ggg needs to take steps to make spells more approachable

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Sinnesteuer wrote:

You aren't adding anything to this conversation. You are upset, that much is clear, although about what is not well defined.

It appears you refuse to accept that there is a difference between the playstyles of melee and caster, and that each does, in fact, offer different strengths/weaknesses.

You shouldn't make assumptions. I'm far from being upset, but I do enjoy being in opposition of statements that seem biased. But I do feel slightly insulted that you seem to believe that your opinion adds to this conversation and mine does not. Stating how a caster can simply use alternatives to their build and not expecting to have it flipped and used in an argument against melee suggests a biased towards melee.

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JahIthBer89 wrote:

I'm just saying that in my case, having a 6L taryns with nothing but damage gems (and life leech) due to taking BM (I sacrifice a lot of potential defense in the form of auras for that extra damage gem), it's pretty absurd to be running into white mobs that can eat like 5 FP casts, half of them being crits no less (44% crit chance/500% multi). Also, I don't know if you've ever played FP, but you need to be in melee range to deal full damage with it anyway. The tradeoff being that FP keeps a lot of stuff frozen.

Doing something similar with a physical build means you're pretty much guaranteed to oneshot everything besides map bosses and rares. I've seen it in action, I promise it's true.

Now I do recognize that melee should do more damage overall since they're forced to tank. But the problem lies in just how black-and-white your damage output can be between different monsters with elemental damage. It can be oneshot or ten-shot between two different maps on the same monster type.

Again, you choose to only run one elemental damage type, you deal with the consequence of that decision. Your choices, and the consequences thereof, are not GGG's responsibility.

For the record, I have played FP, and am well aware of the mechanics. Projectile speed is OP for these builds, IMO, and if you don't have any you are choosing to make life harder for yourself.

To offer a possible solution for you, have a leveled EK you can swap to for the cold resist maps. Your +spell damage and +projectile damage passives will boost it as well.

Seems like all of the advantages spell casters have over melee is being totally overlooked and all that is being focused on is DPS. Seems... odd, to say the least.

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Wittgenstein wrote:

Seems like all of the advantages spell casters have over melee is being totally overlooked and all that is being focused on is DPS. Seems... odd, to say the least.

Since they added spectral throw, which ones are those?

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Sinnesteuer wrote:

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Dravkwn wrote:

Trying to figure out how any of that stuff makes a casters dps any better. Caster advantage is safety so they get a dps reduction. Melee are now just as safe 99% of the time and have how much more dps compared to casters? Oops dangerous unique or boss ahead guess the melee can whip out a decoy totem and use spectral throw for 1 fight and caster can just...."inserts useful thing caster can do better than melee to make up for the other 99% of battles....data not found"I may be exaggerating to some degree but its basically how it works.

You aren't adding anything to this conversation. You are upset, that much is clear, although about what is not well defined.

It appears you refuse to accept that there is a difference between the playstyles of melee and caster, and that each does, in fact, offer different strengths/weaknesses. You seem to be advocating for spell casters to be able to facetank mobs and one-shot all content. Having played the game, and accepting what the game offers (as opposed to developing unrealistic, personal expectations of what the game should be), I cannot come to any other conclusion than that the developers very much intended for there to be playstyle differences between ranged/melee, spell/attack, and physical/elemental.

Perhaps the caster/elemental/ranged combination just does not suit your playstyle or personal preferences. Instead of raging against GGG to prompt them to change their game, I recommend you stick with those builds that mesh well with your personal preferences. You will enjoy the game, as it is, far more that way.


@JahIthBer89 -

You choose, as a Freezing Pulse build, to run a map that you know has cold resist mobs within its mod set...and this is GGG's problem how?

EK builds are popular because they are easy to scale to end-game with minimal gear investment and "no brainer" passive choices. Other options are just as viable, if a little bit harder to put together.

you are so wrong ....
all the things you listed (in this and th posts before)

summons/totems arent exclusive to either melee or caster and needs soe kind of investment (except for decoy totem,but that doesnt last very long when you realy need it)

there are cruses for melee/attackuser which boosts the dmg even higher (90% of the time caster need cruses to remvove some resi since there are nearly no monsters with physical resi/armor)
there are many cruse resists (mapbosses have up to 75% less effectivness of cruses) or cruse cruse immun enemys,hell there is even a mapmod for that now(nothing against tis mod,its just very common like cruse immunity)

melees/attackusers have much more access to defence (life/lifeleech/lifereg)
on top of that they need much less mana/life (if you use bm) to use there skills with better scaling support gems
(yes most casters get more mana/int sice they have to walk these path in the passivs tree,but you cant call it a benefit when spells costs 3 times more mana anyway)

the biggest issue with spells is they need gem level 20 to reach the dmg of average!!! weapons that can drop in any level 68+ area (level 20 gems means charr level 84-85)

