I don't get the usefulness of stun and frozen

[Seldkam]

Basically title. I got super hyped a few times with stun and freezing builds with lots of + damage to frozen or stunned targets. Of course I learned the hard way that the HOTK doesn't really care about that. Is there a requirement to get + frozen or stun duration? It seems like a super risky build to attempt if so. If I don't need stun and frozen CC for regular levels (and I don't, yet) then I don't quite get why I would bother with them at all.

[FlintX]

Maybe you will in the higher difficulties. Keep playing to find out.

[Seldkam]

Originally posted by FlintX:

Maybe you will in the higher difficulties. Keep playing to find out.

That's the idea... I've also thought of the Impaler as having a similar problem. Almost none of the bosses that I can remember have "walls" so to speak, so the "walls + hit = crit" almost never works against the bosses.

[Krampus]

Originally posted by Seldkam:

Originally posted by FlintX:

Maybe you will in the higher difficulties. Keep playing to find out.

That's the idea... I've also thought of the Impaler as having a similar problem. Almost none of the bosses that I can remember have "walls" so to speak, so the "walls + hit = crit" almost never works against the bosses.

This is why you have 2 slots.
You don't have to have melee and ranged/shiels.
Perfectly fine to have 2 weapons. 1 for bosses and elites and a fast weapon for mobs.

[Seldkam]

Originally posted by Krampus:

Originally posted by Seldkam:

That's the idea... I've also thought of the Impaler as having a similar problem. Almost none of the bosses that I can remember have "walls" so to speak, so the "walls + hit = crit" almost never works against the bosses.

This is why you have 2 slots.
You don't have to have melee and ranged/shiels.
Perfectly fine to have 2 weapons. 1 for bosses and elites and a fast weapon for mobs.

That's fair, I've been stuck at BC 1 because I"m bored and a perfectionist. If I get hit once I tend to restart. I think I just need to take a break for a day or two LOL.

[mfndonut]

I don't use either in 5BC, it's not a requirement and some would say freezing actually causes more problems than it solves. Stun, on the other hand, is hella good especially with the cudgel, but that's survival scaling.

[kermat_]

I'm not into playing frozen/stunned, but they made those status effects much more consistent by putting them into survival and giving survival some mutations that benefit frost/slowed/stunned. Frost/stunned enemies get more useful as you go to higher BCs where you get swarmed by enemies. But getting +50% stun duration is not particularly useful to me.

A basic combo like nutcracker and frost blast or ice bow can be very potent. Or even combined with an Ice shield.
Apart from that frozen enemies become slowed which gives you crowd control and an opportunity to use the slow survival weapons.
Slow survival weapons have the chance to get the "Victims slow down nearby enemies" affix. If you pair this with the Frostbite mutation it will help you chew on nearby enemies when you kill one. Things like bats immediately die to Frostbite so it is especially useful in those biomes. Especially on higher BCs where there are more enemies per biome.
Using Heart of Ice you can get really good cooldowns for your skills allowing you to spam them more often.
Freezing enemies now interrupts their attacks completely so you can even deny them any attacks by constantly spamming something like frost blast on them.

Really freezing/stunning is a good pair with survival builds and its slow weapons. Other builds, not so much.

[FlintX]

Either way you should not assume that every single gear effect will work on bosses the same way it does on normal mobs. By far I can tell this was never how it worked in video game history. Bosses are usually more resistant/imune to CC effects or magic to prevent the player to fast cheese the fight. You can take games like Dark Souls and Sekiro in this aspect. And so, even with such limitations people will still figure out some way to abuse and combine mechanics and cheese the fights anyway.

[Seldkam]

Originally posted by FlintX:

Either way you should not assume that every single gear effect will work on bosses the same way it does on normal mobs. By far I can tell this was never how it worked in video game history. Bosses are usually more resistant/imune to CC effects or magic to prevent the player to fast cheese the fight. You can take games like Dark Souls and Sekiro in this aspect. And so, even with such limitations people will still figure out some way to abuse and combine mechanics and cheese the fights anyway.

I didn't assume bosses and mobs function the same way regarding CC. Specifically, I expected to be able to get a hit in while the boss was frozen or stunned. The latter was difficult and inconsistent, and the former pretty much irrelevant as the boss was mostly immune. I'm not saying "why can't the boss be stunned and frozen as long as other mobs?", the answer to that is obvious.

[FlintX]

For what I could understand your main issue for not using freeze and stun is mainly because it is weaker against bosses. But outside of boss fights there are plenty of uses for them.

[Seldkam]

Originally posted by FlintX:

For what I could understand your main issue for not using freeze and stun is mainly because it is weaker against bosses. But outside of boss fights there are plenty of uses for them.

It depends what you mean by weaker, the problem was that getting a hit in while they were stunned or frozen didn't seem worth the effort required. Whether or not the boss is capable of being stunned / frozen or simply has faster recovery was the difference. Of course, as others have said as the difficulty has gone up I've found CC to be more useful in biomes rather than boss fights, that I agree with.