How does the Chill -> Freeze -> Shatter chain work?
I recently found Pocirkeln, a unique ring with "Enemies chilled by your hits can be shattered as though frozen", that somehow sent my clear speed through the roof.
I'm playing pretty standard lightning/cold-based Invoker with level 20 Storm Wave as the main skill (around 35k tooltip DPS without Charged Staff buff), both Heralds, Charged Staff, and Charge Infusion. My current crit chance on Storm Wave is around 40 percent (without the bonus from Charge Infusion).
My clearing speed in T14s was fine (by my not-very-high standards), pretty fast and safe, but after equipping the ring, I can explode the entire screen with just one cast of Storm Wave.
What makes the ring so strong? Why skipping the freezing step in the chain of "chill -> freeze -> shatter" makes so much difference?
Comments
Herald of ice cannot freeze. By using the ring you bypass that downside, and it allows all the herald of ice shatters to chain, if I'm not mistaken.
Freeze is built up by applying high enough dmg enough times. Chill is basically instant when applying cold damage. At least that's how I interpret it.
Because almost all hits from cold damage chill. You went from exploding the occasional frozen enemy you killed to exploding every enemy you killed.
Herald of ice explodes frozen enemies, the ring makes herald explosions trigger also on chilled enemies. Since it is a lot easier to chill then to freeze the rings gives you a lot more explosions thus improving the clear.
Wait... would this also work with Fragmentation Rounds? I suppose not though since it's worded as "consumes the freeze".