Actualy with enough CDR spellbinder or Sorcerer may facetank all content and dont even need to move anywere :roll: Lack of defence has nothing to do with AAR.
When you have enough cdr to have permanently on mirror or mark of torment I guess it works, but that’s only spellbinder, how do you facetank like that on sorcerer? On the main campaign it’s not a big problem, but in the expansion the cc provided by demolitionis and OFF do not work nearly well enough. Maybe if you went full physique, that could explain why you’re having trouble with energy regen…
Just to get a sense of how channeled skills in general are doing in the game, how do people feel about Flames of Ignaffar? That one arguably has Endless Flames (i.e. constant chance of making victims fumble) in its favor. Then again, I get the feeling that the inquisitor is a little more durable than the arcanist or necromancer…
I will own that neither Aether Ray nor Drain Essence have much appeal to me, but I think that’s mostly because my usual desire for a skill is crowd control–and neither of those have any real sign of that.
What about changing the way that it channels. Would the engine allow change that makes it a casted skill that lasts for X (1or 2) seconds, from origin location ( or even better, continuing to originate from your character, as you move) towards a predestined target location… But then would allow you to move/Dodge before casting another X second duration?
What about a set that focuses on the vanilla AAR that has a final bonus where after you channel for some arbitrary time, when you release the beam it continues to channel for 2-3 seconds from the orginal position? I have no idea if this is possible, though. It would probably be easier to make the bonus the shotgunning ray someone mentioned early on.
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I got that reference.
Thats actually my preferred fix IMPO (in my pleb opinion).
With spellbinder alternating Mark of Torment and Mirror of Ereoctes would require a CRD% of around 50% with 12 points in Mirror of Ereoctes.
For a Sorcerer, even with a huge amount of CDR it only seem possible if use the hourglass constellation. But that would require to give up a fairly large chuck of dps to get. Unless you mean alternating blast shield and Mirror of Ereoctes. That could work(though blast shield lacks the ability to protect you against huge single chunks of damage) but would but would require a similar amount of CRD%.
The amount of CDR% you need for these kind of setups seems unobtainable without a insane amount of good rare items and/or insanely good legendary/unique item rolls.
Frankly it seem irrelevant to this discussion, as the average player can hardly be expected to have these item nor should they be required to play such builds.
Weird how people keep asking for something they want. If it has been beaten to death for a couple of years, then the devs have been wrong for a couple of years.
I wonder what lies behind their reluctance to empower Aether Ray. All that’s coming to mind is possibly fear that it would eclipse the other Arcanist skills in popularity. Although Sky Shard and Flash Freeze have crowd control capability in their favor (not sure what Callidor’s Tempest has…). Aether Ray is just raw damage–not the most exciting thing to me, no matter how high it is. (“Cool”? What’s that?)
Well I got to agree with wolf here. Been playing my sorcerer,got to lvl 94 last night,and it’s the same old problem I find with most caster’s. Your just to damn squishy. Low armor,low hp…relying on the usual crutch:mirror and flash freeze. Hopeing the next pack of monsters isn’t immune to freeze or worrying if mirror is still on cooldown as a screen full of flesh hulks dog pile you.
As for the beam itself I think for pure single target damage it’s still actually pretty strong. The problem lies in the aoe which is zero, and why this skill is a nightmare in crucibal, unless you rely on another crutch of the arcanist:devastation. Sure you could link a certain devotion proc or two to the ray for some aoe but where is the fun and build deversity in that? I mean you pretty much have to take tree of life if you don’t want to be energy starved so right off the bat you are limited how to build your character.
Here are 3 things I think this skill desperately needs:
#1 Let this skill pierce like obliteration. PLS. Either a new item or new skill modifier.
#2 Adjust the energy cost of the skill so taking tree of life isn’t mandatory. Will open up more ways to build via devotion tree
#3 like wolf said give the ray some flat damage to allow you to life leech. This will greatly help with things like crucibal so your not instantly destroyed getting dog piled by a screen of monsters when things are on cooldown
While I agree not everybuild should be able to do everything I wanna give an example with two situations where AAR rly struggles (I am on HC ultimate)
- fighting those 3 hero wild boars
- Main mission: For the people -retake the base in steel cap district. This made stop playing that char for a while.
AOE doesnt mean alot in this game.
In my chat last night while I was streaming this topic came up and a few interesting ideas came up, mostly about the transmuter.
I’m going to edit this into the main post, but I’ll have it here as well.
