As a user of the glacius with no plans on crafting a voltedge anytime soon, certainly not before making my Callahan, I have a story to share Anyways. So one day I decide to do a vana run instead if the arcade, and I bring my glacius.I look around at the other members if my party, to see them sporting voltedges and expensive costumes. We start the run, and get to the first arena in no time. I charge my glacius, they their voltedges and begin the battle. I lag a bit, so they rip their electrifying explosions into the slags before me. After a couple if seconds, I unleash my freeze-splosions into the already devastated mob. They all freeze, but are freed milliseconds later by shock spasms. On the next wave I try again, but the slags don't even stay frozen long enough for me to see them in ice, I only hear the noise. My glacius us next to useless in light of the PvP swords. The glacius does enough dps for me to get by, but does anyone else wish that freeze was a bit more useful in a party? I mean, even shiver is useless for everything but the actual vana boss... That and permanent freezing someone with your hail driver. :3
TL:DR
Nothing is to long to not read. Read the walk of text.
The never ending battle. Freeze vs. Shock
To overstate my opinion: Freeze is for newbies. It gives them control over the room, to make up for their lack of knowledge of the monster AI, skill in dodging projectiles, etc. But experienced players don't need this level of control. They would rather spend their time inflicting damage or other statuses that lead to more damage (fire, poison, shock). They're good at kiting, shield-bumping, and knockback, and they resent the fact that freeze hinders those tactics.
My opinion is really more nuanced than that. There are times when freeze is very helpful, even for veterans. But it's not anywhere near every fight. Newbies who spam Shivermist all over the place are not appreciated by veterans, in my experience.
Additionally, as the original post says, the fact that freeze is so easy to break is a major drawback. That's why I don't care for Hail Driver. As soon as you manage to freeze something, the next shot comes along and unfreezes it.
Freeze is best used as something to protect the party while they eliminate key threats, unfortunately most would prefer the shock brandish over the fire(which has incredible DPS thanks to it's status which doesn't hinder movement) or freeze (which is good for holding down enemies for slower weapons and helping others charge safely). Plus like the catalyzer problem most party members seem not to understand anything their teammates are doing and just to attack everything (even if it is frozen for a reason or has enough catalyzer tags to blow up everything surrounding that enemy).
Shock is more of the middle ground between the two when it comes to utility, it has more reliable knockback than Glacius but less than Combuster. This added to the fact that a shocked enemy can hurt it's allies with the spasm means that the Voltedge is great at dealing damage to the hordes in FSC while keeping them somewhat immobile.
Fire has a status that deals respectable damage regardless of number of enemies and has that wonderful knockback. Even in the FSC the Combuster shines as a reliable elemental weapon.
Don't be hating on my Glacius now, it's my first Brandish I ever made. I'll probably never get a Voltedge because of how many Krogmos I need. ;_;
You guys don't understand the power of glacius. It gives you full control over mobs, and gives time so you and other party members can charge another strike. It sure is hard for glacius and voltedge to work as a team. And this is where newb stage ends, if you master glacius you master not only fsc, but also everything else.
Now i suspect some more freeze is for noobs comments. Have fun :)
freeze is for noobs
shock is overrated
In all honesty I believe Voltedge is for LD, while your Glacius is for FSC/PvE.
"freeze is for noobs"
"Freeze is for newbies"
Fixed that for you. Oh and by the way, that correction was taken from one of Bopp's post. xP
If you want to be unleashing all damage as fast as possible, freeze will not aid you. If you want to control enemies, freeze is your best friend. Why do people bring a freeze bomb to FSC? To control the boss. You won't see shock used as much there because it's not the same range of control.
Freeze is the best if you know how to use it - and it does take a fair amount of skill to use freeze effectively because most people want the best damage when damage is not always the best path in certain scenarios. Shock is crowd control where you don't have to pause and re-position, but you sacrifice complete control in the process. For example, I would rather have a tortodrone frozen than shocked as that is a hard enemy that complete control is better than partial control.
