Hi all!
Am I the only one that doesn’t like the current Aethere ray skill?
The way that I see it is, I would change it for a mid range beam that start wider near you and finish pointed/sharp. Furthermore, it would pierce through monsters! And if possible, I would make the character use both hands for the animation to ‘‘channel’’ the skill.
Currently the skill is not fun to play with, at least it’s my opinion.
It definitely needs a look. Just for the fact alone that the linked skill Disintegration requires tons of points to even begun to add up to a single point in the base skill. And it’s only for single target. Yes, it IS amazing for proccing devotions because of the hits per second, but it’s still lackluster.
I agree that AAR needs some sorta buff. I posted a topic here:
What I want from AAR is more potent damage. My suggestions from the other topic:
Have the beam increase in power in multiple stages the longer you hold the button. Lets say its got 3 stages, the current aether ray is stage one, after 1 sec, it goes to stage 2, the beam does more damage, and gets wider, after another second, its stage 3, the beam does even more damage, becomes wider and can pierce targets.
Add debuffs to armor and resists on disintegration. Maybe a slight bonus to aetheral mobs on top of that.
And he’s my setup. Just in case someone tries to tell me I can do considerably better with this skill. The only reason this build is even viable at all is mostly due to devastation, devotions, procs, flashbang, and thermite mines. I’ve entertained the idea of just dropping the skill entirely to be honest. Once I get that Leg dagger that has cold to fire conversion, I’m considering scrapping AAR and putting the points in OFF or Trozan’s Sky shard. If that tells you how I feel about the current AAR.
The DPS listed is AAR. The skill is still garbage though. My 2h warder with 35k tool tab does way more damage.
It would coincide with mirror. I’d be able to do more DPS while mirror is up than I can currently. I’d start the beam when the boss mob is at range, when it gets near melee range, I’ll pop mirror, and it’ll eat a couple seconds of stage 3 aether ray/kamehameha
I’d be happy with any sort of “buff” to AAR to make it more effective than it is currently. Including what you suggested.
Another way to do it would be to turn AAR into an exploding Aether fireball via a branch skill or something. That way you can lob it and move.
It’s just that what you suggest isn’t what I hate the most about the aether ray skill. It’s it lack of AOE damage. I mean, it could be a mix of what I suggest and what you suggest and I would be still happy about it as long as the first stage kills fast enough white/yellow monsters.
Trash mobs get eliminated by combo of others skills. Devastation, procs, devotions, etc all eliminate trash mobs pretty quickly. Even flash bang with aetherfire linked to it can kill some trash mobs. Or thermite mines with meteor shower linked to it. There is the occasional tougher regular mobs like Aether Hulks which don’t get eliminated by the same AOEs that take out trash mobs. But you need raw DPS to take those out. Not AOEs. Nothing in the arcanist tree really provides sufficient DPS.
IMO AAR needs to be the boss killing DPS. The biggest gun in your arsenal. And for this purpose, its severely lacking. And a multi-stage ray would help you eliminate trash mobs. You cast devastation on a group, then charge up your ray and the wider/piercing beam would more effectively pick off stragglers and mobs like Aether Hulks that survive.
Anyways, given the mechanic of ARR, the occultist with the Curse or the Shaman with the Grasping vines, would help for the channeling skill that ARR is.
All I’m saying is I have a Callidor’s tempest build that is almost liek yours. But instead of using ARR I use Callidor’s tempest and the aoe damage helps a LOT for overall killing speed. I just wanna add that since the last hotfix, i cannot kill the Mad Queen in about 1min 30sec anymore with my CT build… the heal she has is maybe overtune considering she has more health (health buffed for every monsters, and resistance lowered).
Maybe if ARR was actually making you super strong while channeling it might help too. But for the fun factor, having a litle Aoe to it would be great. Otherwise, I will never use that skill in it’s current state.
I do feel for the cost and investment necessary, it is quite underpowered, when compared to other mastery abilities.
In my opinion disintegration should either add a % piercing component ( capping at 60 natural and 75 ultimate) and cost come down about 5-10 mana. Or have Disintegration add a small AOE ( starting at 0.25 and capping at 1 meter natural and 1.5 meter ultimate), with cost staying the same.
Or
Could animate it in such a manor that it allowed for a basic attack in between short cool down (great for gun or wand, could be bad for Melee weapon though).
Nice thread…very interesting.
Let’s start with assumption 1, viz. AAR is quintessentialy a single-target damage skill and see what is wrong with it.
Most ARPG operate with tropes and this is a good thing because tropes align with the expectations ppl have. It is true that Grim Dawn avoids some of these tropes, but still you have “glass cannons” - i.e. casters and assassins - and “tanks” - the Warder class for example or the Witchblade.
