'Hot' take: Thawing potions are better than Cannot be Frozen for most builds

I've seen a ton of builds bend over backwards just to get that Cannot be Frozen in there. But unless you're chugging olympic swimming pools' worth of potions or meleeing with hordes that chill you... why make that gear sacrifice, why not just use thawing potions?

It's my understanding that both thawing potions and Cannot be Frozen are equally ineffective against

Holy Freeze, and non-holy freeze chilling is usually not something that happens frequently during a run (it's mostly problematic when you get with those ice novas on death.)


EDIT: Unrelated: how do you turn off that automatic keyword nonsense (on "Death", "

Sacrifice", etc.) ? ty @ShadowHeart

Vigil_Ante wrote: 1 month ago

EDIT: Unrelated: how do you turn off that automatic keyword nonsense (on "Death", "

Sacrifice", etc.) ?

You use the "nolink" tag around the word/sentence you don't want an autolink for.

for a

Frenzy or WW barb cbf is very useful, and a great annoyance reducer.

but not necessary, as i rediscover each ladder...

First, a low

Raven Frost is rather cheap, can probably obtained for a couple of pgems. And for most melee builds, i.e. the ones caring about Cannot be Frozen as most casters do not really care, it is a simple and neat answer : lots of dex, lots of AR, CBF and mana can almost never be a bad mix. Barbs can feel this annoying due to the cold damage that may shatter corpses too, that's usually where the

Cham'ed headpiece comes in.

Cham used to be at about 3

Ist - not something THAT expensive, as being Frozen for example for a

Whirlwind Barb is really a painful experience - and hard to avoid as you are melee.

Necrarch wrote: 1 month ago

First, a low

Raven Frost is rather cheap, can probably obtained for a couple of pgems.

More like 1

Ist. And if you look at trade history, just in the last month, a better RF has been sold for a

Vex,

Ohm, 2

Ist and even

Jah.

For PGs, 20-30 seems to be the most common.

FULCRUM75 wrote: 1 month ago

More like 1

Ist.

Are you saying

Cham runes are going for 1

Ist? If so please share where because i'll buy a bunch for that price.

Necrarch wrote: 1 month ago

First, a low

Raven Frost is rather cheap, can probably obtained for a couple of pgems. And for most melee builds, i.e. the ones caring about Cannot be Frozen as most casters do not really care, it is a simple and neat answer : lots of dex, lots of AR, CBF and mana can almost never be a bad mix. Barbs can feel this annoying due to the cold damage that may shatter corpses too, that's usually where the

Cham'ed headpiece comes in.

Cham used to be at about 3

Ist - not something THAT expensive, as being Frozen for example for a

Whirlwind Barb is really a painful experience - and hard to avoid as you are melee.

Like this:

Indeed. Good point for

Raven Frost, the prices have increased a lot, there used to be some giveaways of this before

On paper, you could, not dedicate much equipment to cold resist and poison resist and instead use

Thawing Potion and

Antidote Potion from time to time.
Or you could even not dedicate much equipment to any resistance and trigger

Fade from Treachery from time to time (and after that swap armor).

But those play patterns tend to be boring / time consuming and so most people prefer to have a "self contained" character and play faster / smooth.

For comparison, some people, me included, even replace Spirit shield for Phoenix, reducing their overall damage (and fcr and resistances) for the increase in quality of life with

Redemption...

(OBS: Treachery pre-buff is heavily used on Ubers runs, thanks to

Uber Mephisto's

Conviction..., but it is not common on other situations...)

/\ This. There are many more pre-buffs available in the game, but they either have short duration, weak overall effect, need expensive endgame items (which also need to be stored somewhere) or annoying proc method/chance. Or any combination of those disadvantages. Too much hassle for typical games lasting several minutes, and for longer games (quest "walks") they are not available yet (with Ubers being the only exception). Had Diablo 2 been an MMORPG, with persistent world, not temporary game instances, such pre-buffs would maybe matter.
The same rule applies to character builds: a necromancer with tens of minions is virtually indestructible, but a fragile sorceress (or other class with Enigma) would clear the game before necro finished gathering his army... Everything is optimized for speedrunning.

Knappogue wrote: 1 month ago

FULCRUM75 wrote: 1 month ago

More like 1

Ist.

Are you saying

Cham runes are going for 1

Ist? If so please share where because i'll buy a bunch for that price.

Uh, dude, i literally QUOTED the part of a post about

Raven Frost which i was replying to. Please DO quote my post as much as you want and then point out exactly where i wrote anything about a rune. Oh right, you cannot, because i didn't mention it at all.

And my comment was based on actually checking how much said RING had been sold for in the last few months, here on the price-check page on this site, because of how i personally purchased a

Raven Frost myself not long ago and it absolutely was not possible to get one for "a couple of pgems".

My fault, have not checked the recent prices for

Raven Frost, they used to be so cheap a couple of months before and I had not looked recently.

FULCRUM75 wrote: 1 month ago

Knappogue wrote: 1 month ago

FULCRUM75 wrote: 1 month ago

More like 1

Ist.

Are you saying

Cham runes are going for 1

Ist? If so please share where because i'll buy a bunch for that price.

Uh, dude, i literally QUOTED the part of a post about

Raven Frost which i was replying to. Please DO quote my post as much as you want and then point out exactly where i wrote anything about a rune. Oh right, you cannot, because i didn't mention it at all.

And my comment was based on actually checking how much said RING had been sold for in the last few months, here on the price-check page on this site, because of how i personally purchased a

Raven Frost myself not long ago and it absolutely was not possible to get one for "a couple of pgems".

WTF are you being so aggressive? It really isn't necessary. I, was being genuine. I really thought you knew someone selling

Cham for 1

Ist each.

