It's time to face the fact that Totems are a failed mechanic.
" Enlighten me. What is an efficient efficient spellcaster build apart from Discharge and Freezing Pulse. Iam talking about efficient builds, not doable ones. So please dont tell me burn based Fireball or Ice Spear totems. |
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My EK build maintains a great balance of dps, survivability and MF.
Clears maps quickly, makes a lot of profit for my account, and only ever needs to even think about the possibility of death around phys reflect (for which I pack alternate skills). Just because 3 builds get talked about more on the forums, does not make them the only options. |
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" This implies that the game will just slowly become easier, as nobody will want to have their pet favorite build nerfed, so the only option when something is strong is to make everything else strong to line up. This is fantasy. You can't balance a game like that (and yes, they do care about balance - they've said so in the past - and we have balance changes to prove it). So, if something is totally, out-of-line strong compared to other things, the only way to balance things out while preserving difficulty is to tone down the out-of-line stuff. Any alternative results in the game slowly becoming easier - something I am sure none of us truly wants. That's the method Blizzard chose with balancing Diablo 3. Just make the game as easy as possible and make all skills feel brokenly strong, that way nobody can complain if somebody else does a bit more damage or clears a bit faster...Because EVERYBODY can do that! Last edited by tikitaki#3010 on Aug 30, 2013, 4:10:01 PM
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" Making skills usable in the first place doesnt make the game easier, it makes it more versatile. Imagine you could actually play an Arc or Firestorm build and not just dismiss both spells by default because they simply dont cut it. Both spells dont have what it takes, no matter how hard you nerfs others. They are situational skills, but right now we barely have any skills that have the potential to be used by the caster himself. Being able to choose from 10 instead of 3 spells definitely doesnt make the game easier unless they completely overbuff the skills. |
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1) What is the definition of "working" vs "non-working"
2) What is the difference between "efficient" and "not efficient" Because in both cases it seems you are putting dual totem as the standard. Meaning, if you can't clear as fast as a low life sporker with 70% crit chance, you're a slow, non-working, inefficient build. I disagree. Maybe it should take a bit more thought and tactics than mindlessly running around slapping totems down. Maybe it shouldn't be possible to defeat the hardest content in the game by using what amounts to the build that takes the least amount of tactics and thought. Last edited by tikitaki#3010 on Aug 30, 2013, 4:26:53 PM
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" Dual Totems arent my standard, I honestly dont even consider them as casters. They are in a completely different group. The skill basically has to be on par or at least close to Discharge and Freezing Pulse. The definition of working should be obviously. You can probably even make an Arc build work but it wont change the fact that its far from being efficient. You will need years to farm areas and clear maps. A reason for a lot of skills being bad is their lack of support synergy. Take Arc for example. Chain adds bounces while reducing the damage and barely adding any with the additional hits. Increased AoE on Firestorm doesnt increase the amount of Fireball falling down but only the size of area the balls fall down to. Shock Nova gets fucked by desynch pretty hard because unless you have meat tanks its hard to time the deadzone properly. Those skills simply arent efficient because they dont deal enough damage nor do they provide enough utility compared other skills. Firestorm for example basically is a skill without status ailment because the burn that gets applied never will be high. Incinerates quality bonus makes the skill hard to control, automatically making thorns a bigger threat. Not even starting on for example Ice Nova that already disqualifies itself due to the insane mana cost. I havent even touched totems since I got high/rich enough on Onslaught to play self caster and tried to make a lot of different things work in Onslaught but it turned out that none of them are worth the investment because they simply dont deliver except for Freezing Pulse. Firestorm was the biggest disappointment of all. Last edited by nynyny#3398 on Aug 30, 2013, 4:42:58 PM
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So I've been thinking about this problem, trying to isolate the real issues.
Observation: Spork and Summon Skeleton are the main problem totems. Freezing Pulse and Ethereal Knives may be good skills on their own... but you don't see a lot of totems with the former, and with the latter you mostly see them to avoid physical reflection, not because it's inherently amazing on its own. Conversely, you don't see Spork and Summon Skeletons without totem support, except sometimes prior to level 31. Conclusion: Totems are not globally OP; slapping any old skill in a totem doesn't make things better. It's the combination of certain active skills with Spell Totem that creates an OP situation. So what is it about Spark and Summon Skeletons which makes them so good in a totem environment? I think the answer to that is "cast speed." It's clear that Summon Skeletons isn't really about the damage the ability deals (except through Instability), it's about being able to gum up the works with rapidly cast minions. With Spark, I suspect it's chosen because projectiles cast by the totem are still lingering around even after the totem dies; the extra waves which are cast between the first wave being cast and the first wave hitting allow it to ignore reflected damage even more than usual. Both of these are very speed-based issues. Therefore, I retract all previous suggestions (for now) and suggest only that we flip the wording Spell Totem's penalties (and RAT too): make it 30% less cast speed, 40% reduced damage. This is the best change to try first because it's the one that tries to isolate the problem to Spell Totem, specifically Spark Totems and Summon Skeleton Totems, rather than trying to nerf all of totemdom. Actually, it's a buff too; although we'd be nerfing cast speed, we'd be buffing damage per cast, which might add some more diversity to the Spell Totem environment. Would that fix the problem on its own? I'm not sure. But another thing I realized: we should go one change at a time with this one. What we don't want to do is pile so many simultaneous nerfs on totems that they go from OP all the way to trash in a single patch. When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted. Last edited by ScrotieMcB#2697 on Aug 30, 2013, 6:25:14 PM
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" Its one of the reasons. The other two are the fact that it applies Shock pretty reliably and, more important than anything else, it gets rid of the problem that totems lack focus. If you pump the room full with projectiles focus isnt necessary, something a lot of other skills lack because their projectiles travel in a straight line. |
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" Doable builds are efficient. They might not be as efficient as some other builds but just because some builds push the envelop it doesn't invalidate other builds that work. I was subbed for roughly 8 years to City of Heroes. There was always talk of the high end builds. I hardly played any of them. I simply played what I did and still did all of the content everybody else was doing outside of soloing stuff that make the named bosses here look like speed bumps. Yes, balance is important, but I'm guessing the actual balance isn't as broken as people are saying it is. I would honestly be curious to know how many totems based builds are on the top of the hardcore ladder. |
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"Lowering cast speed also helps with Shock application; less stacks. When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
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