Spellcasters need a little more

I've played spellcaster for hundreds of hours now. Played crit spellcaster, RF spellcaster, block spellcaster, etc. Running max gems on 6-links and the whole shmeal.

...and I can't help but feel that my DPS is locked down. Solo mapping is completely fine, and I can steamroll everything relatively easily. But the moment I start mapping in parties I get carried hard by attack-based or CoC players who dump out way more DPS and I can’t help but think about how my CI flicker striker 3-shots most rogues at only level 78, while my self-casters need a GMP flame totem to help deal with rares. Phys builds generally have so much more damage potential because:
-They can utilize all 4 offensive auras, whereas spellcasters can only utilize 1.
-Their damage scales multiplicatively with their weapon’s phys damage, whereas spellcasters’ damage scales off of the gem (effectively capping it at X DPS). In addition, the wand base is absolutely arbitrary (18% base spell versus 19% base spell? Really?) and a wand’s stats are additive, denying spellcasters two important multipliers that phys builds scale heavily off of. Sure, phys weapons are much more expensive than wands. But yes, my phys-crit dagger worth 5 exalts can spit out over 50% more AOE DPS than a lvl21 arc + lvl4 empower on a Vertex, which is worth a little more than 5 exalts.
-They all have access to several more dmg gems (projectile, melee, melee on full life, %phys as fire, more WED), whereas most spellcasters can’t even use a conc effect, which is the only more damage modifier for spellcasters.
-Resistances. Spellcasters can only use 1 or 2 elements at best, and a 75% resist enemy cuts that DPS down to 1/4th of the original DPS. When playing phys builds, armor had never been a problem (it’s a joke, frankly) and elemental res are minor inconveniences. While running X penetration gem is standard on spellcasters, I don't see phys builds running armor pen gems - not that it exists, because armor was never a problem to deal with.
-Crit. For spellcasters, crit is locked by the gem and will never change. For phys builds, the weapon base crit affects crit chance. Usually, crit is so much easier to get on weapons than on spells.
-Damage rolls on rings, amulets, gloves, etc. I find that generally rings and amulets have a little more going for phys/buzzsaw builds than they do for spellcaster builds.
-Mana/life leech. Seriously, why is it that so many things can have phys damage leeched as life/mana but spellcasters have to resort to Doryani’s and special corruptions to gather their meager percentages? And life gain on hit as well, these rolls are all pretty one-sided.

Not to mention that CoC players can spit out a bajillion and one arcs, fireballs, discharges, and arctic breaths in the time I can spit out 5 arcs. Kinda meehhh to self-cast if some guy can spit out 3 spells 10 times faster than I can at virtually zero mana cost (like really, who thought making CoC completely mana-free was a good idea?)

So yea, when I ran CI flicker it was awesome because I just stacked more melee phys + more melee phys on full life + hatred + wrath + crit multiplier gem and watched all the multipliers create terrifying DPS values (something like 250-300 DPS for each 1 point of DPS on my dagger) and steamroll in 6-man parties. I don't see spellcasters creating insane multiplier cascades, simply because gems and auras won't support it and the only way to "end game" DPS is getting empowers and special corruptions.

You know, just giving my 2 cents why I have to resort to some phys build like reave or ST this coming league even though I love playing self-cast.

Agreed.

Spells be blowin.

Bring back old RF, hype!

... or you know...

add some flat spell local crit chance in the passive tree, enough to bring 6%s to 12%s and 4%s to 10%s

I really dislike the fact that most spells have less local crit chance than an axe with crit chance on it, and the spells that have anything higher than 5% are either flameblast(best crit spell imo) OR extremely weak flat damage cold spells.

I find it ironic that I mention axes, I did some math earlier for the new unique axe "The Harvest" which gives 4% global crit chance per level. Apparently, using that axe is the only way you can ever get max crit chance with anything that has a 5% crit chance base. (and that's with voidbringers, rats nest, infernal mantle, gifts from above, AND EVERY critchance node on the passive tree) That's a bit disheartening to spells in particular considering that every weapon in the game can get at least almost 7% local crit chance, and every 1% of local crit chance is essentially 400% global crit chance, so right away spells are shoved behind a 800% global crit chance wall that they have to climb in comparison to weapons. Yeah yeah, Spells always hit, good point, so can attacks (accuracy is available in the passive tree, 800% global crit chance os mpt/

With that said, Ice spear is the only spell with 7% local crit chance(the highest of spells not counting discharge)... and it's damage is absolutely horrendous at 21 compared to any worthwhile physical weapon. (even a wand).

