Cospri's Malice - Embrace it

On June 2nd, 2016 following the reveal of Cospri's Will on May 25th I decided I wanted to design a follow-up Cospri's unique. One of the main contributing factors here was the amazing response I got to Cospri's Will. It's hard to describe how it felt to get that good of a response, the simplest way to put it was pure elation.

Something I need to stress from the very start is that your design is ultimately up to GGG's approval. If they don't like it, it won't be added to the game, additionally there are certain modifiers/mechanics that aren't possible (on Dodge, on Evade, negative Max Life mods can permanently brick CI characters), and don't bother bringing up a skill you don't already have access to because the answer is almost guaranteed to be no. RIP that idea.

However, if your idea is to somehow modify an existing skill you may be able to work something out. Jorrhast's Blacksteel is the best example I can give of this. Unique's granting skills are always specific to GGG.

Cospri's Malice much like Cospri's Will is the bastardization of a few different ideas.

• To start I love uniques with Chaos Damage conversions. Voltaxic Rift was my favorite unique prior to it's nerf in 2.3.0, something I'm still a bit salty about. I even went so far as to make my divination card, Anarchy's Price specifically for a Voltaxic Rift as this was prior to unique drop rates being lowered with Act 4s release (patch 2.0) and almost no one was corrupting them and at 20-25 Exalts for a 4-link trying to get +1 arrow was astronomically expensive.
  
  The Consuming Dark is another of my favorites. You might notice though, there's no cold variant. Where's the direct Cold > Chaos conversion? Sure Pyre + Consuming Dark works, but that's a roundabout solution and so I discovered my starting inspiration for Cospri's Malice.

• Both the Voltaxic Rift and Consuming Dark have a particular gimmick, if I was going to compete I also needed one. The Voltaxic Rift has the innate ability to shock with Chaos damage, and The Consuming Dark allows your Chaos Damage to poison without the use of the support gem or another item that makes your Chaos damage poison. This is important because Chaos damage doesn't innately poison enemies, you need to use an item/gem/passive that allows you to poison to receive that additional benefit.
  
  I'll be honest here, I'm not particularly original so I decided the best idea would be to look over the extensive list of uniques already in the game. In particular I was looking at uniques that were very popular and powerful. 1000$ it a lot of money to me, so don't want to waste it designing an item that would considered 'vendor trash'.

• Cast on Crit, I love CoC (KappaPride). Not really, I actually hated this gem for the longest time. I was calling for it's cool-down to be nerfed to 500ms back in the Act 4 Beta, but obviously that didn't happen. Ultimately my opinion changed regarding this gem after I tried it out in a CoC+Consuming Dark+Pyre+Binos build. There's something to be said for the way CoC builds play. They're just inherently fun, but also inherently extremely strong.

Regardless of this fact I knew a CoC nerf was on the horizon and something had to be done! I could save CoC! ....?

So it was decided, my weapon would be a Cold > Chaos Mjönler, because why not. The thing is though, you can't just create a unique that's essentially a copy of an already existing one. GGG likes to use the term 'design-space', basically the tl;dr here is they can be similar, but they also need to be distinctly different. That is to say they need to function differently. I can't just create a cold version of Lightning Coil for instance and say "but it's Cold themed so it's not the same thing" because it is unless you're willing to go one step further and add more modifiers to separate the two.

I didn't want to use a Bow or Dagger base item as the two pre-existing Chaos conversion uniques do, so I started exploring the various base items. One of thing I took into consideration when doing this was how the Consuming Dark and Voltaxic Rift are used. One is used for Bow and Spells skills and cannot be used for Melee Skills, while the other can be used for Melee skills and Spells but not Bow Skills. I'd like to say I figured out a way to create a unique that can use Bow and Melee skills, but I'd be lying. That's one concept I'm going to leave up to GGG to figure out.

So I ended up deciding Melee and Spells would have to work. Since Daggers were off the table I started going over the possible options. I knew I wanted the end result to encourage Critting without outright giving you all the tools needed to have a extremely high Crit chance. Basically I wanted you to devote yourself to Critting otherwise you'd end up with a noticeably weaker build.

