How to scale new Fragmentation Rounds (0.3.0)?

Hi All. The changes to Fragmentation Runds confuse me. I'm unsure how to scale them with 0.3.0.

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Fragmentation Rounds: Explosion from Frozen Enemies now converts all Physical Damage to Cold Damage, and will cause further explosions on any Frozen Enemies it hits (though this cannot propagate any further). Explosion radius is now 2 metres (previously 1.8). Hits against Frozen Enemies now have 50% more damage against Unique Enemies.

I was planning on Freezing things and then blowing them up with Frag Rounds. Since the Explosion is now fully converted to Cold damage, I'm assuming the hit that consumes freeze should now be scaled with elemental damage scaling. Something like Elemental Focus, and passive nodes that skill elemental damage/cold damage for instance.

That being said, if the Frag Rounds DON'T hit anything that's frozen, the damage would still be physical, would it not? So essentially, any kind of elemental damage scaling would be useless, if I don't freeze in between Frag Rounds shots?

That might feel rather clunky, If I have to switch between Frag ROunds and, say, Permafrost Bolts, all the time.

Also, how exactly does Primal Armament work? Does it require Elemental Damage on the actual Weapon, or does it scale any elemental damage that is done by a skill which requires a Weapon?

Any insights on the matter?

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FzN#5805 schrieb:

I was planning on Freezing things and then blowing them up with Frag Rounds.

Frag Rounds cannot freeze.

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FzN#5805 schrieb:

That being said, if the Frag Rounds DON'T hit anything that's frozen, the damage would still be physical, would it not? So essentially, any kind of elemental damage scaling would be useless, if I don't freeze in between Frag Rounds shots?

Yes, unless you find a way to convert physical damage to cold. I don't know if a way to do that exists currently in poe2.

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FzN#5805 schrieb:

Also, how exactly does Primal Armament work? Does it require Elemental Damage on the actual Weapon, or does it scale any elemental damage that is done by a skill which requires a Weapon?

The latter.

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Frag Rounds cannot freeze.

Yes, I'm aware. The idea was to use a skill that can freeze (most likely a combination of Permafrost Bolts and Freezing Mark) to paint mobs blue and then blow them up with frag rounds.

I'd probably scale the Frag Rounds with cold damage to get the max out of the freezing explosion, but I'm now wondering if the playstyle of constantly switching between two Ammos might be too clunky. Also unsure of how it would work against bosses. I suppose it depends on how fast you can freeze them with the new massive Freeze Buildup on Permafrost bolts.

Maybe I'll just try it and if it all fails I could switch to lightning.

Anyways. Thanks for the insights.

I'd suspect this is an omission from the patch notes, as leaving base frag rounds damage as pure phys makes no sense.

Or it is just a detonator skill now, used purely to blow up frozen enemies, in which case they should just rebalance the base damage scaling and still convert at least some portion of it to cold.

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arandan#3174 schrieb:

I'd suspect this is an omission from the patch notes, as leaving base frag rounds damage as pure phys makes no sense.

Or it is just a detonator skill now, used purely to blow up frozen enemies, in which case they should just rebalance the base damage scaling and still convert at least some portion of it to cold.

The explosion being converted to cold damage make sense. If you want to use this skill for the detonator part, you will mostly use Cold Skill with Cold/Elemental scaling. Now this detonator will also scale with your regular cold skill damage.

If you want to use this skill as your main skill for some reason, you cannot freeze anyway, so it's better that it stay physical as it can still trigger & use physical "ailment" (better stun build up for example).

You get the best of both world, so imo it's better this way.

I didn't ask you to quote my post and reply completely not on topic.

Base skill damage =/= explosion damage.
The whole point of the problem the OP is having is that they have to scale the explosion damage which does effectively nothing to the base damage.

Yes I totally understood that. And explained why they decided to keep the regular usage of this skill physical.

If you are in a freeze build (cold scaling) to exploit the explosion part, you shouldn't use this skill except for its detonator ability (that now scale with cold damage) as you need to use others cold skills for freeze something. In this instance, the fact that the regular hit is physical or cold is irrelevant.

BUT in the case someone would want to use this skill as his main, this skill being physical is much better than cold as this skill cannot freeze by default.

So no, it wasn't an omission from the patch note but a cleaver way to buff the detonator part without affecting a build that would use this skill as his main.

Obviously nobody is going to use this as their 'main skill', since only its payoff part does any damage.
Nobody is going to use it to stun either, for the same reason (and the existence of Flash Grenade - duh).

Hence the base damage being pure phys and the explosion part being fully converted to cold makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER.

So why bother if the regular attack do no damage anyway ? :)

Like I said, it's completely irrelevant if you only use it as a detonator. And in the odd case that someone would want to use it as a main skill, it's still better it stay physical + it's also for the flavor. It's literally a shot gun attacks. If it would be pure cold damage, they would also need to change the name and animation. What's the point ?

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RaphaelDjirane#7270 schrieb:

So why bother if the regular attack do no damage anyway ? :)

If at least part of the base damage was converted to the same element as the payoff, then whilst still not being usable as a 1 button skill, it'd at least be somewhat scalable.

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RaphaelDjirane#7270 schrieb:

Like I said, it's completely irrelevant if you only use it as a detonator. And in the odd case that someone would want to use it as a main skill, it's still better it stay physical + it's also for the flavor. It's literally a shot gun attacks. If it would be pure cold damage, they would also need to change the name and animation. What's the point ?

1) Nobody said that the base damage should be fully converted to cold - that's your misinterpretation of what you're reading.
2) Give me one actual reason for why it is better that base damage stays as pure physical (for flavour, or because it is fun are not arguments).