Now, let’s take the worst “assassin” type class we have at the moment, namely the Witch Hunter (for the record, he is slower than the Blademaster and the Spellbreaker by around 2-3 seconds when it comes to nemeses - trust me here I tested this for over 200 cases with Ultimate Fabius). In the opposite corner we will have the AAR sorceror = the most powerful cast speed caster class. Let’s see now what is wrong with AAR as a “single target skill”:
Both classes encounter Ultimate Fabius and hit him. I also assume that the AAR sorceror has time dilation in order for him to facetank, otherwise he will be dead very fast.
A) Witch Hunter - 100.000 dmg / SS (understatement) + 150.000 DoT/sec + 60.000 (from DEE fg and Dreeg’s Affliction) => he will deal Fabius 1.710.000 damage in 11 seconds even at SS/3 seconds.
B) AAR sorceror with Time Dilation - 12.000 / tick + 30.000 Devastation + damage from mirror (unquantifiable). Assuming you will get 6 ticks/second, AAR Sorc will deal Fabius a total of 822.000 damage in those 11 seconds.
=> the worst assassin class is 2.08 times more efficient than the best cast speed caster in terms of damage AND 8.25 times more efficient in terms of damage / mana cost.
Should we also factor in the fact that SS scales with your items ? …that SS is available to you at level 4 ? …that we discuss similar BiS gear here ? …that we also considered Time Dilation on the caster (which is as you see…not OP at all) ?..that AAR is available to you at the end of act 1 ?..that you have to remain stationary for AAR to work ?..that you also need “skill disruption protection” in order to maintain your DPS ? That the poison DoT WH in my example doesn’t even need to facetank Fabius in order to destroy him in under 15 seconds ?
Pls do the math of how much buffs would AAR need to really be a single target damage skill…
So what you’re saying is SS and DoT builds need to be nerfed into the ground… :rolleyes:
Just kidding!
I play an AAR sorcerer and love it! I definitely feel it is a viable build, but it does require a lot of fine tuning on the gear and game play to use right. It is definitely less broken then TSS and PRM. However, I do agree that the skill itself is relatively weak compared to other popular builds. The picture of an Arcanist appears as if they are casting AAR, so it should be the “showcase” of the class… and as such it definitely lacking compared to other showcase skill lines. There are definitely some nice things about it as there aren’t a lot of modifications so there isn’t a huge skill point investment in the skill itself. The beam will melt bosses pretty quickly early game. And…there are a lot of aether damage gear out there…
Unfortunately, even with the nerf to Fabius’ loot table, he is still much easier to find and is the “benchmark” for how good a build is. But he’s one of the harder nemesis (along with Iron Maiden) for most AAR builds to take out. I don’t even mess with him on my AAR Sorcerer. Not because of the damage of AAR is weak (which, as you’ve shown it is compared to SS…but isn’t everything compared to SS and DoT’s?), but because the mechanism is too difficult to use vs him. Fast moving targets, especially ones that can do a lot burst damage, are rough for AAR builds because they do have to remain stationary. The beam requires you to channel it so you have to stand still and you can’t recast your other DPS abilities without breaking the beam. The sorcerer has a couple of nice abilities that don’t need to be recast a lot in the thermite mines and devastation, but not much else. (maybe TSS will be better after the buff, PRM will still probably require too many points to build with AAR). Once they are up (mostly devastation) you have to break the beam to recast. So you loose DPS from the beam, or you lose DPS for not having your devastation going… That beam also takes time to build up before it starts so you can’t even take little “pot shots” with it here and there as it take too long to build up. Fab is just too hard to hit with the beam without putting myself too far in harms way. TD does help so I can spam mirror, but mirror is really the only skill that can take advantage of TD and the loss in DPS from other constelations don’t make up for it as it is still not enough time to kill Fabius.
Its one modifier skill though, is really pointless, especially late game. The crit damage is the only thing it has going for it. The flat vitality damage helps out Warlocks maybe…if they build in some vitality damage too… The 65% Fire/Aether damage (at 12/12) when you’re already at 1000% is really isn’t that significant. The beam itself also scales poorly late game. I think this is mostly due the fact it is one of the main skills used that does not use WD. WD helps a lot of skills scale into late game. Without it you miss out on a lot of flat damage from aura’s, skills, constellations and gear (and the weapon you’re using). IEE is must have for an AAR build for the energy regen, but you lose out on and the elemental damage it adds as there is no WD in the beam. A lot of devotions have added weapon damage components as well. All lost with AAR… WD, I believe, is the main reason why CT builds are so strong with an arcanist and PRM, TSS and AAR are lacking.
Making the mechanism easier to use, I feel, would be the most help, but probably the hardest to do…and still may need some DPS… A DPS boost and energy reduction (so you can gear for more DPS/survivability instead of energy regen) would be a nice step in the right direction. Adding WD would be awesome (even if was on disintegration as then the modifier would be a lot more useful) and really help with the end game scaling of the skill.
