Elementalist, a HUGE let down

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yotmato wrote:

I got an empire of emotional
Squad see me crusin', crusin' in my go kart
I'm War ho, I'm Warhol
I'm Wario when I'm in Mario Kart
Topping the charts
Ace in my cards
Choppa my locka when I'm writing these bars
Koka Kola Veins, I'm insane
Trip through memory lane

Dafuq have you been smoking?

Mushrooms, obviously.

The princess was likely in another castle, though.

Elementalist might as well be called "convert lightning to fire".

They should have given it random conversion and allowed double dip for elemental damage for this class only so there's an incentive to pick up more elemental nodes.

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Show me a build that makes Freeze Mine viable.

Not meant for actual damage.

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Deadpeng wrote:

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Nephalim wrote:

Issue is summoner is dull af to play for extended periods of time.

Witch really needs something on par with assassin and pretty much all 3 ranger classes and definitely something that does not lean towards cast on crit discharge.

Dude you completely missed the point. The summoner subclass is most interesting because it is counterintuitive. We make use of the offering skills to grant us a free shield so that witch is now a better attacker than even duelists. 2xshields plus a few block nodes gives us a much easier ES based max blocker. The other arm will obviously be holding a dagger to bring back the age of ES attackers.

You can easily get max block chance without offerings as long as u keep rumis with you.
If i were to use a dagger and a shield like you mentioned with ES based defence, theb offerings have very little use ob me as my rumis is up pretty much all the time.

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DDseedFoot wrote:

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Deadpeng wrote:

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Nephalim wrote:

Issue is summoner is dull af to play for extended periods of time.

Witch really needs something on par with assassin and pretty much all 3 ranger classes and definitely something that does not lean towards cast on crit discharge.

Dude you completely missed the point. The summoner subclass is most interesting because it is counterintuitive. We make use of the offering skills to grant us a free shield so that witch is now a better attacker than even duelists. 2xshields plus a few block nodes gives us a much easier ES based max blocker. The other arm will obviously be holding a dagger to bring back the age of ES attackers.

You can easily get max block chance without offerings as long as u keep rumis with you.
If i were to use a dagger and a shield like you mentioned with ES based defence, theb offerings have very little use ob me as my rumis is up pretty much all the time.

Then* and on*
Typos on phone haha

That's a relief, we thought you had a nasty cold.

"reads whole thread"

Those who are harping on this class really don't seem to get how good it is. Here's my take on it:

1) Master of Discord: Difficult to use because pen goes in opposite direction of damage conversion. There's a few skills you can use (perhaps the new frost orb or lightning orb things) to try to get the boost. It's most powerful with something like discharge, clearly, or perhaps a cold build that runs flame dash to move around. The only other way to use it is to add damage to your spells (like via anger) or to run double conversion (like fire->cold->lightning)

2) Pendulum of destruction seems useful for vaal skills, as mentioned, but overall it is equivalent to 40% increased damage.

3) Paragon of Calamity: 8% reduced damage taken is pretty strong for tanking things, esp if using some kind of conversion. Situation damage buff is less effective than Pendulum of Destuction.

4) Shaper of Desolation: This seems super powerful. That buff (Arcane Conflux) causes all damage to cause 3 status effects on every hit, regardless of crit (thresholds only can stop it).

5) Beacon of Ruin synergizes well with the above, and it's free prolif without a damage penalty. Sure, the base radius is pretty small, but this could bring back burning prolif to some extent.

6) Liege of the Primordial: Too soon to tell, really. Depends on numbers.

This class has the potential to be very powerful with a few specific kinds of builds (Think EE trapper, for instance). It's important to note here that you can't get both Master of Discord and Beacon of Ruin on the same character, despite the fact that having both would be very strong. While it's harder to fit a generic existing build into this class, I think it will open up some interesting possibilities. I'd put it more in the line of the Saboteur in that caters heavily towards a particular set/style of builds.

I too am somewhat disappointed by this class, but only because Inquisitor is so damn powerful.

Instruments of Virtue, Righteous Providence, and Inevitable Judgement alone are fantastic, and the other options are also good.

