ggg needs to take steps to make spells more approachable

I will point out that Elemental Penetration gems are not a 'waste of a slot' by any means. They work on mobs that have 0% resist. They are obviously far more effective against high resist monsters, but 30% cold penetration will give you 30% more damage on a no resist mob, which is about as effective as Added Fire.

witch/shaodw area not only lacks life it doesnt have any real acces to atleast 1%lifereg (which is kinda mandatory without es based builds when you reach end of cruel)
the closest lifereg nodes area scion/templar or ranger startarea to reach them you need atleast 10points in +10 stat nodes (where every other class gets it for 5 or less/or 2 notables on the way)

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kaross579 wrote:

I will point out that Elemental Penetration gems are not a 'waste of a slot' by any means. They work on mobs that have 0% resist. They are obviously far more effective against high resist monsters, but 30% cold penetration will give you 30% more damage on a no resist mob, which is about as effective as Added Fire.

in a 0% resist mob it will only add 20%damage when you calculate the -resist from the curse too.

and added fire is 39% more damage.

so added fire is 200% better when compared to using penetration in a no-resist mob.

edit:

changes that (imo) would balance the casters out:

---flat out reduce the mana costs of spells by at least 50% by lvl 20 gem.
---rescale the damage of spells so that at lvl 16 they do ~85-90% of a lvl 20 gem, lvl 20 gems still do the same damage as now
---penetration gems buffed to 50% at lvl 20 gem
---concetraded aoe having it's -radious removed
---flat out increase in spell damage and elemental damage nodes by at least 2%
---seperate wands and sceptres into two categories, p.e. the sceptres with 20% elemental damage should be able to only roll caster stats. majority of the wands "base types" should be able to only roll caster mods. The rest should be only roll attack mods (for wanders)
---flat out reduce resistances on mobs on merciless/maps. The only thing that should have 75%+ resistance should be orange bosses and double resist rares

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kaross579 wrote:

I will point out that Elemental Penetration gems are not a 'waste of a slot' by any means. They work on mobs that have 0% resist. They are obviously far more effective against high resist monsters, but 30% cold penetration will give you 30% more damage on a no resist mob, which is about as effective as Added Fire.

thats true but pent gems work for both attacks and spells and are equaly strong for them
the strong melee/attackbased gems (MP/MPofL,WED,Multistrike) have no equivalent for spells
a good attackweapon deals around the same dmg as a level 20 spellgem (both are reachable until level 85 which is when you get your level 20 gem)

on top of that you can get free leech (passivtree or eq)

dont get me wrong its still fun to play my "trapper" (which is a caster in some way) but when i compare him to my attackbased chars (LS and a ST/DS) it kinda lacks something in 72+ maps

nvm

Lol @ the guy saying to remove -radius from Concentrated Effect, you do realize what Concentrated means?

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.

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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 :)

i give up on any kind of spelluser for now...
just ran a crappy mud gysir map with my level 82 scion trapper (fire/coldsnap/beartrap)
my skillgems are level 18 and a bit (beartrap supported with empower +1 to gems)
there is only 1 notable for traps that i dont have (below the ranger tree)

i wasnt able to kill xandro blooddrinker (i could facetank him with AA level 18 and procing level 18 Molten Shell with firepen)
he couldnt kill me i couldnt kill him ....
with level 82 just because of skillgem levels not beeing able to kill an exile (too much regen even with EW or Vulnerability both level 15+) is more than just frustrating
my gems still need a freaking amount of exp to reach level 19 (and geeting from 19 to 20 is even worse..)

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ciel289 wrote:

i give up on any kind of spelluser for now...
just ran a crappy mud gysir map with my level 82 scion trapper (fire/coldsnap/beartrap)
my skillgems are level 18 and a bit (beartrap supported with empower +1 to gems)
there is only 1 notable for traps that i dont have (below the ranger tree)

i wasnt able to kill xandro blooddrinker (i could facetank him with AA level 18 and procing level 18 Molten Shell with firepen)
he couldnt kill me i couldnt kill him ....
with level 82 just because of skillgem levels not beeing able to kill an exile (too much regen even with EW or Vulnerability both level 15+) is more than just frustrating
my gems still need a freaking amount of exp to reach level 19 (and geeting from 19 to 20 is even worse..)

Yeah, that sucks. Atleast before the patch to handle situations like that you could use a 2+ to gem level weapon with viper strike and empower as weapon swap. I don't know if that's viable anymore.