Cold Arrows

Cold arrows are all bow/crossbow skills that are at the left of the skill tree. Cold will either chill or freeze its target (so long as they are not immune to cold or using equipment that negates chill/freeze), allowing a bowazon to slow the pace of combat or stop it altogether; the bowazon is already the fastest physical attacker in the game, giving her the ability to slow targets only emphasizes that edge in battle. When killed, chilled/frozen monsters have a chance of shattering, leaving no corpse: this is indispensable in NM and Hell.

Cold damage is important to the bowazon in particular because she is the only classic character who can take advantage of LOD's interchangeable and cumulative chill-freeze times: enough cold damage items will add up to a total chill duration of 20-22 seconds (or more). This chill duration is nice for magic arrow attacks like Strafe or MS, but its true power is revealed when it's stacked with Freezing Arrows's 2 second or Ice Arrow's 2-5.8 freeze duration, resulting in 22-24 seconds of freeze with Freezing Arrow or 22-27.8 seconds with Ice Arrow. This particular property works with all of the bowazon's cold arrow skills. It also makes the bowazon the undisputed queen of freezing cold damage: if she wants to increase the freeze duration on freezing arrow, she doesn't need to add skill points, just cold damage equipment.

My advice is to get at least one point in all the cold arrow skills, even if your bowie's using a Buriza-do Kyanon. Just trust me on this. Yeah, the ballista can freeze targets and it has the best cold damage from any bow, but a Buriza doesn't have a 3.3 yard blast radius.

Cold Arrow (one point to maximum)

Clvl: 6
Prerequisites: None.
Effect: Enchants an arrow, adding cold damage and slowing your target.
Properties: Can be blocked, dodged, does not work with Critical/Deadly Strike or Penetrate, does work with Pierce, steals life/mana, elemental portion always hits, can be resisted/negated/absorbed via cold resistance/immunity/absorption, chill duration is reduced by 50% in NM and 75% in Hell.
Synergy from: Ice Arrow: +12% cold damage/slvl.
Synergy to: Ice Arrow: +8% cold damage/slvl, Freezing Arrow: +12% cold damage/slvl.

Cold Arrow converts a percentage of your physical damage to cold damage, around ({slvl × 2} + 1)%, then tacks additional cold damage on top of that. A solid skill to have because it'll help your bowazon take out big uniques and bosses, mostly by slowing them down. Slowing an target is vital because it takes longer for them to close the gap between your bowazon and them; if they're ranged attackers, their attacks slow as well, which is when D/A/E skills kick in. For the first eighteen levels, count on using cold a lot to widen the gap between your bowazon and your targets. Due to its obsolescence factor, don't invest more than one point: the damage from cold arrow is noticeably lower than your standard attack damage and any item with cold damage will render this skill obsolete.

Ice Arrow (one point)

Clvl: 18
Prerequisites: Cold Arrow
Effect: Arrows have additional cold damage and momentarily freeze the target.
Properties: Can be blocked, dodged, does not work with Critical/Deadly Strike or Penetrate, does work with Pierce, steals life/mana, elemental portion always hits, can be resisted/negated/absorbed via cold resistance/immunity/absorption, freeze duration can be increased with interchangeable and cumulative chill-freeze times, adds physical damage to point of impact, freeze duration is reduced by 50% in NM and 75% in Hell.
Synergy from: Cold Arrow: +8% cold damage/slvl, Freezing Arrow: +5% freeze length/slvl.
Synergy to: Cold Arrow: +12% cold damage/slvl, Freezing Arrow: +5% freeze length/slvl.

Cold only slows down a monster; Ice Arrow's freezing stops it solid. (It won't freeze uniques, bosses or champions, only chill them.) Ice Arrow is an excellent addition to any multiplayer-oriented bowazon: she can play havoc with everything and how much damage she inflicts will be secondary to her ability to chill things or stop them dead in her tracks. It is effective when combined with Pierce: with a near-80% chance to pierce through targets, an Eye of Etlich to extend freeze time and an exceptionally fast attack speed, any target vulnerable to being frozen is as good as dead the second a single Ice Arrow hits because they're being refrozen so fast that they can never break free.

Some might have noticed that Ice Arrow adds +5% freeze length per skill point to Freezing Arrow and may be tempted to max Ice Arrow to increase Freezing Arrow's freeze duration by +100%. Don't do it: it's far easier to collect small cold damage charms (which add a second of freeze time) than to waste points for a freeze duration that will be penalized in hell anyway. In short, if you're looking to increase your Freezing Arrow's duration, save your points and use cold damage equipment instead.

Ice Arrow's freeze duration is extended with cold damage items and additional skill levels. If Ice Arrow is chosen, an assigned hot key is recommended.

Freezing Arrow (one point to maximum)

Clvl: 30
Prerequisites: Cold Arrow, Ice Arrow
Effect: Enchants an arrow to deliver cold damage that freezes any monsters near the point of impact.
Properties: Can be blocked, dodged, does not work with Critical/Deadly Strike, does work with Pierce, steals life/mana, elemental portion always hits, can be resisted/negated/absorbed via cold resistance/immunity/absorption, 3.3 yard radius, two second freeze duration that can be increased with interchangeable and cumulative chill-freeze times, adds physical damage to point of impact, freeze duration is reduced by 50% in NM and 75% in Hell.
Synergy from: Cold Arrow: +12% cold damage/slvl, Ice Arrow: +5% freeze length/slvl.
Synergy to: Ice Arrow: +5% freeze length/slvl.

Freezing Arrow (which will hereafter be referred to as "FA") is similar to the sorceress's Glacial Spike: it will damage and freeze any target within a 3.3 yard (10 feet) radius, quite a significant AoE. FA applies physical damage for each target that has been directly struck by the arrow; cold damage is then stacked on top of physical damage while cold damage is applied to FA's blast radius. For pure stopping purposes, FA shouldn't get more than a single point in most cases, because the low benefits gained per point: the two most important attributes — the radius and freeze duration — don't increase with additional levels. For those who use FA as a main secondary attack, a high-level valkyrie isn't necessity because FA negates her overall usefulness with its freezing effect: both skills stop monsters from getting closer to the bowazon, but a valkyrie becomes more helpful in A4-5 where cold immune monsters are numerous.

Before v1.09c, Freezing Arrow did not leech, requiring a bowazon to fire off a volley of Freezing Arrows, then to quickly switch to Strafe or Multiple Shot to quickly refill the mana bulb. Now that FA does leech, its status as a clvl-30 skill is made clear, as it's the skill to use against tightly-packed groups on non-cold-immune targets. There are two ways to use FA now: either use it to freeze monsters in place (old frostmaiden route) or use it to completely destroy them (speedazon). For pure freezing purposes, a frostmaiden's IAS gear is sacrificed for cold damage items to lengthen freeze duration. She isn't worried about firing speed — everything will sit still until she's good and ready to kill it. For purposes of pure destruction, additional cold-damage is unnecessary and replaced with IAS items, as a bowazon only needs enough freeze duration to fire off another FA as she decimates a crowd.

The skill that makes a frostmaiden isn't Ice or Freezing Arrow, but Pierce: she must have a slvl-10+ Pierce in order to maximize her power and she needs to develop that before she moves on to develop her Freezing Arrows. If she can get her targets pinned close to a wall, line up FA so it pierces and detonates against the wall. She'll get two or more hits for the price of one. Always look for a piece of terrain — like a wall, post or conveniently-placed minion — behind the pack to shoot at: the extra detonation can only help her kill quicker.

If Freezing Arrow is chosen, an assigned hot key is highly recommended.