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Sinnesteuer wrote:

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JahIthBer89 wrote:

I'm just saying that in my case, having a 6L taryns with nothing but damage gems (and life leech) due to taking BM (I sacrifice a lot of potential defense in the form of auras for that extra damage gem), it's pretty absurd to be running into white mobs that can eat like 5 FP casts, half of them being crits no less (44% crit chance/500% multi). Also, I don't know if you've ever played FP, but you need to be in melee range to deal full damage with it anyway. The tradeoff being that FP keeps a lot of stuff frozen.

Doing something similar with a physical build means you're pretty much guaranteed to oneshot everything besides map bosses and rares. I've seen it in action, I promise it's true.

Now I do recognize that melee should do more damage overall since they're forced to tank. But the problem lies in just how black-and-white your damage output can be between different monsters with elemental damage. It can be oneshot or ten-shot between two different maps on the same monster type.

Again, you choose to only run one elemental damage type, you deal with the consequence of that decision. Your choices, and the consequences thereof, are not GGG's responsibility.

For the record, I have played FP, and am well aware of the mechanics. Projectile speed is OP for these builds, IMO, and if you don't have any you are choosing to make life harder for yourself.

To offer a possible solution for you, have a leveled EK you can swap to for the cold resist maps. Your +spell damage and +projectile damage passives will boost it as well.

so its right to force a caster out of his main element because of resi
but there is no reason to force a attack based charr to switch its attack (for dmg conversion) or weapon

time for some monsters/bosses that have resi against axes/maces/swords or daggers

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Gravethought wrote:

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Wittgenstein wrote:

Seems like all of the advantages spell casters have over melee is being totally overlooked and all that is being focused on is DPS. Seems... odd, to say the least.

Since they added spectral throw, which ones are those?

casters have all of the benefits of playing ranged, something that melee does not, which means that - typically - it is far easier to survive. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, particular monsters cause more of a threat and so do some bosses, but by and large its a far easier ride when you aren't in the monsters face.

Casters also - typically - have the easiest access to pet passives, which I believe are if not required, at the least are highly advantageous. Even a small investment can provide large benefits simply by being able to cause a distraction amongst the mobs. Of course, same goes for totems.

Casters can become very powerful with the right unique items, I'd say much more powerful then the majority of melee builds. And its pretty much a staple in the RPG world that casters start out week and end up godly, so I wouldn't fault GGG for following that trend (if you believe that is the case).


Now, obviously, given the nature of the skill system any class can pickup some of these advantages. But that isn't a knock against casters, as casters can employ some of the benefits from melee if they so choose. The idea of being a 'pure' anything in this game I believe is faulty, and you're only painting yourself into a box. Sure some of the 'pure' builds are better than others and there is always the flavor of the week build that everyone points to and wants their build to be as good as - or that they feel means that their build is faulty because it isn't as OP - but that isn't the issue.

It is also difficult to even speak of 'casters' as if it is a particular build/class.. a Templar caster will have different strengths/advantages against a witch caster and vice-versa. My general point is that this thread *seems* to be bent only on DPS and particularly DPS early-mid game, but I believe that is a very pessimistic view of the caster repertoire.

also, about being "axe/mace/sword" resistant - that is faulty. The difficulty is in needing to be in the monsters face to USE those weapons (and ST isn't so great in the late game) so by definition there is a downside to using those weapons that isn't needed to be stated by having a "axe resistance".

not that I am opposed to such a property if they chose to include it, but I feel it is redundant and most likely an unneeded/unjustified burden on the melee users.

I believe the main thing about the whole caster vs melee is more of an elemental vs physical, where melee can focus on say one handed swords and adds 100% physical sword damage that will never hit a resist sword damage type while a fire focused build will and lose almost half their dps. If they wanted to add things like slash, piece and bludgeon resist mods so melee suddenly lost 40% of their dps for being a focused build I imagine we'd see a large swarm of complaints about it being a terrible mod and need to be removed.







Going to bed have fun posting. =)

The only really nasty thing GGG did to casters recently was Hexfont and Proximity Shield as Nemesis mods. I've played a mix of caster, ranged, and melee characters since...forever...and I can honestly say that spells are perfectly "approachable." Well, except Flame Totem, since GGG decided to turn that into utter dumpster trash for some reason I still don't get along with the rest of the totems.

The only spells that really serve no purpose right now are Arc, Frost Wall, Lightning Trap, and Arctic Breath. They're the only ones I've been super underwhelmed with no matter when I use them.