You win pretty much the moment your opponent touches the ice shower. Because the moment they do, they now;
Cannot evade or stop your attacks. An attack that misses deals 0 damage. This means ALL of your attacks for the next 4-11 seconds WILL land.
Takes 10% more damage
Takes an additional 10% more damage from the Ice Storm they now can’t leave
Takes an additional 35% damage from Ultimate Chill
Increases your critical strike chance by 20%
Because you no longer need to dodge them because they’re stuck in it, you now deal 15% more damage to them because you’re 15m away and deal 15% more crit damage because you have full stamina
Ice shower IS a damage ability. It’s your strongest damage ability in your toolbox, because it activates all of your perks at once, stops them from avoiding your damage, and stops them from hitting you. It’s damage and defense in one.
And yes, Musket traps are the same way. Much like the Ice Gauntlet, Musket comes into its own in the late game when you have a ton of dex. And like the Ice Shower, traps are the “I win” button for Musket. Touch one and the Musket wielder just healed for 100% of his HP and took 90% of yours.
Difference is the traps are harder to land, though also harder to avoid.
@Dustbone
I would have to disagree with you …sweep(which is actually cyclone, got the skills mixed up) is not bad, but not great either as it pushes enemies
away from you in all directions, thus suddenly you can find yourself surrounded, where they
usually where only in front of you (the enemies).
Javelin I find to work for what it does, though I can’t for my life understand why it would have
“knock down” because if you use javelin as it is supposed to best be used (over distance)
…you would never be able to reach the enemy to take advantage of the knock down.
(unless you play with others that are tanking, but then again you got a passive for doing more
damage to knocked down targets …which doesn’t really fit well all things considering …in my
opinion)
EDIT: Thank you Dustbone, I have corrected my post a little.
oups my bad keep messing them up I meant the one where you rush forward and bump into enemies. Since I run both… I need to check… one is great against shielded enemies as it instantly reduces the shield of them. The other is great for aggro catch. But the discussion here makes me now unsure.
You can’t compare it to sweep because compared to sweep, basically all spell in the game are bad, sweep is incredibly satisfying, both in effect and animation.
Javelin is quite strong for a few reason :
It does great damage at close range on a very short CD once you’re used to instantly land headshot (And the animation is quite fast once you get the hang of it)
It knock down
it has the added versatility of hitting target farther away if push come to shove (but it’s not great)