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, doesn't 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'll damage and freeze any target within a 3.3 yard (10 feet) radius, quite a significant AoE. FA applies cold damage stacked on top of physical damage to each target directly struck by the arrow; only cold damage is applied to FA's blast radius, but this is still the bowazon's most damaging skill. This is the skill to use against tightly-packed groups on non-cold-immune targets

In case we missed the Exploding Arrow article, let's go over what the blast radius (or splash) means for the bowazon. She possesses three skills with a blast radius, also known as "blasting skills": Exploding Arrow, Immolation Arrow, and Freezing Arrow. These skills have two parts: we'll go over the splash first. The splash is the blast radius, that 3.3 yards of pure elemental damage.

"How big is 3.3 yards in the game?" you might ask. Let's take a look:

That's pretty big. It's not huge, but it's big enough.

The amazon can augment the damage of her splash with like elemental damage items. In this case, cold damage from equipment and charms is added to and spread with the blast radius of Freezing Arrow; however, fire, lightning, and poison damage aren't. So if your bowazon throws on 400-500 cold damage, that cold damage is added to the splash, but if she throws on something like 20-300 lightning damage, it has no effect on the splash whatsoever.

However, matching elemental damage is the only thing that can be added to the damage of a skill's splash: non-elemental effects like PMH, Slows Target, Crushing Blow, Deadly Strike, Freezing, Critical Strike, and so forth are not — neither is leeching. These are added to the other part of the bowazon's blasting skill: the actual arrow itself, also known as the point of impact. This part contains mostly physical damage with a coat of the skill's elemental damage (non-matching elemental damage is added to the point of impact, so you can poison targets hit with FA if you so wish). The point of impact doesn't cause a lot of damage because it doesn't benefit from synergies. In the beginning, the point of impact and splash cause the same amount of damage, but with better items (particularly items with percentile-based bonuses to elemental damage), more skill points (especially synergies), and higher levels, eventually the splash will overtake the damage of the point of impact. (Not very important, just something to keep in mind.) When a bowazon uses a skill with a blast radius, the splash is always going to hit. The point of impact, however, is dependent on the bowazon's AR, just like all her other attacks. This is important because the point of impact not only transmits those nifty non-elemental effects, but it's needed to leech. It's also needed to pierce: every time the point of impact of blasting skill pierces a target, it's "cast" again, with the damage from every subsequent blast overlapping over the last, but it needs to actually hit the target first. (This is discussed in more detail under "Pierce.") Just remember: if the point of impact doesn't hit, the skill doesn't pierce.

Freezing Arrow by itself isn't very powerful (a slvl-20 FA with a slvl-20 Cold Arrow synergy offers about 1,054-1,088 cold damage), but when mixed with a high-level Pierce, it starts becoming excessively dangerous: 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.

Freezing Arrow can be used in one of two ways: either use it to freeze monsters in place (old frostmaiden route) or use it to completely destroy them (speedazon). Either way, FA is a solid investment. If you only want to stop things, FA shouldn't get more than a single point because of the low benefits gained per point: the two most important attributes of FA — the blast radius and freeze duration — don't increase with additional levels. On the other hand, if you want to use FA to inflict damage, then additional points into FA and Cold Arrow are definitely recommended.

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.

For those who use FA as a main secondary attack, a high-level valkyrie isn't a necessity because FA negates her overall usefulness with its freezing effect: both skills stop monsters from getting closer to the bowazon, though a valkyrie becomes more helpful in A4-5 where cold immune monsters are numerous.

If Freezing Arrow is chosen, an assigned hot key is highly recommended. When using Freezing Arrow, try to avoid items with knock back or HCMTF, as both are detrimental to controlled herding.