All this lack of crit chance for spells and you still manage to gimp the damage, nerfing righteous fire, nerfing crit multi, adding spell echo to pull the wool over our eyes... Crown of Eyes still exists as a shining example as to why no spell can ever scale as hard as any weapon will. Meh.

As for everything else...

Yeah..
I completely agree.
Spell Echo was not a proper buff to self-caster Mage Archetype Builds.
^In the end-game (non-meta-OP-flameblast-arc-leveling-realm) Mage types are just a joke honestly, unless you're DD and even then that's not atziri viable.

I will say this in the current meta of Spells.. They have an amazing start.. Arc and Flameblast, and even Glacial Cascade are really strong leveling tools. I just want to see Mages capable of getting on par with the Assassin Archetype's in the end-game. I'd like to see all archetypes stand tall beside each other in the end, but they don't.

Apart from a few spells, everything else is trash.

However, those few spells are extraordinarily powerful ->

Arc, uber-Atziri capable and also far faster than most melee builds.
Detonate Dead Prolif, the build being used by the #1 in the HC race right now - incredible clear speed at low cost.
Discharge with Voll's - shown by Ghudda to be very cheap and very powerful.

The rest need to be buffed up to the same standard. NO NERFS.

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Chundadragon wrote:

Apart from a few spells, everything else is trash.

However, those few spells are extraordinarily powerful ->

Arc, uber-Atziri capable and also far faster than most melee builds.

Kute stated that she or he had a 21arc & 4empower. That uber-atziri arc'r that you're talking about went low-life righteous fire I believe, with a legacy item that no longer drops correct me if I'm wrong? but he didn't even break 30k dps with that did he? O _,O You can break 30k DPS with a non-legacy Bringer of Rain + Wings of Entropy set-up and be 10times tankier at 1,000 times less currency spent with the same exact tool-tip. (plus lots of room for improvement, such as crown of eyes crit spec)

"

Chundadragon wrote:

Detonate Dead Prolif, the build being used by the #1 in the HC race right now - incredible clear speed at low cost.

That's not even a "spell". It's a secondary spell effect, a "cast." It doesn't scale with spell damage, it is not labeled a spell, so it =/= spell.

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Chundadragon wrote:

Discharge with Voll's - shown by Ghudda to be very cheap and very powerful.

The rest need to be buffed up to the same standard. NO NERFS.

Very Cheap and Very Powerful to what ends? Those are arbitrary adjectives. Sure, it has 8% crit chance, but it's power comes from being able to generate charges on large groups of mobs to even compare to straight up arc, and end-game arc alone is already comparable to a mid-game melee leveling spec of most optimal varieties... In terms of DPS output, unless you're cast on death Discharge... you're not pairing up with Melee or Ranged attackers when all is said and done.

But yeah, I agree with you on half of that last part. Don't just buff everything else, BUFF ALL SPELLS. There needs to be a kind of resurgence of what the old righteous fire use to be about-> Making spells on par with other specs end game while keeping them really powerful for leveling.

How do you pull something like that off though? They nerfed Righteous Fire to the point where the damage it dealt to enemies around you was stronger than any spell you could throw out afterwards (more or less).

Where can spells get that x2 dmg that they need?

No, the Arc build that was Uber-capable was life-based, in Ambush league - no legacies.

I think tooltip DPS is irrelevant, I can have 30k Spectral, 60k Dual Strike -> Spectral will clear faster. Since Arc chains the spread is far greater and far more effective at clearing mobs.

It's been replicated many times by different people, check my Uber capable-build list in Gameplay.

The Detonate Dead build, yes it doesn't scale with spell damage but I still call it a spell -> it's cast after all :) Not an attack.

The Voll's build I'll measure in this -> cost only around 5 exalts, very high relative clear speed to other builds of the same cost, check the Gorge Speed Records.

"

Chundadragon wrote:

No, the Arc build that was Uber-capable was life-based, in Ambush league - no legacies.

I think tooltip DPS is irrelevant, I can have 30k Spectral, 60k Dual Strike -> Spectral will clear faster. Since Arc chains the spread is far greater and far more effective at clearing mobs.

It's been replicated many times by different people, check my Uber capable-build list in Gameplay.

The Detonate Dead build, yes it doesn't scale with spell damage but I still call it a spell -> it's cast after all :) Not an attack.

The Voll's build I'll measure in this -> cost only around 5 exalts, very high relative clear speed to other builds of the same cost, check the Gorge Speed Records.

