Wander problems

Very informative!

I'm going to try and address this in my next update for my Witch Skill Tree Proposal Thread.
Found Here: Linky

I got about 4-5 things I can adjust in my next design for a new layout:
Critical strike chance & multiplier, Point efficiency, Mana Cost, Accuracy, and Buff to mana nodes.

It's not fair that wands only have 1 direct skill, maybe two if you count barrage.
I agree with most of the info.
Hopefully GGG actually reads these forums, cause we get little to no feedback on these types of issues.

If you got more issues that could be looked at post them here or in my thread. I'll try to keep myself up to date.

While I agree that the current wand passives aren't great, I'm curious how you think it could be fixed. If they changed wand nodes to include Crit Chance / Multi, then wanders would be getting a huge buff. Wanders are already very strong with the right gear - you'd have to take back a little bit of power to keep it reasonable - but I can't think of a good way to do that without nerfing Auras overall, which is a much bigger change than just in regards to wands.

I think one of the main problems is the difference between daggers and wands with similar levels of gear. If you can afford the gear, daggers are better in most situations.

Edit: ST op ggg please nerf

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FatRhys wrote:

I think one of the main problems is the difference between daggers and wands with similar levels of gear. If you can afford the gear, daggers are better in most situations.

The advantage of wands has always been the long range... then ST came out. Now wands are in an odd place. I think just making the wand nodes better and improving the area above the witch start is all it needs.

The mana cost is already ridiculous so I don't see how anyone could call wands anywhere near overpowered. OP's build is just an example of CoE + shavs being overpowered and is irrelevant to this topic.

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toyotatundra wrote:

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qquno wrote:

Wish GGG had such meticulous person like you on their balancing team.

I'm not so sure. Skyforth complains about no crit chance, but he does have capped crit, free power charges with PS and one shots the entire game without a single wand node. It's REALLY hard to reach a conclusion that a buff is needed here.

While wands do get a power charge on kill they also need an extra link compared to spectral throw (wands = lmp/gmp and chain while ST = lmp). With spectral throw using PCoC you get power charges against bosses as well.

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toyotatundra wrote:

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qquno wrote:

Wish GGG had such meticulous person like you on their balancing team.

I'm not so sure. Skyforth complains about no crit chance, but he does have capped crit, free power charges with PS and one shots the entire game without a single wand node. It's REALLY hard to reach a conclusion that a buff is needed here.

Main point is - wand nodes suck, its efficiently renders what you can remove HUGE (28 skill nodes) part of the tree and nothing changes, wand nodes just does not scale DPS well, simply get general purpose crit chance/crit multi nodes and that will be more skill point wise, isn't it a bit idiotic? A wander without a single wander node? lol.

So, suggestion is make wand nodes somehow interesting to get, adding crit chance to wand nodes at least let wanders pick up less general purpose crit chance nodes. Look at nightstalker dagger node - 16% phys damage, 60% crit chance, aaaand 10% increased ENERGY SHIELD, such a sweet node, hard to not to get it.

Anuhurt on the other hand point out what it is not wand nodes bad, but what the main source of damage is from buffed auras - APS * (physical / fire / light / cold). I am not sure about this, even if auras got nerfed (this time for real, not like last time, where it was actually buffed), sooo, even if auras got nerfed I still think what fire/light/cold component of the damage will greatly outperform physical component. Also most wand nodes scales physical damage (which is low) so it result in really shitty DPS increase, so it force you to scale DPS with crit multi nodes instead which will scales both ele/phy component.

Also there is an issue with mana and wanding and almost perfect gear requirement.

I didn't watch the whole video because looking at it from a math point of view your argumentation is wrong.

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Lowlife CoE is just an amplification towards my damage.

No, it shifts your damage. CoE makes the %phys dmg and %ele dmg nodes way less effective. Lowlife allows you to run 3 dmg auras - thus shifting the damage further and making % nodes even less important.

"Proof" : Lets assume you have a Crit chance of 100% (makes the calculations way easier), only ele or pdmg damage, 500% Crit Mult and 100% spell dmg with CoE. The damage calculation is damage = base damage * (1.0 + incr dmg) * crit mult. Note that the values are random numbers, you can adjust them to whatever you want and you get a similar result.

First without CoE :
No incr damage : damage = 500 * base damage
10% incr damage : damage = 550 * base damage
10% incr crit mult : damage = 510 * base damage

With CoE :
No Incr damage : damage = 1000 * base damage
10% incr damage : damage = 1050 * base damage
10% incr crit mult : damage = 1020 * base damage

As you can see the crit mult nodes are more effective with CoE. The reason here is that all kind of damage has diminishing returns. At some point its more efficient to go for damage nodes than for crit mult / crit chance nodes.

If you look at a lot of other builds - damage nodes usually get less important with good gear. In your case abusing CoE and low Life is way more damage than damage nodes - because of that they are bad. But for the normal player without CoE and Shavs the nodes are quite good.

Lets assume we use Hatred and Grace/Det and want to build a hybrid damage build with as much pdmg as possible. Lets assume we have no pdmg nodes and all the stuff in the previous example. The question is - what do you need for a normal player to double our physical damage (which also inceases our elemental damage - but the hybrid calculations would be way more difficult).

Again we have damage = base damage * (1.0 + incr dmg) * crit mult.
Thus to get double damage, we need 100% incr damage, 500% Crit multiplier or double base damage. And here it is quite easy to get 100% incr damage - but it is really hard to get 500% additional crit mult or double base damage.

I played a physical wander and a low life physical wander (without abusing damage auras) some time ago - both with decent equipment (meaning 2-3 exalts worth of equipment without Shavs) and they where fine dmg and defense wise. No need to change anything.

My point :

Wand nodes are ok atm - they are just bad together with CoE and Aura abusing (meaning low life). Because of that there is no need to change them - only a really small amount of wand players have CoE and Shavs.

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qquno wrote:

Wish GGG had such meticulous person like you on their balancing team.

Meticulous without any math?

I get the feeling that the general point of this discussion is: Fucking nerf auras.

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CptQaoz wrote:

I get the feeling that the general point of this discussion is: Fucking nerf auras.

Nerfing auras means that elemental wanders become useless.

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Thirion wrote:

My point :

Wand nodes are ok atm - they are just bad together with CoE and Aura abusing (meaning low life). Because of that there is no need to change them - only a really small amount of wand players have CoE and Shavs.

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qquno wrote:

Wish GGG had such meticulous person like you on their balancing team.

Meticulous without any math?

Care to watch whole video? Point is, "%inc damage" which you referring is applied to physical damage of wand while "%crit multi" applied to phy/ele, and NO anger/wrath/hatred is NOT equal to low life, not to mention if you play in the party you can leech auras. So your math is correct in some "ghetto solo no auras wander" case only. Also, you spend LESS skill points on "%inc crit multi" than on "%inc phy damage" this is also major idea why wand nodes suck.

Auras is not something artificial or rare in the current meta so you can't ignore it in the "math".

Auras actually quite great since they let you make nice DPS even with trash weapon, only APS matter (ele buzzsaw), or APS + local crit for crit builds (flubby).