Is Lightning damage the only viable thing as a caster?
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I'm currently playing a cold damage chronomancer build, and looked at the other builds of my type of playstyle. Every god damn build has archmage, and I can definitely see why. Lightning damage just has better Nodes overall, and archmage is insane damagewise, also the big advantage that freeze had is now also available with electrocute for lightning damage.
So we people that play fire and cold builds can just go fuck ourselfs or what? Like, there's no point currently for me to continue on the cold damage path. Last bumped on Jan 7, 2025, 6:18:16 AM
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" Yeah archmage is just way way too good atm. Its also a synergy thing because you need high int for your skill gems, alot of people use mind over matter so mana is also hp pool. So you just stack int/mana and its both damage and defense in one. | |
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Yep there's literally no reason to not go mind over matter archmage manastacker as a caster. I really wanted to make a freezemancer and I'll keep trying but the current state is just utter bullcrap. Why can Lightning damage scale with Intelligence? Why do Lightning damage builds get free movement with lighting warp + lighting bolt? Also Freeze has negative multipliers on rares + uniques, something shock does not seem to have.
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I played a frost stormweaver and while it was fun to play, it's complicated and slow.
The funny thing is that I changed TO cold from lightning, because the lightning damage output I had in Act 3 normal was so abysmal I got stuck at Viper and Mektul, so lightning also only seems to work with some specific builds, but then eventually ends up being the cream of the crop. |
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I've been playing a Sorc Stormweaver based on a hybrid fire/cold build from the very beginning. It's very slow, not very good defenses and damage-wise not good either. Currently on level 89, with relatively good gear, at which I managed to complete both the 3rd and 4th Ascendancies after some tries. While mapping regular T15 content, I still get 1-shot randomly. T15 Breaches and Rituals is a no go, because of the damage output and sluggish skills. In my opinion, at least the damage output for frost builds should be buffed; they literally nerfed it to the ground.
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There are many compounding problems that lead to spark manastacker being the best caster, and archmage is NOT one of them.
First problem: ES is significantly better than life. This makes Chronomancer's strongest defensive nodes (the recoup ones) worthless. It is also partially one of the things that makes Bloodmage bad. Half the Witch/Sorceress Ascendancies are dead. Assuming you aren't playing a caster with a different class (such as Invoker, Gemling etc), that means you are either playing a Stormweaver or an Infernalist, and Stormweaver is clearly set up in a way that pushes you towards Archmage since it already has built in mana scaling. You could pick the other nodes, but they are just worse than the mana stacking path. Second problem: Archmage is by far the best build at stacking Rarity solo. It needs less affixes on gear, specifically Rings which are scaled by Ingenuity, than pretty much every other build. Getting rings with Mana, double Rarity and resists/castspeed/manareg and then slapping on ingenuity just feels so rewarding. Third problem: Spark is just an inherently good skill compared to most spells. This is harder to fix. Spark is notorious for breaking the game. I think it is one of the spells that has broken the game the most amount of times throughout PoE1 history. Spork Totems? Vaal Spark? Voltaxic Spark? Selfchill Spark? Poison Spark? LL Maxblock Spark? Aurastack Spark? The list goes on. It's just a good skill. As an added problem, I will say that the fact you picked Chronomancer is kinda on you. Chronomancer is a good Ascendancy on paper, but it's bad in practice because there is nothing in the game that is worth building as a Chronomancer that wouldn't be better off with another class. Life is trash, so you can't go recoup. Building around Cooldown Resets/Reductions COULD be absurdly strong, and it IS absurdly strong on Supports (Maxblock aura Chronomancer timestopping the entire screen for half a minute), it just doesn't have any strong solo applications. Rn, if you don't want to play Archmage, your second best caster bet is probably Demon Form (which is kinda absurd when built correctly btw). If you don't want to play as a Demon either... good luck. Basically, tl;dr: GGG pushed out an incomplete and unbalanced early access game so at the endgame there are only two worthwhile ways to build a caster. It's not Archmage as a skill being OP, it's other things around it being bad. But in typical GGG fashion, they will nerf the thing that is good because people are crying, and then we'll be stuck playing shit builds, instead of fixing the things that are problematic, like life being trash etc. Love the games. PoE1 way more so than PoE2, but still enjoying both. Hate the company. The scummy, lying, fake and shitty facade, the excuses, the failures, and most of all, the "Vision". Keep both of those in mind when reading my posts. Last edited by PrimordialDarkness#3913 on Jan 7, 2025, 4:11:24 AM
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The lightning family is indeed having way more love.
Spark is innate broken. Too many tags. Not just your normal spell, cast speed, lightning damage stuff. But also benefitting from proj damage, proj speed, duration. More projectiles, fork, chain, pierce all good. Even if you turn off archmage, you can't stop shock spread from launching orbital cannon every second, or even more in some cases. And also the int multi-dip mechanics. And also the mana multi-dip mechanics. And stormweaver double shock. Spark is not good because one thing is OP, it's good because EVERYTHING about the build is OP. Spark is the one killing trash. Orbital cannon is the one killing bosses. The guy above have already mentioned gearing. Spark archmage, needs meta%, ailment magnitude, shock chance, which with the exception of shock% on wand, are all not on gear anyways. They are all on the tree and jewels. Last edited by llindvior#2871 on Jan 7, 2025, 4:29:52 AM
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Yeah I'm really bad at picking ascendancies. I first wen't crossbow witchhunter, that's mood because crossbows/ammogameplay is just shit(why does cooldown apply to reload and shooting? wtf is this garbage?)
Cooldown in general is a nice idea if GGG was capable of not making slower things shit. You are inheritly punished by having to stand still and cast and wait for your spells to get off cooldown and you get what, 40% more damage for it? Concentrated effect gives the same, no reason to link that. Also we should be able to stack cooldowns to get that 60 second cooldown spell that oneshots bosses, I don't see the problem with that, there are builds that can do that with 0 cooldown. |
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" You start of by saying that archmage isnt the problem and then you dont really explain why it isnt your just talking about life being bad and chronomancer being bad. Archmage is overpowered because: 1. Its damage numbers are just way too high, if your playing any lightning or elemental damage build you can just equip archmage and it will be your highest damage spell. I will give you an example. One of my characters is a fireball/frostwall Blood Mage. And as Im playing blood mage Im forced to stack life, so ontop of other defenses/resistances you need there is no room to stack mana ontop of it. I have no lightning damage affixes on gear or skill tree, only cold or pure elemental. Im using archmage on that character and in the skill sheet of my spells all of them do more lightning damage then cold thanks to archmage. And thats with zero attempt at stacking mana other then the non optional 200 int. So basicly on Blood Mage (a life stacking class that archmage really shouldnt synergize with) I more then double my damage just by turning on archmage. That is basicly as obvious of an example of something being overpowered as you can get. You can just equip it on any caster and your damage doubles, which makes it mandatory = bad for build variety. 2. It has no cost or downside to it (other then the spirit) because your alredy forced to get like 200 int for your lvl 20 gems. So you alredy by defualt have: A) Enough int to use the gem B) Enough mana to outweigh the downside C) Enough mana that the damage increase from archmage is greater then any other spell you have 3. Its synergy with mind over matter. You get mind over matter, you turn on archmage, and mana is basicly the only stat you need. = Also bad build variety. | |
" Yep that's it basically. Manastacking is King, and not because it's better, it's the only god damn option. There is no mechanic to scale your fire and cold damage with just one stat, so you are just shit out of luck. Ignite compression does not seem to be a thing yet, and freeze & slow is heavily penalized against rares and uniques, and in party play you have to deal with additional 10% less slow magnitude for each additional player. |
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