Compared to Elementalist, let's just say that I'm looking forward to learning what all the little nodes are and hoping they are excellent.

Right now, due to the fact that my Witch build could just as easily be a Templar since it connects both starting positions I kind of wish I could change class.

Just as Templar gets the whole chance to create consecrated ground on kill, we get chance to create golems on kill. But instead of a node that further benefits us for standing in that c. ground we are left with a 2 point passive that is probably going to be underwhelming given that they will be "lesser" golems and the ones we already have aren't exactly unstoppable killing machines.

Arcane conflux seems like a purely beneficial passive, along with the free proliferation.

The cyclic damage buff is nice, and certainly beats the one that requires getting hit or juggling different elements to have full effect.

I use Glacial Cascade primarily, and I have Herald of Ice/Thunder + Cold to Fire so basically I do every damage type other than chaos/poison/bleed. I'm hoping that will mean I get triple penetration at all times with that one skill. It would be the only redeeming quality of this class to me.

Right now I'm picking Beacon of Ruin and Pendulum of Destruction over the other options, purely because they are true passives that are always active without me needing to be hit or change the skills I use. If Liege of Primordial kicks ass then I'll take that over Pendulum though I doubt it will help on bosses at all or clear any faster. It would be purely for thematic/style points and I assume minor meat shields I don't normally have due to only having an ice golem.

I used to use chaos golem but realized it barely did anything. I'll probably switch to flame golem for the flat damage, but the ice golem is just so aggressive. It at least attempts to murder things plus I use mostly cold based skills.

The last Witch class intrigues me. I currently stopped using curses (even though blasphemy rocks) due to wanting to swap in herald of thunder for funsies. People assume the last class is curse based. The witch is already so spread out between minions, chaos, elements, wands, curses etc. that at this point it could be anything. Hopefully it will have some more "fun" and unique passives.

Some kinds of passives I would have made for Elementalist are:

"X% chance to get an extra stack of shock on hit by lightning damage"

"X% chance on kill to create elemental ground of a random element"

"elemental ground has the opposite effect on you" (burning ground would heal, chilled would haste, shocked would reduce damage taken.)

"chilled enemies take X cold damage over time"

"enemies burn X% faster, can stack up to 5 ignites"

"shocked enemies have X% reduced stun threshold"

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1) Master of Discord: Difficult to use because pen goes in opposite direction of damage conversion. There's a few skills you can use (perhaps the new frost orb or lightning orb things) to try to get the boost. It's most powerful with something like discharge, clearly, or perhaps a cold build that runs flame dash to move around. The only other way to use it is to add damage to your spells (like via anger) or to run double conversion (like fire->cold->lightning)

Depending on the numbers, you can for example run a hybrid Minion Elementalist build. You use Summon Raging Spirits to trigger the Ice Penetration, then, you have 4 seconds to use your Ice spells.
But the issue here really is the 4 seconds, that is not a long time at all. Unless you are able to increase its duration, having to switch spells every 4 seconds is not really worth that 20% penetration.

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4) Shaper of Desolation: This seems super powerful. That buff (Arcane Conflux) causes all damage to cause 3 status effects on every hit, regardless of crit (thresholds only can stop it).

Yes, this one is excellent, however the trigger condition is that it is good for regular enemies and not so good for bosses. 20% per kill trigger, that means 5 kills or so to trigger.

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I'd put it more in the line of the Saboteur in that caters heavily towards a particular set/style of builds.

And that is the main issue, it is too specific.
Right now, both Witch ascendant classes do not cater to regular 1 element builds, which I believe are the most common for witch caster classes.

I am kind of surprised that they went with Elementalist though, since witch start nodes are about Spell Damage/Cast Speed on one side and ES/Mana regen on the other side, I thought this class would be more of a sorceress type class where you get bonuses to spell damage.

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I use Glacial Cascade primarily, and I have Herald of Ice/Thunder + Cold to Fire so basically I do every damage type other than chaos/poison/bleed. I'm hoping that will mean I get triple penetration at all times with that one skill. It would be the only redeeming quality of this class to me.

No, you need to cast a Fire spell to trigger the 4 seconds of penetration for the Ice spell for you to spam.