ggg needs to take steps to make spells more approachable

I have 7 characters who have completed all 3 acts in all 3 difficulties and a number of other characters that are lower level. Each of my attack based builds have AT LEAST twice the DPS of any of my spell based builds. Some of them are 4x better DPS. The attack builds were also a lot easier to build for survival, so not only do they do a ton more damage, but they survive better too.

Take a look at the passive tree:
-- how many 20%+ spell damage nodes are there? For melee physical damage there are several for each weapon type as well as 1h, 2h, and DW. My DW claw build has 7 different nodes at 16% or higher for physical damage at level 69. Good luck finding that on a spell character. The only thing that comes close are trap/mine nodes.

-- the common physical damage nodes are 12%, the common spell damage ones are only 8%. It is worse for elemental nodes which are usually only 6%.

-- attack speed comes in bigger chunks than cast speed. The highest cast speed node is only 6% but the highest attack speed node is 15%.

-- energy shield is harder to raise up high than armor or evasion. The biggest pure ES node on the tree is only 18%, but you can get 30% for both armor and evasion nodes. The values for ES on gear are also much lower for items of the same level.

-- Anger, Wrath and Hatred only work on attacks and not spells. Where are the spell damage improving auras?

(Disclaimer: I only made a cursory glance at the passive tree for these comments, so it's quite probable that I may have missed some nodes, but as a generalization what I've said still holds true.)

TLDR: spells have poor support in the passive tree compared to attacks.

the line of thought for the poor supports , is that logically people would use 100% spell damage wands to make up for the passive skill trees lack of spell supports.

what ggg doesn't get is that good .. no not even good , decent .. even grabage spell items are an entire magnitude harder to get than weapon oriented items.

so they balanced the passives on items that almost nobody has , shocker .. it doesn't work all that well.

"

Saltychipmunk wrote:

the line of thought for the poor supports , is that logically people would use 100% spell damage wands to make up for the passive skill trees lack of spell supports.

what ggg doesn't get is that good .. no not even good , decent .. even grabage spell items are an entire magnitude harder to get than weapon oriented items.

so they balanced the passives on items that almost nobody has , shocker .. it doesn't work all that well.

i don't follow that logic:

wands give % increase in damage and spell gems give +base damage
weapons give +base damage and attack gems and str give %increase in damage.

the supports have nothing to do with spells vs attacks.

p.e.
a lvl 20 heavy strike adds 95% increase physical damage
a top lvl WHITE axe does 118.8 dps (void axe) and needs at minimum 150str to use:
150str= 30% increase in damage

dps with WHITE axe and lvl 20 heavy strike: 118.8*(1+0.3+0.95)*1.5= 401

dps with lvl 20 fireball:

297-446, 0.85 casting time

((297+446)/2)/0.85= 437

so supports have nothing to do with it, whatever increase in damage a spell caster can gain from a top wand, the attack user gets it from the actual skill gem.

as for the comparison to gems , well there is a reason why spells are shit.

yes the logic flawed , spells in this game as a concept is flawed.



attack speed passives are 100 - 150% better then cast rate
physical nodes are 50 - 100% better then spell nodes
there are 6 times more physical nodes than spell nodes

weapons have base attack speeds which can further bolster the effects of attack speed
weapons have better scaling gems

weapon gems tend to have + physical as they level

coc as rendered conventional spell casting a dieing concept.

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Saltychipmunk wrote:

you dont get it , the reason why there are so few spell damage passive / the passives are shit is because of the spell damage affix on wands.

as for the comparison to gems , well there is a reason why spells are shit.

we actually dont know that unless GGG says why the nodes are crap.

my own opinion (yours is because of wands) is that before they nerfed curses and nerf elemental damage in general because of elemental cleave and such, getting the mobs to -resists was actually quite doable.

a double curse back then did an easy -108% resists and penetration another 35% on a unique boss.

also "resist all elemental damage" mobs were actually quite rare.

now, on the same boss the double curse would do a whooping -32% resistances, meaning that on a double resist rare (-54%resistances) it would still not take (WITH penetration) even to 0 resist.

mind you, that actually requires 2 lvl 20/20 curses, a unique or a lot of points to have 2 curses, a lvl 20 penetration gem, AND a gem slot.

so, apart from the gear disperancy, the actual reason why casters feel so bad compared to older days in the beta was the curse nerf.

but curses could benifit melee / weapons just as well as they do spells.


just use a vulnerability rather than a dedicated elemental curse along with elemental weakness and critical weakness.

hell that is what wind scream can do


hell most wander builds follow the same tree paths as spell builds ( getting crit ) etc

"

Kenzorz wrote:

To add to your list:

Every end game mob and their mothers have elemental resist. Meanwhile 0% physical resist.

this. its imbalanced as fuck.

most spells are crap additionally.

hence why alot of coc builds use armor and ek

This is a good thread with many good opinions. Free refresh from me.

"

Saltychipmunk wrote:

but curses could benifit melee / weapons just as well as they do spells.


just use a vulnerability rather than a dedicated elemental curse along with elemental weakness and critical weakness.

hell that is what wind scream can do


hell most wander builds follow the same tree paths as spell builds ( getting crit ) etc

not quite:

take vuln vs an elemental curse on a double resist mob pre and after nerf:

both will only work at 50% efficiency after nerf and 100% pre nerf.

for siimplicity let's say that the mob has exactly 75% resists and both the attacker and the spell caster have 100dps:

vuln would boost the dps from 100->140 pre erf and from 100->120 after nerf. 120/140= 85% or 15% dps loss for the attacker.

elem weakness would boost the dps from 25-> 75 pre nerf and from 25->50 after nerf or 50% dps loss for the spell caster.

50/15=3.33

or simply put, curse nerf was 333% worse for the casters

now double those values for double curses ^^