Give AAR the weapon damage by default on the ability, then for the transmuter, have it completely convert to Chaos as usual but remove the weapon damage. This way, with the Black Flame set, its tankiness would be under control and you’d have more balanced life steal.
Someone also recommended that for the transmuter, you could half the length of the beam and make it pierce, in addition to converting the aether to chaos.
There was also the idea of giving the beam a damage boost by default, then having the transmuter drop the damage increase but the beam would pierce int he chaos version.
Something from me, maybe if the weapon would come from an item, a weapon may be better, given how stacking the idea with Wrath of the Ascendant or Mindwarp or Warpfire might be too strong.
Just more ideas bubbling up from the fanbase.
FoI (not typing that name every time heh) has built in area of effect, like you would expect of a flame thrower. So right there it’s already much, much more user friendly. And the final modifier has fumble on it, which on such a rapid fire aoe skill triggers ALL THE TIME. Pretty sure you can facetank Fabius with it, will report back once I leveled the character to 100, in like a month…
And then to put the cherry on top it has flat physical resist reduction, so it’s instantly ready to use with Beronath Reforged. Variety is good.
Compare with AAR which has … nothing listed here. Think I’ll stick with FoI for a while (I have a 85 AAR sorc from way back, never touch him).
One thing I’ve noticed is that people want weapon damage applied to Aether Ray. But…is that really in tune with how the arcanist is supposed to work? I’ve noticed that none of the arcanist skills, except for Elemental Exchange (which is explicitly a weapon enchantment), look at the weapon. Yet I don’t think I’ve heard anyone complain about that for Sky Shard, Devastation, or Flash Freeze. (Or maybe I haven’t looked hard enough…) So I wonder if we need to look elsewhere for how to amplify Aether Ray, without breaching the intended flavor of the class.
On the other hand, given that you need a caster off-hand to use Aether Ray in the first place, maybe there could be a way to incorporate the off-hand’s item level, for lack of a better variable, into the damage equation?
PRM is the only other primary attack on Arcanist. Those other skills are all 2ndary skills, which gives you time to run between use and even PRM lets you fire and run. AAR requires you to channel for half a second before it does anything, so running and stopping isn’t a good option.
I’ve found AAR requires you to find a spot which chokes the targets together, and have high enough damage to kill one mob at a time before they reach you. No other build requires such positioning to work and you can’t always get that positioning.
Edit:
Another reason weapon damage might be brought up a lot, is at one point, it had a weapon modifier on it. I think it started at 9% and may have been on a transmuter.
I also have a question for those who do want a weapon modifier at a low percent. Have the changed back their rule where the percentage of ADCTH is additionally reduced by the percentage applied to the skill? If so, a low percentage weapon damage would do nothing to help heal.
A year or more ago, they changed it so that if a weapon skill only applied 10% weapon damage, then the ADCTH would be lowered to 10% of the original, and since the weapon damage was only 10%, you effectively ended up with 1% ADCTH.
1% of your ADCTH isn’t going to do much.
Sky Shard, Devastation, and Flash Freeze are all cooldown abilities that go with a build and two of those are never used as main attacks. (Also, don’t get me started on OFF not working on have the stuff in the expac.) Plus, Devastation gets weapon damage from one of the new Battlemage sets.
Also, the flamethrower deals weapon damage. It’s a magic flamethrower, same pose, no weapon involved in the casting. It has weapon damage. The cat’s out of the bag on channeled abilities having this function.
Hell, you can even use a shield if you’re so inclined with the flamethrower and there are plenty of mage-oriented shields in the game.
AAR would, presumably, return that damage per tick, so even having 1% life steal would be a huge boon to the sustainability to the ability. You also don’t want it to be too high because you still want the enemies to hurt the person using the ability.
I’m not asking for AAR to break the game guys.
I just want it to WORK.
Also, another idea someone had in my chat last night.
Put the weapon damage on Aethereach or give the Mythical Aethereach its proc back and put the weapon damage on that.
Also, another idea someone had in my chat last night.
Put the weapon damage on Aethereach or give the Mythical Aethereach its proc back and put the weapon damage on that.
I like the idea of aethereach proc restoration. Aether chain lightning is fun.
No, you missunderstood me. You get 1% of the ADCTH that your weapon would do with a normal hit. That would make 25% ADCTH would behave like 0.25% ADCTH. I had some experience trying to make a Phantasmal Blade build after the change, and you are even firing off 5 blades at a time, and it was worthless.
Personally, AAR should replace or have a similar skill tree as PRM with more added effects. Slows, stuns, piercing, damage buffing, etc.