I am talking about this ring. A very solid ring, great stats for an auto-attacker, with bonuses to Fire Strike line and Righteous Fervor line. But bonus to Maelstrom?
Thing is, Maelstrom is a purely caster’s skill, third nod of Wind Devil. Good chunk of its damage comes from Electrocute. Malmouth Arcane Seal doesn’t even offer any %Electrocute support or casting speed, it’s purely an auto-attacker ring.
Why am I making a thread about one stat on a faction ring? Thing is, that bonuses to Maelstrom are very scarce. As you can see, items with +Maelstrom are mostly weapons and off-hands. And since most Wind Devil builds are going to be based either on Trozan set or new Cyclone set - all those slots are taken. So if you want to hard cap Maelstrom you are forced either to take this ring + Stormcage Legguards (suboptimal pants for most lightning builds due to their stats) or this ring + Stormbearers (also suboptimal boots for most Lightning builds), or pants + boots (this way you loose a lot of important stats you could get in boot + pants slots).
My suggestion:
move this bonus to any other Coven Ring or any other Lighnting ring
add bonus to Storm Touched or Tenacity of the Boar instead
They are not the worst legendaries out there. Pants could use physical resist. But overall personally I never take them in my lightning builds since they always seem like third best option. I guess I will have to take those boots in my Lightning Cyclone Vindicator tho. Not the end of the world, but what can you do.
Out of three items that give bonuses to Maelstrom, ring is the worst offender for caster builds, other two are bearable.
I meant is there a +skills you would add or swap out on the pants to make it the best option for a specific kind of lightning build, without making it displace the other good pants?
Does it need the phys resist AND a +skills change? This is the sort of stuff Zantai could do quickly and would actually start diversifying the game. Maybe one of those conduits converts something to lightning and it can get plus skills on these pants? I don’t know.
And yes I think I have used those boots situationally on a character or two, so that’s why I only asked about the pants because I agree they fit no good role.
I really can’t say about the pants too much. First of all, I don’t know shit about retaliation meta, is electrocute retaliation a thing? Second of all, are those pants used on Mortar builds? On Stun Jacks builds?
I can say tho that %Spirit stat is only good for Arcanist based classes and I can’t see any kind of Arcanist using those pants. So everyone else would benefit much more from flat Spirit - so they can equip caster off-hands (needed for Stun Jacks and Mortar builds) more easily.
Another thing I can add is that if electrocute retaliation is not really a thing in Grim Dawn, change it Physical resist.
Maybe someone else can make suggestions about skills on those pants.
I just want some proper caster rings to have Maelstrom bonus and Malmouth Arcane Seal get some relevant autoattacker bonus.