Frost Nova

Frost Nova is a Wizard skill unlocked at level 1, sending out a flash of severe frost, damaging and often slowing enemies.

Background

The Wizard has learned some knowledge of the Zann Esu mage clan that first tried to foster her like it did the Sorceress heroine, and improved on it. She has modified the staple Frost Nova to deal more damage and have a higher chance of hitting vital areas of opponents, freezing them in one spot.

Skill Effects

The following is a very quick list. See the Frost Nova runed page for a more thorough summary of rune effects, or any of the individual rune pages for numbers, screenshots, blue quotes, and much more.

Skill		Effect
Frost Nova (Level 1)		An explosion of ice freezes nearby enemies for 4 seconds and causes 2 - 3 Cold damage. Cooldown: 12 seconds
	Chill to the Bone	Enemies take X more damage while frozen or chilled by Frost Nova.
	Nova Shatter	A frozen enemy that is killed has a X% chance of exploding in a smaller Frost Nova causing X-X cold damage.
	Frozen Mist	The Frost Nova no longer freezes enemies, but instead leaves behind a mist of frost for X seconds that deals X cold damage per second to enemies standing in it.
	Cold Snap	Reduce cooldown to X seconds.
	Deep Freeze	If Frost Nova hits at least X targets, you gain X% chance to critically hit for X seconds.

Frost Nova rune'd to freeze EVERYONE

Skill Design

Frost Nova is pretty much the same skill it was in D2, but with vastly improved graphics. Instead of just a ring of frost, it now sends out a gaseous ring that's speckled with dozens of shooting, snowball-like projectiles. As it was in D2, the skill is not very damaging and is best used for defensive purposes, a fact that's reinforced by the eternity of a 12 second cool down it's saddled with.

However, its is improved over the D2 version in several ways. It now has a pretty good chance of freezing the enemy rather than just chilling it, and it casts very quickly; so fast you can hardly even see the ring expanding out. It looked much faster and less detailed in the BlizzCon 2009 build than it has in previous screenshots, which I found disappointing.

The substantial cooldown decreases slightly with higher skill levels, but it's still an eternity after the zero cooldown on the D2 Frost Nova. However, it's not so bad if you use it wisely. Cast Frost Nova at the start of a battle, giving yourself some time/space to back up and pelt the enemy with projectiles, or hold it back for emergencies. Few battles in the BlizzCon 2009 demo lasted longer than 8 seconds, and not more than once or twice was the Wizard actually swarmed to the point that she needed this kind of freezing escape spell.

Synergies

• No synergies with any of the passive skills are yet known.

Development

Frost Nova was first shown at BlizzCon 2008 when the Wizard debuted, on the Storm Skill Tree at Tier II. It was changed slightly in appearance at BlizzCon 2009, in that the animation and graphics were sped up, possibly as a balancing change.

Frost Nova was one of the Wizard's starting skills at BlizzCon 2010, and Flux found it to be very useful, indeed almost overpowered:[1]

The nova doesn’t just chill, it freezes the non-bosses, and for more than a second, which I was surprised to see at just level one. Presumably chill time is reduced on higher difficulty levels, as it was in D2, but this was a very powerful spell for so low in the skill tree.

Skill tiers were removed for the July 2011 Press Event, and Frost Nova became a level 1 skill.

Previous Versions

See the Wizard skill archive for more details on previous versions of Frost Nova and other Wizard skills.

In Other Games

This skill is an updated version of Diablo II's Sorceress skill Frost Nova with improved graphics.

Media

Frost Nova can be seen in action on video here:

• Video: Blizzcon 2010 Rune Effects

You can find pictures in the Diablo III screenshot and picture gallery:

• Diablo III screenshots and pictures
• Frost Nova specific gallery contents

• 

  Official shot of female Wizard casting it.

• 

  Skill icon.

References

• BlizzCon 2008 Wizard Gameplay Report
• BlizzCon 2009 Full Wizard Skill Trees
• BlizzCon 2010 Wizard Hands-on Report
• Zediono's translation of JudgeHype's pre-beta report -- IncGamers 1st Aug 2011

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