Frostmaidens aren't cool, they're cryogenic. The frostmaiden was conceptualized by saddguy, named by the author, then expanded by other players. More controlled than the average bowazon, the frostmaiden doesn't blindly flail about with Strafe or Multi, but selectively herds targets, waiting for the right moment — a nice large crowded group of monsters — to unleash her Freezing Arrows.
If you were thinking of making a bowazon variant, chances are pretty good you were thinking about a frostmaiden. It's not hard to see why: FA hits hard.
The frostmaiden's offense/defense is based on using her cold and freezing arrows to take advantage of D2's interchangeable and cumulative chill and freeze times: with enough cold damage items, a frostmaiden can freeze an enemy solid for 22-24 seconds with FA while causing massive amounts of cold damage. (These times are halved in NM and quartered in Hell.) A frostmaiden is an excellent addition to any multiplayer game: is an excellent offensive and defensive character, though how much damage she inflicts will be secondary to her ability to chill things or stop them dead in her tracks.
Like all variants, the frostmaiden's narrow perspective demands sacrificing the development of other skills: her focus, first and foremost, is cold damage. With the introduction of cold-immune and CBF enemies in LOD as well as problem monsters like champions, uniques, and super-uniques, the frostmaiden's power has been cut back somewhat, but she can still work. Before you even start, write off 41 points on the Cold Arrow-Freezing Arrow portion of your offense alone: that will cover FA and all its prerequisites, except for Ice Arrow, which you're going to ignore.
The fun part is deciding where the rest of your points go. Fire skills need a lot of points to work, points you can't spare, so don't bother with them. Critical Strike has no effect on elemental damage, so ignore that. D/A/E's protective aspects are cut short by FA's freezing effects. A high-level valkyrie isn't required because FA can stop most enemies just as fast, though a valkyrie may be needed when the frostmaiden runs into a monsters that're immune to being frozen, like frenzytaurs, ghosts, and cold-immune monsters. Magic arrow skills will be capped or underdeveloped at your option: you need the points, so specialize in a single physical attack to conserve points: because of its simplicity, wide targeting range, and static mana cost, I use Strafe; if your frostmaiden's base AR isn't too great, Guided Arrow would be an option.
This leaves a frostmaiden with few super-specialized core skills: Cold Arrow, FA, and Pierce. Generally, you'll want to have a 70~80% chance to pierce a target; either strive for slvl-15 Pierce or use piercing equipment. If you've a good number of +skill items, then prioritize Cold Arrow over FA for the synergies; if not, prioritize FA over Cold Arrow for the AR bonus, making sure to keep an eye on FA's mana cost. Eventually, you're going to max them both; it's just a matter of pacing.
While a frostmaiden is an invaluable asset in a party of melee fighters or parties without heavy damage dealers, it should be noted that she might want to hold back a bit when partnered with a necromancer, druid, or assassin: frostmaidens have a bad habit of destroying corpses that could have been used for…other things.
A frostmaiden's attributes aren't that much different than a standard bowazon's; it might be safe to say that she needs no changes at all. Sure, she'll need more mana because of her high-cost FA, but it would be more expedient to pack on +mana items to increase her mana pool or to focus more on mana leech to make the most out of every shot than to invest in energy.
Unlike the magezon, the frostmaiden can afford to use heavier bows and allocate more points towards dexterity: not only because they give FA more punch at the point of impact, but because she will be dependent on a physical attack when cold damage just won't do the trick and she'll need a healthy amount of physical damage and mana leech in order to maintain the high mana cost of FA. In this respect, her weapon of choice is just as open as a standard bowazon's.
More important than physical damage, however, are cold damage items. If she merely wishes to freeze things for as long as possible, then all she needs to do is pack on as many cold damage items as possible; if she wishes to cause as much cold damage as possible in addition to freezing things, then the frostmaiden's equipment demands are going to become a bit more particular.
If she just wants more cold damage and freeze duration, the frostmaiden may find the following bows of some interest:
The penultimate frostmaiden bow would be:
There are also many socketing options to consider: perfect sapphires have 10-12 cold damage @ 3 seconds apiece, while Thul runes have 3-12 damage @ 3 seconds. Jewels of note are rare jewels of the icicle (3-10 cold damage @ 2 seconds) and magical jewels of the glacier (5-15 cold damage @ 2 seconds). Sitting at the forefront of cold damage jewels are Rainbow Facets; they won't drastically increase your frostmaiden's freeze duration, but they will give a significant boost to her cold damage:
If you were truly psycho, you could put four cold facets in a four-socket armor of the whale/dexterity/amicae, but if you want your frostmaiden to cause even more cold damage, there are some better ideas.
Though they won't do much for your frostmaiden's freeze duration, a pair of perfect cold facets in a perfect set of Ormus' Robes and Nightwing's Veil would add up to an incredible +45% to a her cold damage, with an additional -10% to enemy cold resistances. Another choice to consider would be the completed M'avina's Battle Hymn set with its high cold damage and +20% bonus to cold damage.
A frostmaiden's charm selection is somewhat open, with one restriction: her charms should have some form of cold damage. How much cold damage is unimportant, what matters is prolonging the cold duration of her freezing arrows. All cold damage charms have a 1 second duration per affix, the highest is a hibernal small charm with 11-20 cold damage, hibernal large with 15-30 cold and hibernal grand with 13-25 cold damage. Like standard bowazons, a frostmaiden may pursue more physical damage, though it may be wiser to find charms that add to her mana pool. While +skills charms are nice, try not to go overboard, especially if your frostmaiden's mana pool isn't that deep.
A frostmaiden's best choice for a hireling is either an A2 Might or Holy Freeze merc. The former gives the frostmaiden's freezing arrows additional damage, while the latter augments the frostmaiden's crowd control abilities. In addition, both have decent amounts of life, are able to handle heavy-damage spears and polearms with life leech. Alternatively, one could give a Might merc a Doom polearm, thus getting two mercs for the price of one.
While barbarian mercenaries can use swords and leech as well, their heavier damage and faster attacking speed is offset by their inability to do anything else (though a barbarian with freezing equipment like a Bing Sz Wa or Frostwind might be an interesting mercenary). Rogue mercenaries with ice arrows are also a possibility, as are A3 cold damage mercenaries…or would be if the frostmaiden didn't already do everything they could better.
last updated: Sunday, April 22, 2007
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