Stormbind

Ohh I'll take this one, I'm one of the probably very few people that played Stormbind this league. I quite liked the skill, but it suffered from some larger gameplay issues with teleporting monsters and survival while standing still.

Heirophant, lvl 94. Killed Sirus A8 multiple times, SSF Softcore. Went for 5k mana to get max aoe from ascendancy, and that's about the right amount of mana to sustain casting stormbind at 75 mana with voidbringers. Went CI cause that synergized best with the mana scaling and heirophant bonus ES. Glancing blows, ES on block shield, elemental overload, playable as wicked ward or ghost reaver.

Stormbind suffers from needing very specific scaling that makes it not have much flexibility across ascendancy choice. Its also this very unique scaling which made me want to play it. Because it scales damage so much with lots of AoE for overlapping hits from the runes, and scales damage so much with mana spent to get fully empowered runes, its hard to see it being very good outside of Heirophant. Awkwardly, Sanctuary of Thought's mana cost reduction nerfed my damage pretty hard by adding another channel tick per rune empower, until I got Voidbringers. I actually switch to Storm Burst from 80ish to 93 until I found my first Voidbringers. I would not suggest playing stormbind without Voidbringers, Apep's wand, or Indigon. It's a little odd being so reliant on a couple uniques for good damage. It's extremely important that Voidbringers adds flat mana cost instead of any sort of increased/reduced, and thankfully they aren't as rare as Shavs. I very carefully divined my voidbringers to a +manacost number that made my rune blast channel cost a multiple of 25, since I got an empower every 25 mana spent. This made every channel tick empower 3 runes and is core to getting the skill to work well. I wanted to know if extra mana spent was saved for the next tick of empowers but was never able to find or ascertain this for myself. I guess when I had half mana costs with Sanctuary of Thought, I was still able to empower runes, so it must keep a rolling total of spent mana?

I had a really hard time seeing the ground effect for my runes in Delirium mist so I just kinda guessed at where my runes were/how charged they were, which did kill stuff just fine.

Sirus was really frustrating in that he teleports so often that he would move out of a good 5x5 fully charged rune field right before it did damage. His corridor + balls attack also stops the runes from spawning under walls, so I can't hit him with more than 2-3 runes even though I have the survivability to facetank his balls. Stormbind (and some other channeled/self cast skills) feel a bit like relics of the past compared to various autotargeting/instant skills that fill the meta nowadays. I really like that Stormbind has elements of aim and timing, and that keeps me playing longer, but I do feel I am gimping myself ever trying to stand still.

I found that trying to stormbind stuff compared to some other self-cast I've tried feels like I have a +50% more damage taken debuff. Standing still even for half a second makes me take sooo much damage. I expected this and built pretty heavily for survival, but it was rough. I thought the hinder would help, but by the time it was applied, mobs were on top of me, and losing it when I detonated would let dangerous mobs (that live through the first blast) free to get right on top of me. The infrequency of damage events with the two channels before damage also made leech less effective, since it would take longer to get started and harder to regain when lost at full ES. I resorted to triggering orb of storms and ball lightning just to have more hits of damage to leech from, and purifying flame + Zealot's Oath for some ground regen. I also expected Infused Channeling to help b/c I'd used it to good effect on Storm Burst, but since Stormbind doesn't have a physical tag, some reduced lightning damage barely mattered. And since Rune blast doesn't have phys or lighting tags, putting infused channeling there gives an infusion buff that literally does nothing, afaik. I also would not channel either part for the 0.6 seconds to gain the buff, because I'd get enough ground coverage of runes and enough empowered runes before that. This was also the patch that removed the damage reduction from tree nodes and while that's fine for something like cyclone, it hits Stormbind hard. My damage was excellent, but I'd love for the Hinder to last a few seconds and some sort of built in mitigation given the particular defensive weakness of this skill. I prioritized cast speed heavily to make myself as mobile as possible...which wasn't much.

Finally, lets talk about clear speed. Its actually great, somehow! I developed a technique that is probably unintended but turns stormbind into almost a slam-style melee skill. So I've got move on left mouse, rune BLAST on right mouse, and rune placement on spacebar. I had to change my keybinds several times to find spacebar as a secondary button for a main skill that didn't start to hurt my hand. Frigging flasks eat all my other good keybinds. The technique is: hold down move always, then to do some damage tap spacebar, then tap right mouse to detonate. I don't actually channel either half, but even a short spacebar tap puts 3ish runes down (@ 20 casts a second) and a single detonate tick spends enough mana to empower 3 runes. My PoB puts a 1 improvement rune at 260k damage and 30 radius, so three of those kills most mobs even in a t16, and the area is pretty big. For a bigger target, half a second placing runes and half a second empowering them will often one shot even a red beast. What ends up happening is I can chew through stuff quick and not have survival problems, but the harder things get, the more I have to do long channels and I get exponentially squishier.

In conclusion, I loved playing stormbind, but its not actually good because the game has become too fast and deadly. It most needs help defensively and in encounter design giving players actual opportunities to dps self-cast style.

