Merge Gem(support)

very true. but this would give players a HUGE room to make experiments of what to combine with what and it would create a shitton of new skills and support gems at the same time. i mean.. people love to experiment alot, this is such a big part of this game.
and i did miss new skill and support gems over the last patches alot.

and if anything.. if ggg ever runs out of ideas they just can do this and people will be busy experimenting for a good while :P

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Milani wrote:

very true. but this would give players a HUGE room to make experiments of what to combine with what and it would create a shitton of new skills and support gems at the same time. i mean.. people love to experiment alot, this is such a big part of this game.
and i did miss new skill and support gems over the last patches alot.

and if anything.. if ggg ever runs out of ideas they just can do this and people will be busy experimenting for a good while :P

It's a good idea, new properties of skills and combination will result in more builds but that will also take more time to create that single gem that will work for every single skills there is available.

Wouldn't it be better to create a new skill with new properties than to merge 2 existing one and uses 1 of the attack and another of the properties? it would work well in your way, but its very complicated stuff :)

If i could suggest a new skill i would actually want something like 'Gravity', i didn't suggest this because it will be an new element. Which will require new nodes within the 'passive skill tree'. there can be lots of new gravity skills since it doesn't exist in this game.

i know :) but as complicated as it is, as many new things it creates. tho i guess the work it needs would go way over the work limit that GGG has atm. still would like a GGG response on this haha :D

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Milani wrote:

i know :) but as complicated as it is, as many new things it creates. tho i guess the work it needs would go way over the work limit that GGG has atm. still would like a GGG response on this haha :D

Yup, the workload would probably be 2x or 3x to create new element or even a skill that would utilise the whole skills ingame. hope they would response too :) can't wait for my gem to be in game.

maybe you write me in a pm what you are thinking of? i am curious now :D

@ Milani:
Your suggestion would be awesome, if it could be done. Unfortunetly i fear it can't be. I think it's the reason why ggg went with active+support gems instead of active gems affecting each other. We have around 60 active gems, excluding auras and curses.
2 gems combining into a new one means 60*60=3600 combinations that devs have to test, balance, etc.
3 gems [...] means 60*60*60= 216000 combinations, and so on up to 60^6. That would be an infinite pool of possibilities for players, but a literally impossible work for developoers.

@MILKaddict:

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i wouldn't say that everyone have enough sockets for everything, so this gem come into play for players with limited sockets too, if they want 2 skills with the same support.

I might miss something, but maybe with an example:
You want fireball and firestorm both supported with fire penetration, ele. prolifention and chance to ignite.
That combo fits in 1 5L or 2 4Ls. If you have a 6L you could fit 1 extra support, for both. So if you choose 2 skills that can use the same supports, you don't need a merge gem to fit them into less sockets. And if you can't use the same supports for the gems (lets say fireball and ice spear), the merge doesnt help either.

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Shouldn't we consider this on average cast/attack speed, from what you say you probably have insane cast/attack speed which require some serious gear or many cast/attack speed nodes.
and yes, faster casting/attack would result in faster animation that would be let you kite for a longer periods;shorter period on the same spot, but you have to stop twice for 2 cast compare to stopping once for just 1 dual cast. so it's somewhat like burst dmg vs cast/attack speed.

If you put in merge, you cast both at the same time with normal cast speed, therefore you cast 2 spells for 1 animation, thats a 50% faster cast efectively.

If you put in faster casting, you can reach 39% cast speed on both gems, resulting a 39% faster casting effectively. So yeah, with merge it might be 11% faster, resulting 11% more DPS. But should there really be a gem just for that?

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Yes, i agree. but the multiplier act as a balance for the gem itself. You wouldn't want an OP gem flying around in the game, would you? As said there's pros/cons in every gem, same goes for this.

If i only suggest a GEM that only have pros but not the cons, it would be a OP gem that would never enter the game, wouldn't it?

I fully agree.

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simplicity? so what about LMP/GMP? its just addition projectile which somewhat is the same as merge gem which dual cast on single key. Would you not use it? since it doesn't really add bonus. you can just shoot 2/4 more arrows right after the first without LMP/GMP.

LMP/GMP effectively turns any single target projectile skill into an AoE(-like) skill.
Merge would turn a single target projectile into a higher dps single target projectile. Or am I missing something?
On the melee part, there are melee splash or multistrike for the same reason. And casting is one thing, but how would it look when a mara swings a cleave and a sweep at the same time?

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Your point is "how will this gem benefit a build in game" or should i say "how will this build benefit me in game"
My point is "I didn't suggestion this gem because that i had a build in mind that could benefit from this gem", No one will know if this will benefit or not without testing it firsthand.

