Problems with Spells that don't get mentioned.

Ive talked about this a few times before but i really feel the need to reiterate some of the glaring issues with spells currently.

First off, theres the 6L mana cost. Its absurd and even with investment into mana it becomes impossible to sustain. There simply isnt any amount of regeneration that can let you cast a 120+ mana cost multiple times per second. Too much investment when the regeneration rates are abysmal for the investment. They tried to bandaid fix it with the eleron mod but frankly it doesnt work and getting elreon jewelry that has substantial stats is neigh impossible.




This brings me to another point, one which im sure youre going to mention, "Why not just get mana leech". Precisely, you need mana leech and theres only a few ways to achieve this, get it from the Boot Enchant or use the Gem. The reason why i wont list things like Bereks Pass is because theyre legacy items that are generally difficult to obtain, on top of that, items should not be end all be alls for builds, there needs to be multiple viable options.

On the topic of leech, Spell Leech or Elemental Leech is also something that still has not been addressed. The two ways you leech are either the Leech Gem or Warlords mark, im not going to count the abysmal .2 craft or values you can get off some pieces of gear, theyre a joke. Spells really need to have some form of leeching apart from those few options.

On top of the leech issue, it brings up the massive problem of consistency of one certain spell type, Lightning. Lightning 100% needs a Vinktars to be functional in maps, id even go as far as saying it needs two and ive quite literally have seen people use THREE to FOUR in top tier content. Lightning leech is being balanced around this flasks existence and its just silly.

I mentioned the consistency of Lightning, as you may have noticed the ranges for the damage rolls are pretty massive. This directly affect mana and life leech in such a massive way, low roll end damage while casting a few times and what little leech you do get wont be enough to keep you alive.



Lightning has been completely left behind while Fire and Cold have quietly crept over it. Look at the damage ranges of spells on the wiki and youll see exactly what i mean, just compare a level 20 Fireball/Frostbolt or similar to a level 20 Storm Call for example.



At this point in the game you have to ask yourselves from a balance perspective, what place does lightning have in the game anymore ? Theres soo many cons to using it, those cons existed for balancing purposed which have apparently been long since forgotten.



Shocking is nice, but Freezing and Igniting is multiple times better. Oh wait, Elementalist also exist and have a broken as hell Ascendancy node called "Shaper of Desolation" which lets the player gain the best of all spells. You can now play a Fire or Cold spell and get free ailments of whatever other spell types you want. Elementalist is really what puts the nail in the coffin for spell type diversity. Not only spell diversity is affected, but soo is player choice concerning what character to use to play a skill. Granted, Inquisitor is a popular second option but id argue Elementalist has quite a few things that are much better, thats something for another thread however.

Now as far as Physical Spells go, ive venture to say that they are relatively "balanced", their issues generally lie with poison and double dipping which are going to be addressed in the future, with all double dipping.

I think that GGG really needs to take a long hard look at these issues, and a real long hard look at what makes a spell feel good, and play in a balanced manor. As far as im concerned Arc is by far the most balanced skill theyve introduced to the game, ever. It has Area clear, but it is limited in how many targets it can hit restricting it. It does not double dip with ANYTHING, this means its damage isnt going to be scaled to completely ridiculous levels. Its quality bonus is relative to the skill, it give additional chance to cause its status ailment, Shock.

With 2.6 coming major balance changes are coming. There are even more changes coming with 3.0. That being said, these are a few things that should not be ignored when balancing the game. As someone who generally and exclusively only played melee which has an abundance of issues itself, its important to not ignore spells as well, one of the many reasons i hate playing spells is because of these issues above.

I have not read your entire wall, but i think i can summarize your sentiments from experience alone.

From a quick glance you seem to go over

- sustain issue's
- elemental identity

correct me if i am wrong?

sustain

Personally i think sustain is "fine", the mana cost's where altered drastically with the introduction of the new EB and personally i have no issue's with some 6-link set-ups combined with certain EHP styles to require mana flasks on top of other sustain factors (leech/regen)

- CI , has more potion slots available by default and is most likely centered in the int part of the tree which means a higher base mana pool and readily available mana clusters. The tax of a mana potion seems fitting for this EHP route.

