Please consider this alternate nerf to Frost Wall

With the announced changes to Frost Wall, projectiles will no longer collide / interact with it. This fixes the obviously broken interaction between piercing Kinetic Blast / Lightning Arrow and stacking multiple Frost Walls around bosses.

Fair enough.

However, this takes away the single-target skill from Kinetic Blast Wanders, which by-and-large rely on walls, environmental or self-cast, to get the necessary damage output to take down high level bosses.

Before the Pierce + Frost Wall combo was used to scale damage output to insane levels, Wanders used to just drop a Frost Wall behind bosses, then hit projectiles into that wall to get the explosions to happen on the boss. This scales damage to reasonable levels, making Kinetic Blast usable for bosses, without multiplying damage to absurd levels. The same thing works with environmental walls, but some boss-fights don't have these available. This latter fact was the sole original reason that Wanders started using Frost Wall.

I would therefore propose the following alternative change: Instead of projectiles not colliding with Frost Wall, let them never pierce it. Since, you know, it's a wall.

This still lets you use clever positioning of the skill to enable bosskilling with Kinetic Blast, while also nerfing the abusive use case, as desired. OP mechanic gone, without taking out an archetype along with it.

and leave wanders to be one-click builds with no weak spots? sure..

there are single target options but they are weaker than the exploit so noone ever used them. it is time to start

you are still far ahead of what melee ever was capable of achieving so..

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sidtherat wrote:

and leave wanders to be one-click builds with no weak spots? sure..

In contrast to, say, Tornado Shot?

Let's be real here, this nerf changes nothing regarding the overall clearspeed of Wanders, map-clear is going to be the same as before. Non-piercable Frostwalls are a QoL feature for the handful of bossfights that do not have environmental walls that you can kite a boss into. They are not an abusive mechanic.

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sidtherat wrote:

there are single target options but they are weaker than the exploit so noone ever used them. it is time to start

"Options", in the plural, is a bit of an overstatement. Barrage is historically the only single-target skill that's viable. Even then, a 3L Barrage setup deals less damage than just spamming your 6L KB at the boss. A 4L is roughly on-par, meaning you lose 4 sockets without gaining anything. So, you need a 5L+.

Now, I can just buy myself a second 6L Shavs, let that permanently take up up inventory space, and swap it in for those specific bossfights. Or, they could make Frost Wall function as a "wall", granting people that QoL, without---as mentioned---letting it be abusive.

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sidtherat wrote:

you are still far ahead of what melee ever was capable of achieving so..

Well, yes, but the balance between ranged and melee is fundamentally skewed, so that doesn't really add to the discussion, does it?

Well Kinetic Blast is AoE skill, not single target.
Dont see what TS have whit all that as TS is single target skill and LA is AoE skill.
Take single target skill and hit the boss its realy simple we all do it.
Else face tank the boss and shot gun that way, if you can...
Knock back can also position enemy, there is plenty of ways to make mechanical part worck better.

use a second skill for single target... problem solved.

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nEVER_BoRN wrote:

Well Kinetic Blast is AoE skill, not single target.
Dont see what TS have whit all that as TS is single target skill and LA is AoE skill.

Ah, it's been a few patches since I played a bow character, which used to use TS for AoE and Puncture for single target. Since I don't believe TS got changed much since then though, this kinda just confirms my point: it's a viable skill both for AoE and single target.

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nEVER_BoRN wrote:

Take single target skill and hit the boss its realy simple we all do it.

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Miazga wrote:

use a second skill for single target... problem solved.

I addressed this above; there are no Wand skills that can out-DPS, on a 4L, a 6L Kinetic Blast. This used to be possible when wanders ran Chain and PCoC, and when GMP had a heavier "less" multiplier. Nowadays though, we get more "more" multipliers and less "less" multipliers, meaning it's much harder to outscale.

Since wanders necessarily only get one 5L+, using a (useful) single-target skill therefore necessitates gem/chest swapping.

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nEVER_BoRN wrote:

Else face tank the boss and shot gun that way, if you can...
Knock back can also position enemy, there is plenty of ways to make mechanical part worck better.

Look, I'm not saying there's no way to work around it. Some preliminary testing suggests I can rather comfortably reach north of 3 million DPS on a 6L Barrage setup, which should be fine for most/all bosses.

Coincidentally, that's around the same number as what you'd get from nuking KB into a non-piercable Frost Wall. So, damage wise, it doesn't change anything. It just makes it cumbersome to swap gems / chest before you engage the boss.

Again, what I'm advocating is a QoL feature, not a request to keep the broken interaction that exists currently.

There is Barrage and even Power Siphon for Wander single target. Barrage has great burst potential and Power Siphon has a build in culling strike if you like.

the 4l players sacrificed for their frost wall setup can now be used for Barrage/Power Siphon.

I don't see any problem, single target for wanders is fine.

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Wiesl_1404 wrote:

There is Barrage and even Power Siphon for Wander single target. Barrage has great burst potential and Power Siphon has a build in culling strike if you like.

the 4l players sacrificed for their frost wall setup can now be used for Barrage/Power Siphon.

I don't see any problem, single target for wanders is fine.

exactly.

I use to run a 4L power siphon for single target. Dont forget you can corrupt your gloves for something nice (if u lucky) to get even more power out of that.

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Wiesl_1404 wrote:

There is Barrage and even Power Siphon for Wander single target. Barrage has great burst potential and Power Siphon has a build in culling strike if you like.

the 4l players sacrificed for their frost wall setup can now be used for Barrage/Power Siphon.

I don't see any problem, single target for wanders is fine.

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Miazga wrote:

exactly.

I use to run a 4L power siphon for single target. Dont forget you can corrupt your gloves for something nice (if u lucky) to get even more power out of that.

That's great.

However, as mentioned above, neither of those skills, when put in a 4L, can out-DPS a 6L KB. Look up the damage effectiveness on those gems, look up the multipliers on the best supports, and run the math.

It's simple. You need a 5L+ to make a second skill useful as single-target, since a 4L would be on-par with just using your main 6L KB, meaning it's a wasted 4L. Since wanders can't have that second 5L+ due to link constraints, this means you have to gem/chest swap. This is an annoyance that doesn't add balance to the game. Making FW non-piercable grants that QoL feature without being unbalanced.

So, what are you guys arguing against, exactly?

I usually switched my Splitarrow with Barrage for bosses... I can't see how a wander shouldn't be able to switch KB with Power Syphon, might have to switch one support, since Syphon has no AoE part but thats it.

EDIT: Even easier would be to just remove Greater Multiple Projectiles. KB already is just one Explosion hits has a base damage of 162% or so (at lvl1), while Barrage has 200% if all projectiles hit. So either remove GMP with Barrage and put a Blue Support in or take out GMP and put another Green Support it, considering that bigger targets are likely hit by more than one explosion and smaller targets are missed by one Barrage Projectile just using KB and getting rid of GMP might be the best.