DD scales off enemy hp. Not one of the "spells" I'm referring to.

Also, Arc has a few problems, namely:
-doesn’t deal any more damage past 6-7 enemies, whereas ST and melee splash don’t care about quantity (this is a huge issue when fighting Jungle Boss or other high-density mobs)
-single target DPS sucks without corruptions and empowers (huge issue when doing atziri, since chain becomes moot. The build you are referring to cost him roughly a mirror’s worth of items to execute by my estimates; that can get you tons more DPS on ST with CoE+Shav). When running Arc, I always have to keep a secondary DPS source around, like RF or flame totem.
-refuses to scale efficiently with crit

Sure, chaining makes clear times pretty darn fast when solo playing, which is why I prefer to solo play. It's when I do party play and there are guys that can chunk 1/6 of a golem's hp (that's one-shotting in solo play) using a phys hit that makes me upset. Running flicker, I could chunk mobs in 6-man parties like it was nothing (enough to sustain max frenzy on blood rage), but running Arc I just sit and hold Q and watch their HP dwindle oh-so-slowly.

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KuteKitteh wrote:

DD scales off enemy hp. Not one of the "spells" I'm referring to.

Also, Arc has a few problems, namely:
-doesn’t deal any more damage past 6-7 enemies, whereas ST and melee splash don’t care about quantity (this is a huge issue when fighting Jungle Boss or other high-density mobs)
-single target DPS sucks without corruptions and empowers (huge issue when doing atziri, since chain becomes moot. The build you are referring to cost him no less than 120 exalts worth of items to execute, btw; that can get you tons more DPS on ST). When running Arc, I always have to keep a secondary DPS source around, like RF or flame totem.
-refuses to scale efficiently with crit

Sure, chaining makes clear times pretty darn fast when solo playing, which is why I prefer to solo play. It's when I do party play and there are guys that can chunk 1/6 of a golem's hp (that's one-shotting in solo play) using a phys hit that makes me upset. Running flicker, I could chunk mobs in 6-man parties like it was nothing (enough to sustain max frenzy on blood rage), but running Arc I just sit and hold Q and watch their HP dwindle oh-so-slowly.

Yup, I agree with this but dealing more damage past 6-7 enemies is fairly moot in most map clearing situations. The Jungle Valley boss mobs just get wrecked with one hit for it to matter.

Obviously spectral goes higher than 30k and Dual Strike goes higher than 60k - those were figures to illustrate tooltip isn't accurate.

With Arc, if you keep around a proliferate totem - you'll find that it does some work. Maybe you'd like to check out Ventor's build on the Scion forums - he can carry full 6 man 78 map parties with Arc - the potential is definitely there with mirrored gear, we just need some more love on the numbers side for the regular players.

There are some spells however that aren't so mediocre in numbers ->

For e.g. Crit Flameblast can one-shot 6 man party Courtyard bosses. It's a similar spell to Detonate Dead but a little bit less oomf when not charged up.

I think a potential solution to this problem (and, self casting IS a problem) would be to change the fundamental way that spell casting items work.

The biggest issue is that spells don't scale as well as attacks because they are much less gear dependent for their damage. So, here is what I propose.

In addition to %increased spell/elemental damage mods on wands, there could be a new set of mods that look something like this...

X Spells you cast have 10-20 additional X damage

...where X is an elemental type. Hell, it'd be cool if chaos was in there as well. Note the wording, spells you CAST. This would mean that any spell that was triggered via CwDT, CoC, or what-have-you would not benefit from these mods. The idea is to buff self-casting, not to give CoC folks an even bigger edge.

Giving a spell more base damage would make the increased spell passives a LOT more attractive, wouldn't you say?

The biggest issue, you may argue, is that the mod pool for wands and staves is already messier than a toddler eating spaghetti. Yep! So, either the mod pool could be cleaned up... OR!

Split the caster weapons into three neat little piles. Physical wands, spell wands, hybrid wands. Itemization is still interesting, the mod pool would still be far deeper than any other piece of gear, yet casters can eventually compete with everyone else.

Whatcha think of that?

Wands can't get split because they are glyphic/tyr hybrids on par with daggers and must be retarded difficult to roll because that's what GGG's design intended ->

Crit = more investment, the bases have more difficulty in rolling.

Introducing a physical wand base would just make it too easy to get the high pDPS numbers.

It is interesting how spells started out as, designed for crit, and now they're the least likely to do so.

Base crit chance is pathetic on many spells.