[Feedback] Seal of Skies vs. The Arcane Tempest

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
1

I was comparing these two chain lightnings by efficiency. On a lightning based Warder, Chain Lightning from Seal of Skies dealt an average damage of 10k per crit (not a level 100 character, still leveling) and Aether Lightning from Arcane Tempest dealt average of 6.5k per crit.

To compare those, The Arcane Tempest has stats of:

And Seal of Skies:

The problem kind of lies in the damage, since Chain Lightning (CL) has more base damage and WD. The only advantage of Aether Lightning (AL) is 7 targets max instead of 3, as in CL. Seal of Skies is very easy to get, since you just craft it whenever you want and put it to your weapon, while AL needs to be farmed. My idea is to increase the damage of AL or completely remove the hit cap. Examples:

75 Energy cost
Affects all targets
45% Weapon damage
105 - 340 lightning damage
240 aether damage
+35% crit damage

or

75 Energy cost
Affects up to 7 targets
55% Weapon damage
190 - 340 lightning damage
100 - 320 aether damage
+35% crit damage

NOTE: The Arcane Tempest’s Aether Lightning should be way stronger because you obtain it by collecting a full set and it takes 3 places from your inventory, while Seal of Skies buffs your physical damage to lightning and takes only one place in your weapon enchantment slot.

I chose to set the aether damage to a random value because buffing it straight up to 320 while also buffing the lightning damage could be a bit too strong. You can still change both damages in both Lightnings to aether/physical (for AL/CL respectively) using elemental -> aether/physical conversion from items, and then CL will still have a better score because it’d be 100% physical and AL would still have 24 - 36% lightning damage due to its own conversion (not a problem in certain builds where you can reach over 1700% elemental damage and around 3000 aether damage).

Summarizing, AL is too weak in comparison to CL and I think the best way of buffing it would be the first example I wrote where you remove the target cap, since straight up buffing damage could have its downsides if we talk about being too stron. In certain builds, where an Arcanist with elemental conversion or massive elemental and aether damage would annihilate everything by only holding one button.

2

USER_NAME_01, glad to hear you are also interested in Arcane Tempest.

Some buff for the set would be nice, but I have big concern that Crate will do it. Arcane Tempest was already buffed in patch 1.0.5.0. Probably this topic was the reason to provide some love to the set. However the proc from set, as you also mentioned, is still “weaker” compared to the skill from the component.

3

I was interested because I wanted something that can clear nicely and had decent damage, but Chain Lightning doesn’t provide that much of a clear. I don’t say Chain Lightning is bad, just bad in clearing. Seal of Destruction’s Stormfire clear is amazing, but had lower damage (well balanced, imo) and Chillspikes from Seal of the Night has a nice burst damage to one enemy. O, I chose to use Beronath to maximize my damage, therefore talking about all of these elemental seals here (could also suggest to reduce a bit of the penetration chance in Chillspikes, because it sometimes outscales the other elemental seals by a whole lot). But we’re talking about Arcane Tempest here. :stuck_out_tongue:

4

The set is just not worth it because of the cost of taking 3 jewelry slots. It also lacks cast speed, a stat often found on these slots, which is kind of strange for a set that grants a no cooldown skill. The little bit you get (6%) is not enough, you can easily get 30% from these slots.

Also your idea of hitting every target is hilarious but broken. Imagine it in the crucible :wink:

5

Aether Lightning?
More like Vaal Arc amirite.

6

I actually didn’t think about Crucible while sending that idea. I mostly thought about something uncommon/rare. Well, I think buffing the damage would be the only good idea here (and maybe items stats).