Staves looked to be a very likely candidate; they have reasonably good crit chances, and many have block implicits which is a nice extra bonus. Maces as a consideration were shortly live, ultimately I felt I would be encroaching on Cameria's Maul and Mjölner. Axes and various Two-Handed weapons were considered but I ended up going with Swords as the weapon type.

Not just regular swords though, Thrusting Swords. You might be asking, what's the difference? In terms of what skills they can use, nothing. However, One-Hand Thrusting Swords have an additional +1 weapon Range over One-Handed Swords and they have much better implicits.

I knew Cospri's Malice was to be a end-game item so I looked at the highest level required Thrusting Swords without repeating stats excluding implicits. What I mean by this is that Tempered Foils and Harpy Rapiers are essentially the same item, just with different Physical damage rolls, implicits, and requirements to be used. It's the Crit chance and attack speed I was focusing on. Don't question my logic, just trust me on this one. ✔✔✔

Anyway, I knew I needed to strike a balance between Crit chance, Multi from the implicits, and attack speed so I ended up choosing theJewelled Foil as my base item. I also chose the base item as it was extremely thematically appropriate with my initial set of suggested modifiers and idea for 3D art.

As a funny side note, Jewelled Foils were not going to be base in the first email I sent. However, I changed this at the last second since Jewelled Foils are simply a superior base item for the end result. I was going to suggest Cospri's Malice use the Midnight Blade base.

Auras & Curses


Attack and Spell Gems


Interactions with other Uniques


The Passive Tree & Ascendancies

Now that I've gone over all that boring crap let's get into the interesting details.

We've already covered that Cospri's Malice intends to encourage Critting, be a Cold > Chaos conversion unique, has certain synergizes/reasons to to Chill enemies, has a Trigger mechanic, is a One-Handed Thrusting Sword and has certainly powerful synergies when dual-wielded. Aside from that I frankly don't remember at this point so I'm just going to cut to the chase.

Here is a rough version of the initial set of mods I suggested - unfortunately I don't have the exact list as I accidently deleted about the 1st months of emails, blah blah blah fml.

• 35% of Cold Damage converted to Chaos Damage
• +1 Frenzy to Maximum Frenzy Charges
• 10% Chance to Gain a Frenzy Charge on Killing a Chilled Enemy
• 15% Chance to Cast Socket Cold Spells on Melee Critical Strike
• Cannot Deal Fire Damage

There may have been one or two additional mods, I honestly don't remember it's been nearly three months.

As you might expect with Chaos conversion uniques being nerfed within the week this idea didn't go particularly well. It wasn't even that the item has Chaos conversion that was the problem, but rather as a whole it's trying to do to many things. Naturally of course, I went back and forth with Nick/Tom suggesting various ideas, but the main thing to take away here is that the Cold > Chaos was going to be dropped and we'd move forward with unified set of mods based around Cold Damage.

As I've already said Nick's suggestion was to move forward with a unique unified around Cold Damage thus foregoing all Chaos themed mods. I was very against this idea at first, however it grew on me and I agreed to move forward under that basis. I did have one major stipulation though, if I wasn't happy with the end result we'd be revisiting the idea of a Cold > Chaos conversion unique.

Coming up with ideas for Cold themed mods was very difficult for me. Some ideas I had come up with included granting access to the Frozen Swarms (Roaming stackable AoE Degen) skill simply weren't an option. This is a monster specific skill granted by Avian Twin Talismans and there are three viarants; cold, lightning, and fire.

Unfortunately as I said before if players already don't have access to a skill don't bother asking.

