ggg needs to take steps to make spells more approachable

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TheTenthDoc wrote:

People don't need to leech life, though.

/spit take

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TheTenthDoc wrote:

It seems to me that people that think "casters" are terrible are just too restricted in what a caster is. They don't want to use traps or mines or totems or non-elemental curses or...anything, really, and just kill everything.

Sort of like how all those physical damage builds need to do all kinds of random things to be marginally effective... oh wait...

If the discussion is only going to be about DPS, and is going to ignore other aspects of caster gameplay, advantages of ranged v. melee, application of status effects, etc., then we cannot really have a discussion.

Spells are approachable. They are valid. They offer a different style of play from melee that, it is apparent, does not appeal to many. Perhaps it is that players have the expectation that spell casters should have the exact same playstyle as melee, which may or may not be valid.

Putting on my tinfoil hat for a minute: This thread is actually an attempt to buff spells even farther so that all the Cast On Crit melee builds can become even more faceroll OP. I'm sorry I even got involved.

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Sinnesteuer wrote:

If the discussion is only going to be about DPS, and is going to ignore other aspects of caster gameplay, advantages of ranged v. melee, application of status effects, etc., then we cannot really have a discussion.

Spells are approachable. They are valid. They offer a different style of play from melee that, it is apparent, does not appeal to many. Perhaps it is that players have the expectation that spell casters should have the exact same playstyle as melee, which may or may not be valid.

Putting on my tinfoil hat for a minute: This thread is actually an attempt to buff spells even farther so that all the Cast On Crit melee builds can become even more faceroll OP. I'm sorry I even got involved.

now you say spell users = cast on crit users,which use a weapon .... wait doesnt that make them melee/attacked based charrs rathe rthan spellusers....

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Sinnesteuer wrote:

If the discussion is only going to be about DPS, and is going to ignore other aspects of caster gameplay, advantages of ranged v. melee, application of status effects, etc., then we cannot really have a discussion.

Spells are approachable. They are valid. They offer a different style of play from melee that, it is apparent, does not appeal to many. Perhaps it is that players have the expectation that spell casters should have the exact same playstyle as melee, which may or may not be valid.

Putting on my tinfoil hat for a minute: This thread is actually an attempt to buff spells even farther so that all the Cast On Crit melee builds can become even more faceroll OP. I'm sorry I even got involved.

seriously:

advantages of spells:
cause elemental effects
don't require accuracy
range

advantages of attacks:
~2-10x the damage of spells
either don't require accu or have high innate accu (depends if you have RT or you are playing a dex character)
all attacks can be made aoe
passive life leech on all attacks without requiring both a passive AND a gem slot
cause stun more easily
require 1/5 of the mana of spells
aren't pigeonholded into using 1 curse

and again, you are lvl 64. go play a full caster in high levels and THEN come compare him to a full high level attacker.

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Sinnesteuer wrote:

If the discussion is only going to be about DPS, and is going to ignore other aspects of caster gameplay, advantages of ranged v. melee, application of status effects, etc., then we cannot really have a discussion.

Spells are approachable. They are valid. They offer a different style of play from melee that, it is apparent, does not appeal to many. Perhaps it is that players have the expectation that spell casters should have the exact same playstyle as melee, which may or may not be valid.

Putting on my tinfoil hat for a minute: This thread is actually an attempt to buff spells even farther so that all the Cast On Crit melee builds can become even more faceroll OP. I'm sorry I even got involved.

because they arent advantages exclusive to spells?


melee get spectral throw, thats ranged , as ranged as a freeze pulse is anyway.

status effects are crit , they are not something spells do exclusively.

infact crit melee with auras actually have better status effects than spells as weapon based builds can have all three status effects easily.


thats the main point , it really is an everything you can do , i can do better scenario now.
spells only have the one no accuracy needed thing going for them now.


infact spells have less going for them now .


and spells are not approachable. hell the consensus on many threads is that in the early game they suck , hard. that is the very definition of not approachable. They have a terrible first impression .



seriously dude , please dont argue points you have little exp with.

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Sinnesteuer wrote:

Spells are approachable. They are valid. They offer a different style of play from melee that, it is apparent, does not appeal to many. Perhaps it is that players have the expectation that spell casters should have the exact same playstyle as melee, which may or may not be valid.

Are you saying that spells don't have the same play style as melee? Maybe (maybe) that is true in a group. Solo, though, mobs get in your face whether you have a melee attack or not - uniques/bosses especially.

