Tornado Shot is a joke right?

"

JohnNamikaze wrote:

Too many new generation players go with the best metas, that the metas below it have to suffer from the bandwagon hipsters. I cannot make a decent build with interesting gems that have interesting mechanics that gets abused heavily from above. :(

Heh. Since they gave us mirror shot I've been entertaining certain visions about a bow/minion hybrid. And you know, when making an honest hybrid there just isn't much wiggling room, no points to exploit crit as usual or whatnot. So you need to go for your best possible skill setup to make up for it and lack of gear slots means you need to go for one attack skill for all situations. Tornado fits the bill perfectly, but you know, with all the stink that rises around it...

"

take your bow build to merc fellshrine (typical mob/dmg ratio for a good bow build) and compare clear speed. tornado shot (once reaching the point when one of the 'misc' arrow can 1shot white mob) wins hands down.

Yes, if you reach that point, then yes, of course Tornado shot is going to win, it shoots more arrows. This is more to having an overpowered weapon than to the skill itself. Right now, if I use Tornado Shot on Act 2 Merciless, I need 3 shots to kill a white leaping goat. If I get the shotgun, 1 shot. The white bears will take more shots. My current DPS using Tornado Shot with Herald of Ice buff is a bit less than 800.

Would I say its better than Ice Shot? Now, after levelling Tornado Shot to 15, it seems to compare favorably with Ice Shot. Tornado Shot is also easier to use, unless you need to offscreen and heavily kite an enemy. But I tend to use Puncture for that. I also built around physical and not elemental, so Ice Shot will be weaker.

Just for record, I feel that Tendrils is actually in a pretty good place right now. It does okay damage (doesn't eclipse other spells) and is forced into a relatively melee-range cone in front of you and locks you in place for a short time. It's very comparable to Incinerate which tends to do even better than Incinerate (though it's not a direct comparison).

Tendrils is nowhere near as centralizing as Flameblast, SS, Nado, and KB.

---

Tornado Shot's shotgunning against single targets is the secret sauce. Tornado Shot without LMP/GMP isn't going to show off how strong it is (but then again, neither is Ice Shot without chain/pierce, or Split without chain/pierce, or LA without chain/pierce).

It's good for aoe and it's good for single target. You don't need two linkages -- you just spam the one skill against every encounter in the game. Even if Ice Shot were to match its clear speed (which I don't agree with), the fact that you have to dedicate a second skill to single target killing implies Tornado Shot is superior.

Also, not many people are talking about mana cost, but L20 Nado costs 10 base.
L20 Split is 10 base.
L20 LA is 12 base.
L20 IS is 13 base.
L20 RoA is 14 base.
Even a few base mana cost turns into tens of mana/s required for uptime with a full linkage.

(I don't exactly like IS <-> Nado comparison since, like I said before, elemental conversion can be interesting on its own. A nearly full cold conversion build with IS/Hrim (+Hatred/HoI) is really a cool thing that Nado doesn't infringe on.)

---

Spells used to always shotgun (until they added EK and had to make an exception for it) and attacks used to never shotgun.

I definitely agree with raics that the game would be a lot easier to balance if there was no shotgunning since it turns skills that use shotgunning into permanent "Skill+LMP/GMP" 2Ls. Nado, Incinerate, Freezing Pulse. Rarely if ever will you see them without their semi-required LMP/GMP counterpart, and that's just a no-brainer "decision" for players to make.

"

pneuma wrote:

Spells used to always shotgun (until they added EK and had to make an exception for it) and attacks used to never shotgun.

I definitely agree with raics that the game would be a lot easier to balance if there was no shotgunning since it turns skills that use shotgunning into permanent "Skill+LMP/GMP" 2Ls. Nado, Incinerate, Freezing Pulse. Rarely if ever will you see them without their semi-required LMP/GMP counterpart, and that's just a no-brainer "decision" for players to make.

I just want to stress that..

Freezepulse shotgunning is totally fine as it suffers from point blank mechanics without getting the more multiplier and thus more vulnerable in comparision to ranged spells without any big benefits other than shotgunning.

"

zzang wrote:

"

pneuma wrote:

Spells used to always shotgun (until they added EK and had to make an exception for it) and attacks used to never shotgun.

I definitely agree with raics that the game would be a lot easier to balance if there was no shotgunning since it turns skills that use shotgunning into permanent "Skill+LMP/GMP" 2Ls. Nado, Incinerate, Freezing Pulse. Rarely if ever will you see them without their semi-required LMP/GMP counterpart, and that's just a no-brainer "decision" for players to make.

I just want to stress that..

Freezepulse shotgunning is totally fine as it suffers from point blank mechanics without getting the more multiplier and thus more vulnerable in comparision to ranged spells without any big benefits other than shotgunning.

The point is that the skill is purposefully weaker because GGG has to assume that everyone is going to use a 2.5x damage multiplier alongside it.

Imagine a world where FP didn't shotgun and FP did more damage than it did now. Slotting LMP/GMP would actually be a player choice of aoe over raw damage. Until they remove shotgunning, they can never buff FP strong enough to be useful without LMP/GMP.

---

"

JohnNamikaze wrote:

It is definitely a no-brainer when you have mobs coming at you in all direction, and it makes even more sense to take them down quickly because you still have to deal with more mobs. This is not factoring in mods that will benefit these mobs even more to the point, you are rekted faster than a human can react.....especially a couple dozen blue devourers appearing beneath you immediately. There is no excuse, and that is the challenge, but how can it be a challenge if you cannot even attempt it.

What are you even talking about?

Shotgun skill + GMP = 2.5x damage against single targets. Has nothing to do with "mobs coming at you in all directions".

---

"

JohnNamikaze wrote:

Also, the game will even easier to balance, if there was no crit since it turns skills that uses shotgunning or anything into nukes. Only crit can take you to extreme levels of DPS. I know GGG has made some improvement in patch 1.3 with the disparity between crit and non-crit, but the distance is still very long.

Very true, but doesn't affect this topic at all.
Tornado Shot has no more crit synergy than any other "fast aoe bow spam" skill listed ITT.

"

pneuma wrote:

Imagine a world where FP didn't shotgun and FP did more damage than it did now. Slotting LMP/GMP would actually be a player choice of aoe over raw damage. Until they remove shotgunning, they can never buff FP strong enough to be useful without LMP/GMP.

Indeed, just take a look at ball lightning. I've seen a discussion recently where a player claims LMP improves his clear speed because of better coverage, the other doesn't like to sacrifice his single target damage so he advised maximizing AoE instead. You just don't see that kind of discussion with freezing pulse.