Self-Cast Vs Mines Vs Traps Vs Totems.

It's been a known issue that Alt-casting generally far outclass self-cast and I personally also think it's why many skills get poor "Damage Effectiveness" when they otherwise shouldn't.

The issue is pretty similar to CoC and I personally feel the solution is incredibly simple.

Have any attached Skill to Totems, Mines, Traps, CoC deal ~50% Less damage. I've seen Sabo's and Totem masters in action. This probably won't even phase theml might hurt spell totems a lil.

Afterward increase the damage effectiveness of MANY spells in this game. This way self-cast will hit like a truck while alt-cast will cast far quicker and in general neither side loses DPS because again the 'Damage Effectiveness' of skills is brough back up.

The biggest perk to this is casters need not stand still as much. They drop a bomb and clears like a strong spell should and they move on. Trappers spam as usual and everyone wins.

that really doesnt solve the problem of self casters, the real issue is that you just cant survive standing still on self caster, sure you might survive if you were inquisitor going all in into life regen, but at that point you are basicaly rf build, so might as well do that.
We need more compelling self cast gems, Faster casting gem should grant more cast speed rather than increased, possibly adding instant cast to spells with cooldown of 5s? so you can cast instantly first spell u cast every 5s, letting you kite monsters on a caster. Theres many solutions you can do to make them more useable, because right now, other than unleash casters its not very good to be a caster

I also see bigger problem staying alive while staying still than the fact that totems / traps are single click delivery method for sustainable dps in a lot of cases.

It would be more useful to get something like 30% passive dmg reduction when staying still.

Not only it helps self casters but also improve name lock attack builds.

selfcast needs the same thing strike skills need, substantial numerical bonuses to compensate for their clunky nature when compared with other skills.

Standing still to cast is obviously a problem, but you wouldn't have to do that as much if you didn't feel like your build was garbage without 100% uptime.

You probably have to hit ~ 3mil dps on a selfcast build before it actually competes with a 1mil CoC build. GGG hasn't learned this lesson yet or if they did they forgot it (like they do with channeling skills tbh)

Builds must be ratio'd with their uptime before you can actually draw comparisons to their skill peers, this is why for example 5mil single hit slams were so popular.

I am a rather mid core player so my opinion is not worth much. But yeah, standing still suicide.
Maps are best cleared if everything explodes before it can react and bosses ask for constant movement or you simply get nuked.

One way to fix it would be to cut player and monster damage in half, also half all sources of regeneration (except mana because being OoM is awful) Then add a easy to reach perk on the tree which adds damage to self casters and self strikers.

Or less drastic: A support gem only for self cast and self strike. Granting defense, damage and Attack/cast speed per charge.
Charges obviously generated by casting linked spells and will fall off if you move for more than a few seconds.

That is the general concept though. I play a lot of melee. I stand still a decent amount. The main difference is that I'm shredding when I'm doing it and quick tapping trash mobs.

If self-cast hits much harder that's much less time they stand still and especially sitting there spamming a spell. Get a big Firestorm smack because it's Damage Effectiveness is ~180% instead of a god awful 55% then move. Cast Speed is about dropping a bomb safely instead of spamming.

In many ways Unleash does this already. You're just banking up multiple casts instead of one bit cast. Channeling skills would need more defensive perks, infused channeling doesn't cut it.