Physical spell archetype feedback

Preface: I’m a long time PoE player with several thousand hours and reach lvl 96-98 on characters in PoE 1 leagues along with buying items over 100d in the last few leagues. While this isn’t super impressive I am certainly not below average as a player.

The following critique on physical spells comes from my 6days, 4 hr play time as a Witch, Blood Mage, Bonestorm, phys crit scaling build. Build planner below, any critique of the build or suggestions to try for supports that I have forgotten or missed are welcome.

3.1k life, 4.5k es, +7 to phys skills (5 phys on wand , 2 all on amulet), crit chance on bonestorm 69.15%

https://maxroll.gg/poe2/planner/a0arq039

State of Physical spells in PoE 2

• Bone storm as a build feels like it operates at the speed that GGG intends the end game to eventually be compared to where builds like LA, poison concoction, monks, Archmage etc. are currently operating
• Caveat that the move speed while channeling in addition to the long animation speed of the ability makes it feel more sluggish than I think it should.
o Suggestion is to lessen the move speed penalty for bone storm or perhaps vaal implicits on boots or some other late game upgrade to make things feel better

Bone Storm: mana cost scaling with cast speed vs animation time reduction is lopsided and feels unrewarding. Way more mana cost while barely making the animation faster (maybe the calculations are wrong?)
• mana cost:
is a bit steep, basically makes mana stacking or inspiration mandatory as a gem link
At gem lvl 26 with arcane tempo and 34% inc cast speed mana cost is 341. With arcane tempo and 126% inc cast speed Mana cost is 584.18 per second. Around a 1.7x multiplier for 92% additional inc cast speed.

• channel speed: needs a faster animation time to feel really useable
Arcane tempo massively speeds up the animation to a visually noticeable degree
cast speed on tree/gear does not influence the animation speed in the same degree that Arcane tempo does at least visually or so it feels
to clarify: with 34% inc cast speed on tree base cast takes approx 3 sec, with arcane tempo you shave off .5 seconds ish. With 92% inc cast speed on gear in addition you only reduce by another .5 seconds to approx. 2 seconds. So with 25% MORE and 92% increased, you only reduce total animation time by 1/3 in total.
But that same 126% between gear and my tree without Arcane tempo doubles how fast I can cast power siphon or at least it feels that way
The information panel for bone storm says 1.89 Casts per second (cps) at base with 34% on tree and 4.07 with arcane tempo and 126% total inc cast speed, this is more than double the cps but again the animation time is only reduced by 33% or so it feels

• targeting:
has trouble hitting smaller ground or air targets, must place cursor exactly on these targets or the skill will not hit = massively frustrating gameplay at times
maps have verticality and so ditches or stairs/ramps make targeting a pain vs things like spark which has no such troubles
if I nameplate lock a rare, I do want my projectiles to focus that target, but when scarabs or flying insects are the only things on the screen, then targeting beyond them should prioritize them

• shrapnel portion synergy forces minions or co op
the shrapnel portion of the skill only makes the next attack deal additional damage which offers no ability for a pure phys caster to take advantage of it
suggestion is to create a skill that combos off bone storm and uses the shrapnel if not triggered with an attack to explode in a radius around the target and cause a bleed? (bleed would need to scale off the power of the phys hit not just weapon damage to make this feel remotely useable)
 gives further play style options
 can interact with exploit weakness support which as of now is useless in a pure phys casting setup as there are no other good armour breaking alternatives

• with so little phys based spells to draw from, bone storm becomes the de facto skill you want to pump pure damage for boss killing. Bone cage is not viable as a main damage dealer and unearth see below.

Detonate Dead:
• Mana cost is appropriate but when any skill (like cold snap) requires a corpse or other condition to be met before triggering then it should not cast when the condition is not met and should not cost mana. i know it also operates this way in poe 1 but there we have desecrate and can make an area viable to cast in, not so in poe 2
• Delirium mobs do not generate corpses that can be used for DD and is the only league mechanic to behave this way
• When the mana cost is 357 and you can spend it hitting nothing and dealing no damage and ground effects can hide corpses from being easily visible it feels terrible to oom yourself doing no damage.