Um yeah Freeze is totally for a newbie player. If you paid any attention (which you dont because you're a newb) you'd notice that the Glacius does the LEAST amount of dmg out of all the brandish lines. Why is this? Because the freeze stops the target from being knocked back from its own attack. The knock back wave does half the damage for a brandish. This is why Voltedge 2nd best and Combuster THE best. Voltedge also stops a target during the knock back more often then not but there is the additional shocks that kinda (but not really) make up for it, whereas the Combuster just lights shit on fire and all targets are hit by the full knockback.
As for Glacius and more to the point freeze "controlling the mobs," again newb tactic. You dont need to "control" mobs and freeze is no way to do it. Only thing you want to do to a mob is bunch it up so instead of attack a bunch of little individual targets you target one big massive target. Freeze in no way accomplishes this UNLESS something else already bunches the mob after which you freeze that giant mob.
Also shock/freeze is actually a good companion because the shock speeds up a process that is otherwise delayed and useless with the freeze attack, the damage inflicted by the breaking ice. Its the only dmg the attack has left in it and as I stated above a stationary enemy is useful only to newbs so win win.
So in conclusion yeah this isn't even a debate; the glacius is a newbie's best friend and anyone with even a micron of skill will choose a Combuster or a Voltedge any day of the week.
Deadagainalready, go get a life. I'm not a newbie.
Okay, now that we have that out of the way.
Here's how you use Glacius properly:
In essence, Freeze does about 50% more damage than the other two statuses if you give it a bit more time. If you're looking for DPS AND playing it safe around Greavers and the like, freeze is your friend.
You can do the same thing with Voltedge and Combuster: Voltedge immobilizes (less) and interrupts and maybe knocks back some, and Combuster knocks back everything out of attack range except Greavers and devilites, mostly. And the status doing more damage over time is irrelevant if you have enough CTR, because the damage from freeze is far outweighed by just... charging again.
imo, Freeze/Glacius is the best for CC. But there aren't very many times that CC is better than outright DPS for players who are good enough at reading enemies and dodging. Personally I use Voltedge+Chaos since the Shock from Voltedge immobilizes enemies long enough to hit them with a second charge. And if they're not dead by then, you can do it over and over.
Why are we arguing about this when Stun trumps them all?
"Why are we arguing about this when Stun trumps them all?"
Rigaruska Storm is ultimate Brandish!
Glacius is best pony. Combuster and Voltedge are overrated mules.
And let the Brandish War begin!
Stagger Storm wins the Brandish War, Stagger Storm doesn't care that Stagger Storm isn't a brandish, Stagger Storm wins anyway
http://postimg.org/image/nnjzumer3/6d0ec9d6/ Glacius?
and Ponies?
What am I saying? It's Archeon that dominates the brandishes
Sorry Pi i was replying to magicth's comment.
Stagger storm is a wasted weapon slot because it does stun and stun doesnt deal damage
@Plancker Stun is probably the most useful status in PvE, letting you lay a smackdown on mobs better then freeze as it doesn't go away when you hit them, which is probably why we don't have many weapons that inflict stun
I agree that stun is very powerful and quite under-appreciated. I don't use Stagger Storm anymore, because it made me feel sorry for the monsters.
Partly, players avoid stun because of the "stun bug" that existed for so long. Does any remnant of this bug still exist? I haven't checked recently.
I chose the Voltedge because it matched my outfit :P
There is nothing "newbie" about playing it safe. Even if you are a "pro" you can still aid your team by freezing monsters and then killing off what isn't frozen.
Stun is great because unlike freeze you can shield bump enemies away, this means you can't get blocked in by frozen enemies during a shivermist ragespam. And yes it can't be broken like freeze.
Freeze is good if everyone has it, or everyone understands to stay out of the way of frozen stuff unless they can kill it or there's nothing else to do. But it's better for CC than Shock.