I'm also not sure why you included your whole second paragraph. In my response to you I never mentioned Ravenfrost or how they are or their value, even if I haven't given 3 of them away. I also never mentioned gems at all so not sure why you included that either.

Necrarch wrote: 1 month ago

My fault, have not checked the recent prices for

Raven Frost, they used to be so cheap a couple of months before and I had not looked recently.

pricecheck.php?item=884&other=0&sk=m&sd ... &plat_pc=1

They are still cheap, hovering around 1Ist (SCNL).

I guess it's doable. Personally, I wouldn't rely on drinking a

Thawing Potion every time i get frozen. Too much of hassle (for me).

fredkid wrote: 1 month ago

On paper, you could, not dedicate much equipment to cold resist and poison resist and instead use

Thawing Potion andAntidote Potion from time to time.
But those play patterns tend to be boring / time consuming and so most people prefer to have a "self contained" character and play faster / smooth.

That's rather the opposite of reality, though. Thawing potions are faster if you are sacrificing items that will increase your kill speed (or increase your survivability.) It's also pretty weird to call a gameplay style with greater interactivity and/or awareness of cold enemies "boring". I would have expected the exact opposite, with botters and humans who like playing on autopilot without paying attention at all to prefer Cannot be Frozen.

This isn't just "on paper", incidentally. I've tested this with myself and it was particularly profound my GF barb and mercenary. Tons of people insist that the merc MUST have CBF (since with a typical GF setup, the merc is the main DPS) but it significantly limits your equipment for him.

(I'm less sure about antidote pots being viable. It could be, for some runs.)

Necrarch wrote: 1 month ago

First, a low

Raven Frost is rather cheap, can probably obtained for a couple of pgems. And for most melee builds, i.e. the ones caring about Cannot be Frozen as most casters do not really care, it is a simple and neat answer : lots of dex, lots of AR, CBF and mana can almost never be a bad mix. Barbs can feel this annoying due to the cold damage that may shatter corpses too, that's usually where the

Cham'ed headpiece comes in.

Cham used to be at about 3

Ist - not something THAT expensive, as being Frozen for example for a

Whirlwind Barb is really a painful experience - and hard to avoid as you are melee.

I'm not talking about expense, but just the gear sacrifice you're making to accommodate that Ravenfrost or

Cham. For the ring, it could be

Bul-Kathos' Wedding Band, could be a strong rare ring, etc. For an open socket in

Helm or armor instead of that

Cham it could be, for instance, a +5% max resist rune (which equates to -20% damage for that element or better, if you have other +max resist already), a

Ber for -8% damage reduction, or a

Jah for +5% HP.

It can also help kill speed by freeing equipment choices elsewhere. Using an IAS+resist jewel instead of a

Cham very often allows you to switch up your other gear, which would otherwise be constrained due to the need to hit the breakpoint and/or max your resists. Or you could be free to use a (non-

Cham) runeword instead of a unique in that slot. Enhanced damage jewels are also an option.

(I did implicitly concede in my post that melee builds are the most likely to want CBF it since they might be unavoidably frozen a lot, but even that depends on what kind of run you're doing and if you are only being significantly chilled a few times in-between visiting merchants, I think it can be worth considering for the above reasons. Yes, WW builds are the least likely of all since they can't drink the potion the instant they're chilled, though if you use a short WW attacking style it might still be viable, not sure.)

Vigil_Ante wrote: 1 month ago

(I did implicitly concede in my post that melee builds are the most likely to want CBF it since they might be unavoidably frozen a lot, but even that depends on what kind of run you're doing and if you are only being significantly chilled a few times in-between visiting merchants, I think it can be worth considering for the above reasons.)

I totally understand where you are coming from with the thawing potions. If I was a new player I'd probably collect/buy them instead of using CBF gear. However, after playing for 20 years, starting a new habit of looking for, collecting, and/or remembering to buy Thawing potions is just not on the table for me. I'm also a very lazy player. I like one-click builds (hdin, light

Nova sorc, javazon, etc). Remembering to collect thawing potions is just another thing I'd need to do

I know you originally asked about Trapsins (I don't play that), but for caster characters, I don't even bother with finding a source of CBF. It doesn't effect their cast rate, and I can just

Teleport away if needed.

Even for GF barbarian the guides I have already saw did not include CBF on Merc...

Like
https://maxroll.gg/d2/guides/gold-find-barbarian

Vigil_Ante wrote: 1 month ago

Tons of people insist that the merc MUST have CBF (since with a typical GF setup, the merc is the main DPS) but it significantly limits your equipment for him.

Knappogue wrote: 1 month ago

WTF are you being so aggressive? It really isn't necessary. I, was being genuine. I really thought you knew someone selling

Cham for 1

Ist each.

I'm also not sure why you included your whole second paragraph. In my response to you I never mentioned Ravenfrost or how they are or their value, even if I haven't given 3 of them away. I also never mentioned gems at all so not sure why you included that either.

Are you trying to make yourself look epic levels of stupid?

The text i QUOTED and REPLIED to read "First, a low

Raven Frost is rather cheap, can probably obtained for a couple of pgems." No mention of any

Cham of any kind what so ever anywhere. That was purely your invention out of nothing and had absolutely no relevance to my post.

My 2nd paragraph was included, because the ONLY THING I REPLIED TO was about Ravenfrost and perfect-gems. And in case you missed it, Necrarch, who i replied to, has already agreed that he was apparently out of touch with the current pricing. Twice.

Why don't you try the amazing idea of scrolling back up and actually bother to LOOK at what you replied to with something that had absolutely no relevance to it and then get angry when i tell you so.