Improving lightning warp

As per this thread in bug reports:

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/650418

Lightning warp's total cast frequency consists of three parts- its cast time, its movement delay, and the animation where the caster is squeezed and then unsqueezed at takeoff and landing.

*The cast time can be scaled with % cast speed modifiers.
*The movement delay can be scaled with % movement modifiers and % reduced duration modifiers
*The animation, however, cannot scale as far as I know, and puts a minimum on the frequency you can cast the spell.

My totem build has a tooltip of this:



With my normal movespeed and 90% reduced duration, a minimum distance hop on warp should take ~0.05 seconds at most. Yet my totems only cast at ~0.6-0.7 frequency, despite the displayed 0.37 cast time. That animation delay in there keeps the spell from casting as fast as its advertised.

Overall on a 100% reduced duration build, the difference between the theoretical and actual DPS compared to cast speed looks like this:



I think that given how lightning warp is so underused to the point it actually has a stigma attached to it, it would be nice to see the skill not have any arbitrary nerfs attached to it. This animation delay on lightning warp could easily be made to scale with either cast speed or % reduced duration, either one would make logical sense. As it stands right now, lightning warp takes a very big nerf as a primary DPS skill thanks to this delay, and is horribly gimped as a mobility skill, and lord can only imagine that if a build tried to use it as both mobility and DPS in a straight forward "hero who spams lightning warp" it would be twice as problematic.

So any of three easy ways I see to scale this:
*Scale the depart/arrival animations by cast speed
*Scale the depart/arrival animations by % duration
*Allow the player to begin casting a second lightning warp immediately after being moved to the new location, like he can cast other spells, without having to wait for the animation to finish

Thanks!

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

leading to you getting either horribly out of sync

Next up, 0.3s animation delay on cyclone, flickerstrike, whirling blades, leapslam and shield charge.

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

Without that delay, differences in latency mean the client can let you lightning warp while the other one hasn't quite finished on the server, leading to you getting either horribly out of sync, or huge numbers of lightning warps that don't work - the second was a massive problem with lots of complaint threads before the current minor extra delay was added.

But... but I still get out of sync and a significant number of lightning warps that don't work even after the minor extra delay was added... :(

I guess it's improved, though? I'm no QA expert, nor am I doing testing for money, so I can't say I paid that close of attention to it

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

No. As I said in the other thread, this delay is both intentional and necessary.

Without that delay, differences in latency mean the client can let you lightning warp while the other one hasn't quite finished on the server, leading to you getting either horribly out of sync, or huge numbers of lightning warps that don't work - the second was a massive problem with lots of complaint threads before the current minor extra delay was added.

Wouldn't hurt to remove it from totems, though :S

@Above I think its improved, yes- still existent, but a buffer against lag, so much reduced. I've seen it fairly infrequently

I think these would do the trick.

Well I can attest I've seen it very infrequently, can chalk that up to the change. And good to hear about the totems

I suppose from a desync point of view a 0.1 delay wouldn't cover anyone but a good connections ping, but combined with animation for ~0.3 seconds that'll cover even a slow average RTT so that would be a sufficient balance of buffer time. If I could be a stickler I'd say it would be awesome to have the extra animation 'can't-warp-until-warp-animation-is-finished-sans-player-delay' removed from totems too, that way you'd get the best of both worlds- mobility and desync given priority over DPS for players, DPS given priority over mobility and desync for those serverside totems. But I just genuinely appreciate that you blokes have put enough thought into it to have covered so many bases already, I'm impressed

Since Lightning Warp is more unique for its movement than its damage, makes perfect sense to consider desync above damage scaling. Glad to see it.