What's up with spell balance?

Hi there,

I want to talk about the balance of different spells a bit.
Some spells in PoE are vastly better than others.
Let's compare 3 spells for example (Lvl 20):

1) Shock Nova
137–411 dmg every 0.75 sec, 6% crit, 50% effectiveness, 1.5 times damage if enemy gets hit by ring
365 base dps, 548 dps in ring (against melee bosses - where you need that boost the most, hitting with the ring doesn't really work on all hits, as the mob tries to get close to you)

It has the potential to shock, however keep in mind, that this is not really a 50% increase, as the initial hit does not get amplified. (So 0% increase for instant kills, 25% for two shots, 33% for three shots, etc)
Also a shock is not necessarily applied on the first hit and resilent monsters might not get shocked long enough for the shock to work.

2) Freezing Pulse
572–858 dmg every 0.65 sec, 6% crit, 125% effectiveness, far away enemies take less damage
1100 base dps

3) Incinerate
147–220 dmg every 0.2 sec, 0% crit, 30% effectiveness, 100% more dmg every stage
917 base dps, up to 3670 after ~1.5-2 sec depending on cast speed
This spell can't crit, however it deals damage as if it would always crit, without any investment at all.

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Obviously damage is not everything, we also need to look at coverage.
Shock Nova has a little better coverage than the other two, however hitting enemies all around you is not as useful as it may seem, as you usually dont are surrounded or have the easy option to have all enemies right before you.

So there it goes, three spells and it's quite obvious, that 1) is weaker than 2) is weaker than 3).
I could add in more spells, but the point of this post just is to show, that there is quite a difference in power-level of different spells.

Obviously this does not mean, you can't use a specific spell - however your clearspeed will suffer depending on that choice.

You forgot:

Mana Consumption
How much crit actually can do to the damage, some stack a lot of it
Status Ailments, Incinerate is not only unable to crit (or 9% TOTAL with a leveled Assassin's Mark applied) it also can't ignite that easily because of that and when it ignites (gear, support, passives) than the single hit damage is so low it doesn't really matter.
Or that Freezing Pulse has an implicit Freeze chance depending on the distance (beginning with 25%).
How well they work with trigger gems, triggering a single Incinerate cast is pretty... lame
You ignored the influence of damage effectiveness completly, you only listed them.
There are different supports and passives.
Incinerate has a crap range, I believe even FP has more.
Incinerate also needs you to hold still while shooting or you loose your stacks.



Just because a skill has theoretically a lot of potential doesn't mean it's good.
My Scion has 5 endurance charges and Cast on Death linked with Discharge but 0% Spelldamage, Firedamage and Elementaldamage bonus... the damage is not even close to what I hoped. :/
Molten Shell triggers in a second when cast, it still does less damage than a single static strike from her.

Mana:
Having tried out all of the above, the mana consumption was not a bigger problem on any one spell then it was for the others. Either you flask a lot or you get EB+Ghostreaver/Zealots Oath.
Incinerate only has problems in the early levels, and only if you don't get an elreons.
Later on you just don't care.

Status ailments:
I wrote sth. about them, I'm going to write it again, just for you.
The shock effect of Shock Nova does not nearly push it's damage in the range of the other too.
The only thing is Freezing Pulse having a freeze chance vs nothing on incinerate.
Depending on the time you already casted and the distance you give up having anywhere up to 10(!) times (at the edge) the damage.

Range:
FP and Incinerate have actually quite a similar range, both increasing with projectile speed.

Trigger Gems:
Neither of the listed spells is really used in a trigger setup currently.
Their performance here is irrelevant.

Just because a skill has theoretically a lot of potential doesn't mean it's good:
While this statement obviously is true, having a lvl 88 incinerator I can assure you, that this is not only theoretical potential.

I updated my profile so you can see my Level 88 Witch using Incinerate. *kisses*

Just because it has DPS in one case doesn't mean it's the ultimate skill.

For instance: the mana again.
First: NO I'M NOT GOING FOR ELDRITCH BATTERY, my argument is still valid.
Incinerate level 20 has a base mana cost per second of 9mana/0,2s = 45 mana per second.
Freezing Pulse level 20 has 18mana/0,65s = 27,69 mana per second.
Sure is sustainable but you loose choices in passives for more mana or less costs, support space like mana leech or reduced mana and so on or worse: you can't even use your supports because of this. <insert drama here>

Next: status ailments again.
It does matter, when you are able to freeze-lock a strong fast rare you might even be faster killing it than if you would have to permanently run and fire and are unable to constantly have full stacks.

Trigger gems: still valid.
I didn't see any argument why you shouldn't use FP for it, just because most people don't do it isn't an argument. Besides freezing whole groups. Maybe it's better for HC?

FP even got a build of the week recently!

Actually there are worse gems.
For instance: why does Fire Penetration quality give 0,5% increased fire damage while Chance to Ignite gives the same amount of burning damage? Fire damage increases both, burning damage only the burn one!
And don't get me started with increased burning damage. :/

Shock nova has 360 effect and causes shock.

It's not all about DPS.