Most of natural RR skills in masteries are either auras, or mass casts. There are also pseudo-pets - Thermite Mines and Wind Devils. But they live for long and also apply RR to an area.
Devouring Swarm is an oddity. It needs to be cast constantly, against any opponent you face. This is compensated with bigger RR numbers but if you are not focused on dealing dmg with the swarm and take it just for RR - the gameplay with it is very annoying.
I always thought Swarm would be more interesting and comfortable to play with as a pet, much like Wind Devil. And people like pets.
I understand it’s a radicle change so another way to improve the experience with the skill is to change the existing properties: double the duration and the size, maybe change the movement pattern to spiral, if possible. All of that at a cost of some RR, of course.
What do you guys think? I personally hate the skill and avoid playing bleed/vit Shaman for that reason.
Any change to Swarm design would be welcome. It has annoying cast animation, its debuff is barely visible and its radius and duration are just awful. One of the lowest QoL spells.
It would be great if it had Pox mechanics. Cast a Swarm of deadly insects that jump from target to target leaving debuffs behind. And make it more visible.
I agree that Devouring Swarm could use some love. It could even use some visual upgrade, because currend dim red blob is pretty uninspiring to play with. I always wanted to look it similar to Shadow Demon’s wave from Dota2, which was damn cool.
I don’t think it should be reworked as a pseudo-pet, it would be enough to just make projectile fly further, it’s radius bigger and buff duration scaling. As for increased cone I don’t think it’s possible since the skill is basically a projectile that inflicts debuff on hit. At best one can try to give it some fragmentation, but that’d require toning down it’s built in ADCtH.
I think it’s ok for vit. Most vit shamans don’t really have much to spam.
But I wouldn’t mind it having a spread. It could have a limited number of enemies that can be affected by one cast - just so that it’s different from Pox
Devouring Swarm as a pseudo-pet - not a good idea. Better to take RR from from it and add it to the Wendigo Totem, leave the Devouring Swarm as a spam skill to start the game.
Can’t have that type of RR. It’s also 60%+ vitality resistance reduction and i doubt Wendigo Totem would have it even if it was allowed to have it.
So with this thread in mind I had a bit on an inspiration to play with modding tools. I’d like to take back a few things - fragmentation is impossible for this template. Multiprojectile like Phantasmal Blades is also impossible. It’s a very rigid template with little to no custiomization.
But after toying around with projectile itself I found a setting that makes projectile scale in size as it travels, and it seems to be increasing it’s hitbox too, effectively making it a cone-shaped wave like you guys want it.
Also, default range turned out to be okay, but the travel speed of the projectile is rather slow, so if you’re throwing it at enemies ahead and then charging at them with mobility rune you’d arrive faster. I increased the speed a bit, but then the range just didn’t feel right, so I ended up increasing range too.
The main problem of Devouring Swarm is the inability to spread after it gets the pass-through. So if that’s change and Swarm behave like Bloody Pox even if RR is reduced, will be welcomed sight.
Spreading is just not how it works. You throw a projectile, any target hit by it gets a CoF cast on it, with 2.5m radius. It does properly affect targets after pass through. The reason it feels bad to use is because collision hitbox of the projectile itself is smaller than that, so it misses often.
The main issue would be that the RR would have to see some significant decrease with such improvements.
It’s already 2x most any other RR skill at soft cap. So you might expect this to be cut in half with significant QoL.
However, at hard cap you only see another 10 RR iirc (for 10 skill overcap), which is consistent with any other skill.
So, the thread probably needs to discuss how much RR one is willing to give up for suggested improvements to distance and duration, and possibly spread.
Vitality - yes, unusually high. E.g. thermites are -40% softcapped with same 16 points needed.
Bleeding - no, CoF actually gives more on softcap with less points.
It is worth taking into account that enemies in general are more resistant to Vitality damage than any other damage type and Shaman compared to other popular masteries for Vitality damage in Occultist and Necromancer doesn’t have as much readily available flat damage to convert on weapon-based skills like Bone Harvest.
If Swarm got it’s Vitality resistance reduction lowered to account for QoL, I wouldn’t expect it to be too high; 10% less RR at 16/16 and 26/16 (with the scaling adjusted to work) seems fine. Really though, I just think the 3-6s duration scaling with rank needs bumping up to around 5-10s just like CoF and the 2.5m radius needs an increase as well (2.5m is smaller than Grenado for Dreeg’s sake )
My thought on the matter is, the skill itself is not the greatest, the debuff is ok and the damage is … ok. When combined with set, it is awesome! Not to great against anything the has a time limit but otherwise I enjoy my little shaman! Great for clearing numbers! I can see why it’s not a fan favorite, 16 points into a skill that has little damage, good debuff and mass consumption of mana! It’s not a quick kill weapon and in end game it is just a debuff with no damage unless you use any item that increases it’s damage… https://www.grimtools.com/calc/M2gj55WN
Not sure what to do to improve it, maybe make it a 12 point skill instead? I don’t know.
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