Sorceress / Monk Elemental Skills Feedback and Suggestions

Here is also feedback and suggestions about elemental damage related Spirit Gems.

Feedback about Sorceress elemental Spirit Gems:

Arctic Armour - does not seem to have much purpose, especially in second part of game. While it does provide some damage output from retailation hits there are much better dps increasing Spirit gems for both elemental melee / ranged builds (Herald of X) and elemental spellcaster builds (like Raging Spirits). It is not good for defensive purposes either since unlike its PoE1 analogue it does not provide any defensive value. It should be improved.
Suggestion: Make it also provide X% physical damage reduction while active (which makes sense for a layer of ice surrounding your character). Such tweak would make it provide some defensive value too and more generally useful.

Raging Spirits - are decently useful for fire builds, no suggestions here.

Mana Remnants - can be useful for mana stacking / mana hungry builds like Archmage, but are not that useful for other builds that can just solve their mana issues and rather spend this Spirit on something offensive / defensive. Maybe it is intended to be very niche, but if not - could use a boost like remnants also providing short duration movement speed boost when picked for additional mobility value.

Cast on Ignite / Freeze / Shock - while initially were very / too strong, now they went in opposite direction and are too undertuned / unreliable, especially against normal (white) and magic (blue) enemies. Could use a boost against mentioned kinds of enemies and if needed - an additional general boost.

Elemental Conflux - does not seem to provide enough value for 100 Spirit cost, even for 2-3 element builds that are more likely to get a fitting element boost triggered from it. Could use a buff or Spirit cost reduction.

Archmage - while requiring heavy investment into mana and mana regen provides so strong damage boost to affected spells that might still be too strong. It also creates a design issue for spells that GGG would have to deal with - they either would have to make existing / new spells have low baseline damage to account for giant scaling from Archmage (which would make non-Archmage builds likely not competitive, since they would have to scale quite low baseline damage values) or they would eventually acknowledge this issue and have to nerf Archmage resulting in massive backlash from players who spent lots of time and currency to make the Archmage focused build. However, there is a solution - baseline damage of most spells should be buffed and Archmage scaling should be tuned to level where investing 4 Ascendancy points (analogue of Stormweaver Arcane Surge nodes), X offensive mods on equipment (analogue of Archmage build stacking mana and mana regen mods on equipment) and picking other 100 Spirit aura (analogue of Archmage's Spirit and skill slot cost) would provide comparable scaling to scaling from Archmage. For example - if you play dual element build, take Elemental Conflux instead of Archmage and pick suitable mods on equipment and suitable 4 ascendancy nodes and can get comparable output increase to what you would have gotten from Archmage with according mods / ascendancy passives - then they would be fine balanced and a matter of preference and allow people who like Archmage to play it and people who don't to play some alternative playstyle and both categories to remain competitive.

Feedback about Monk / general elemental Spirit Gems:

Herald of Thunder - decent for clearing maps, but provides quite low value against bosses, especially if this boss does not have adds. Maybe intended and fine, but if you would want to make it more generally useful it could also occasionally trigger from hitting boss enemies too (like every X seconds from shocking / critting them akin to Mana Remnants).

Herald of Ash - has similar issue against bosses to Herald of Thunder and since its effect is not as strong as other two elemental heralds this one is most suitable for buffing, like letting it also trigger from critical hits with X seconds internal cooldown to make it more useful against bosses.

Herald of Ice - has similar issue against bosses to Herald of Thunder and Herald of Ash, but its chain shatter effect (especially when stacked with Polcirkern) while mapping is so strong that it likely does not need any boosts for now. Simply track its performance and based on whether it suits your game vision - adjust if needed.

Elemental Invocation - performs better than Cast on X gems since is stacked by all three kinds of elemental ailments, but still might be undertuned against normal and magic enemies too. Consider buffing it against only these types of enemies.

Feedback about some of remaining Sorceress / Monk / general elemental skills and several suggestions:
Freezing Mark - after nerfs to refreeze capabilities its viability was reduced (since you can reliably freeze enemy once anyway and can do that even if you don't use this mark) and now can be inferior to Voltaic Mark that provides both shock chance and shock magnitude. Could use a small boost like also increasing duration of freeze while active to match Voltaic Mark.
Voltaic Mark - decent effect that provides both shock chance and shock magnitude. No suggestions here.
"Incendiary Mark" - There is currently no ignite boosting mark and that should be addressed to keep elemental builds in line.
Flammability / Hypothermia / Conductivity - decent effect, but curse activation delay can make them easily miss moving targets, especially if you play dual element build and take Whispers of Doom to scale all your damage types. Whispers of Doom having a tradeoff like other key passives is fair, but consider reducing base curse delay itself.
Fireball - its effect can be decent, but many people miss usual effect of Fireball creating a big explosion instead of throwing projectiles around. To address that - consider adding a support gem that would replace Fireball's projectiles with big area and damage explosion - such solution allows people who enjoy projectile based Fireball to still play it and people who like explosive Fireball to have such option available as well.

On the one hand, Unbound Avatar and Elemental Expression synergize with fire damage and ailments. On the other hand, the Monk passive tree has starting nodes for progressing electric and frost damage/ailments, but not fire. The Invoker ascension tree has nodes progressing electric and frost damage/ailments, but not fire.

Maybe the plan is to add some fire-based quarterstaff skills later on and adjust the passive/ascension trees to accommodate a similar progression as lightning and frost. Maybe they also plan to do the same with chaos-based skills and nodes.

Hopefully both of these suppositions are the case, as currently the chaos and fire aspects of Monk seem very half-baked and unintuitive.

