Spell Echo

To add an other mandatory support gem was not a wise idea i believe. To my mind CoC / CwdT / Multistrike / Spell Echo should all be removed.

Instead Multistrike(auto aim could be added to all attacks skills maybe?)should become an active skill. Base cast speed of all spells should be increased and mana cost lowered a bit. Base weapons attack speed should be increased and fast cast/attack speed nodes should be improved as well. Leech mechanic should be improved/reworked also.

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Yesu wrote:

To add an other mandatory support gem was not a wise idea i believe. To my mind CoC / CwdT / Multistrike / Spell Echo should all be removed.

Instead Multistrike(auto aim could be added to all attacks skills maybe?)should become an active skill. Base cast speed of all spells should be increased and mana cost lowered a bit. Base weapons attack speed should be increased and fast cast/attack speed nodes should be improved as well. Leech mechanic should be improved/reworked also.

Yes.

That way, 4-link items would be "valuable enough" and a 5-link wouldn't be "a must" as it is right now.

My biggest issue with this support gem isn't that it is good. It isn't that the buff to spell (particularly self-cast spells) wasn't needed. After all, spells do a mere fraction of the damage of attacks AND they don't leech. One might say, "But they are ranged, that's why their damage is so low." To that, I would still say that that many spells can't touch ranged attacks in damage, which are correctly lower in damage compared to melee attacks. Additionally, a few spells such as freezing pulse and ethereal knives are only slightly less of a melee attack compared to cleave and do about a tenth to a twentieth of the damage. Their damage is far too low. And while this support is good for a variety of spells (the ones with low crit rates that have high damage and slow speeds), this support makes faster, weaker spells with a higher crit even worse than they already were.

Crit rates were already nerfed through the floor for spells. What's the point in investing in spell crit now? The thing with multistrike is that it is a real good support for resolute technique attacks since you don't need to invest in crit chance and crit multiplier. Spell echo is the same way. Spell crit was already stupid low. Now, for spork totems, I can understand, but many of the spells need sweeping buffs to crit if they are self-cast.

So the problem with spell echo is that while all self-cast spells were kind of bad, spell echo makes self-cast crit spells even further behind. What's the point in using freezing pulse + added cold damage/LMP/GMP + faster casting + life leech + PCoC + crit multiplier when you can use arctic breath + faster casting + spell echo + life leech + empower + cold pen/LMP/GMP.

In essence, it's no longer worth it to not take life nodes to specialize in crit. There are so many buffs that spells needed. This was just bad.

Spells rely on gimmicks like EE, RF, and curses to make them workable. The problem is the insane map resists and curse resists and immunity that makes them near useless on certain mobs. And what happens when you encounter a less regen or no regen map? You can't do it. There won't be enough damage if you try to use life leech and mana leech. Spells can't regen to life or mana from gear (more or less) in addition to the insane resists that elements receive. Elements get a mod of 75% or more and the equivalent is 30% for physical??? Some maps and some monsters are immune to curses. There goes one way of dealing decent damage.

The fix:

1) If MoM is going to get playable in endgame, you need better ways of getting leech on gear, both to life and mana. To corrupt an item for 1% life leech to one element is a joke. Wands and scepters should be able to get 1-3% life leech to ALL elements and 1-2% mana leech to all elements. So should caster shields. The problem is that spell builds are cheap. Yeah they are cheap, but they suck at end game. Forcing this leech to be on modified corrupted items will allow flexibility but still keeping end game builds incredibly expensive for perfection.

2) Give a bonus to crit rates for SELF-casted spells (the ones that need it). You know which ones we are talking about. The ones that have a 6% crit rate should be 7% if self casted. The 5% crit rate spells should have a crit rate of 6% if self casted and the 4% crit rate spells should have a 5% crit rate if self casted. There isn't an attack in the game that has a weapon with less than a 5% crit rate that can't be modified to do 6.9% local crit. This is just common sense. It makes far more sense. It's not like crit builds don't have to deal with enfeeble as a huge problem.

3) Give totems a smidgeon of elemental resists at level 20+. Summons get this. And they get bonuses from purity. And they get the same bonuses from minion and totem elemental resistance. That doesn't make any sense to me. 30% elemental resistance at level 30 seems reasonable considering purity of elements has NO effect. That won't make totems rediculous to kill at all. Totem casters still can't leech. But it will make it so that totems might survive more than a fraction of a second if you use your one totem to proc EE and then self-cast the other element if you stand in front of the totem and tank for it.

4) Bosses like Atziri cannot be immune to all things like ignite, shock, and freeze. Really, we need another reason why all our damage needs to physical attacks. You want to give her a chance to resist the elemental status effects, like say 50%, fine. She can't be IMMUNE to them. That's just dumb.

