Spork totem nerf

So I played PoE for a while at the start of the OB, then dropped and then came back for Anarchy or something. I've heard about the Spork builds nerf many times. Changelog shows
but if I remember correctly Sporkers were rocking so hard that this shouldn't be able to kill the build, just slow down a bit.

So out of curiosity how exactly did GGG nerf those builds?

They nerfed the base crit chance from 6% down to 4% probably around the time you stopped playing. That didn't really hurt them that bad though.

The biggest nerf was to spark's base duration. They dissipate a lot more quickly now, so you can't really saturate the ground with sparks like you used to.

Adding an increased duration support would probably bring it pretty close to its old glory, but then you're taking away from what made sporkers so good to begin with: free slots for MF gems.

They also increased Spell Totem's damage reduction from 40% to 50% (so 100% instead of 120% damage with two totems) and changed the cast speed penalty from reduced to less (so with like 100% increased cast speed your total cast speed is now 140% (200% * 0.7) instead of 170% (200% - 30%).

The other thing is that they made RF basically unsustainable for spellcasters without a big investment (what was a good change), so people skipped low life, that means less than half damage of what was possible before.

So together with the crit chance and duration reduction spark pretty much got gimped.

There has been many changes that has made sporkers quite bad. I'll list them off:

- RF was completely changed, this applies to all spell builds. People used shavs + RF for a huge DPS boost which is no longer possible without a completely different tree. RF used to only be based on life but is now based on ES and life.

- Spark critical chance reduced from 6->4

- This was the biggest nerf in my opinion(outside the craziness of RF). Spark duration reduced.

- Spell totem cast speed got heavily nerfed. So did it's "less damage" mod. I don't really agree with this change. It has made flame totems the best totem build.

- Static blows/thunderfist got nerfed. Not that significant

On the other hand many new totem nodes were introduced and many spell damage nodes got 50% or 100% better. Castspeed nodes also got better I also know spark got dmg buffed for leveling.

Using those with other skills still beats spark though. It is in need for a tuneup.