Path of Exile has many old skills that have since been outclassed by other newer skills that perform their role better. Recently, GGG announced the improvements to underused skills. I believe that most players will look forward to it just like u4gm.
Some skills excel in a specific situation (like destroying stationary bosses or dealing significantly more damage with a specific unique item) but fall behind when taking on the majority of end-game encounters.
As an example, Ice Spear performs somewhat adequately in crit-based builds against stationary mid-range bosses, but the large number of support gems required to let it hit multiple targets make it underwhelming against groups of enemies, which contributes to it being one of the least popular skills in recent leagues. GGG are given skills like Ice Spear numeric increases in the past but they still lack the features that their alternatives offer.
Over time they will be trying to breathe new life into underused older skills with additional mechanics or significant mechanical reworks to make them feel like brand new skills. These will usually include an update to their visual effects to bring them up to the quality of modern skills.
Cold Snap is one such skill on their hit-list. GGG are currently trying out a version of the skill that still does the instant, large damage hit in a small area (with values increased to bring it closer to the scaling of other cold damage skills), while also releasing a larger pulse that chills and applies a cold damage-over-time effect to nearby enemies.
This lets it keep its high damage hit output for those that enjoyed finding ways around the cooldown but also provides notable area damage in a way that makes getting around the cooldown less of a necessity.
It should fit into a cold damage build as a quick way to dispatch large weak packs while also working well when used alongside other skills when fighting a single tough enemy. GGG are still in the early stage of testing this skill out in real end-game builds, so they may still see further changes to Cold Snap as they try to make sure it has a place on some builds in the later stages of the game. Do you like these changes?