The spell look cool but really hard to scale outside of mana. made a meme build with it was fun but standing still this long to channel both part of the spell is not really fitting this game.
You can stack rune and damage before encounter but as most of them have "one shot prevention now" it isn't helping a lot too.

overall fun and quite different from others spells but don't fit in a game where speed reign supreme in every aspect of the game (both as a way to make more currency and as a defence layer)

Hi there,

overall, Stormbind looks good as a skill, but I think it lacks in the "place rune part", it feels like if the runes are placed they don't do anything, only on detonation, which to me is not that appealing.

In my suggestion, how about when the runes are placed, they deal damage in ticks or damage over time which would make the skill more versatile.

maybe making the runes give a buff to all standing within it would also be pretty nice.

kind regards
JeckNoTree

I got to roughly level 60 with Stormbind and Archmage support. My build was predicated on using a crap ton of mana to hit harder with lightning damage. My build wasn't the issue, I had runes on the ground that instantaneously got to stage 3 runes, and they were so big they covered off screen. The problem with the skill is how you need to set the runes, channel the runes, then use runeblast to make them explode.

I feel like a small re-work would make this gem vastly more playable by making it respond like Flameblast or Cyclone in a sense. Where you just hold down the skill button to channel the runes and at each stage, increases AoE in increments that represents the build's overall AoE scale of the skill and then when you release the channel button, they explode. So say Stage 1 rune channels in at 33% of overall build AoE at the time of channeling, Stage 2 - 66% and stage 3 100%.

After posting this I realize, since there's not much in way of how many runes you can place, might I suggest a fixed number per gem level or just a fixed number in general.

It is deeply odd, that if you have Stormbind linked to Spell Totem Support, and you have the passive Ancestral Bond (so you cannot do damage yourself), then both of these are true:

Stormbind can still do damage (ie you are not doing damage yourself, the totem is doing it)
AND
When Stormbind hits mobs with elemental reflect, you take damage (ie you are causing the reflect to trigger because you are doing the damage yourself)

Obviously you need to be channeling the Rune Blast to cause the Stormbind explosion.

Got to level 92 using a power charge stacking occultist. Managed to beat Sirus on A9 but it was impossible for any of the unchartered invitations.

Similar to most of what other people have said the skill is very restrictive on your build and voidbringers is mandatory. You also need to scale AoE and mana regen to pretty high levels to make it work.

I would suggest reducing the mana requirements to charge a rune by at least half, this way you aren't locked into voidbringers. Also is it possible to link all the runes as a single hit when they detonate to allow for a ignite playstyle? It'll still be a niche and underused skill since dual channeling pretty much means a skill is DOA but at least it'll be used a bit outside of meme builds.

Stormbind is an interesting and unique spell that has amazing single target potential, but is 100% dependent on unique's to scale rune's improvement rate to decent levels. Without uniques Stormbind suffers from Rune Blast inability to improve runes at a decent rate. Locking you in place for a long duration. In a game where you are only a few seconds from death at any point. This spell takes those few seconds and more to set up.


Why Stormbind's feel good to me:
Stormbind's clear feels good because the longer you channel, the more you clear and is easily improved with cast speed. All while getting to pick where you put it down, and you can keep placing if interrupted. All in all, would like a small cast time buff, but it is not needed.



Why rune improvement feels bad to me:
Currently, at gem level 20 to fully improve a 3x3 Stormbind it takes 24x3x9=648 mana. Rune Blast cost 14 mana every 0.2 sec, so it spends 70 mana/sec. 848/70= 9.25 sec till you can fully improve a 3x3. The rune improvement is also compounded by little to no support gem options for it.

What about scaling with increased mana and cast speed:
100% increased cast speed gives you 10 cast per sec.
15% increased mana cost of skills gives you 160 ManaCost/Sec
So you should be able to spend improve all of your runes in 4.05 seconds. Which is an improvement.

Let's add some gear no uniques:
We pick up an additional 100% cast speed on gear. Increased mana cost of skills is only on unique gear to my knowledge. Gives us 240 ManaCost/Sec. So you should be able to spend improve all of your runes in 2.7 seconds.



Changes:
The Change I am asking for, is to give Rune Blast the same gem tags as Stormbind.
On the low end. It will increase the improvement rate, making the skill feel smother and how long you are stuck standing still.
On the high end with uniques. They would be able to ramp faster with Indigon, but %90 of the ramp is done by Arcane Cloak or other shenanigans.



Final thoughts:
Stormbind is a 2-step process to do anything. While gating your clear and damage behind how long you channel your skills. The time it takes can be reduced by increased cast speed and increased mana cost. However, the availability of meaningful increased mana cost is gated by uniques. Leaving you standing still for the duration. If you do not channel long enough, you have to repeat the process all over.

Also, If Stormbind and Rune Blast could be combined where it is a 1-step process, to place and improve. With the mine/trap detonation button starting the chain reaction. Improved runes could also detonate at the end of their duration. Giving other play options with duration.



TLDR: Stormbind feels clunky, do to how fast you can improve your runes.

Thank you GGG for 3.17 giga-nerf of stormbind. Skill was not loved by many and now it's just dead. Great buffs for self cast. Lmao.

Need up mana cost for Rune Blast (Stormbind). It's impossible to play on this skill after rework Voidbringer :(