Greater Multiple Projectiles

First off, I applaud the balancing efforts. Multi with certain skills was OP and needed a nerf of some kind.

That being said, the fact is that this skill now has one benefit and two impairments. +proj, -damage (net), -crit. And that's without taking into account the increased mana cost of moding skills. It seems a bit much.

The -60% crit (at lvl 15) would still be a lot if it was applied additively.
(IE. if I simply added +60% to crit from items or passives it would balance out.)

But as this is applied multiplicably, you can never balance this out with added crit chance.

Also, multiple projectiles was, for me, the only mod which materially changed a spell (Turns a single target skill into an aoe ability - but with less damage per projectile). There is supposed to be more, ie. Traps etc, but so far, this is the only one I know of in the current game.

I think the benefits no longer outweigh the costs, as crit not only is a large damage increase, but all status effects are dependent upon them to proc (without using additional mods or curses of course).

As such, I fully understand dust7's comments that for an aoe witch, lit nova is perhaps the only logical choice currently.

In conclusion - Needed a nerf, but should've made it additive, ie. removes x of added +crit chance %, so that it can be balanced out with passives like every other mod gem's negative stats.

I know the -60% crit was mainly intended to fix Ice Spear, but it also killed the wand witch build (elemental hit + crit). Don't know if that was intentional but I didn't feel it needed fixing. I've tried experimenting a bit with 100% pierce instead of multi proj, but it's not nearly as good. So I've abandoned the build for now.

Wouldn't it make more sense to simply decrease the crit chance on ice spear?

How are the crit chances worked out, for the -80% at the maximum level. Which figure is it taken from?

If I spend 4 points in passives, for 25%, 25% 15%, 15%, will it cancel out the -80% nerf to multiple projectiles?

Just making up figures here, if a spell starts at 10% and I have 200% from gear, and 100% from passives, will it:

((10+200%)+(100%-80%)) = (30+20%) = (30+6) = 36%

(10+(300%-80%)) = (10+(220%)) = 32%

(10+(300%)) - 80% = 40-80% = 8%

So, we've gone from a 40% crit rate spell, down to 8%

If it's the latter, it makes the spell useless. It would be much better to take it from the passives %, as that way you are spending points to remove the negative part, not permanently penalised.

Some more figures, assuming the final 8% total is the correct one to be working from:

So using the figures above, if we cast 100 casts of a spell, with 300% extra crit damage, and a damage of 1,000:

Spell Crit % = 40%
Crit Damage = 300%
Normal Damage = 1,000

(1,000 x 300%) x 40) + (1,000 x 60) = 180,000 damage total

If we then work this out for the multiple projectile version of the same spell

Spell Crit % = 8%
Crit Damage = 300%
Normal Damage = 1,000

(1,000 x 300%) x 8) + (1,000 x 92) = 116,000 damage total
multiplied by 5 missiles = 580,000

Now remove the 40% damage penalty
348,000 damage total (approx 70,000 per missile)

For Ice Spear, Multiple Projectiles is approx 75% of the base cost of the spell. So, if we add this into the figures:

Ice Spear cost 30 mana:
100 casts = 3,000 mana = (180,000 / 3,000) = 60 damage per 1 mana

Ice Spear + Multiple Projectiles costs 50 mana:
100 casts = 5,000 mana = (348,000 / 5,000) = 70 damage per 1 mana

This, has the BIG assumption that 5 out of 5 missiles are all hitting, if they don't, the figures are skewed toward the support now being really poor.

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Nutcase wrote:

How are the crit chances worked out, for the -80% at the maximum level. Which figure is it taken from?

I think at max level, with +5 projectiles, it is -100% and you lose the ability to crit.

That's even worse then, if you lose all crit completely for 5 missiles, then you'll end up doing:

(100 x 1,000) = 100,000 x 5 missiles = 500,000
- 40% damage reduction = 300,000

300,000 damage / 5,000 mana cost = 60 damage / mana

So after all that effort to get it, you are burning through your mana faster, and killing no more efficiently, even if every bolt hits.

Nice nerf

This skill gem is way too rare. All my buddies want it, noone has it.

I luckily got one per trade one day before 0.9.5. So i did not have the chance to test it extensively.
First impression was: A little disappointing for bow chars. Increased cast speed as quality add on. Yeah. Great. It's a GREEN gem. It should have a dex related stat. Preferrably some class-neutral one like run speed or crit chance. Cast speed is way too caster specialized.

It's very hard to give feedback on a skill/support if it's that hard to get your hands on. Same applies to life leech. Not to the extend of multiple projectiles but still...

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ardikus wrote:

Unavailable

"-45% less"? :P The line just before got it right (30% less projectile speed).

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Hartbrot wrote:

This skill gem is way too rare. All my buddies want it, noone has it.

I don't think it's necessarily too rare, it's just in extraordinarily high demand. Almost certainly the best/most popular/most fun gem in the game. It's scarcity is the result of that.

I build up a witch mainly on critical chance. I had 89% critical chance. I was useing ice spear + multiple projectiles gem. Now i stoped playing.

For the guys that nerfed it want to say just one thing. In case you did not noticed in a critical chance build the player sacrifice alot of important stats . So i have low hp, defense, spell damage and so on. With the critical chance penality the option for a critical chance character was basicaly deleted.

I guess the next in line are spell damage withc's.

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unsane wrote:

I don't think it's necessarily too rare, it's just in extraordinarily high demand. Almost certainly the best/most popular/most fun gem in the game. It's scarcity is the result of that.

It's one of the rarest skill gems in the game.
1. The higher level gems seem to drop much less often than the lower level ones.
2. This gem, alone with some others (increase AoE, Concentrate, and maybe 1-2 more) cannot be obtained as a quest reward either (as far as I know).

It's not just the demand. That contributes to it as well though.

I can't comment on whether or not it's good that it's rarer — doesn't think it matters too much.

Despite what i said, i do think the rarity could/should be reduced. The skill is so cool, it'd be a shame for so few ppl to ever get to enjoy it.