Update 3: thanx to the feedback, I managed to overcome my laziness and included the itemization into the agenda. I also restructured the feedback accounting by splitting it into 4 categories. Erased my own opinion justification and included it into the general accounting. Enjoy!
Hi!
The next expansion is a possibility to make underdog damage types more represented. Let’s try to figure out which ones need more skills and powers.
What is your opinion, people? What damage types deserve having more skills in masteries or celestial powers or maybe better itemization?
According to the feedback on 29/03/2018, more support is required in (the forum does not want me make a table nor upload an image, therefore such are the statistics):
Update 1: corrected item 3 and removed item 5 (Physical). For too long I have not played as a Shaman :).
Update 2: started tracking the feedback.
Update 3: thanx to the feedback, I managed to overcome my laziness and included the itemization into the agenda. I also restructured the feedback accounting by splitting it into 4 categories. Erased my own opinion justification and included it into the general accounting. Enjoy!
Definitely Vitality Decay, still confused as to why no celestial power deals Vitality Decay damage. Or why Hungering Void doesn’t also add % Vitality Decay.
Are you sure about Pierce? There are many skills in Nightblade, Soldier and Inquisitor and a bit in Demolitionist and even Necromancer.
What are Aether skills?
Drain essence - aether part is smaller then Vitality and Vitality Decay.
Reap Spirit - it is a purely pet skill, dps is too small.
Syphon souls - a transmuter that replaces Vitality with Aether. Well, if you play Necromancer you will probably have high Vitality damage anyway.
Spectral Binding/Wrath - a nice skill. Unfortunately, the animations of Binding are the worst in the game.
Callidor’s tempest - fire part is more significant than aether.
Devastation - fire part is more significant than aether.
Albrecht’s Aether Ray - ok.
Panetti’s Replicating Missile - Aether damage is secondary to Elemental.
Reckless Power - ok.
Harbinger of Souls - ok, but the buff to aether is not so serious as to Vitality and Vitality Decay.
Fabric of Reality - a semi-waisted passive.
Storm Box of Elgoloth - Ok, although you cannot convert Electrocute.
Death Sentence - just 1 or 2 stats out of 4 make sense in aether builds.
To sum up, depending on a mastery combination, you can have
1 or 2 toggle skills: Spectral Binding/Wrath and Harbinger of Souls or Reckless Power;
1 main attack: Drain essence or Albrecht’s Aether Ray or Panetti’s Replicating Missile;
3 or 4 other active skills: Syphon souls, Callidor’s tempest, Devastation, Storm Box of Elgoloth or Death Sentence. Aether component is secondary in almost all of them.
I think it is not enough and certainly not close to any elemental damage type.
The most troubled ones, to me at least, look like pierce and then chaos. Perhaps vitality decay but you know the blood orb does exist and fixes that particular problem nicely.
I would still like a few caster armors with this damage type. Trying to make oddball physical casters with nothing but heavy armor is … annoying.
I laughed so hard, 120.000 per hit are very small damage, indeed.
Now, jokes aside, vitality decay is worst dot damage in whole game. Yes, i saw that devs are trying to make some support to this type of damage, but we are still there - the dot damage that do no deal at least 100k damade per second is not dot, its a useless piece of shit. Already only that now almost the only way to make vit. decoy work is to convert into it the poison through the bloody sphere of the chthon is a very bad diagnosis.
I think it is a bit another story. There are enough physical skills in masteries and constellations, but the gear does not support a “caster” style. I wanted to make a physical or pierce caster until I understood I had never seen an off-hand for these damage types. I think introducing caster armours and off-hands for the physical damage group (cunning-related) would enrich the game.
Uhh, did you actually try these skills cause some of your reasoning looks pretty odd.
I assume you are not taking into itemization into account? Cause that’s a big part of things
CT, Devastation - Fire being more dominant than Aether is a non factor. Even w/o item based conversion it is arguably the most powerful skill available to Aether casters
PRM - A single item can enable Aether PRM
Spectral Binding - What does animation have to do with anything? It is a source of Resistance Reduction and has the highest flat aether damage potential
Siphon Souls - Why would I go Vitality damage if I pick necromancer? There are Acid Necros, Cold Necros, Physical Necros and Aether Necros. Aether based Siphon Souls is a very strong heal skill
Drain Essence - It literally has a dedicated set for it. Not to mention conversion.
Besides having an impressive itemization that already adds to build diversity. Aether related constellations are very strong and are in the vicinity of some of the most powerful Tier-3 constellations
You can get to 0,5 secs through skill modifiers and CDR. Energy cost reduction and skill modifiers with energy cost reduction mostly patch up the high energy cost.
This is not me being a dick, but you seem to be ignorant how some damage types are greatly enhanced through items and devotions. Mastery skills are not the only thing to determine the representation of a damage type.
You are absolutely right about items, however it is not a factor I considered in the OP because the loot is not something you can control. It is random. I believe the damage types should first be balanced in masteries and constellations. And I am quite ignorant about items and not ignorant about devotions.
Dude your baseline is way too low. Anything below 150k ticks is a shit DoT type.
And yeah, the Gargabol pistol doesn’t exactly help with the issue. The duration is good but Uroboruuk’s reaping is still weapon locked unlike the other DoT relics. Then there’s the issue of devotions not supporting Decay properly. We also need some Decay procs
I tried a full BH (Dread) focused Decay catser and it was shit. I couldn’t maintain 100k ticks properly
If we go by this logic and Aether gets more support then game will become more unbalanced. Pierce needs much more help. And decay still sucks. I’d say these two damage types require more support.
Except that’s not how it works. Everything contributes to something. Some damage types have better mastery support, others item support and others devotion support.
Asking for every damage type to have similar mastery support would also mean that item support and devotion support would be affected. Because those would need to be balanced too because some clearly have better support in those areas than others.
I don’t see a problem in giving more mastery support to one damage type, more devotion support to another and more item support to the third - or in any combination. Or none at all in case of elemental.
If a build is not fun without a very specific itemization, it is not fun for most players which is not good. In particular, conversion is a rare item attribute and therefore unreliable.
Aether and Physical are strongest damage types at the moment.
One part of the problem of Vitality Decay is that game often uses Vitality damage per second (like in Wendigo Constellation proc) instead of Vitality decay, which is basically the same thing.
My problem with vitality/vitality decay is that vitality damage overall seems to be kinda weak. I have a conjurer caster, and despite biggest RR stacking in game it still feels bit underpowered.
I’m a little bit on a different note here to simplify the game’s core (something I doubt they’ll do in an expansion, but might be useful for a sequel).
I never understood why they separared the dots into different damage types alltogether. Why not just make fire damage one type of damage, both for dots (currently called Burn) and for instant? The same applies to all other damage types and their associated dots.
This would make solving certain problems (like the vitality decay one lacking support) a lot easier.
On this note, I am also not a big fan of pet damage. It feels counterintuitive that if I get increased fire damage, that my Hellhound doesn’t also benefit from that. After all, it is a spell I summoned. But that’s a whole different story and I understand that broadly speaking, pet builds would be impossible to pull off because you can’t stack mso many damage types (unless if we had items that converted pets damage tpyes :D).
You’re not the first person to suggest this idea. They are separate presumably because direct damage and DoT damage function differently, even things like Wendigo’s Mark that deals direct damage over time is different in how it works to DoT damage.
