Arc

This skill is absolutely worthless.

It's beyond ridiculous that not only does this spell have a cast time of 0,8 seconds, it also has 50% damage effectiveness.


Has anyone made a build that uses arc successfully?

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Idioticus wrote:

This skill is absolutely worthless.

It's beyond ridiculous that not only does this spell have a cast time of 0,8 seconds, it also has 50% damage effectiveness.


Has anyone made a build that uses arc successfully?

Depends on your definition of "successfully", and whether they are using it outside of CoCS/Totems.

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

I'd hoped the 'summoned monsters do not give souls' rule might pass over the annoying baby spiders endlessly sent your way. Alas, it would appear the children of the Weaver have no soul.

That's actually pretty silly, not just arc but vaal gems in general.

I used the respec in stnadard for one of my Characters (LVL 79) to try how bad arc is, and the results are amazing:



With this amazingly offensive tree, i maanaged to ALMOST clear groups in merciless docks without going oom on a 5l Arc. Using a LVL 20 Clarity and Discipline OFC. That´s just ridiculous.

On the other Hand i Almost 1 Shotted myself on Ele Reflect because Storm Call nuked the crap out of monsters.

Arc sincerly needs a Buff/Tweak to make either good against large groups OR single targets with enough examples given all over this Thread

for example (ofc not all, but please give it some love)
- making it a projectile
- changing the jump count / Chain interaction
- making it able to jump single targets mutltiple times
- buffing Damage
- improving damage effectiveness
- buffing base crit
- fixing Mana Cost
...

I LOVE ARC, and i would love to use it in a reasonable build. Because let`s face it: Chain Lightning Spells are the collest in every RPG.

Just wait until Ball Lightning is officially in the game.

A Lightning Skill that will, over time (good for avoiding reflect spikes of death), hit every enemy in a pack, potentially multiple times.

GGG will be master trolls if they don't fix Arc the same time they make Ball Lightning go live.

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RickyDMMontoya wrote:

Just wait until Ball Lightning is officially in the game.

A Lightning Skill that will, over time (good for avoiding reflect spikes of death), hit every enemy in a pack, potentially multiple times.

GGG will be master trolls if they don't fix Arc the same time they make Ball Lightning go live.

Oh, I am sure I know how the fix for Arc will occur it that situation: remove Arc, add Ball Lightning :P.

--

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

I take a little pride in the fact that my style of Arc can clear merciless docks effortlessly then.

Eldritch Battery is the key, by the way.

Charan, if I recall correctly, yours was a crit build, right? This was before the crit multiplier nerf.

If you look at the other guy's tree you will see that he has gone a crit build. It is true that he doesn't have EB (really hate the idea that to use Arc you are forced to get EB - it is totally against why I play this game), but mana leech has also been nerfed.

Your build was prior to this patch. I am not sure if you used mana leech - if so, you might have mana issues too, now. Even if you did not, the crit multiplier nerf will probably mean you will have to cast Arc more than you did before - which means you might still end up with mana issues like the other guy was reporting.

Basically, the crit multipler nerf has the potential to make your build no longer clear the merciless docks as effortlessly (if slow) as it did before - unless you have tested it post-nerf?

I guess while we're sharing skill trees, this is what I aim for with my poverty-ass lightning she-wizard. Which uses Storm Call of course. Kind of wish there was more radius available; that stat has accelerating returns, you know.

While it's ~65% the damage of a crit build, it has actual mana regeneration. It makes me want to puke, thinking back to the days before we had the 6/8 life/mana nodes.

It helps being able to identify when a stat's hit a wall. Normally when damage% has been milked for what its worth, you can push past the wall a bit with critical damage. Or invest into ungodly powerful defenses - like block% or Phase Acrobatics. The Blue zone has no such thing, if you decide the 60-80% more damage from Lightning Spell Crit isn't worth the investment.

Wait, actually it does. It's Whispers of Doom. Which is what, 30% effective against bosses? If only it were a real option.

... Whispers of Doom should have some serious curse resistance penetration on it. Acrobatics isn't cut to less than a third in strength just because some chump has fancy gold lettering on his name-plate.

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

Eldritch Battery is the key, by the way.

Nope, just one way to do it.

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

Aimeryan -- I'm extremely confident that my revised 1.1.1 Shadow can handle Merciless docks. The loss of crit kinda sucked but the raw damage gainage has made up for it. I also have a lot more mana this time.

I'm not too far off it, so we'll see. I just looked at the dude's tree and found it incomprehensible. CI is well and good for lots of builds but I don't think it's a good choice for a mana-heavy build like the arc hard-caster.

Finally, we have no idea what gear he had. Just respeccing the Skilldrasil is half the story.

Looking forward to see it!

Agreed that going CI and not EB given Arc's mana issues is not a good idea. Still, I stand by my point that being forced into EB to use Arc is against what I feel this game stands for - he should have the choice to go CI and not EB (and this being a real choice, rather than a moot one).

Do agree totally on the gear point though; there is a lot of potential +mana regen % on gear, as well as maximum mana mods. It should be expected that you will need at least some appropriate gear mods in order to use spells. He would have to post his gear if he really wanted to make his point.

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

No offence, but is any of this on-topic?

Offence deeply taken.

* People bitch about mana, suggest maybe try getting some regeneration instead of no regeneration.
* People want more damage, critical damage isn't an efficient way to do that with 4% base crit and diffuse crit chance nodes.
* All Lightning Spell builds hit a wall when it comes to skill-point value. By the 60's you're done. Your character is not getting significantly stronger from the skill tree, which isn't as true for the red and green zones.

We've been playing this game for years now, we should know well by now that you'll be out of mana in three seconds if you don't spec at least something into regeneration, and any gain in lightning crit alone is going to be dwarfed by sitting around for 30 to 55 seconds waiting for the bulb to refill because you didn't spec to refill it in 10.

Arc blows, yes. But mana is a boogum here. It's important to identify why it blows, and how it blows in comparison to the alternatives. Example: Ice and Fire spells get much more out of crit (50%+ more) - therefore it's important that the base dps on Lightning Spells be somewhat higher to compensate. Storm Call follows this rule (11% more dps than Fireball), Arc does the exact opposite. Get what I'm getting at here - it's a holistic system?

Which is exactly what I said the first time:

"DPS and lack of the ability to scale long in any direction (offense or defense) with the skill tree is the issue, not mana per second."

Whispers of Doom being usable (not overpowered like the olde days, just, usable) would be a boon to all Static Blows lightning wizards in general, which is something they could seriously use.

Arc, which has a 10% chance to shock on hit remember, specifically hungers for ways to increase damage which isn't crit. Against bosses, that chance to shock is meaningless as only critical hits will be able to land enough duration. Even if that damage were adjusted to the number it's supposed to be.

In that vein, it would also be nice if the quality on this skill added to shock duration instead of or in addition to the chance. The shock chance is already at 35% baseline off the tree, another 15% from Conductivity, another 10% from Added Lightning... that's a stat we don't much lack, these days.