It's a widely known fact that freeze resistance on armour, aside from the occasional immunity, is a joke. Part of this lies in the fact that half of freeze' effect is lost on knights, namely the thawing damage. I don't suggest you re-introduce this mechanic, as it was ill-thought of in the first place. Instead, remove that thing entirely and replace with a different aspect: Hardness.
Currently, freeze lasts for about 4 seconds at minimum strength (Shivermist buster vs full Snarbolax) and about 9 seconds at full strength (Glacius vs Chaos). 4 seconds is really too long for something one is wearing specialized armour against. It might just barely help one dodge a single Silversap or escape between cooldowns of an ice trap. Barely. In addition, there's no problem going Chaos because anyone on your team can free you with a single hit. This is where hardness comes into play.
With this suggestion, freeze is no longer automatically broken in a single hit. Instead, hitting a frozen enemy or teammate reduces the duration of the freeze by a certain amount. The harder the freeze, the less this reduction counts for. I suggest numbers that look a little bit like this:
-6 strength freeze (Shivermist vs full Snarbolax): 2.4 second duration, 6 second reduction per hit
0 strength freeze (Shivermist vs most things): 4.8 second duration, 4.8 second reduction per hit
2 strength freeze (Hail Driver vs most things): 5.6 second duration, 4.4 second reduction per hit
4 strength freeze (Glacius and most enemies vs most things): 6.8 second duration, 3.8 second reduction per hit
8 strength freeze (Glacius and most enemies vs Chaos): 10 second duration, 2.2 second reduction per hit
The actual numbers in question are up for debate, of course, but you get the general idea. The change would apply to both monsters and players. With this change, players would be able to break loose their teammates in LD as well.
What this would achieve:
- Freeze defence matters now. Wearing a full freeze set will in practice cut time spent frozen to almost 1/3. It will also reduce the amount of hits needed to be freed from 2 to 1.
- Hail Driver will no longer instantly break its own freeze. A quick gunslinger could keep a target perpetually frozen, as could a lucky Cold Snap bomber.
- Seeing a freeze-themed level will no longer make me go "lol, time for Chaos". Getting frozen in Chaos is a severe disadvantage that can no longer be simply bypassed by shielding a single hit. This brings it in line with the other statuses, which are all very dangerous when hitting a Chaos user.
I love this idea because it gives the meaning to wear freeze defense. Although OOO will never see this once it goes I suppose 5th page.
No because we have a TRUCKLOAD of freeze themed levels in the clockworks. I suggest this only happens once the "blizzard" clears up.