ggg needs to take steps to make spells more approachable

i wish ggg would cut the crap about all classes are viable..

SHOW me a vid of a dev using the WITCH, using cold spells doing a lvl 78 map with all the hardest mods.

i'll wait to see the vid.

"

B3RTY wrote:

i wish ggg would cut the crap about all classes are viable..

SHOW me a vid of a dev using the WITCH, using cold spells doing a lvl 78 map with all the hardest mods.

i'll wait to see the vid.

Witches can be wanders, summoners and totemers so yes they are viable as a class.

they are viable . just not good

No matter how much they buff the damage on spells, it won't be enough until mob resists are rebalanced.

My suggestions for fixing spell pen and casters:
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/721920

until they fix the double resist rares, the nerf to elemental curses, and the 95% of the mobs being innate resistant to at least one elementa while none being vulnerable, then no matter the raw damage buff you can't balance casters:


give us a 20k dps spell and with the current way resists work we have:

on a white non-resistant mob: ~40k dps
on a rare with dual resists: ~12k dps

the differance is way too huge (350% MORE damage on a type of mob compared to another) to balance.

do GGG balance around double resist mobs? if so then casters would far outdps attacks on no resist. Do you balance on no resist? then casters are still useless (compared to attacks) in high end maps.


solution is easy:

either cap the resist of mobs to not go above 40% no matter what (this way penetration at least would bring us to 5% resists)

or add penetration in items/passives to allow casters to reach 75% penetration with some investment and make it so that you can't go to negative resists through penetration. Then change the elemental curses from -mob resists to +more elemental damage.

Rather than buffing spells I'd like to see much better passive node bonuses so they are worth investing into at the cost of some of the survivability that gets taken instead since most using dual wands or wand/shield are getting up to 300% spell damage from base and equips together. 8% for a passive spell damage node only adding a 2.7% increase just doesn't seem worth it.

Having monsters becoming more resistant to all types of elemental damage unless its a rare with an aura just over does it. I can see a cold resist in normal having 35% and 50 in cruel and 75 in merciless, but I'd expect if its strong to cold its either neutral or weak to fire or lightning.

Cold pen, fire pen and lightning pen would also be nice if the were merged into simply an elemental pen gem as well as the quality bonus giving increased pen instead of increased damage which adds almost nothing noticeable.


I'd expect element specific nodes to be increased by maybe 4Xs current and spell damage nodes by 2.5 to 3X to seriously consider them in favor of simply aiming for high spell rolls on wands and taking extra ES nodes on passive tree.

Still playing what I can enjoy in the meantime.

The problem is this shitty resist system GGG went with.

start by not having every goddamned mob in the game be resistant to one or all elements.

"

B3RTY wrote:

i wish ggg would cut the crap about all classes are viable..

SHOW me a vid of a dev using the WITCH, using cold spells doing a lvl 78 map with all the hardest mods.

i'll wait to see the vid.

Precisely what I was thinking when I saw the video showcasing the new spell flameblast. I believe the gap divide between striker and caster only becomes evident in Act 3 Merciless - hence giving the false impression that caster is viable early game (Normal - A2 merciless).

All future videos showcasing new spells should be made in merciless Sceptre of God at the very least.

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tackle70 wrote:

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SL4Y3R wrote:

Penetration gems are some of the best in game right now. No need to buff.

While I do agree with the slow leveling, hard time at finding decent spell gear, etc. I will say most spells are designed to crit. They're base dmg has always been low, and will always be low. You must take into account crit in the tree.

The only spells, i can think of, with shit for base crit are lightning. This is simply because of the shock mechanic.

At 30%+ crit chance, my freezing pulse feels pretty good soloing 70-72 maps so far. It's not anywhere near as fast at clearing mobs as some of the more OP DPS builds out there, but it's fast enough that I have fun playing it.

And freeze locking all white mobs on the map is soooooooooooooooo much fun :)

FP appears to stick out like a daisy in this regard, and its due to the shotgun mechanic, almost every other "spell" does not have this luxery