ggg needs to take steps to make spells more approachable
" imo all spell pen from passivtree or items (if they go this route) shoould be caped at 100% dmg effectivnes i.e. you have 50% passiv spellpen against a monster with 75% resi it would tripel your dmg against a monster with 25% resi it would only add 33% against a monster wihtout resi it would do nothing its not a good solution,but seems better to me than the way it currently is "spell/ele pen" should only be on pure elemental notables so if you focus on 1 element you get those notes anyway or go the avatar of fire route add frozen entity,blessed by the winds as keystons (each located at its attribute fire= str,ice=dex and lightning=int) makes you unable t deal any other dmg than that one element but grants you xx% pen to that one Last edited by ciel289#7228 on Dec 4, 2013, 3:58:27 PM
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TBH current balance is just terrible. Spells incur so many negatives compared to melee such as not being able to use item leech, super high mana costs and requiring high # of sockets to be effective and at the end of the day they still get out DPSed by melee.
Compare Incinerate and ST. Both roughly same cone AOE. S -ST shoots farther by default which lets you hit 95% of ranged monsters -2% leach is enough to sustain ST. Easily picked up on a ring. You can also run BM with it effectively if needed. Incinerate requires huge investment in mana regen if you want to run it without mana leech gem. -ST is quite good on a 4L ST-LMP-ADDED FIRE-FASTER ATTACK -ST can use life leech on gear -Run of mill DPS weapon does comparable DPS to stage 3 incinerate. Crit dagger can hit way higher numbers. Then when you factor in resists its laughable how much better ST is. - You can't recurse, pick up items or reposition without having incinerate drop back down to stage 1 where dps is terrible. -Melee have super efficient builds around the duelist to templar tree range that lets them hit high hp, high dmg and high armor with amazing keystones. (iron reflexes/unwavering stance imba) -Hatred provides another link worth of DPS -Lightning thorns rapes incinerate 10x harder than ST -Leveling isn't even comparable incinerate just uses way too much mana. But not really super relevant except for new players. Last edited by Simon493#2786 on Dec 4, 2013, 7:24:14 PM
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Summing up the points above, this is the argument that elemental spells are under-powered at the moment:
1. Right now the game starts physical damage at a higher benchmark and then scales that benchmark faster, more efficiently, and from more passive nodes than spell damage. 2. Physical attacks are based off of weapons, and abilities usually boost those weapons. Spectral throw does not "throw a spectral weapon for 2-4 damage" like a level 1 spell, it throws a weapon with a base 200+ damage that is then multiplied by some effect or percentage. Cleave, leap slam, dual strike etc, work much the same way. 3. Static adders are available to boost physical attacks. Iron Ring is the earliest example of this. The solution to this is to drop some spell wand/staves/shields mods into the game. "Adds 50-100 Spell Damage" this could be scaled to match the "adds physical damage" mods. Create "adds elemental/chaos damage to spells items/mods" for the same basis/purpose. 4. Monsters effectively have zero physical resist. Adding a zero to the armor values in Cruel and another zero to the armor values in Merciless would adjust physical damage to something closer to parity with spell damage. i.e. Monsters with 100 armor in Normal would have 1,000 armor in Cruel and 10,000 armor in Merciless. This could approximate the impact of resist reduction on spell damage. Until Physical damage characters CANNOT kill armored mobs from lack of damage they will not be facing the restrictions that spell based characters face when dealing with a "Curse Immune/Resists Elemental Damage/Life Regen" rare . 5. Strength based Physical Damage Builds appear to offer more survival early on. Str gives both damage and HP. Dex gives both damage (accuracy) and effective HP (evasion) Int gives Mana and effective HP (ES) Therefore STR characters base stats translate into damage and survival faster and easier for new players. 6. Spell inherent effects are reliant upon critical hits and therefore do not compensate for the above limitations. TLDR version: Spells are weaksauce. |
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When I first started playing about a month or so ago, I started a witch because I usually play ranged spell casters in these sorts of games. So, I took the usual damage buffs, and a bunch of energy shield nodes because, well, that's what is available when you start a witch.
