Es for light. Vita for cold.

I have mained Frozen Orb pretty much since the game's release and probably have a bit more experience than some here.

Over Death's Fathom, Doom is approximately 9-10% higher dps against immunes (also depends on whether your sunder is -res or %cd, can be slightly more or less depending), while it suffers considerably against non-immunes. Depending on skill distribution and gear, Fathom deals up to almost 55% more dps against non-immune creatures, although admittedly in testing I had mistakenly put my Frost jewel on my Fathom, so I was losing that as well. Edit: I did at least have a normal facet in my helm, but there was definitely user error in my most recent testing.

You need to ask yourself: what is more important to you- dealing slightly more damage to immunes, or significantly more damage to non-immunes? Are you only fighting cold immune heralds, or are you bossing and doing general content?

The above makes Fathom significantly better in my opinion, although it is arguably much harder to get, especially a high rolled one. There are also some things people just neglect to bring into this conversation, such as losing access to fcr on your weapon by using doom. The Fire Resist on Fathom isn't something that should be dismissed either, even if resists are a bit less important on ES.

This post was edited by TheEmotionalSupport on Apr 28 2026 02:41pm

hoto

Fathom setup, unless you're farming an area with a high amount/majority of cold immune mobs.

the purpose of doom is that blizz/orb >> pure blizz & pure orb. holding doom allows you to dump points into orb rather than cold mastery so you can use it between blizzs on cooldown

BQQ -

Thanks for that information... so what would you rock for gear on the rest of the set-up? Enigma? Vmagi? Circ? NW?

Anything helps.

3/20/2 or 2/20/2 circ (2os essential to socket with facets)
vmagi (frost jewel)
jewelers monarch of simplicity (4* facets, simplicity for low str requirement & cheap)
doom -60
arach
trang gloves
sojs
2/15+ fcr ammy

being able to alternative between spamming blizz and orbs on cooldown is way more dps than pure blizz. with above gear and doom, you'll have enough cold peneration with 1 pt in cm

Agree on orb + blizz > pure. You also get much stronger ice blast with the hybrid spec cause orb is a synergy to it. Ice blast is great for mindless boss runs.

Your argument has much merit considering the Topic Title, but the post was primarily about Frozen Orb as a main/solo skill and that is how I tackled the problem. It is more complex if you add Blizz into the mix, but that was a little bit off of what the guy was searching for from context clues. I was speaking to the specific solo Frozen Orb/ES build with my findings. I probably should have been a little more clear on that in my comment. My apologies.

I personally have the mindset that blizz/orb is higher dps and more "meta" but Blizzard as a skill simultaneously bores and mildly frustrates me, so I go for fun instead of min-maxing by using Blizzard.

Blizzard is an awesone skill. I love popping elite packs from 1.5 screens away.

This post was edited by babun1024 on Apr 28 2026 04:07pm