- hybrid defenses, always struggles with buffer and sustain mostly due to a very limited scope of mechanics around this play-style as a whole. But since they are not "key-stone" defined there are limited options of how to improve their situation.( a new key-stone centered around this play-style might work and do justice to the lack of mechanical complexity)

- life based + MoM casters, these i think deserve something added, not only does their mana pool become a part of their EHP buffer they still suffer from the same sustain issue's.
I would give "mind over mater" the additional property of allowing "attack based mana leech to perform on spells".
The logic behind this would be that it is justified since they are punished twice as much on their mana pool buffer then the other types available for casters.(on-hit damage + sustain)

tl,dr MoM is warranted a fix for their sustain, the other caster type's seem fine to me in their current position, ignoring the lack of mechanical availability for hybrid users.(for which only inquisitor offers some nifty benefits in my opinion)

elemental identity

First things first, elemental identity is fubar. You seem to focus on lightning but its pretty much fubar across the board in my opinion.

Lightning however does take the cake
- here have this status ailment that increases damage taken that only proqs on trash mobs and is rendered useless on the big targets where it might actually be relevant.
BUT, no worries, here use this vaal skill/potion to trigger shock you don't even have to be lightning focused in order to use them \o/

So rather then listing up the complaints and enforcing just how much elemental identity suffered over the years, i think it might be more beneficial to address them individually and propose alternative interpretations of the status ailments they can provide.

- Lightning
-> shock phase 1: rework shock to a 15% reduced cast and attack speed ailment
-> shock phase 2: if target is under a shock effect and gets another shock in that time it has a 25% chance to be rooted in place for 1 second and a 5% chance to be stunned for 1 second.(rooting would not prohibit ranged attacks or spells, while the stun would disable all actions)

- Cold
-> chill phase 1 : drastically reduce the movement slow factor, keep animation reductions the same and add a 10% chance to be frozen
-> frozen phase 2 : immobilizes the monster completely, grants 0.5 global mana leech against hits on frozen targets
(bosses and rares become immune to frozen for 3 second after being frozen, this starts working the moment they are frozen, which means the actual "frozen time" is deducted from this 3 second timer)

- fire

Ignite seems to be fine in the current game state, if not a bit overpowered due to double dips.

I'd rather wait to see the potential double dip changes in the future before addressing this, if it where to remain an issue.

note : i am clearly favoring double phase status ailment proqs, mostly because these make the actual passives around status ailments very favorable(they could boost both phases for a single point investment)
I would also suggest removing status ailments from critical strikes, which would allow GGG to balance them differently and provide more utility and power.(since then not everybody and their mother would be autoproqqing them)

Ultimately i would want status ailments to be the deciding and defining objects of the elemental identity's and they should provide not raw power, but utility's beyond the scope of already presented utility's, exclusive to their alignment.(and as a result a deciding factor in how to operate or create your character)

Peace,

-Boem-

That post is spot on , I'm actually doing a dual wield mjolner + hyaon fury and I'm getting all the problem you mentionned.

I even wrote post also labeled as pure elemental melee build lol

Some stuff I would like to see :

1- Every physical attach leech node should be changed to Attach leech (seriously we need some love)
2- Fortify and Phasing gem again should be reworded to melee damage and not just physical

Those are some examples.

Nonsense. PoH and jewelry with mana regen can spam whatever you want. And thats a 7L not 6L. There are dozens of other ways to spam unlimited as well. like run clarity, have mana on all gear, tree, regen on tree, jewels and jewelry.

People just don't want to. rather have other stats and run DPS auras instead of clarity.

I wont even mention reduced mana. heaven forbid anyone interrupt all-dps-all-the-time with that gem

Bottom line you don't need leech and can spam any set of spells you want.

Just take some sacrifice.


The real problem is mana leech is too easy (via warlords and/or gear) so people forgot how to spam without them when mana costs were even higher than now.

I agree with half your points OP, I think you can get enough sustain to run 6l spells they are pretty expensive but It can be done in a variety of ways and something has to balance out the lack of an accuracy requirement basically.

Shock is definitely garbage atm, primarily because vaal lightning trap shocks anything and you need colossal lightning damage to actually shock a boss otherwise.