Increase the cost of SS by 10%-15% (at least) - skill is massively overpowered for how little it costs. I know this because I have played all nightblade variants possible and demolished all nemeses with them. I can even post videos of me killing Ultimate Fabius in < 15 seconds with no pants…yeah, you got that right - no PANTS, man !
Add weapon damage to disintegration (16% WD at lvl 1, increases at 2% per level and 1% at ultimate lvl).
What does removing the caster weapon (offhand) do? Allow you to DW to increase WD?
Are there any “casters” that can hang with good melee builds that is not DoT oriented? Maybe a vitality conjurer? Never played one so don’t really know… The one listed in the build compendium still utilizes falcon swoop…
Lot of focus on how weak AAR is…but are there any really strong “caster” skills that don’t use WD somewhere? Devastation does good damage, but it is not a “main” skill. People don’t build around it, it is a support skill people add for extra damage and AEO… From what I’ve been reading it appear “casters” are generally significantly weaker than melee builds… This seems to most be related to end game where WD skills can really scale up… I think the lack of WD on Caster abilities appears to be a general issue with most caster skills, not just AAR… That is just my observations… I know there are much more knowledgeable and experienced players out there. Maybe my observations are wrong… I’m sure there are a couple of caster builds that can compare, but it seems that % is going to be small…
You’re correct on the weapon damage lacking for casters. Only CT has any meaningfull amount of it. Adding weapon damage to more spells though raises other issues, like leeching health from half a screen away in complete safety just to name one.
Yet this is not a problem with pistol or rifle builds (or DEE or PB)? Not having WD% on skills creates more problems than benefits created. It makes gear upgrades pretty underwhelming, it locks them out of a lot of interesting stats/devotions, and inherently makes them scale slower since once you cap cast speed, +skills are your only significant source of damage improvement and these are much rarer than flat damage that WD% skills get to use (in addition to +skills). Yes they can balance around this scaling, but they’re not really, and why create all that extra work? Most importantly, it is VERY confusing to new players why their AAR or PRM build doesn’t benefit at all from life steal stats or the Eel devotion’s 20% resist reduction for instance.
So there are no real casters that can hang with a melee build for end game clear speed?
Looking at the build compendium thread…there are actually only a handful of build out there focus on non-WD skills… Course only Occ, Arc and Demo (although Demo still has the firestrike line) have decent skills without WD…
Looks like an AAR build may actually be one of the strongest non-DoT caster builds out there… Would be kinda sad if one of the strongest caster skills out there is also considered too weak compared to melee builds…
Let me first say this to get it out of the way: at this point in the game I couldn’t care less about AAR balance because…
a) I have every legendary item in the game (including around 15 Mad Queen Claws that I am giving for free);
b) I can craft whatever I want and whenever I want => I don’t trade (in fact I give legendary items if you are a nice guy);
c) 80% of my roster consists of nightblade related characters;
d) I have every achievement on Steam.
As such, what I will write here are not the words of a sore loser. I can’t actually envy or hate Blademaster players or DoT build players because I AM such a player and have been so for a very long time. So pls, don’t think that what I write here is Aesop fable 101 - you know what I mean…the fox and the grapes scenario. Unlike the “silent masters” who laugh at the new players that report the fact that casters suck and reply sarcastically with “learn2play noob”, I decided to be the good guy for once and discuss the ‘caster problem’ objectively.
In GD there are three types of casters:
Cast speed casters - the best builds here are AAR Warlock/Sorceror, DEE Warlock, CT Battlemage/Sorceror and, ofc, Phantasmal Blades Spellbreaker. With the exception of the Spellbreaker, none of these can even hold a candle to a poison WH in terms of clear speed - which is, as I said, the worst “assassin” type class.
What is even worst is the fact that Time Dilation does basiscally nothing for these guys so 90% of cast speed casters builds are pure trash. FACT !
Summoners - contrary to popular belief, pet conjurers and warlocks are in fact casters. The only difference is that their “nukes” walk on legs or fly. Pet Master builds are doing o.k. ofc…but don’t expect “lol” Fabius times from them. They also require an enormous amount of patience to gear up - perhaps just as much as a Blademaster.
Cooldown casters - generally speaking these guys are at the bottom of the barrel. The only thing that keeps them floating for now is Time Dilation. Before that you could only make two single builds work, namely Focused Gaze Warlock or Witch Hunter AND bleed Conjurer.
Let me put things into perspective here:
i) Vitality Conjurer - worst mage in the game in terms of damage.
ii) Trozan Druid (with full set) - world record Fabius kill: 52 seconds. Blademaster: 5.
iii) Doom Bolt build - nonexistent.
iv) Grenado spam - nonexistent.
and it goes on and on
=> You are right, my friend, casters are trash in this game and that’s why I play only a summoner build and a phantasmal blade spellbreaker. Without Time Dilation, category (3) does not even exist…unless ofc you are a “Fifty Shades of Grey” fan
