Arctic Blast

Blast a continuous jet of ice to burn your enemies with frost.

Arctic Blast is the Druid's level 6 Elemental skill, with no prerequisite; it unlocks Cyclone Armor. It is a channelled cast: for as long as you hold the button the Druid breathes a narrow stream of cold missiles, paying mana continuously, and everything in the stream takes cold damage and a long chill. The numbers that decide it are the tooltip's cold per second, 184–203 at level 20, which the Basin says is twice what actually lands, the cold length, 15.4 seconds at level 20, and the range, 12 yards at level 20.

The numbers

• Cold damage per second comes from the EMin/EMax columns, per-frame rates in the table's units, through the tooltip's calc enms × 12 ÷ 256. EMin is 32 at level 1, then +20 a level to level 8, +26 to 16, +28 to 22, +32 to 28 and +36 past that (EMinLev1–5); EMax is 64, then +21, +27, +29, +33 and +37 over the same brackets. 42–55 at level 5, 84–99 at level 10, 132–150 at level 15, 184–203 at level 20, 304–327 at level 30.
• Cold length is ELen 100 frames plus 15 a level (ELevLen1–3), ÷ 25: 4 seconds at level 1, 0.6 more a level, 15.4 at level 20, 21.4 at level 30.
• Range is calc1 = ln12 ÷ 2, the missile's duration, from Param1 35 ("Range baseline") plus Param2 2 a level; the tooltip turns it into yards as ln12 ÷ 4 × 2 ÷ 3: 5⅓ yards at level 1, 8⅔ at level 10, 12 at level 20, 15⅓ at level 30. The Basin's note: the range grows 2 yards every 6 levels.
• Mana is paid while you channel. The row has mana 24, lvlmana 1 and manashift 2, which resolves to 0.38 at level 1 and 0.67 at level 20 per charge; the tooltip's mana line reads mps and prints it per second. The Basin writes the per-second cost as (23 + slvl) × 25 ÷ 128: 4 88/128 at level 1, 8 51/128 at level 20.
• Minimum mana to cast is Param3 = 4 at every level, so the line is not in the table. The Basin warns that 4 is displayed but 6 is actually required to start; the row's startmana column is 6.

Every line reads lvl, so +skills from items raise the damage, the length and the range; the synergy reads hard points only.

How it works

Arctic Blast is a cast on your cast rate (Casting Speed) and cannot be used as a werewolf or werebear. The Basin describes it as a stream of piercing missiles that apply cold damage and cold length for as long as the caster continues to cast; because the missiles are size 1 the path is very narrow, and it recommends aiming at a distant point rather than a target so the stream passes through everything in between. The damage is Cold Damage with the chill of Chill and Freeze for the cold length, cut by the target's Cold Resist and raised by Cold Skill Damage, see Dealing Elemental Damage. No attack rating is rolled.

The Basin's warning: the tooltip's cold per second assumes the bit damage lands every frame (× 25 ÷ 256), but the engine applies it every other frame (× 25 ÷ 512), so the real rate is half the tooltip: about 92–101 a second at level 20 before resistance.

The Basin adds that Faster Cast Rate does not shorten the fixed start and end of the cast animation, and that because any damage in a frame stops a unit's damage regeneration, a non-cold-immune target's regeneration is halved while it is fired upon.

Synergies and +skills

One synergy: Cyclone Armor, +15% cold damage per level (Param8 = 15, "Damage synergy"), through EDmgSymPerCalc = skill('Cyclone Armor'.blvl) × par8, hard points only. The Basin's page lists Hurricane as a second synergy in the older game; the current table has no line for it. Arctic Blast's own hard points are a synergy for Twister, whose page gives the line.

Against players

A player's hit on another player is cut to 17% of its value (difficultylevels.txt PlayerDamagePercentVSPlayer) before anything else, see Player versus Player. The Basin's page says nothing more about Arctic Blast against players.

Build notes

• Read the tooltip at half: the Basin's every-other-frame rule makes level 20 about 92–101 cold a second, and the synergy is the only thing that multiplies it, +15% a hard point in Cyclone Armor.
• The chill is the durable part: 15.4 seconds at level 20, 0.6 more a level, on everything the stream touches.
• Mana runs about 8.4 a second at level 20 by the Basin's formula and climbs with every level; keep 6 mana spare or the jet will not start.
• Its hard points feed Twister, and it is the road to Cyclone Armor.