Remeber when GGG released new skills...

Daggers need aoe melee skills... Only thing you can use is lighting strike and its not really melee, and cyclone which is awful

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topcatti wrote:

Daggers need aoe melee skills... Only thing you can use is lighting strike and its not really melee, and cyclone which is awful

Word, I was excited when my friend told me in cb that there was a class that focused on daggers and stuff, but it turned out to be a lie!

I usually only enjoy playing stealth/agile classes and was disappointed to not see a backstab skill or the like.

Lightning skills (for casters) feel really lacking right now. At least in the first 40 levels.

You get:
Spark - awesome skill, tons of fun you can have with it, but only if you're a Shadow. Witches don't get any of the useful supports except fork and multi-proj (the latter of which isn't even a mana-smart choice since its just a static +2).

Arc - equally cool skill, but falls short on access to supporting gems. As a level 36 Witch, the only support I've gotten that I can use on it is Penetration (which, honestly, is too much mana multiplier if I ever pair it with more supports - compared to just cursing the target).

Lightning Warp - good skill, but not a dps skill.

Shock Nova - enemies get next to you, and don't take damage. which means you have to spend time moving to keep them at the edges, which cuts down a TON on potential damage output.

You don't get:
A good single target spell (spamming Spark at point-blank doesn't really count when the enemy can 3-shot you).

Good support/skill interaction.

Any effective spell for large groups, without trading for Pierce support for your sparks.

Now, this bothers me, because Lightning is supposed to be "the" pure Int spell. Fire is Str/Int, and Cold is Dex/Int. So how come a Witch feels so weak when trying to build Lightning without non-quest gem access?

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eragon1111 wrote:

+dual wield block chance like 30+ :D
and/or
Reduced dmg taken while melee fighter

I really like the Reduced Damage Taken idea as a Melee Support Gem. That's brilliant!

You would have to make a tough decision between dealing 30% More Damage or taking 30% less Damage with your precious gem slots, and it wouldn't be something every Melee build would have to take in the Passive tree and it wouldn't simultaneously buff ranged.

Awesome idea and the first I've heard of it. I've been thinking that PoE needs more passive buffs available elsewhere besides Uniques or the Skill Tree, and a Reduced Damage taken support gem would be a good first implementation.

new helm art > new skills

As much as I like the idea of more skills, there is one fundamental issue:

Currently, the endgame revolves around single-skill spamming.
This has 3 major side-effects.

1) When paired with Kaom's Heart (0 socket unique chest), it makes any dual-wield or shield build automatically inferior due to having to either run no 6L item, or run no +1000 health item.

2) Your other 12+ sockets are devoted to things that make your main skill better, instead of providing a diversity of skills to draw upon.

3) Ridiculously expensive mana (or health, w/ blood magic) costs aren't enough of a detriment to running 5 supports, except that it makes methods of sustaining that cost a required part of every end-game build.

Now, where this runs up against the bonuses of adding more skills is #2. GGG can add as many skills as they want, but there will remain a core handful of skills that will see 99% of endgame use, because they simply do the job better. The only way there would be change is if a new skill comes in and bumps another skill out of its "best for this playstyle" position.

This is why I think the community / GGG need to address the current endgame 1-ability concept before worrying too much about new skills. And the biggest thing here might simply be adding cooldowns to skills, or even a cooldown modifier on some supports.

Phase Blade: Summon a magical blade that does 1.3 aps, base damage is (0.1* player level Physical,elemental and chaos damage. This skill Doubles the effect of the linked Support gem ( including mana multiplier). This skill reserves 30% mana. Each level of the skill add 0.02*player's level of damage

Quality: EACH 1% of quality is 1% of the 20% less mana reserved.

I honestly have no idea what GGG's game plan was with the "new skill every week" patch series. New skills really werent what the game needed at all. What the game needed was polish and balance reworks. 4 months later we STILL havent seen any news regarding things like evasion as a defensive parameter or the glaring lack of build defining keystones in certain areas of the tree.

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topcatti wrote:

Daggers need aoe melee skills... Only thing you can use is lighting strike and its not really melee, and cyclone which is awful

I am using daggers with dual strike+melee splash right now. Combined with power charge on critical and an emphasis on critical hits. It is very very powerful.

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CliveHowlitzer wrote:

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topcatti wrote:

Daggers need aoe melee skills... Only thing you can use is lighting strike and its not really melee, and cyclone which is awful

I am using daggers with dual strike+melee splash right now. Combined with power charge on critical and an emphasis on critical hits. It is very very powerful.

But you could have just gone cleave.