Cold Steel

Cold Steel is a unique Viridian JewelViridian JewelPlace into an allocated Jewel Socket on the Passive Skill Tree. Right click to remove from the Socket..

Vendor: 4Alteration ShardsAlteration ShardStack Size: 20A stack of 20 shards becomes an Orb of Alteration.
Shift click to unstack. and 5Alchemy ShardsAlchemy ShardStack Size: 20A stack of 20 shards becomes an Orb of Alchemy.
Shift click to unstack.

Strategy

Global Physical Damage is hard to come by on the skill tree, and Physical Spell Damage does not exist at all. The Jewel can therefore be used to turn Cold Damage nodes into Physical damage nodes for Ethereal Knives, Shockwave Totem and Bear Trap.

If the player is dealing a lot of additive cold damage with any kind of weapon, the Jewel will allow him or her to convert physical nodes in the southern half of the tree to apply to that cold damage instead. However, as these bonuses will no longer apply to physical output, the only unique weapons with enough added cold damage to justify this strategy (i.e. achieve overall increased damage) is DyadusDyadus
Infernal AxeOne Handed Axe
Quality: +20%
Physical Damage: 61.2-102
Critical Strike Chance: 5.00%
Attacks per Second: (1.43-1.49)
Weapon Range: 11Requires Level 69, 158 Str, 76 DexAdds (255-285) to (300-330) Fire Damage in Main Hand
Adds (255-285) to (300-330) Cold Damage in Off Hand
(10-15)% increased Attack Speed
25% chance to Ignite when in Main Hand
100% increased Damage with Ignite inflicted on Chilled Enemies
Chill Enemies for 1 second on Hit with this Weapon when in Off HandBorn of love, forged in blood
He burned as a torch in the blackest night
She shone as ice in the winter sun
Proudly, fiercely
At their mother's side, forever. when held in the off hand or Debeon's DirgeDebeon's Dirge
Despot AxeTwo Handed Axe
Quality: +20%
Physical Damage: 108-146.4
Elemental Damage: (310-350) to (460-500)
Critical Strike Chance: 5.00%
Attacks per Second: 1.40
Weapon Range: 13Requires Level 66, 140 Str, 86 DexAdds (310-350) to (460-500) Cold Damage
15% increased Movement Speed if you've used a Warcry Recently
150% increased Elemental Damage if you've used a Warcry Recently
Warcries Knock Back and Interrupt Enemies in a smaller AreaA sharp and heavy beat,
discorded, out of tune,
when you hear it on the wind,
you know death will follow soon.. As there is no noteworthy main hand weapon with similar amounts of additive cold damage, and the only skills that will not alternate between hands when dual wielding with an axe in the off hand are Heavy Strike and Infernal Blow (each when wielding a dagger or claw in the main hand), this is an unlikely scenario.

Skills with Damage conversion to Cold Damage, such as Frost Blades or Ice Crash, will usually not profit from turning increased Physical Damage nodes to increased Cold Damage nodes, as Physical Damage nodes will scale all of the damage, whereas Cold Damage nodes will only scale the cold portion of damage. See Damage Conversion for more information.

Mechanics

Cold Steel will only transform nodes that explicitly state Cold Damage or Physical Damage. It will not apply to Elemental damage, nor Attack Damage, Melee Damage, etc., unless they also use the words Cold or Physical. All other restrictions on damage and weapon types will remain. A few examples are:

 X% increased Physical Damage with Two Handed Melee Weapons <--> X% increased Cold Damage with Two Handed Melee Weapons
 X% increased Cold Damage                                   <--> X% increased Physical Damage
 X% increased Cold Damage with Weapons                      <--> X% increased Physical Damage with Weapons

Version history

Version	Changes
2.0.0	Introduced to the game.