I just hope that they actually intend to add some fire based monk skills and not make them borrow fire melee skills from Warrior and Templar that would force fire based monks to scale all 3 attributes (Strength for fire attacks, Dexterity / Intelligence for other monk abilities and Intelligence for fire spells) with according scaling issues. But we shall see.

Several additional suggestions for elemental skills / builds:
- Add analogue to Archmage damage scaling Spirit gem for fire and cold spell builds. Raging Spirits exist, but they are minion based and more fitting for an Infernalist Witch, so fire sorceress builds could get something too, like spirit gem that would make Ignite stack a debuff each second it is active that increases fire damage taken from all sources (promoting Ignite chance and Ignite duration synergies) or something else. Cold builds could get for example a Spirit gem that would make enemies take increased cold damage the more Chill they have enabling both offensive synergies for Chill magnitude / duration effects and way to offensively scale cold builds without relying on freeze that is diminished after first application.
- Consider adding a Sorceress spell that would combust Ignite on enemy making it immediately deal remaining stored damage instantly, maybe even with increased effect and if you want synergy with AoE situations - it could affect enemies in some area too. This could be pretty much fire builds analogue of Cold Snap (payoff spell for fire's elemental ailment effect) and since Ignite is much easier to apply than freeze this spell could have other limitation like having a cooldown (which would enable additional synergies with Chronomancer). Such spell 1) would help with Ignite builds clearing speed that is much lower than cold and especially lightning builds 2) would enable additional synergies for ignite magnitude and ignite duration effects and 3) would add more dynamics to fire builds.

The complete lack of Quarterstaff fire skills is pretty unusual, especially when Assassin's Martial Arts tree in Diablo 2 had fire-themed skills like Phoenix Strike. I hope we get some at some point.

I'd also like to see a lot more love for Quarterstaff physical Wind skills. Currently, the Wind skills (Wind Blast, Vaulting Leap, Staggering Palm, Whirling Assault) are completely outclassed by Monk's Cold and Lightning skills because there are very few ways to scale physical damage at the moment. All of them except for Wind Blast are slow and clunky to use, too, and they deserve their own feedback thread. You can make a funny meme build using Wind Blast linked with Devastate and Armour Explosion for crowd clear... but Titan actually does it better than either Monk ascendancy due to Titan's access to AoE nodes. My guess is that Monk's third ascendancy will be focused around the 'beige' physical wind skills, with maybe some support for the Unarmed palm skills. We'll just have to wait and see.

I left a physical skill out of the above list: Bell. Ironically, Bell makes the elemental Quarterstaff skills even stronger because it ramps up scalable elemental damage and ailment procs. If you don't run Bell and Charged Staff on your Quarterstaff builds, you're severely gimping your damage. Every weapon class has this problem, but it's even more of an issue for Quarterstaves because Bell is just that strong.

Some additional feedback post patch 0.1.1 changes:
- The Sentry Unique Quarterstaff change to deal only fire damage is interesting and would provide an option for fire damage based quarterstaff, but its general power is still too low. It requires more buffs and some form of scaling into endgame to be competitive with rare quarterstaves.
- Addition of cold and lightning damage affixes to Matsya Unique Quarterstaff is nice, but dealing implicit physical damage still severely reduces its synergy with elemental builds, since even elemental attacks convert only part of physical damage to elemental and remaining part won't be scaled much. Consider making it deal implicit cold damage (its description clearly states that it should be water / ice focused) - that would both give cold monk builds a fitting unique weapon (that should also be tuned to competitive with rares in endgame level) and would not overlap with The Sentry (fire damage) and Unique Crackling Quarterstaff (lightning damage when it is implemented) as a result providing a fitting unique weapon for any dedicated elemental monk build.
- Collapsing Horizon Unique Quarterstaff has a similar issue - it is clearly designed for elemental monk builds, but implicit physical damage reduces this synergy and makes it simply inferior to rare Expert Crackling Quarterstaff that does implicit lightning damage and can roll higher roll of + X to melee skills. Consider changing it in a unique way that would make it compatible with any elemental monk build - make its implicit damage type change based on highest damage type bonus that Monk has (for example if monk has biggest bonus to lightning damage it is lightning implicit damage type, if biggest bonus is to cold damage then cold implicit damage type etc) and if there are several damage types with equal bonus one of them is picked randomly. Such tweak would make it better compatible with any elemental monk build (as its non-implicit bonuses already fit them) and as long as its bonuses are brought to level of rare endgame quarterstaves it would be competitive and better in its niche.

If you insist on playing with Fire as an Invoker, just equip Painter's Servant and call it a day. Elemental monk already has enough syngery baked into it's ascendancy, the class's starting point on the passive tree, as well as its signature weapon skills + support & spirit gems. I'd say you're reaching for a problem that does not exist.

Painter's Servant are multi-elemental, not fire focused, and they don't address the issue with lack of compatible with monk fire attacks in skill trees. And the problem with Invoker supporting fire abilties but having pretty much no fire based attacks (fire spells can be borrowed from Sorceress) does exist and should be addressed. It is also not contradicting separately buffing undertuned physical / chaos abilties and builds if that is the point you are trying to make.

My point is that if you want to play with Fire as an Invoker, you will have to work harder for it than if you had instead chosen Cold/Lightning and that it is in-line with this game's design. The classes/ascendancies all specialize differently, yet the player has the choice to supplement non-specialties of their class at the cost of investing more gear/passives into it.

Maybe, but that does not mean there should be no fitting skills to even play that build. Currently there are no quarterstaff skills that support fire damage / Ignite buildup, so to scale that part of Invoker ascendancy (like Unbound Avatar) you need to use external skills. That is a design flaw and should be fixed.