ggg needs to take steps to make spells more approachable

I hate saying it because most folks don't like it, but sometimes the only way to make a caster powerful is to make them a true burst class. You have melee which have good solid high consistent dps
then you have casters who can burst briefly for as high if not higher dps and then need to recover. Casters in this game will probably never be balanced without some true division in how damage is delivered.

They could substantially up mana pools for casters while reducing regeneration of mana and mana leech in some manner that they could figure out, then increase spells significantly so they are killing groups as fast if not faster than melee, but then when they get to rares, unique or even bosses they find that they have to slow down significantly as they simply can't maintain like a melee that hammers away without pause.

Again,I hate to say it, but sometimes the only way to find a balance or stop people from all flocking to a few builds is make very clear advantages and disadvantages.

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Mannoth wrote:

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

yeah i do.

the name of the gem is more important than balance?

then rename the gem to "increased aoe damage" and be done with it.

i get what GGG was trying to do, make skills behave differently (like chain, fork, lmp, etc) but atm a lot of spells are lacking a pure damage upgrade.

melee attacks have multistrike, increased physical damage, increased physical damage when on full life, and if you are going elemental route, weapon elemental damage

projectile spells and ranged attacks have chain/fork/pierce/etc that really add a lot of dps through multihitting the same mob with several projectiles

pure aoe non-projectiles are forced to take concetrated effect to even start comparing in damage, and that has a huge drawback in the -30% range. Make it a spell only support and reduce the penalty to -10% or something (similar to how splash for melee only gives -16% on main target).

attacks atm have way, way too much going in their favor. out of all of my characters, there isn't a single one caster that can compare to a decently build attack character, loh, gem-less leech, multistrike, splash, more physical damage, etc

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Dravkwn wrote:

I hate saying it because most folks don't like it, but sometimes the only way to make a caster powerful is to make them a true burst class. You have melee which have good solid high consistent dps
then you have casters who can burst briefly for as high if not higher dps and then need to recover. Casters in this game will probably never be balanced without some true division in how damage is delivered.

They could substantially up mana pools for casters while reducing regeneration of mana and mana leech in some manner that they could figure out, then increase spells significantly so they are killing groups as fast if not faster than melee, but then when they get to rares, unique or even bosses they find that they have to slow down significantly as they simply can't maintain like a melee that hammers away without pause.

Again,I hate to say it, but sometimes the only way to find a balance or stop people from all flocking to a few builds is make very clear advantages and disadvantages.

you cant really do that though, since in end maps, every few whites there are blues or rares

"

shroudb wrote:

"

Dravkwn wrote:

I hate saying it because most folks don't like it, but sometimes the only way to make a caster powerful is to make them a true burst class. You have melee which have good solid high consistent dps
then you have casters who can burst briefly for as high if not higher dps and then need to recover. Casters in this game will probably never be balanced without some true division in how damage is delivered.

They could substantially up mana pools for casters while reducing regeneration of mana and mana leech in some manner that they could figure out, then increase spells significantly so they are killing groups as fast if not faster than melee, but then when they get to rares, unique or even bosses they find that they have to slow down significantly as they simply can't maintain like a melee that hammers away without pause.

Again,I hate to say it, but sometimes the only way to find a balance or stop people from all flocking to a few builds is make very clear advantages and disadvantages.

you cant really do that though, since in end maps, every few whites there are blues or rares

Actually, you can do that, you have the caster quickly and hopefully tactically kill the whites and the blues shouldn't be a real issue either. Rares could be handled by something that is considered by most for one thing or another ie a totem that pumps out a spell you can cast yourself at half the dps as the caster themselves and that is only if the caster hasn't recovered from a previous battle as I think a fully recovered between battles caster should be able to handle up to rares without issue, its unique and boss level monsters where I'd expect them to balance their resources, but then again this is all just something to expand on.

Seeing as both witch and templar have easy access to powerfull area nodes, concentrated effect negative side is not that big at all.

Thing is that if you buff spells too much melee becomes obsolete again and dual totem builds will again faceroll the content.

Imo it would be nice if they changed every elemental node to something like:

+6% lightning damage, +2% lightning penetration // examples for lightning node rework
+12% lightning damage, +4% lightning penetration

+5% elemental damage, +1% fire/lightning/cold penetration // general elemental damage node

Or even something like:
For every 5% spell damage you gain 1% fire/cold/lightning penetration, so at 100% spell power you get 20% elemental penetration all around.

