Analysis and critique of the intellect passive setup.

so instead of that. do it like this

Some people have made mention about nerfing the base effect of power charges. I can tell you from experience that is NOT a good solution.

Why? unlike probably anyone here (except maybe a rare wand or claw witch) I've gone melee spec with power charges — mainly for testing purposes.

The results are that the build is viable, but that it's not nearly as good as if I specced hammer/sword/axe with frenzy charges. the 3% crit rate doesn't do a whole ton. When I have a base attack speed which is usually under 30%, a 25/30/35% attack speed boost outweighs a 15% critical rate boost (plus I don't end up wasting a ton of passive points into things like increased fire damage and faster casting speed to get there.)


If power charges are overpowered, it's because of the obvious fact that it's RIGHT BESIDE lighting, and that it gets buffs to spell damage and casting speed for every power charge. All of a sudden 8 power charges doesn't just give +24% crit chance, but +24% increased AoE, +32% increased damage, and +24% increased casting speed! (I think my numbers are right — going from memory, so maybe not)

One more thing I also forgot to include. In fact instead of saying that it's right beside lighting, the bigger issue is that the links to lighting, and between or in power charge passives are all mostly caster passives, which is why it's only viable for my templar to get +1 power charge, as opposed to +3. He also doesn't gain any advantage from having faster cast speed or spell damage, and increased charge duration doesn't seem to be enough % to be worth it.


If anything, I'd say buff the critical chance bonus on power charges, not lower them (maybe add a passive or two around there — or even just add critical rating passives).
Lower the passives such as cast speed (and maybe a bit of the additional mana), and certainly reduce the effectiveness of the added cast speed, AoE, and spell damage per charge.


Lastly, a small note: I am not sure if increased AoE will affected my attack skill or not. The support gem that the description says only affects spells does affect my skill, so I'm wondering if it will or not (I am presuming the cast speed and spell damage don't affect attacks certainly though)

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Xapti wrote:

If anything, I'd say buff the critical chance bonus on power charges, not lower them (maybe add a passive or two around there — or even just add critical rating passives).

Good points, but a note here: I pointed out above that the DPS increase from power charges already exceeds the DPS increase from Frenzy charges for physical dpsers at high lvl (due to lots of IAS devaluing the Frenzy orbs).

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aimlessgun wrote:

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Xapti wrote:

If anything, I'd say buff the critical chance bonus on power charges, not lower them (maybe add a passive or two around there — or even just add critical rating passives).

Good points, but a note here: I pointed out above that the DPS increase from power charges already exceeds the DPS increase from Frenzy charges for physical dpsers at high lvl (due to lots of IAS devaluing the Frenzy orbs).

Yes but in my post I said "When I have a base attack speed which is usually under 30% [ i forgot to include the small bit from passives, it would be more like 40%], a 25/30/35% attack speed boost outweighs a 15% critical rate boost (plus I don't end up wasting a ton of passive points into things like increased fire damage and faster casting speed to get there.)"

My character who specced into power charges gets MAX 10% IAS from gloves, MAX 10% from each ring, and about another 12% from passives.
It's possible I could get a weapon with 10–30% IAS, but out of all the weapons I've had for the longest time, best DPS weapons haven't had any IAS (which is a bit of a problem considering I just recently realized that increased weapon damage doesn't multiplicatively stack with other enhanced physical damage).

Even with 100% IAS (which I'm surprised one could get without power charges), 30% increased attack speed would act as 15% increased DPS, which is still slightly more than 15% critical strikes would give (assuming a base 10% chance — or even just the 5%) without any increased critical multiplier mods.

Also, with frenzy charge passives affect an attacker much better — things like movement speed, additional attack speed, and other stuff. In the power charge area, it's stuff like buff duration, increased spell AoE, increased spell damage, increased spell casting speed, etc. (like I mentioned already)
Due to that, as well as the fact that non-charge-specific passives that are in-between or close to frenzy charge passives are more attacker-friendly, it's much more viable to get more frenzy charges (+3 instead of +1), and/or spec into nearby passives.