I think there is a major issue with crit automatically applying elemental status effects anyway tbh like doing quad damage wasn't enough of an upside :p

I agree with aim_deep. 6L Spellcasters should have to make some small sacrifices to sustain high mana costs. Dunno why nobody likes mana flasks, I almost always have a mana flask of warding on my chars which use a lot of mana.

"

I agree with aim_deep. 6L Spellcasters should have to make some small sacrifices to sustain high mana costs. Dunno why nobody likes mana flasks, I almost always have a mana flask of warding on my chars which use a lot of mana.

Mana Flasks don't really work. Right now I'm using a 6l Spectral Throw, and with Clarity, Rallying Cry and a Hallowed Mana Flask I cannot sustain the cost. And that is a cheap skill at 35 Mana cost. Also Elreon rings have a huge downside in benefiting cheap skills massively while not doing much for expensive ones. Costs for skills like Incinerate almost vanish, while it hardly does anything for a high priced Fireball.

Also Clarity is not that good. It essentially is the equivalent of having an additional 1k Mana at lvl20. A spellcaster easily spends about 400 mana per second. And here is a huge difference in mana efficiency as well. Blade Vortex gives you about 50 damage per point of mana and that is considering only one blade, it goes up massively if you more than one blade, while a fireball only provides about 35 damage per point of mana and Storm Call only 28 damage per point of mana.

The thing is when spells are strong it is very often because they are used with totems or are able to do damage over time. Just look at which spells are good. Flameblast with Totems, Bladefall with Totems, Blade Vortex, Icestorm and Firestorm, exspecially with CwC. So spells are either used with totems, bypassing mana, have a long duration making them more efficient with duration or are triggered bypassing mana cost again.

I actually did make a Selfcast and a Totem Flameblast char, and selfcast is so much weaker because I have to invest so much into mana, I cannot go crit due to the mana cost I have to somehow remedy. If course in the case of flameblast I could get away with elreon rings but good ones are very expensive.

Inquisitor usually doesn't have any real issues with mana costs but I can see it being a problem for the rest.

Honestly though, reserving as much mana as possible is the norm in this game now, having only enough mana to cast a couple of spells is what we brought upon ourselves.

well guys, mana is there for a reason - as a soft cap to your obscene DPS!

it is BY DESIGN. all games have to limit spam somehow - with current (ABSURD!) cast speed players get (that ggg is not willing to cut in half or more to bring it to less auto-cannon levels due to fear of players leaving their auto-wins machines)

there are ways to handle mana costs - but they require choices and sacrifices elsewhere. the 'oh, ill just take all of it' generation might be confused but life is choices. games do this stuff too.

6Link, 2 mana nodes and 3 rolls on gear.. common sight. if you experience problems casting 120mana/cast spells 20 times a second.. maybe reduce your cast speed a little? maybe pick other supports? maybe get some real mana management for once?


Mind over Matter topic: if anyone builds MoM with leech/regen he is doing it wrong. GGG already told us how to use it, directly, with their latest mana related ring. MoM has nothing and i mean f.. nothing to do with leech/regen.


casters' leech: casters are faceroll enough. leech somehow limits the dumbness of what casters are right now. but it is not a real limit because most spells can mop shaper on 5 link so the life leech gem is perfectly fine in a 6 link (but it cuts my dps /whiny woice/.. tough)



vinktars is not required: it is maybe required for no-defence all-buffer CI sponges that have 0 defences but otherwise? my fireball elementalist is lvl91 and i do not use ANY leech source whatsoever. the range and clear speed.. other casters have cwdt warlords or i just use flasks. leech for casters really isnt that huge of a deal if you avoid going the CI-braindead-sponge meta. sad thing is that the sponge is just better than anything else.



elements and spells: elements are in fact off. but it is Fire that holds the title. cold? most endgame content is freeze AND chill immune. and it works best when converted to fire. you can convert lightning too.. so it is all fire. why? because this crap double dips. tripple dips. why use anything else when one option does 10 times the damage?

flameblast got numerous miniscule nerfs that people overreacted and called 'gem is ded'. most people havent even played the skill before claiming it got 'dumpstered'. i wouldnt care much about these over-reactions


in short. balance in this game and design of certain game elements is - to put it lightly - worrisome. but if you need to start somewhere, spellcasters is the worst place to select

"

sidtherat wrote:

to your obscene DPS!

Tihihihi... he said obscene!