Bitter Freeze Ray worth it?

[Hero Star]

Is Bitter Freeze Ray worth it? With the long cast time and since Chilling Ray is just sleep on Sentinel(which doesn't help with stacking holds). Is it worth the DPS or is another combination of attacks outperform it?

[Frostbiter]

Isn't that the only hold that Ice gets on Sentinels? A little recharge and slotted with the Lockdown set it should be enough to perma-hold bosses pretty easily. EB's might take a few applications and require more recharge but it's not that hard to pull BFR off even in combat.

 

As for it being a DPS option? Maybe on a Blaster but for Sents I'd say probably not.

Edited October 20, 2020 by Frostbiter

[egoprovince]

Back on live I used it as a gap filler with most of my other Blaster ice powers.  In a pinch I could two-shot a boss to lock them down.  And this was all before IO's.

 

I like it, thematically and functionally.

[Underfyre]

The correct answer is yes. Slot it for procs and it is your highest damage attack.

[Hopestar]

While it may be your highest damage attack, it's actually quite low in Damage Per Activation, the amount of damage it does for the time it takes to cast, because of it's long 2.5 second duration.
Ice Bolt - 44.38
Ice Blast - 41.76
Frost Breath - 27.7 to up to 6 targets.
Chilling Ray - 51.88

Bitter Ice Blast - 112.57
Bitter Freeze Ray - 61.7

With damage procs in BFR, it still only stays in 2nd place, though closer to BIB. While it does have a hold, it's not exactly long enough to depend on for holding bosses indefinitely unless you have a 6 second recharge or lose some damage to put in the +2mag hold proc from Lockdown.

All that said, Bitter Ice Blast -> Chilling Ray -> Bitter Freeze Ray -> Ice Bolt is an OK chain until you can get some Epic or Patron attacks in there since you can slot 1 quicker, higher damage attack like Pulverize or Knockout Blow + another Chilling Ray or even 2 attacks for some like Fire and Psi. (Psi Epic is so good that if the recharges weren't so high you could make an attack chain out of just that and deal considerable damage)

[Underfyre]

Well I said slot it for procs. So it'd be more like 345 DPA.

 

Here's some math for that: (154.26 base + (4 * 71.75)) / ((ROUNDUP(2.5 / 0.132) + 1) * 0.132)

 

Yes I used Arcanatime. And the procs are at a 90% proc chance. Accounting for that it's more like 316 DPA, which is just so far ahead in damage compared to the other attacks it makes you wonder what they're there for to begin with.

 

So like I said, slot it for procs and it's your highest damage attack. Feel free to put the Decimation proc here as well.

[Hopestar]

I think you're calculating Damage Per Activation, In cases like this I calculate per animation because of how long you're in the animation because like I said earlier, you can fit 2 attacks in the same time frame; even slotted for procs it comes out behind BIB and some Epic/Patron attacks like Pulverize or Mind Probe when equally slotted. What you're saying is, only slotting BFR with procs makes it better damage than the other powers because they aren't slotted with procs in which I can agree, but that's not a good argument.

With 4 regular procs like I calculated above + 96% damage enhancement, it's ~225 damage per second of the animation rounded up.
With the same as above, Bitter Ice Beam is ~462 per second of the animation and hitting with Chilling Ray beforehand increases that about 5% further.

Yes, if you value bigger numbers popping and the hold, Freeze Ray can do that for you, but in an attack chain purely for damage, you're better off comboing 2 other attacks, even the suboptimal Ice Bolt with only 2 procs and 66% recharge is ~110 for 40% of the cast time.

[Underfyre]

The animation time and activation time are matched. Next argument?

[Jeneki]

The way to enjoy Bitter Freeze Ray is to hook up a subwoofer.  No idea why that attack has so much bass but it sounds awesome.

 

[Spectre7878]

I just wish they could make bitter freeze ray faster. It’s just to slow