Holy Freeze

When active, aura freezes nearby monsters adds cold damage to your attack.

Holy Freeze is a level 18 Paladin Offensive Aura that requires Holy Fire and opens Holy Shock and Sanctuary. It does three things at once: it slows every enemy in its radius, it pulses cold damage to them every two seconds, and it adds cold damage to the caster's attacks. Two numbers decide it: the slow, 30% at level 1 and 54% at level 20, and the weapon cold, 10–15 at level 1 and 185–190 at level 20.

The numbers

The slow is the table's dm34, a diminishing curve between Param3 25 ("Slow % Min") and Param4 60 ("Slow % Max"): 30% at level 1, 42% at 5, 48% at 10, 54% at 20 and 56% at 30. The Basin writes the curve out:

slow % = min(25 + [35 × [110 × lvl ÷ (lvl + 6)] ÷ 100], 60)

The pulse comes from the EMin/EMax columns and their five brackets at the row's HitShift 8 (whole points): the minimum is 2 at level 1, +1 a level to level 8, +2 to 16, +3 to 22, +4 to 28 and +5 past that; the maximum is 3 at level 1 with the same steps. That is 2–3 at level 1, 9–10 at 8, 25–26 at 16 and 37–38 at 20 before the tooltip's doubling: Param6 100 ("Area Damage % Range Scaling") takes the maximum from 100% at the edge of the radius to 200% at the caster, so the tooltip prints 37–76 at level 20. The weapon cold is the pulse times Param5 5 ("Damage multiplier added to Attacks"), before the doubling: 10–15 at level 1, 185–190 at 20, 385–390 at 30. The radius is Param1 6 at level 1 plus Param2 1 a level, times two thirds for yards: 4 yards at level 1, 16 2/3 at 20. An aura costs no mana. Every line reads lvl, so +skills from gear and an Aura When Equipped item count.

How it works

Holy Freeze is an aura with the row's holywind state on the caster and a holywindcold state on every hostile in range, refreshed on the aura's period (perdelay 50 frames): the Basin says the pulse lands every two seconds on every hostile in the radius, and that a target inside several Holy Freeze auras takes all of their pulses. The weapon cold is the row's two passive stats, coldmindam and coldmaxdam, on the caster's attacks only; the Basin says it is added to both the arrows and the explosions of Freezing Arrow.

The slow is three aura stats in the table, velocitypercent, attackrate and other_animrate, all set to -dm34. The Basin's page sets out what that means: no cold length is applied, so Holy Freeze is a separate source of slow that adds to cold length, Slows Target and Decrepify (and, in the current game, Impale), and no unit can be taken below 15% attack rate or 25% velocity. Cold Resist and Cannot Be Frozen do not reduce the slow, so cold-immune targets are still slowed; but the value applied is the lesser of Holy Freeze's and the target's chill effectiveness, so a target with 0 chill effectiveness takes neither the slow nor the pulse, and the Basin says no target is slowed by more than 50% past level 11. Both the pulse and the weapon cold are cold damage, reduced by cold resistance (Resistances and Immunities, Dealing Elemental Damage); Cold Skill Damage from items is applied to the skill's damage first, then a second time to melee attacks.

The Basin's page says Holy Freeze does not slow and does not pulse the act bosses it calls Evils, and that it can slow an Aura Enchanted unique even when that unique carries a higher Holy Freeze.

The Basin lists the other suppliers: the Act 2 Defensive mercenary hired in Nightmare or, in the current game, Hell; an Aura Enchanted unique at level max(mlvl ÷ 7, 1); and Duriel at level 5 in Normal and 6 in Nightmare and Hell.

Synergies and +skills

Two skills feed Holy Freeze, both read as hard points (blvl) through the row's EDmgSymPerCalc:

• Resist Cold: +15% cold damage a point (Param8).
• Salvation: +7% cold damage a point (Param7).

The bonus applies to both the pulse and the weapon cold: twenty hard points in Resist Cold add +300%, twenty in Salvation add +140%. The Basin's page has the same two rates. The slow and the radius have no synergy. Holy Freeze feeds nothing, and the Paladin has no masteries.

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 pulse and the weapon cold are each cut. The Basin's page adds nothing else about players.

Build notes

• Level 20 reads 54% slow in a 16 2/3-yard radius, a 37–76 pulse and 185–190 cold on every attack, for no mana; every +skill raises all four.
• The slow is the reason to run the aura: it reaches 48% by level 10 and only 6 more points by level 20, so a low level from an item does most of the work.
• Resist Cold at 20 hard points is +300% to both halves of the damage and comes with cold resistance; it is worth more to the damage than Holy Freeze's own levels.
• Cold immunes are still slowed; see Resistances and Immunities for what they take from the damage.