matter of game rules. I'm playing almost always 3-4 player games, and tonight it was all Hell difficulty.
When I was trying Ray of Frost and failing with it, in 4-player hell games, even a Snow Blasted Ray of Frost is insufficient to kill a minion, even though I had 140 Arcane Power and was draining it all, with all my damage increasing passives in place. Just to put the scaling in perspective, I used Archon three times during a single encounter with a champion pack this evening. On one of those uses I was able to channel Disintegration Wave for more than fifteen seconds on account of the champions' Illusionist property, and had the beam on one of the champions for the full duration of thirty or so seconds. That was a little under half of its health.
In short, the situation you describe (and ones like it) could never have happened to me under any of the conditions that applied when I was testing Ray of Frost. As a result I couldn't find anything positive to say about Ray of Frost. I would definitely feel better about it if I'd been able to single out a mob and kill it with the ray in the way you're describing.
On the strength of your earlier comment I actually went back to single player for the first time since release day and ventured out into the desert to try Ray of Frost. I did still feel it was suboptimal for Hell difficulty but I acknowledge that under such conditions it has some value for single-target situations as I didn't have to deplete all my arcane power to defeat a single enemy, and I could also channel the beam while being attacked to finish off a target.
That said, even with just one other player (another Wizard) we were having such trouble finding a useful time to use Archon that the other wizard dropped it entirely for Diamond Skin. If even Archon had these issues, I find it hard to believe that Ray of Frost won't. I am very interested to see if your opinion changes as you advance into Hell difficulty if you continue to duo, especially against champion and boss packs as I consider the storyline bosses to be relative pushovers.