And, really, this isn't about melee v.s. ranged. It is more about physical v.s. elemental.

Physical = no resists, can leech through gear (effectively an extra gem in your attack chain)
Elemental = high resists, no leeching for you without a leech gem

so i decided to roll (another) caster.

i dropped a shivesting. (mind you i could have bought it for the exorbitant amount of... 1 alch)

i have 1 AS node as well as 2 projectile damage nodes.

at lvl 16 now i am doing 210 tooltip dps with spectral throw, this means in an aoe i do 420-1050 (2min hits ~5max hits) DPS. Pretty close to the 61dps freezing pulse which btw does way way less damage to targets not in my face.

GGG pls tell me, since my passives will be for a caster, at which level will i change to actually casting spells? i believe around lvl 50-60 i will start using some of my spells (and that's a big if...)


Itemization for casters and spell scaling needs a BIG overhaul.

As someone who plays casters almost exclusively, I have no problem saying ranged isn’t really a play style anymore. The variety of movement abilities in game now, reflect, thorns, curses, bubbles, coupled with the default view distance, “ranged” just means 2 hander sweep range. Stuff can be kited effectively, but with POE’s dysnc, lag, ect you’d have to be on crack to say you don’t need leech or decent regen. And that’s for kiting melee, never mind the missile barrage and aoe abilities you find in maps. As others have said this puts spells at a huge disadvantage since they don’t get leech from items.

Buffing mob armor / nurfing melee isn’t the way to balance out dmg spells, and I agree that it’d be nice to have some spell pen passives in the tree, but I think the main drawback to spells right now is they have very low base crit, and can’t buff that. Attacks can get a sweet roll, or drop and have a base crit of 10% fairly easily. Spells in general can’t get above 6%, which then renders all those points you dump into crit nodes less effective than their melee counterparts. In addition, spells have no buff auras to add all those great elemental effects. Yes it’s harder to load auras now (and god that sucked a lot of creativity out of builds) but any attack can still throw wrath on and suddenly have all that shock stacking that spells get, but they keep their 10% base crit % chance from their weapon.
The other major discrepancy I see between attacks and spells is cast time. Spells have some pretty long and elaborate cast times, but we don’t have 15% cast speed notables combined with numerous other fun stuff like 20 dex. Instead we get to spend 3 points in most cases for 9%. This renders incinerate (or maybe firestorm) as the only spell which can apply some of the % chance proc abilities in game (blind on incinerate is hilarious btw).

As others in this thread have pointed out, GGG recently buffed the hell out of HP melee builds, and with good reason. Last time that was done was way back in CB if I recall. Just from looking at the current tree it’s pretty easy to see the witch area hasn’t been updated in a long, long time, and she’s probably next in line. My suggestion would be to either up the base crit on most direct dmg spells, buff / streamline cast time nodes, or revamp the witch and templar area spell nodes so they have combo effects like the shadow nodes (8% dmg vs 8% dmg + 5% to ignite).

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shroudb wrote:

Tell me a non-discharge non cast on crit (which insidentaly makes the best way to cast spells an attack...)that can run up to the numbers of a normal melee build (like having 20k HUGE AOE dps +14% life leech with gear worth ~1ex)

Seriously, your highest level character is 64 , so please, go roll a high end caster first and THEN come to talk here.

EK builds might poke a hole in this claim of melee superiority...... I believe some are getting 300k dps? (yes EK is a spell)

Other than that the only 2 other dominant self cast builds that I can think of are FP/Cold caster, and Incinerate. Both are more tanky than dps output builds though.....

I have faith in my new experiment on a lightning caster using the new Storm call, but the Jury is still out. (I hate that it only has 4% base crit......)

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Gorrim wrote:

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shroudb wrote:

Tell me a non-discharge non cast on crit (which insidentaly makes the best way to cast spells an attack...)that can run up to the numbers of a normal melee build (like having 20k HUGE AOE dps +14% life leech with gear worth ~1ex)

Seriously, your highest level character is 64 , so please, go roll a high end caster first and THEN come to talk here.

EK builds might poke a hole in this claim of melee superiority...... I believe some are getting 300k dps? (yes EK is a spell)

Other than that the only 2 other dominant self cast builds that I can think of are FP/Cold caster, and Incinerate. Both are more tanky than dps output builds though.....

I have faith in my new experiment on a lightning caster using the new Storm call, but the Jury is still out. (I hate that it only has 4% base crit......)

totally gona have 3 eks with 2 linked to cast on crit , it shall be glorious