Bone Cage: its good, leave it alone, does good damage when specced into phys and prevents monsters from closing gaps. When supported by pin and lockdown it’s a good tool to deal with small enemies with low hp and fast mobs

Unearth: the spell feels bad if not going minions
• if not a minion playstyle, the minions die in single hits from some enemies and they do virtually no damage making them useless

• mana cost reflects the skill’s ability to summon so many minions which are useless to pure phys casters

• The spell is confused trying to be phys spell and minions and winds up bad at both so I think it needs changes
• Option 1: the gem needs support options
Brittle bones support: Unearth deals less physical damage but bone constructs explode on death dealing x physical damage in y radius around them (for example)
 This support could just be adds hp or increases the max number of summoned bone constructs etc, this was just a brainstorm
Sacrificial Power support: completely stops the ability to summon minions, reduces mana cost and increases the phys damage of the ability

• Option 2: separate unearth as a temporary minion raising ability
Create bone spike: sends the bone spikes

• For unearth to be a viable choice for clearing over bone storm, the damage needs to double its current value at a minimum

Physical spells in general
• Lack of good options for phys scaling spells
The only directly phys damage scaling gems available for bone skills are Brutality, phys mastery and Heft
 Heft either does not work or does not reflect accurately in the skill info panel for any phys spell

• Bleed is a dead option for casters, there is not enough scaling for damaging ailments or bleed close enough to the int starting that will scale the ability enough to make it worth pursuing
Bleed based supports aren’t very good because bone cage is better with pin and lockdown as a prevention from gap closing enemies and unearth does pitiful damage
Even lvl 26 bone storm with Brutality, Lascerate, Deep cuts etc does a very small bleed to even normal monsters, not even ½ as good as a lvl 20 essence drain with swift affliction when base dps on bone storm is around 30k and essence drain is 3k
Blood mage has a node that uses elemental damage to contribute to bleeds but no way to leverage pure phys damage or increase the potency of bleed without doing elemental damage making bleed not an option when going pure phys
Bleed is based off the phys damage of the weapon? But doesn’t extend to spell damage despite nodes for scaling bleeds in the int section of the tree?

• Phys modifiers for spells on rings
Rings have added phys and ele to attacks but not spells
Rings have ele and chaos % damage but no phys

Game in general
Leagues:
• League mechanics should be marked on the minimap permanently after discovery
With 1 portal per map and rippy league mechanics, trying to memorize where the mechanics are is tedious and unneeded, I already discovered the position
Ideally there are checkpoints at the different ritual spots to travel between them before I end the map

3 of 4 leagues feel terrible for bone storm and are only kind of saved by DD
• Breach: monsters spawn too fast and rush the player too hard for the current animation speed of bone storm, if I pop the breach just before getting full cast on bone storm I fire once and before I can channel the ability again, I’m stun locked to oblivion
• Ritual: same as breach, animation time is so long and mobs spawn right on top of the player that you are stun locked until dead
• Delirium: mobs don’t leave corpses to use with DD
Also if the mirror is already at the very start of the map, why are deli mobs spawning behind me at the very beginning of the map? I’m instantly sandwiched between two packs of deli mobs and it feels unnecessary
• Expedition: It feels great for bone storm, I can kite and play strategically with all the care and reverence for the dangerous monsters that GGG seems to want

+1

+1. Played more or less the same build to 93 as my first char. I would add:

There really does feel like a missing slow-but-hard-hitting phys spell similar to comet or maybe a bigger Bone Spike like what we can get on wands. Despite being heavily invested in crit, I didn't find a phys spell that felt good using with cast on crit.

4th floor of Trial of the Sekhemas is a pain because of the multiple stairs up and down combined with bonestorm's targeting.

i agree with most stuff you said. ill point out 2 things on bonestorm.


1 - checking your build planner i see you are using fork support, swap it for scattershot, the dps tooltip will show lower numbers, but the spell will be cast 3x faster (it summons 3 projectiles per satge isntead of 1), massive dps increase, and lower mana/life spent on a full charge (~1sec for the full cast). Tooltip DPS is per projectile so its wahtever number it shows times 20. on my case with skill at lvl 29 and all buffs active is 131,778x20 = 2,635,560


2 - it may be a bug, but its possible to cast bonestorm and move withou any movemetn penality. tap bonestorm while moving as the character rasises her hand in the animation she will start moving at normal speed, hold bone storm again and you while move at 100%ms and keep the cast.If this is indeed a bug yes i also think it should have a smaller movement penality, withou using mobility support gem (i have it on DD for faster clearing)

I believe that there's also be reap and exsanguinate at release (both shown at multiple sites, I believe the latter requires a wand implicit?), so I wonder if Bonestorm was meant to be a main phys damage skill.
Then again, I sure would not mind.
And yes, the spell is soooo clunky.