5) Curse immunity needs to be changed to enemy can have one less curse. If you spend that many talent points to get curses, you shouldn't suffer that large of a penalty. If the mob has the modifier and the map modifier that should make them immune to dual curses, but if you are specced to triple curse, one curse should work. That's just fair.

6) 75% elemental resistance (even to a particular type) is dumb. 40% elemental resistance and 20% chance to avoid the elemental status effect is more reasonable. Compare this to 30% physical resistance and 0% additional chance to avoid a stun. Physical builds already have TONS of leech and armor doesn't work in the same way as resistances. Also, its not like CwDT + immortal call is hard. So don't even give me - but, but, the reflect problem!?!

Summary
Vaal pact isn't even an option for elemental builds. The fortunate thing is that the damage doesn't need it. The unfortunate thing is that is a bad thing. The damage is less and the leech is less. And you KNOW you can't go by tooltip damage. 100k physical damage is like 100k physical damage whereas 100k cold damage is like 25k cold damage. People overestimate how much auras help damage. First of all, if you do think that, that is yet another reason why attacks are OP in endgame. But it is not even true. Just as hard hitting slow attacks penetrate more armor than fast hitting weak attacks, minor amounts of elemental damage will not provide any meaningful status effects on a boss. So don't delude yourself into thinking that using something like wrath or hatred will shock and freeze every boss if you are concentrating on physical damage. If you want to get those effects you need to specialize in those damage types, which means no leech? Again, how do you do zero regen maps with mind over matter? And Atziri is IMMUNE to status effects. And the damage is considerably less. And those forms of damage are dependent on curses which many mobs and all bosses are either immune or at least resistant to. So what am I missing here?

Is it the designers intent to make self casting spells be terrible in endgame? If so, just say that from the beginning. All spell echo does is make really hard hitting slow spells that don't crit somewhat better. Can you play that in endgame in standard or hardcore? The issue is the choices for Templars and Shadows. Go to PoE statistics and see how common they are. They are not pure ES characters or pure life characters. If you want to play them as hybrid charcters, you need to be able to leech to mana so you can play Mind over Matter, get a legacy Aegis so you can play life plus ES in which case you should still do attack damage or, forego the only advantage that hybrids can provide by going either pure life or pure ES. Well guess what, if you wanted to do that, you should play another character, which explains why so few endgame builds in standard are Templar or Shadow. If you want to fix that, you need to heed my suggestions.

so if i use ice spear+spell echo, does the second form of the ice spear still do the 600% increased Critical Strike Chance after the "first cast" of the spell echo successfully critical hit the enemy?

Thanks in advance

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newuser123456 wrote:

so if i use ice spear+spell echo, does the second form of the ice spear still do the 600% increased Critical Strike Chance after the "first cast" of the spell echo successfully critical hit the enemy?

Thanks in advance

Yes, echo just performs the spell two times in a row, it doesn't effect the spells inherent ability's in any way.

600% crit chance in second form is inherent to ice spear.

Peace,

-Boem-

4-link? Wha?

Try it on 6L with these :P



I'm just being an ass.

echo isnt shit. arc really isnt shit. spell caster in general isnt shit. whoopty do clear sceptre of god when attack builds one shot UBER bewteen phases.

To put in perspective..... highest DPS caster with echo and 7L pledge of hands which has 30 ECHO running short distance HIGHEST DPS spell flame surge with 7 power charges does about 120K DPS.

CoC builds are doing 3M
Bow builds 1M

Still think OP?

Naw man arc nerf was unwarranted especially the double nerf of no chock stacking.

What you're really complaining about is the same thing I complain about - monsters are too glassy at all levels - you're just noticing because you built something halfway decent. Just wait until you play a real DPS build.

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Cergic wrote:

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Yesu wrote:

To add an other mandatory support gem was not a wise idea i believe. To my mind CoC / CwdT / Multistrike / Spell Echo should all be removed.

Instead Multistrike(auto aim could be added to all attacks skills maybe?)should become an active skill. Base cast speed of all spells should be increased and mana cost lowered a bit. Base weapons attack speed should be increased and fast cast/attack speed nodes should be improved as well. Leech mechanic should be improved/reworked also.

Yes.

That way, 4-link items would be "valuable enough" and a 5-link wouldn't be "a must" as it is right now.

That really is a problem since 5-link items are so damn expensive....... *facepalm*

Spell Echo is the way of "fixing" self cast by GGG. Makes it mandatory for every build and basically replaces Faster Casting. Kinda lame but we take all we can get, right?