Oh yeah, frenzy passive gives stuff like additional attack speed and dmg(? 1% I think?) per charge, which results in more than just 30% IAS too.

I said most of your post in my video...

Edit: By level 36 you could have both, frenzy and power orbs.

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wickedhood wrote:

I said most of your post in my video...

Edit: By level 36 you could have both, frenzy and power orbs.

Are you talking to me?

Maybe you said much of my post in your video (I can no longer remember), but I'm sure you didn't mention everything. My post also had a different goal, since I was just replying to aimlessgun.

I don't know if you're saying a witch could spec into power charges and frenzy charges, or a duelist, or what, but IMO speccing into power charges and frenzy charges doesn't work right now. I think it would be difficult to get enough str for good damage on skills, as well as possibly even equipping weapons (since all 2Hs require strength), and most importantly the best armor. int-str and int-dex armor sucks, str-dex armor is only a problem because it's hybrid armor (it sucks, just less cause it's not mixed with ES).
The str tree also gives extra health as well as damage reduction from endurance charges (if one was to spec into endurance charges) which is pretty damn important for an attacker.

Lastly and most importantly, any class other than the specialization or the hybrid cannot get many power charges. A duelist would only get 2 power charges base, 3 with the +1. A templar would only get 2 frenzy charges base, +3 maximum (probably not worth all the points invested).
For a witch, it's certainly not worth it to spec into frenzy e ither — all those wasted points into accuracy and other stuff only to get 10-25% cast speed

I mean the claw class would be the best to use int / dex. I'm gonna wait for that class to come out before I make judgements on frenzy + orbs. But this is a rather large tangent on just the intellect tree. I really wanna stress that I just wanna talk about INT here. What other classes do with porbs is rather insignificant because eventually the shared orbs will work and only 1 person in each party needs orbs.

Good points xapti (though I don't know why you compare 6 frenzy orbs (30% IAS) to 5 power orbs (15% crit).

Getting 100% ias without power charges comes from stuff like 20% IAS for a 20% qual skillgem, various ~5% IAS from quality supports, bloodrage, and the faster attacks support gem, on top of the gear/passives stuff (which is 58% for my ranger atm, and my wep and rings don't even have IAS!)

I mentioned the reason why I compared 6 frenzy charges with 5 power charges, is because for an attacker, it's very viable to get +2 frenzy charges, (no significantly wasted points) while for power charges you need to waste points to get there (cast speed, fire damage), and to get more than +1 charge, you need to waste more points.

Also, with frenzy charges you can easily get +1% attack speed per charge, which brings it up to 6% per charge, which means 5 charges gives +30% attack speed. You can also quite easily get +1% damage per frenzy charge.
Not only that, if you spec into the other frenzy charge passive zone, you can get an ADDITIONAL 2% damage per frenzy charge and ANOTHER 1% attack speed buff.


Anyway, the main reason why I'm posting is due to this revelation:
the added lightning damage from power charges is effectively added to the base damage of lightning spells.
This means that the "added lightning damage per power charge" passive ALONE will increase a character's damage by 10-25% MULTIPLICATIVELY for shock nova (10% for lvl 20 shock nova, 25% for lvl 6 shock nova — the minimum and maximum realistic values where a person would have added lightning damage). The values would be MUCH HIGHER (doubled? even more?) for a skill like spark, which deals less damage (but obviously casts faster, and can have multiple projectiles)

The other thing that is not related to power charges, but likely makes witch even more overpowered than would be normally, is that support gems "added cold damage" and "added lightning damage" also work the same way -adding to the [base] damage before increased spell damage or increased lightning/cold damage is applied (seem a little bit strange that added lightning/cold damage even get affected by increased spell damage in the first place,. Particularly seems unfair, considering attackers don't get increased attack damage)
added lightning damage goes up to +41 average damage at lvl 19, which increases a lvl 20 nova by an additional 14.5% (51% more than the added lightning damage from power charges, which it stacks additively with, but stacks multiplicatively with everything else)