menu
MobalyticsUse your favourite features in-game with our Desktop App
PoE 2 Guide

PoE 2: Chill Explained

Mechanics
Updated on Sep 11, 2025
Sep 11, 2025

Overview

Chill is a Cold-aligned Non-Damaging Elemental Ailment in Path of Exile 2. You'll often find Chill-related stats on Cold clusters, typically at the top of the passive skill tree.

Tip: check out our guides on other Elemental Ailments: Ignite and Shock!

Basic Mechanics

What is Chill?

Chill is a Non-Damaging Elemental Ailment that reduces the Action Speed of the target and is most commonly inflicted by a Hit, but can also be caused by a Ground Effect. Chill can only be inflicted by a Hit of Cold Damage by default, and its effect does not stack. Each Chill inflicted on a target will have its own independent Duration but only one Chill will affect the target at any time by default.

Note: Chill is entirely independent from Freeze.

Inflicting Chill

Cold Damage from Hits inherently carries the property of being able to inflict Chill without requiring an explicit chance granted from modifiers or elsewhere. The chance to inflict Chill is based on the total Cold Damage of a Hit relative to the target's Ailment Threshold. For the majority of monsters, their Ailment Threshold is equal to their maximum Life, with the exception of stronger monsters such as some Rares and all Unique bosses. Stronger monsters have their Ailment Threshold adjusted to allow players to inflict Ailments on them. Chill is significantly easier to inflict than other Elemental Ailments, requiring a much lower threshold to be met.

Magnitude of Chill

The Magnitude of Chill is the amount of reduction to Action Speed that is applied to the target. By default only the Cold Damage in a Hit will Contribute to Chill Magnitude, therefore a larger Hit of Cold Damage will inflict a greater Magnitude Chill. The maximum Magnitude of Chill is 50% by default.

Any Chill with less than 30% Magnitude inflicted on a target is discarded, therefore you need to ensure you're dealing enough Cold Damage or have enough modifiers to scale Chill Magnitude to be able to consistently inflict Chill.

You can also scale the Magnitude of Chill that you inflict using modifiers to Chill Magnitude. For example Grip of Winter grants up to '30% increased Magnitude of Chill you inflict'. These modifiers act as a multiplier on the Chill Magnitude that is calculated from all of the Contributing Damage in a Hit.

Note: Chill from non-Damage sources has a default Magnitude of 20% unless otherwise stated.

Duration of Chill

The default Duration of Chill is 8 seconds on Monsters and 2 seconds on player characters, and can be increased with modifiers to Ailment duration such as 'increased Chill Duration on Enemies'. Chill inflicted on you by Monsters can have its Duration reduced by similar modifiers, for example the '30-50% reduced Chill Duration on you' on Obern's Bastion.

Note: the Duration of Chilled Ground Effects vary based on their source. Chill inflicted by Chilled Ground does not have a Duration and persists indefinitely while the target remains on the Ground Effect. The Chill is removed immediately upon leaving the Area of Effect.

Interactions

Sierran Inheritance

The Unique Body Armour Sierran Inheritance has the special interaction of reversing the Effect of Chill on you. Instead of reducing your Action Speed, any Chill on you will increase your Action Speed by the percentage of Magnitude. For example if a Monster Hits you with Cold Damage and inflicts a 23% Magnitude Chill, you'll have 23% increased Action Speed for its Duration.

Tip: consider a method of applying Chill to yourself in combination with this Unique item!

Three Dragons

The Three Dragons Unique Helmet prevents any Cold Damage you deal with Hits from Contributing to Chill. Instead, any Cold Damage you deal in a Hit will Contribute to Ignite Chance and Magnitude.

Polcirkeln

The Polcirkeln Unique Ring makes it so Monsters that are Chilled by your Hits are able to be Shattered as if they were Frozen. This means that upon killing a Monster that you've Chilled, they will Shatter, leaving no corpse. This can be combined with Herald of Ice to create explosions when you Shatter a Monster.

Table of Contents

Latest Guides

Campaign Layout Guide: Act 1
By Lolcohol ∙Updated on Dec 4, 2025
Beginner
Beginner
PoE 2 - Campaign Layout Guide: Act 3
By Lolcohol ∙Updated on Dec 4, 2025
Beginner
Beginner
PoE 2 - Campaign Layout Guide: Act 2
By Lolcohol ∙Updated on Dec 4, 2025
Beginner
Beginner
PoE 2: Skill Speed Explained
By Dreamcore ∙Updated on Nov 24, 2025
Mechanics
Mechanics