Cone of Cold, the worthless spell? (in General)

Cone of Cold hasn't been a good spell for a long time, ever since fireball was made more powerful in the old days of cb1. Now, it's even worse, since it only fires in melee. True, it doesn't splash your enemies like fireball does, but by the time your spell actually launches there's not really any time left for it to do any significant damage.

If the damage isn't increased, or the range isn't increased, how about this? In most games, cold spells have a slowing or weakening effect on the victim. What if CoC had the minor benefit of reducing the target's dexterity, similar to an axbow? Even if nothing else were to change about the spell, that would at least make it a bit more useful.

It will be more useful at higher PR's when battles last 5 or 6 rounds each.

I'd put money on that not being the case.

It might be a bad spell for a solo mage. Might even be a bad spell for a 2-minion team. But if it's on the 3rd or 4th minion, especially when a tattoo is in the mix?

A good strat with CoC would make an effort to minimize opponent damage to yourself, so might incorporate AMF, EC, and armor. To say that it's useless would be... overstating it a bit, I think.

I think Cone of Cold would work really well in a Strat that goes as following:

Minion 1 - AS and DM
Minion 2 - AS and GA
Minion 3- Magic Missle and Prot
Minion 4 - Cone Of Cold
Tattoo - Jiggy or Steel Tattoo

Because the tattoo is always in front of the minion it is on, the Cone Of Cold dude would be protected and would be more effective than a Magic missle or Fireball.

Doh!


Minion 1 - AS and DM
Minion 2 - AS
Minion 3- Magic Missle and GA
Minion 4 - Cone Of Cold and Prot
Tattoo - Jiggy or Steel Tattoo

I think the thing a lot of people forget with strats like this is that the TJK has offensive capabilities in the melee rounds. So, don't put him on your 1st minion, put him on your 3rd or 4th to let him get some licks in.

(Not saying that you were suggesting it, Mian; just making a general observation.)

"the old days of cb1."

Yikes! Velo said it first, here!

Miandrital,

so your saying i should get AS on my DM minion? and prot on my CoC minion to be perfect? .... lol

The problem with CoC on a 4 minion team is that 4 minions dilute the CoC to the point where it can't do decent damage. One could have a pure CoC mage with nothing else trained, but due to DM, the CoC mage is no longer highly effective without HP trained. HP dilutes the CoC even more so in the end, it's still worthless.

Anyone who says you'll have a high enough AS to deflect the DM, remember that AS works at reduced effectiveness on 4 minions and a team with less than 4 minions won't have any problems overcoming even your most powerful AS.

I switched CoC for FB and noticed an immediate improvement in the performance of the one char I was using. While burying a CoC mage at the back is fine at low levels, when players get richer and the top teams use lots of rare ammo, the CoC mage will be slaughtered faster than it can be useful, I think. I think with the advent of DM, 4 minion teams dilute the XP too much unless they're all single spell casters. I don't know how much extra XP, if at all, multi-minion chars get like CB used to.

Maybe increasing its range by 1 would help. The idea of having DD spells do something other than damage is an interesting one, though.

Way I look at it, in the old game FBM was amazing, Though I favoured CoC slightly as it imo was better than fireball. MM reduces the minion numbers so that either FB or CoC will devastate the remaining minions.

Plus for CoC : Fireball is now a bit specialist, in most teams its not going to be the best choice.

Negative for CoC : With teams now almost all having an extra minion from a Familiar it dillutes it. This is also the case though for Fireball.

In Conclusion, CoC isnt great but its the best out there for many teams, MM is good but it acts like a tank, means can have highly unprotected minions behind a screen. I think maybe Fireball and CoC should possibly gain a small bonus considering 5 minions in many teams.

FB and CoC already got about a 20% bonus.

The amended FB is great. The bonus equals out the penalties and it's a tantalising decision whether to use it or not.

A 20% increase in CoC s damage is offset by the loss of the ranged attack. Which I think out weighs the bonus...