No, I think that Box is an exception. For example, Sigil of Consumption does not benefit from cast speed (in terms of damage, the casting animation will still be faster I suppose). Same goes for e.g. Ravenous Earth, Wind Devil, Storm Totem, and Mortar Trap. It’s weird and inconsistent, but that’s Grim Dawn. Honestly, that’s perhaps my only/main criticism of the game: many mechanics are hidden, and you can’t rely on the tooltips to fully understand how an ability works.
For what it’s worth: I’ve tested this on the dummies. I can upload a video later if I figure out how to record one.
No need, I can test it myself later. I just wondered if you just assumed it to be like that because of similarity with beam spells, but seems like it’s not the case. If confirmed, it would mean that Stormbox is a very unique skill mechanics-wise.
I think that is because they are counted as player-scaled pet.
Test it with wendigo celestial power, syphon souls, spectral wrath, olexra flash freeze
Sent from my Redmi Note 3 using Tapatalk
DOTs don’t benefit from casting speed.
Wendigo only deal regular vitality damage.
Syphon souls also deals regular vitality damage.
Spectral wrath deals regular vitality damage.
Olexra flash freeze also deal regular cold damage
My point is, all of these skills inflict regular damage but in duration. That is why I thought, based on storm box mechanic, they also affected by cast speed
Sent from my Redmi Note 3 using Tapatalk
Yeah, but sadly Grim Dawn isn’t the kind of game where you can expect that similar skills have similar mechanics.
I guess I was horribly wrong. I’ve tested it again and can detect no difference between 90% and 152% casting speed, neither for the box nor the thether. What’s worse, it also doesn’t do damage every 0.3 seconds; the previously bugged character sheet damage fooled me.
Boy, did I fool myself!
I’m curious how I got this mixed up; I can distinctly remember testing this. I hope that the cast speed thing was a bugfix in one of the updates as that would at least mean that I’m not crazy.
Both changes means that my calculations were waaaaay off. The DPS of Box is stuck at 414, or 860 DPS when fully overleveled. In comparison, Sigil does 265 DPS, up to 602.
Well, that’s a shame. Then maybe you should take out storm box from your list.
I think it’s better that you compare damage of channeling skill and skill that has no cooldown only. Because your research right now is for cast speed only.
Sent from my Redmi Note 3 using Tapatalk
Storm Box scaling with casting speed has been confirmed by Zantai before here.
Thanks for the clarification Evil Baka!
Captain Obvious: now I wonder why your recent test show different
Sent from my Redmi Note 3 using Tapatalk
Man, I knew someone posted this before.
Zantai seems to suggest that it is only Tether that scales with cast speed. Perhaps the reason why I didn’t see this in my tests is because you get a lot of damage numbers flying around, making it hard to accurately count them. Or perhaps I didn’t change my casting speed enough.
Also, I wonder if it is both the electrocute damage that scales with cast speed as well as the direct lightning damage? To be honest, it seems unlikely that the electrocute damage would scale with CS. If it doesn’t, that would mean that only 35% of the direct damage scales with CS, which is only a portion of the total damage when you include DOT.
Furthermore, this would make Allagast’s Arcane Net even more weird: you deal Aether damage that doesn’t scale with CS, Lightning damage that scales with CS, and electrocute damage. It should convert all the damage and/or have other benefits (e.g., +total damage with a longer cooldown).
Do AAR builds require a lot more tanking devotions than other builds to survive?
In my opinion, having played a lot of AAR builds, generally yes. You need to be able to facetank even the nastier enemies at least for some seconds if you want to be able to deliver your full damage, which means being able, in turn, to take a lot of damage yourself.
This is all the more difficult with classes like Sorcerer because of the lack of healing skills. I usually go for both Giants Blood and healing rain and pair this with the best CDR i can achieve. in some builds i tried to put in time dilation too, both for offensive and defensive purposes.
All of this usually means that is difficult to stack too much offensive devotions.
Mirror and maiven’s shield of course are a must.
Do you have experience with Drain Essence at high levels? Dealing 1/3 of the damage of AAR does not at all seem to be offset by 15% ADCTH? It seems unplayable as a main source of damage.
never did a drain essence build so far, but try take a look at this http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=63790 or this http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=67556.
Both builds seem to reach 170/180k dps with drain essence alone.
I guess BTW drain essence purpose is to mix damage and life sustainibility so ofc you can’t expect the same output as AAR. That said it would be probably be best if associated with a powerful nuke. MAybe a reaper with maxed SS converted to aether with the conduit of night’s whisper affix? But how to use pierce dmg in that case? Just throwing some stone here 
Drain Essence is extremely good. The innate ADCtH is what makes it so good
Vitality and Aether are good in crucible (150) as well. Gravechill DE is only good in main campaign due to lack of support
The only problem is the gear dependency of Drain Essence. Besides that DE is pretty solid
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/qNYe9J4N (Even w/o TD it can beat 150, you can opt for TD for more tankiness)
http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=63790 (No Buffs, No Banners 150)
http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=67556
http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=64470 (Cold, only good for MC imo)
With gear dependency, do you mean the Uroboruuk set for +125 flat aether (and vit->aether conversion), and/or the Spectral War Shield which increases it’s AoE capability?
It’s interesting to hear that it’s viable. Do you think that Aether-converted Storm Box could viably act as an additional source of damage? It seems to be either that, or Devastation, if you want to focus on Aether over Vitality.
I edited my post that you quoted and added some builds to it.
Aether Stormbox is the weakest thing in the game. Stormbox itself is an extremely bad skill, Lightning Tether is the DPS source. Problem with the transmuter is that when you pick it the Tether remains Electrified i.e Lightning Tether’s damage doesn’t get converted
Devastation or Bone Harvest are better nukers if you ask me.
While it’s true FoI and AAR beat DE in single target. The thing with DE in my experience is it gives you a higher margin of error. If you screw up nullify, mirror or heal pot with AAR or FoI you can be punished severly for it. Not to mention you are depenent on these things for tankiness. DE’s innate ADCtH allows you an extra source of sustain to help you “stay still”.
Yeah the Aether conversion on Storm Box is, imo, badly thought out. It should either fully convert it (with electrocute to vitality decay perhaps) and/or give other benefits.
Ignoring the damage types for a moment, with the same skill investment Storm Box does about equal damage as a single shard, but does it every second. With an average of 1 shard per second (assuming they all hit) I am not sure if their damage outputs are that much different. Storm Box never misses and gives -DA; TSS deals slightly more damage, bursts, and has crit damage, but it can miss. But with more skill points, TSS easily wins. On top of that, TSS actually has items to support it, benefits from cooldown reduction, has much more synergies with its damage types, and freezes.
Storm Box (and its transmuter) can be so easily fixed to become a viable second skill. I really hope that they’ll do that in the upcoming patch.