Analysis and critique of the intellect passive setup.

Thanks for taking the time to make all this feedback.

I'm not going to respond individually to each post in this thread, but here are some responses to issues raised. Feel free to ask for elaboration on any of this stuff and I'll try to get on that.

1) If lightning is overpowered in the tree due to being close to the power charges, which are mandatory, then the problem isn't with lighting, it's with power charges being too good and thus being mandatory. None of the charges should be mandatory for any class, they're intended to be an optional thing you can choose to spec into for your build is you decide to.

2) No-one seems to have mentioned this, but the elemental damage types are aligned with the attributes. Fire is aligned with strength, cold with dexterity, and lightning with int. This is why the support gems for the damage types are those types. So there isn't necessarily a problem with the power charges being slightly more lightning aligned.
As for the abilities which make them that way, "added lightning damage per power charge" was already in the game to be used on a planned skill, and we decided to use that stat on a passive as well and see how that went. "Kill power charge on killing shocked enemy" was my idea - we needed another 'gain power charge' passive, and that one made thematic sense - you draw the electrical energy out of them as you kill them to create a power charge. It wasn't intended to make power charges lightning-based, it was just a cool thematic idea.

3) Based on your video, you seem to have some misunderstandings about how shock nova works. It's not dealing damage based on the shown range over the whole area, it's scaled. If your shock nova says something like "300 - 600 lightning damage", for example, then monsters hit right on the edge of the nova are dealt damage in that range. Monsters halfway between you and the edge of the nova have damage scaled to 50% - so will be dealt between 150 - 300 lightning damage. Monsters right next to you take hugely reduced damage.
This leads in nicely to the current bug in shock nova - the scaling is based on the base radius, not the actual one - as a result, if you increase the radius by +50%, you can hit a monster who's distance from you is 150% of the base radius, and it will be dealt 150% damage (i.e. 450 - 900 from our example numbers). That wasn't intended and is fixed in the next patch. (It was also my fault, sorry guys).

3) Surgeon's flasks are not working as intended at the moment - we moved to a system where the action as a whole is a crit or not, but they are still giving you multiple sets of charges for one critical hit if it's with a skill that hits multiple enemies. They aren't balanced around that, and again it's being fixed in the next patch. The synergy with crits is intended, but the current level of power is not.

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Xapti wrote:

I kind of agree with this, but I kind of don't in other ways. As long as power charges are rather useful, it's better to spec into only a few wasted passives and get both lightning mastery and power charges, than get only cold, and end up having to waste passives into other things due to a lack of any more cold specialization passive points. Cold spec has limited amount of points you can invest before it's maxed, just like lightning, then you have to move on to something else such as power charges.
That is the main issue, and he mentioned it quite clearly in the video (albeit I found the video was a waste of time compared to a paragraph or two)

Sure, you can't put all your points in cold, and need to go for something else. but Power charges are not the only option, and they're still very effective for a cold-based caster as well. You can get cast speed, energy shield, more mana when you're done with the cold stuff if you don't want power charges.

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Xapti wrote:

I see in your second point you talk about how cold is related to dex and str fire. While I suppose that is fine, it kinda means that witches will only be lightning witches unless they wanted to also spec into claws, daggers, or staves, which at this point is completely, totally stupid, because mastering both melee damage and spell damage splits your overall damage making them both weak.
This is another massive issue with the passive tree (or game in general) that will be difficult to fix, but seems very important to fix none-the-less.

No, it doesn't mean that at all. There will be (and already are) gems of each colour which deal all the different types. A witch can spec into fire or into cold without needing dexterity - they don't get to have high levels of the added elemental support gem for that element, but you'll notice all the elmental damage increases are in the int tree for all elements. Having the added damage support gem isn't necessary to make a build for that element.
Also, the final tree will have more skills, and you'll thus take longer to reach the point where you've filled up all your cold passives and need to decide where to go next.

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znowstorm wrote:

The two passive skills "Gain on Crit" and "Gain on killed Shocked Enemy" need to go. Take these away and Shock Nova will probably die out in favor of safer cold builds. The unison of power charges and these two passives are the key to current success. Crit's that increase crit's that increase crits...sounds pretty good.

I disgree on loosing the "Gain power charge on crit" passive - I think it's really good that there's a gain on crit passive for each charge type, for two reasons. One, it helps relate the charge to each other by having a matching one for each; and two, it ensures that for any combination of charges, you have a way to get one of each, which allows the hybrid classes to use two charge types without having to worry about getting the two in different ways if they want to.
I think the problem is that power charge's base crit chance effect is too strong, and we might need to either lower it, or maybe change it to something else, such as mana cost reduction on skills.