Long story short - It was all a huge mistake. Witch is probably the worst possible starting character - spells are terrible until you hit level 50 or so and get a 5-link (when they progress to passable), and energy shield is pretty useless without specific builds and hard to obtain gear. It nearly made me quit the game. Instead, I read some guides and made a melee character. Suddenly, the game was much, much easier. I'm no game balance expert, but this seems like a problem to me. |
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people also seem to forget that against rares curses are much less effective, while damage suports aren't:
let's take the OPTIMAL route for spells vs attacks and say that they somehow have the same DPS (never going to happen but lets assume that it does) and that the mob has no double resists so it doesn't have above 75% resistance (most rares either have double resists ore hex proof but hey, lets hope here): spell dps 100 attack dps 100 caster has penetration attacker has melee physical damage attacker does: 100 *1.49 (melee physical damage) * (1+ 0.34*0.5) (vulnerability 50% efefctivness due to rare): so attacker does: 174dps caster does: 100*(1- (0.75-0.35- 0.49*0.5)) = 84dps so even on magical optimal situations where the mob hasn't overcapped resistances AND the spell has somehow equal dps to an attack the attack does: 207% damage compared to the spell. enjoy. there needs to be enough penetration on the passive tree that alongside with penetration gem a caster can have 100% penetration WITHOUT a curse, or the penetration gem to be buffed to offer 100% penetration at lvl 20. then make penetration never go below 0% (but applying curse after penetration puts it into negative resists) this way: you free casters from having to rely on one curse: you want to play a caster and have some more survivability? use enfeeble/temporal curse you want to have caster and play with crits? use critical weakness you want to have caster and play with raw damage? use elemental curses all of the above are what the melee currently enjoy. another option is to completly and utterly remove resistances from monsters. Instead if you want tougher subtypes put a "resistant" mod on them that offers 10-50% LESS damage (from all sources) on them depending on rarity/subtype/etc Last edited by shroudb#3225 on Dec 4, 2013, 6:00:30 PM
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I think this thread deserves a reply from ggg :/ i will be the bumpknight!
bump FOR THE DARK GODS!
IGN: Monokuma_Joestar | |
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Early game is why I can't seem to get past my witch's A1. I just get bored. I main a Ranger. I shoot fast, I shoot a lot. To go form that to a slow moving fireball is just disappointing. Especially when that fireball at early game does about the same damage as my wand. Sad when I can launch a fireball, followed by a wand attack. And my wand will hit the target before the fireball. Not a lot of options to fix this without investing in a good chunk of dex.
Early game spells need more damage. Considering how fast they take up mana and how slow mana recharges early game it should come with more power. Either this or mana regen early levels needs an increase. I know it's not hard using a potion. It's just annoying to need to constantly use a mana potion to keep up with someone who uses AAs reliably when they run out of mana for skills. On my dueliest I had a level 4 2h club drop. I used this club till level 17 when I upgraded to a 2h unique mace. That level 4 rare club was 1 shotting monsters 10 levels over me. I just don't see a spell doing that. This is mostly with survivability nodes. No dps nodes at all. I think weapon choices need more impact. 1: Make weapon speed act as a spell modifier. This means players who choose to use slow 2H weapons will have high damage, but slower cast speed. Or simply a slow recharge before next spell cast. Would allow for an interesting quick power shot build. 2: Give all weapons spell damage. Spells can work their damage by modifiers the way physical abilities do. Can still have some that are +damage spells. Allow weapon speed to effect cast speed. With these two changes a 1H weapon can be fast and deal quick damage. A 2H can be slow and deal heavy damage. A DW build can sacrifice a shield for the DW AS bonus. This is the only realistic way to make a level 40 wand better than a level 4 wand. Right now the % spell damage they get does not grow with items. 3: With possible fast casting builds in above's idea, mana regen could become a problem. Add a node that changes pysical damage->mana leech to spell damage->man leech. If proven too strong it could have reduced effect. 4: Continuing #3. Add a node that changes spell costs to use energy shield instead of mana. This node also transfers 50% of mana leech and mana regen to energy shield. This does not transfer Aura's to energy shield. 5: All of this would allow for more stats such as "adds + damage to spells" instead of just % damage. Would work the same way a Quill Rain build works. Overall once they balance spell casters and make evasion equal to armor the overall balance of the game will be much better. Last edited by Cindikle#7582 on Dec 5, 2013, 2:05:25 AM
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" heh, same thing happen to me yesterday. Got shiver on lvl 17 (lmp+spectral+addfire) it lasted till docks lvl 34 or so... Then i swaped to dbl totem. :). Anyway, this discussion about is useless. Whole caster/attacker disbalance is caused by Caster gear availability. ▄█▀█▀█
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i made a thread about this here, showing what a 6% node does to a level 18 fireball with screenshots.
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/672584 IGN: Edgar_Ffs
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" the discussion is not uselss imo. item affixes that should be on items yet they are not (penetration, flat spell damage increases, etc) are certainly missing, as base spell caster items are also missing (not a single base item has caster only affixes/prefixes, while over a 100 or more have attack only) BUT there nedds to be a way to boost SELFCAST spells to the point where attack is. It needs to be for selfcast only, because totems are faring way better, CoC is the best way to cast spells (which is a disgrace for a pure caster), witch is by very very far the worst calling except for summoner and etc reasons. Storm call has opened a path that can be exploited to fix some of those issues: make a support gem: Delayed Blast: spell, aoe, fire, cold, lighning, elemental cost multiplier 200% spell casts at target location after 1sec. 80%more elemental damage 10% elemental spell penetration at lvl 1 scaling to 100% more damage 30% spell penetration at lvl 20 works only with selfcast (not totems/mines/traps/coc/cwdt/cws/etc shenannigans) |
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