Various other ideas were thrown around including but not limited to the following:

• X% - Y% Increased Spell Damage when in Off Hand
• Deal no Non-Cold Damage when in Off Hand
• X% - Y% Less Maximum Energy Shield when in Main Hand
• X% - Y% of Cold Damage Leeched as ES when in Main Hand
• +X to mana cost of skills
• Herald of Ice Mana reservation reduced to 0%
• Frozen Enemies Spread Chilled Ground on Death

And the list goes on and on. Eventually we agreed upon a list that pleased both parties, but I had one extra important requirement for Cospri's Malice. I felt there needed be to something to help reign it in a bit. This mod would also serve as nod to Cospri's Will and it's Chaos themes. An Intelligence requirement - 257 to be specific.

I'm not going to spoil the other modifiers until the final section, "V3 - The Finalized Version", so if you're not interesting in reading about the flavour text and art skip ahead to that section.

Art


Flavour Text

Please note the 'Cast a Socketed Cold Skill on Melee Critical Strike' was a typo/error and has since been corrected to 'Cast a Socketed Cold Spell on Melee Critical Strike'.

This image contains randomized values for the following mods:

• Adds X to Y Cold Damage to Attacks
• Adds X to Y Cold Damage to Spells
• X-Y% Increased Attack Speed

As far as I know the value ranges for these mods are as follows:

• Adds (80 to 100) to (160 to 200) Cold Damage to Attacks
• Adds (40 to 60) to (90 to 110) Cold Damage to Spells
• 8-14% Increased Attack Speed

Additionally the cool-down for triggered skills is 100ms and the order of socketed gems affects the order in which they are triggered. What this means is if you socket multiple Cold Spells they will cycle between being triggered start the top of the bottom working down.

• Q. Who is Cospri?
  
  A. Eventually I'll get around to writing lore I feel to be appropriate on this matter. I should stress Cospri is not an official character created by GGG, however if and when I get around to writing the lore I will do my very best to take every pre-existing piece of lore into consideration. When I'm happy with it I will present it to GGG and if they're interested they can adopt it in whatever fashion they find appropriate if at all.

• Q. Can I make a Cospri unique too?
  
  A. At this time no. Cospri's is a character of my creation and unless GGG was to adopt him at a later date this could cause some very serious issues regarding appropriate mods and theming at a later date.

• Q. Can I create a Divination card for a Cospri unique? Specifically Cospri's Malice or Cospri's Will or one that will award one of the two?
  
  A. If someone is interested in creating a Divination card for a Cospri item you are free to do so (updated as of May 17th, 2017).

• Q. Any specific drop restrictions?
  
  A. To the best of my knowledge, no. I didn't discuss any specific drop restrictions with GGG however I know Cospri's Will requires an item level of 68 to drop so hopefully that will also be the case here. I also cannot speak to it's rarity as that information isn't discussed with players anymore.

• Q. Can I trigger Cospri's Malice with an attack from a different weapon?
  
  A. No, the trigger mechanic for Cospri's Malice is local just like Mjolners. This means any attacks with another weapon cannot trigger it under any circumstances.

• Q. Is the 60% Increased Critical Strike Chance Against Chilled Enemies a global modifier or local?
  
  A. It is a global modifier.

• Q. How does Cospri's Malice interact with skills such as Molten Strike, Lightning Strike, Frost Blades, Wild Strike, and Spectral Throw?
  
  A. Okay, first off Spectral Throw. Since Spectral Throw isn't tagged as a Melee gem it cannot trigger Cospri's Malice at all. As for Molten Strike, Lightning Strike, Frost Blades, and Wild Strike each skill has a Melee hit component that can trigger Cospri's Malice. However, all of the projectiles created by these skills are not classified as Melee and therefore cannot trigger Cospri's Malice.

• Q. How does Lacerate interact with Cospri's Malice when Dual-Wielding?
  
  A. Assuming you land a Critical Strike you will trigger a spell from both your Main Hand and Off Hand. However, for both to trigger you'll need to hit an enemy with each swing.

• Q. What is the internal cooldown of Cospri's Malice?
  
  A. Originally (patch 2.4) the cooldown was 100ms, however in patch 2.5 this was changed to 250ms.

Season 6 - Episode 7: Maddognils' the Freezerator