Item Development - Information

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Aggnog wrote:

I think one of the main problems with this discussion is that people are treating this as a skill in itself and not treating it as just a unique item that casts a modified firestorm and is really not much different from a pledge of hands or dreamfeather or doon cuebiyari in the way that it affects a character build.

Exactly. Trading a skill gem for a weapon slot (in this case 2!) seems counter-intuitive. In this specific case the spell had to be tuned for it to work at all.

Wow. So much emotions over this unique for and against it.

I liked pneuma's suggestion of having a level 1 icestorm being available as a skill gem as well. That solves the issue of people being forced into a unique just for a specific skill and people will still use this unique since it's a 7L without the fusings.

As for having the item stick with you throughout the entire game, we already have facebreakers and pillars so that's nothing exactly new here.

With the forums like this, I dread the thought of the shit I'll start receiving when my new unique gets teased... sigh.

It will be interesting to see the damage effectiveness of the skill, but the +1 to support gems, would benefit added cold, added lightning and added chaos immensely, seeing as the item is a free 7 link, added cold + added lightning + added chaos + inc aoe + conc effect + spell echo?

Maybe Cold to Fire instead of added lightning or inc aoe? Maybe use avatar of fire together with cold to fire gem, and double dip in cold damage + fire damage on tree, while stacking int? The possibilities are there.

To the naysayers complaining about oskills, remember its oskills in PoE, this isnt Titan Quest, just because you can only get the skill through this staff, doesnt mean theres only one way to build around it.

What if you actually 6 link the staff?

Firestorm + Storm Call + Spell Totem + Inc Aoe + Conc Effect + Added chaos, use soul mantle and you have tri-elemental totems with just 1 6link and another potential free 6 link in your chest.

You're all forgetting this will still be PoE, so start theorycrafting instead of complaining.

10/10 in avoiding the word blizzard

Or you could just implement a help / wiki in-game that contains all of this information including wtf ice storm is so the player could look it up......but that would be too easy wouldn't it?

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yotmato wrote:

You're all forgetting this will still be PoE, so start theorycrafting instead of complaining.

I agree completely. Even with just a 5 link, which is fairly easy to pull off, you can do glacial cascade + aoe + echo + FC + pen/whatever and have a 5 link blizzard great for putting icy ground everywhere and a 5 link cascade great for doing damage. And still the possibility of a 5/6 link in chest. You wouldn't even need to make it an int heavy build if you didn't intend to use blizzard as your main damage source. You could make a cold to fire or 3 dragons build, hell, with all the generic elemental damage on the tree now you could easily add in any elemental skill to the staff and retain double benefit.

More Ice!!!

Es builds seems good for it since u stack lotsa int and int gives es and dps on that skill. And it seems it cant be supported by gem specific enhancing but iy could be supported by conc effect since conc effect doesnt specify gems

What if you implemented it as a "locked gem slot"? As in one of the staff's gem slots will always be used up by the irremovable Icestorm skill gem. This way you no longer have the "7L OP" issue people are talking about and the Icestorm skill can have it's own tool-tip.

Might be an interesting idea to have other uniques have non-exclusive skills locked into them and be itemized specifically to synergize with that skill.

Perhaps something like a sword with a locked Determination skill.

By the way, Paired Swords might be a fun weapon type to play with. A 2-handed item type that counts as dual wielding 1-handed swords. Could definitely have some fun and interesting uniques like Kanshou and Bakuya (not likely to be a possible unique due to Type Moon most likely having the names of those paired swords trademarked but still)

You guys don't get that with this you pretty much can pretty much have ALL 3 purity auras in the staff linked to empower lvl 4 and a reduced mana for some crazy resistences and you will have a free slot for whatever other aura you might need, this way you won't have to worry that much about having resistences on all your items and you can concentrate on getting aura nodes, int nodes and spell nodes, ignoring the fact that you can also have more auras linked to blood magic and run low life with shavronne's and with decent es gear you will have a HUGE ammount of ES, what would make you pretty tanky.

Considering that a person is using two Perandus Signet and Astramentis the player can soleny from the gear have up to 448 int, without any inteligence from the skill tree... I mean people with a nice amount of currency can make pretty decent -probably even op- builds arround it, if I am lucky enough to get my hands on that unique I would for sure try to make the best out of it and I am sure this item is capable of a lot more than it appears.

On a side note you guys shouldn't forget that more uniques and even AURAS (maybe one that increase the level of active skills?) and they might influence this staff positivelly.