ggg needs to take steps to make spells more approachable

Sure but you cannot balance numbers while you have disbalanced gear distribution. Casting will still feel weak without so much support(gems/rings/gloves/belts...) as attackers have.

When you start change numbers you will get clusterfuck where people with godgear plow while avg(joe) cannot do shit.

I don't understand why isn't there an opposite to ancestral bond keystone?

+X% more spell damage (or cast speed, or elemental penetration whatever), cannot use totems.

To make dedicated self casters more potent than dual totems. (Totems still seem like the way to go for most spells)

+1 OP

I support the OP. Self casting is trash now. Totem casting got far overnerfed. All the new mobs in A3X are also 10x as annoying to fight as ranged as anything melee ever had to deal with.

There are lots of reasons, but scaling of passives, mob resist, support options, lack of dps adding auras, all contribute.

Fix casters ggg.

Spell damage/crit/speed should scale off weapon damage/crit/speed. Game after game after game seems to make this same mistake, and I just don't understand it.

Take away all spell damage from gear. Turn physical damage% mods into non-elemental damage% mods. Allow elemental damage bonuses on gear to affect spells. Give spells native cast speed modifiers and damage modifiers that affect said stats from gear, to a point where they are balanced equivalent to now, only scale with weapons and gear similarly to attacks.

For example, lets say a Witch starts with fireball.

Under the new system, we might get a rank 1 fireball as:

Damage modifier: 100%
Cast time modifier: 110%
Crit chance modifier: 75%

Take a basic Driftwood Wand:
4-7 damage
1.3 attacks per second
8% crit chance
8-12% bonus damage (take 10% for the average in this case).

Casting a basic, level 1 fireball with this basic wand would result in:
4.4-7.7 Fire Damage
0.846APS (1/1.3*1.1)
6% crit chance (8%*.75)

For a dps average of 6.05*1.182*.94+9.075*1.182*.06=7.3656DPS


However, let's say we alch that basic wand, and result in a wand that has, say,

Serious Damage, Driftwood Wand:
4-7 damage
1.3 attacks per second
8% crit chance
8-12% bonus damage (take 10% for the average in this case).
+1-2 Damage
+1-5 Lightning Damage
+5% attack speed


We now get fireball doing:
5.5-9.9 Fire Damage (4-7 + 1-2 * 1.1)
1-5 Lightning Damage
0.888 casts per second (0.846*1.05)
6% crit chance

So, with this upgraded weapon, we now have:

7.7*1.126*.94+11.55*1.126*.06=8.9303DPS

Hey presto - the spell scales with a gear increase in a fasion similar to physical attacks.

You can still leave spellpower in the skill tree exactly the same as it is now - most early melee/ranged builds take some early nodes just because there are no survival nodes anyway, and it means that builds remain specialised. Weapon choice becomes SLIGHTLY less difficult, because all weapons are potentially useful for all abilities that can use them.

Spell gems can level up in a manner similar to skill gems - increasing skill cost, increasing spell damage%, increasing crit chance - whatever you want. Their basic damage no longer scales by the gem alone, meaning that spells are capable of the same item-based growth as skills are, particularly in the early game.

I really don't understand the need to effectively create two separate combat systems where one would suffice.

I think the biggest problem is with wands. Either you go all out and make a wand attacking character or you ignore your wand as a weapon and just try to roll good spell mods on your wand. There's no hybrid wand attack/cast option and so you desperately hope to either get an amazing attacking wand or an amazing casting wand since otherwise the wand is useless to your build. This makes getting correct gear drastically harder since you're looking for extremes.

What if some of the wand cluster over by the witch area gave bonuses that could help both the attacking & casting aspects of a wand user? Like what if Fusillade said "+6% Increased Damage per Power charge while wielding a wand" instead of just boosting the wand's attack damage? Or Wandslinger's Prowess gave a bonus to attack speed & casting speed? What if the "Wand Damage" regular nodes gave a bonus to spell damage while wielding a wand, in addition to the physical damage bonus? For that matter, the entire witch/wand area lacks a single +% Projectile damage node which is one of the easiest ways to boost wand damage while still boosting some spells.

can we please get an official answer from GGG if they at least see the dps disperancy/itemization woes/scaling/etc of casters (mainly selfcasts) vs attacks as a problem?

or if they ever plan to really buff the witch starting area?

"

Pathological wrote:

Spell damage/crit/speed should scale off weapon damage/crit/speed. Game after game after game seems to make this same mistake, and I just don't understand it.

Take away all spell damage from gear. Turn physical damage% mods into non-elemental damage% mods. Allow elemental damage bonuses on gear to affect spells. Give spells native cast speed modifiers and damage modifiers that affect said stats from gear, to a point where they are balanced equivalent to now, only scale with weapons and gear similarly to attacks...

(Clipped to quote)

What you just described is everything that sucked about Diablo 3.

No scaling of spells from weapon damage, please.

What makes this game great is how divergent the mechanics are, the fact that you can make a great build from a level 1 bow because it's fast or from level 24 staff because it modifies fire damage, or you can go for a high level weapon and opt to do great weapon damage instead.

What you're suggesting dismantles that entirely.

"

werezompire wrote:

I think the biggest problem is with wands. Either you go all out and make a wand attacking character or you ignore your wand as a weapon and just try to roll good spell mods on your wand. There's no hybrid wand attack/cast option and so you desperately hope to either get an amazing attacking wand or an amazing casting wand since otherwise the wand is useless to your build. This makes getting correct gear drastically harder since you're looking for extremes.

What if some of the wand cluster over by the witch area gave bonuses that could help both the attacking & casting aspects of a wand user? Like what if Fusillade said "+6% Increased Damage per Power charge while wielding a wand" instead of just boosting the wand's attack damage? Or Wandslinger's Prowess gave a bonus to attack speed & casting speed? What if the "Wand Damage" regular nodes gave a bonus to spell damage while wielding a wand, in addition to the physical damage bonus? For that matter, the entire witch/wand area lacks a single +% Projectile damage node which is one of the easiest ways to boost wand damage while still boosting some spells.

This game's design is completely predicated on specialization. You don't get to be optimal at two things at the same time. That's the way it works.

Any tweaks to balance spellcasting need to embrace that concept, not erode it.

"

Oxyn wrote:

"

Pathological wrote:

Spell damage/crit/speed should scale off weapon damage/crit/speed. Game after game after game seems to make this same mistake, and I just don't understand it.

Take away all spell damage from gear. Turn physical damage% mods into non-elemental damage% mods. Allow elemental damage bonuses on gear to affect spells. Give spells native cast speed modifiers and damage modifiers that affect said stats from gear, to a point where they are balanced equivalent to now, only scale with weapons and gear similarly to attacks...

(Clipped to quote)

What you just described is everything that sucked about Diablo 3.

No scaling of spells from weapon damage, please.

What makes this game great is how divergent the mechanics are, the fact that you can make a great build from a level 1 bow because it's fast or from level 24 staff because it modifies fire damage, or you can go for a high level weapon and opt to do great weapon damage instead.

What you're suggesting dismantles that entirely.

You can only make a bow build with a fast level 1 bow because of elemental damage, which is entirely non-existent in spell scaling. With this change, you could use that same bow to make effective builds with a huge range of spells. Imagine machine-gunning fireballs that do very little base fire damage, but are infused with cold/fire/lightning added damage. Imagine leveling with a storm cloud using Incinerate, so instead of breathing fire you are instead breathing lightning.

Yes, there are some items (like searing touch) that would require changes under the new system to be as useful as they are now. But there is a MASSIVE range of others that are currently useless, or completely niche, that don't need to be.