Spark

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Mark_GGG wrote:

Fixed spark not working with increased duration support

Thank you. Too bad I died already :(

I tried to love Spark.

It's just so terrible leveling with spark as your main spell. Horrible, painful, tedious, not fun. The story might be different if there was AoE damage upon impact such as fireball has, but the damage is just painfully low. I would equate the efficiency of killing mobs with Spark to rubbing your socks on carpet and shocking via static electricity. Unsupported you may as well not use Spark. Heavily supported, well it gets better, but you are still going to kill more efficiently using any other spell. Multiple Projectiles, Pierce, added Chaos Damage and Spark was my set-up after level 31. It works, but fun is not how I would describe this exercise in tedium.

Ideally you will take hexmaster and use Projectile Weakness and Elemental Weakness. Ok, now with a bonus of 2 curses 10 casts of spark will accomplish the effect of a couple unsupported and uncursed Shock Novas. Don't target a single mob while you hold down the Spark button, because once he finally dies your character stops casting so you have to tediously click another instead of continuing to cast. To avoid this you can cast at the ground continuously, but now it feels like it takes even longer to kill mobs cause you can't see their health slowly trickle down. In caves you would think Spark might really shine- nope. The tiny spitter mobs have a smaller hitbox or something, they tend to avoid getting hit by the Sparks as the electricity wanders around. Even worse yet, the real dangerous mobs are the Merveil's Daughter (wave throwers), even with pierce on Spark you are 10x better off just using Shock Nova instead. Packs of archers safely destroy you while the sparks dissipate on melee mobs or never find their way to the ranged mobs. Try this test: stand almost a full screen away from a barrel or crate and see how many casts of spark it takes for just one of them to contact the barrel. Now imagine a blue archer pack raining arrows on you while you try to spark them to death. The spell is pure horrible and inefficient compared to: Ice Spear, Freezing Pulse, Shock Nova, Ice Nova, Fireball, Firestorm, and Exploding Zombies. Spark does, however, beat out Frost Wall in killing efficiency.

*edit*

It's funny what difference a couple levels can make.

Level 37 was the turning point where things really started to pick up. What changed? Level 4 Multiple Projectiles adds an extra projectile, but keeps the same 30% penalty to damage.

1 extra projectile, 30% damage reduction vs. 5 extra projectiles, 30% damage reduction....

Why not progressively penalize the damage as extra projectiles are gained- so that the early levels aren't a completely horrible experience using Spark, or any other skill supported with MP.

Regardless, I'm enjoying Spark as my primary skill now and wouldn't recommend anyone use it before equipping a level 4 multiple projectile, pierce, added damage support minimum.

I agree that it is not a great skill till you get the right supports, but after that, it's really not that bad. No, it's not good at hitting single targets at range (although it is easier to do this with faster projectiles). And shock nova is better in the open in many situations, but I really don't understand why you say it's not any good indoors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmtI5-fuiVI

This is my spark witch at 59, the first character I made on the new default realm. I rarely even use the high-crit single target version I have in the video anymore, except for more controlled DPS vs elemental reflect. And I kill easily twice as fast with the multi version since my gems are all over-leveled.

Also, since multi doesn't reduce crit chance anymore, I could probably respec/regear this character to be even more deadly by using shocked stacks.

Yeah, watching your videos was what inspired me to give Spark a try.

I just finished an update to my experience while you were posting- but as you say, later the supports really pick up. It's just....until then spark is kinda bad.

I do remember it dragging a bit before you start getting multi projectiles levelled a bit, but a lot of my other builds with multi projectiles had similar experiences. The 30% damage reduction does hurt quite a bit, especially if you're only paying attention to individual projectiles' damage.

I'm curious how you guys get enough DEX up to use Multi Projectiles on witches. Any advice? I like Spark pretty well but my dex right now is a flat 14...

The path to the 6th class' spell damage, FCR, ect and the path to center area give more than enough dex for multi projectiles, for a relatively small investment of points. See http://poezone.ru/skilltree/#6j for examples. Here's a pretty good look at the range of dex requirements for the support:


As you can see, you don't really need much. You could probably meet it easily with the right kind of jewelery, as long as you don't plan on ever changing that jewelery.

I tried Multi-projectile Spark with Elemental and Projectile Weakness and it seems to be pretty good compared to my usual Ice Spear. The many projectiles synergize very well with Lightning's natural Shocked debuff, which is nice. I'm not sure if I can really say whether it's truly comparable to Ice Spear since everything's already so easy, but it seems effective enough to do Chaos with.

lv 72 Witch - Crit and Power Charge focus

Now that spark has 4 projectiles by default, wouldn't hooking it up with multiple projectiles (level 1) actually decrease your damage? 25% more projectiles, -30% damage. Obviously at higher levels it would be positive again, I am just wondering if there is going to be some change to make spark less affected by the damage penalty similar to how it is less affected by added damage, or if it's just not intended that players will use spark + multiple projectile?


Or does spark + MP scale really well at high levels of spark? I have not yet tested that personally, just theorycrafting.