Yes, basicly why add a gem if it doesn't add anything new or a missing thing to the game?
Or at least i fail to see what would this gem add other than a slight dps advantage.
When i think of a new idea, i ask myself "who would use this thing, why would he use this?"
Or would it just become a collectors item like portal gem?

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From what you suggested, it should be more like Double strike than Dual Strike, am i right?
That's a pretty good idea, could i use that in the description?

Sure if you want to.
Well at least i'm saying the double strike way, it could benefit from some of the mechanics.
So it would be something like multistrike, but would use different skills rapidly, and would allow projectiles as well.
Multistrike's uniquness is that, it allows for otherwise impossible attack speed.
It's obvious multistrike is limited to melee, because it's supposed to be a melee balance thing, it uses a single skill. So for a support gem to use multiple skills in a rapid sequence, might be potential to it, but it needs some "uniquness", something otherwise impossible. something like a buildmaker ability.

Edit.: for example: now i'm building an explosive arrow duelist with Ele Equilibrium. fightplan is:
-shoot several EA with added cold dmg
-shoot lightning arrow (EE boosted dmg, possibly shock)
-EA charges explode (boosted with EE and shock)
(Everything with GMP)

Something like this could benefit from such a gem, but here's my point: It's possible to do without it.
Should find something, that would be impossible without your gem.

i dont think the OP waants a gem that makes the skills stronger than others
all it does is change the skills or adding a new aspect to them

i.E. arc + spark spawns sparks on every hit of arc at the target
to get that effect both arc and spark would do less dmg than alone but still enough to be as strong as arc(or spark)+1 support gem (dont forget you would need 3 slots for this combo not 2)

it would create "new" skills that may be fun to use but arent stronger than existing ones (after balancing ofc)
more options = more builds = more fun (as long as neither spark/arc only with support gem nor the merged version would be stronger)

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Daxora wrote:

I might miss something, but maybe with an example:
You want fireball and firestorm both supported with fire penetration, ele. prolifention and chance to ignite.
That combo fits in 1 5L or 2 4Ls. If you have a 6L you could fit 1 extra support, for both. So if you choose 2 skills that can use the same supports, you don't need a merge gem to fit them into less sockets. And if you can't use the same supports for the gems (lets say fireball and ice spear), the merge doesnt help either.

Yes i do know that the combo you mention can fits in 1 5L or 2 4Ls or even a 6L which you can have another extra support. that would be a separate casting, what merge gem is suggesting is not that you can or cannot have 2 gems within a same item, is that it allow more attack ability within builds.

For example my kind of build for bow user would have 2 main ability with 5support each(2 6L),
Auras with reduce mana(4L), Skeleton totem for def(3-4L) then Curses(probably 2sockets, but if needed to be enhance could take up to 4L). Max socket you can get in game is 24, let's just say i go for the lowest, that would be about 20-21 sockets? So if i want to have 3-4main ability, i would need to abandon the curses? or the auras? wouldn't that just harm the build? what merge gem is suggesting is that you can keep your current build but losing just 2 support gems within a 6L you can have another ability that doesn't really harm the build as much as you what you will do now.

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Daxora wrote:

So yeah, with merge it might be 11% faster, resulting 11% more DPS. But should there really be a gem just for that?

You said that merge would result in 11% faster casting/attack and 11% more DPS, i would say you are right on the faster casting/attack but not the DPS, since i would still have all my other support such as auras and curses. so i would be dealing more than 11% more DPS.

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Daxora wrote:

LMP/GMP effectively turns any single target projectile skill into an AoE(-like) skill.
Merge would turn a single target projectile into a higher dps single target projectile. Or am I missing something?

You are partially right on that, you can merge a single DPS with AOE too(if that's what you want).

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Daxora wrote:

On the melee part, there are melee splash or multistrike for the same reason. And casting is one thing, but how would it look when a mara swings a cleave and a sweep at the same time?

Melee splash is enabling a single target attack to do splash damage, where as multistrike just deal multiple strike of the same attack rapidly in some way it will have a better overall dmg. Merge gem for melee would be something alike to multistrike but you wouldn't be attacking with the same ability, that's pretty much of the point to "merge" gem.

and who would care how mara looks(animation-wise) swings with cleave and sweep? If you are talking about how it would work since they are melee attack, i wouldn't really know since i'm not working for GGG and i don't know/understand how does the things go around doing skills and attack ability, maybe they would just enable the animation of which icon that you pick to use on the skill panel but dealing both damages out.

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Daxora wrote:

Yes, basicly why add a gem if it doesn't add anything new or a missing thing to the game?
Or at least i fail to see what would this gem add other than a slight dps advantage.
When i think of a new idea, i ask myself "who would use this thing, why would he use this?"
Or would it just become a collectors item like portal gem?

answer to this is from all the reply above... i think. :)