albrecht's aether ray needs buffing

My character
I made a Chaos/Aether Warlock (level 85, hardcore, Clairvoyant set, Blood Orb of Cthon, aetherreach, black star of deceit, among other things). My Chaos/aether damage is great… Have vitality built up enough that my Devastation and Doom bolt are useful abilities.

My Gripe
Albrecht’s aether ray is not a useful ability. I made this character to make AAR work, but it falls flat. This is particularly true on Ultimate, where it is stupid to play a squishy caster who stands in place to cast AAR.

The fact that one must be stationary, and then there’s a delay in the casting animation, makes the ability extremely slow and clumsy to wield.

The damage is good… but the fact that it’s limited to single target kills it. Mobs surround you while you try to beam down one at a time.

Repeatedly I’ve re-specced max Aether ray & disintegration to try to make it work, and repeatedly I’ve been disappointed. Even with great legendary gear, it’s meh.

My build runs far better and clears areas way faster when i de-spec AAR and put the skill points into other places. Landing good devastations and locking the mob dead-center in the devastation with olexra’s flash freeze seems to be what caster Warlock does best.

My friends told me AAR was bad, I said it just needed the right equipment and build. Well after dozens of hours on my warlock, I’m wrong, AAR is underpowered and needs some buffing.

My Solution
There’s a lot of routes to make AAR better.

  1. beam charges up and does incrementally more damage
  2. AOE splash damage in a circle
  3. AOE splash damage in a cone-shaped area behind the point of beam contact
  4. Minor damage increases with minor mana cost decreases
  5. Beam splits upon contact into several smaller beams that strike nearest enemies for less damage

Thanks for hearing me out. I don’t play my warlock much because without AAR being good enough to be fun on Ultimate Hardcore, I never achieved the player experience I was looking for :frowning:

Channeling skills will always suck in OHKO-happy environment.

Aether Ray receives a decent buff in Project Cornucopia.

I saw that and thought: why doesn’t the base build have this.