1% all penetration per 5% spell damage is way, way, way too strong, but I do like the idea of mixing in penetration with some of the elemental nodes for spellcasting-oriented classes. It would help even the playing field that a forum poster on here has told me is uneven (I'm told a melee can safely and efficiently bulldoze a 74 map with 1-2 threatening map mods with 0.5-5 exalts total worth of gear)

"

Dravkwn wrote:

Actually, you can do that, you have the caster quickly and hopefully tactically kill the whites and the blues shouldn't be a real issue either. Rares could be handled by something that is considered by most for one thing or another ie a totem that pumps out a spell you can cast yourself at half the dps as the caster themselves and that is only if the caster hasn't recovered from a previous battle as I think a fully recovered between battles caster should be able to handle up to rares without issue, its unique and boss level monsters where I'd expect them to balance their resources, but then again this is all just something to expand on.

that would give an even bigger advantage to the attackers since you go for loot killing rares not whites.

what you are suggesting is similar to someone suggesting removing all and any aoe abilities from melee and leaving all aoe to casters, which would really destroy solo play for melee.

poe is a fast paced action game, you cant expect people to play a class that isn't fast paced, and giving crappy mmorpg antics like sustain and burst and such will only lead to people playing whichever kills rares faster.

if you really want to make attacks behave fundamentaly differently from spells you would need to do it is such a way that whichever way you choose to play your gameplay is fast and unhindered but different.

as it stands out, atm they ARE different, p.e. spells have to worry about resists, whereass armor is nonexistant (something like 900 armor which is nothing on the most tough monster in the game i think).
Spells also have way more aoe than attacks, and way less single target.

But GGG decided to give melee splash to attackers so that they can make all of their attacks aoe at a small penalty...

The problem isn't that they behave the same, the problem is that spells are severly underwhelming at doing the thing they are supposed to do best compared to melee.

Attacks offer more survivability than spells p.e. due to how easy is for attacks to leech/loh, attacks do way more damage, all attacks can be made aoe, and etc.

this is because attacks have way, way better support gems than spells. Spells need something like a 50% more damage support, or making RF scale it's damage to blood rage levels at lvl 1, or something like "multicast: 50% chance (at lvl20) to cast supported skill 3 times with one casting" and etc

"

Mannoth wrote:

Seeing as both witch and templar have easy access to powerfull area nodes, concentrated effect negative side is not that big at all.

Thing is that if you buff spells too much melee becomes obsolete again and dual totem builds will again faceroll the content.

Imo it would be nice if they changed every elemental node to something like:

+6% lightning damage, +2% lightning penetration // examples for lightning node rework
+12% lightning damage, +4% lightning penetration

+5% elemental damage, +1% fire/lightning/cold penetration // general elemental damage node

Or even something like:
For every 5% spell damage you gain 1% fire/cold/lightning penetration, so at 100% spell power you get 20% elemental penetration all around.

passive penetration is a nice idea.
i would love it if it would become a BASELINE FOR INT though: int: 1% ES /5 points 5mana/10points 1% elemental penetration /20points.

this way you don't have to thin out caster node selection even more and you give an actual reason to raise int.

"

shroudb wrote:

"

Dravkwn wrote:

Actually, you can do that, you have the caster quickly and hopefully tactically kill the whites and the blues shouldn't be a real issue either. Rares could be handled by something that is considered by most for one thing or another ie a totem that pumps out a spell you can cast yourself at half the dps as the caster themselves and that is only if the caster hasn't recovered from a previous battle as I think a fully recovered between battles caster should be able to handle up to rares without issue, its unique and boss level monsters where I'd expect them to balance their resources, but then again this is all just something to expand on.

that would give an even bigger advantage to the attackers since you go for loot killing rares not whites.

what you are suggesting is similar to someone suggesting removing all and any aoe abilities from melee and leaving all aoe to casters, which would really destroy solo play for melee.

I don't see how it could be considered removing AoE from melee as I'd still expect melee to be AoE killing things. The difference I'm suggesting is basically equalize the dps where casters might be big hits they have longer recovery while melee do not.

By attackers do you mean melee?

"

Saltychipmunk wrote:

1 the lack of availability of caster items. All caster items share their rolls with weapon based mods. This makes getting good spell casting items a real chore.

I'm all for having caster items. Anything I'm finding with spell damage is far below 50%.

Given the elemental resists of monsters now, did GGG compensate that by increasing spell damage items accordingly?

Balance is give and take. Take away from one specific area of damage type (elemental melee cleave), you'd better make sure unrelated areas (spell caster damage) aren't compensated.

GGG has always been terrible when it comes to balance.

A year ago when I played game I had melee paladin character that I played to a level 60 then I had to quit, reason: I did not had decent area damage power that could clear white or blue mobs fast enough before ranged mobs killed me. I died frequently and could not even gain more levels.

I used all my currency and made powersiphon multiple aura wander and game was fun again, I had very good damage and could survive easely, got to level 75 played maps etc...then it came 1.0.

My wander was shit, without auras my survability and damage was zero.

I have tied to make my wander work with power siphon and elemental profileration and high crit% (anger+wrath auras) but I still can't kill some orange bosses (I'm lvl 75 with decent gear) not to mention about playing maps.

So conclusion: I dont have currency to change my character anymore (to buy regret orbs and skill gems). I guess its time to quit this game and play something else...

It's simple, to decrease the huge gap between casters and physicals, increase armor on monsters.