Black Ice (passive)

Black Ice is a passive skill available exclusively to the Wizard. It increases damage done to targets frozen by the Wizard.

Lore

Not known yet.

Design

Damage dealt to frozen targets is increased by 20%.

It's not known if this applies only to frozen targets, or to chilled targets as well. Since Champions, Bosses, and other players in PvP can not be frozen (just chilled) that seems to limit the utility of this skill a bit. Also consider that anything frozen can be refrozen and kept frozen, thus dying helplessly with or without bonus damage effects.

Level Requirement

• Wizard: level 20

Synergies

Wizard active spells that can freeze targets include:

• Ice Armor
• Frost Nova

Ray of Frost and Blizzard only chill; they do not freeze. (Though perhaps a runestone might add that property, making them eligible for a bonus from Black Ice?

This might be a useful passive for a Battle Mage, since Ice Armor adds to armor as well as freezing melee attackers.

Development

Passive skills have had a long and storied history. When Diablo III debuted at the WWI 2008, skill trees included passive skills, much like in Diablo II. In 2010, it was announced that passive skills had been renamed traits and separated out from active skills. At the July 2011 Press Event, Blizzard announced that passive skills were once again in the game, replacing the traits system. Like many passive skills, Black Ice was moved directly from a trait of the same name when traits were changed back to passive skills in early 2011. Neither the name nor the function changed, though the stats may have been tweaked slightly.

• Black Ice (trait) - As a trait with slightly higher damage.

See the traits page for more details on previous versions of this and many other passive skills.

References

• JudgeHype.com July 2011 Press Event Coverage (Translated by Zediono)

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