I would much rather they leave it as a Chaos conversion. I’ll just copy my post from the other thread changing a touch for not quoting.
The Inquisitor already has a stack of stuff that synergises with cold and elemental powers and masteries. As was just pointed out above, synergy with Occultist is in comparison lacking so this is possibly one of the few reasons to max out Occultist in that combination.
As for theme, this is the lore description of Inquisitors…
[i]Trained by the secretive Luminari Order, inquisitors were officially sanctioned by the Erulan Emperor to hunt down and eliminate all eldritch and arcane threats to the empire. This dangerous and thankless duty necessitated some unconventional means of combat, including using the powers of their very enemies against them.
For you see, while most artifacts and relics were deemed too dangerous and in turn ended up locked away in the impenetrable Vault of the Luminari, duty sometimes overcame safety. By studying these powerful relics, the Luminari have learned how to replicate them for their own purposes, in a way turning the very tools once used against humanity to instead defend it. It takes many years of rigorous training before an inquisitor is granted access to this arsenal, and for good reason. A fully initiated inquisitor is as deadly as she is unpredictable.[/i]
Getting hold of an ancient artifact and then deciding to to disobey your teachings to harness the forbidden power is something the Luminari seems extremely worried about. Presenting the option to play a character this way is a very nice touch and 100% in theme.
Personally I am looking forward to trying this out with Gaze of the Guardian and Chaos strike.
Poison/Acid has nothing to do with the forbidden knowledge aspect. Before you were making an argument about the thematic design, then the next moment you are suggesting something that runs contrary to it.
“yet another” is misleading imo, replace it with “a second”, which is accurate, and it sounds a bit different.
And is there really so much difference between a channeled skill and something like Ice Spike? It still only hits periodically. Since, as far as I can tell, this is a short range area effect skill, I feel it is significantly different from AAR. I feel your argument is exaggerating the “channeled” aspect.
I want it to be anything but Chaos, both because we’ve already got AAR and other good Chaos spells and attacks… Also because, as I’ve said in other threads, it makes NO sense with how Chaos has been described in canon.
Nobody uses an evil force that is KNOWN for turning everything it touches evil… Unless they ARE evil. No way in hell the Luminari would use a power noted for corrupting people. They’d just end up with a bunch of corrupted Inquisitors, and they aren’t that stupid as to let that happen.
You’re right, remember that one poison user mentioned in the lore who was hailed as a hero by the luminari and the followers of Menhir. What? No? Wrong fiction?
Also,
Firstly, you haven’t seen Ignafar if you don’t think it’s a channeled skill.
Secondly, the entire thread is about making the transmuter anything but Chaos/Aether. Cold was my pwn personal suggestion since I am interested in more Cold spells
And now back to the poison part - if you recall Dreeg’s lore then either in notes/dialogues it was revealed that his current form “leaks” acidic blood and wherever it dripped no life would emerge in that place
It’s not entirely evil, but it’s certainly not gumdrops and icecream. And it most certainly is something an inquisitor would battle against
“Spray Acidic bile that ravages the land and bars any life from spawning wherever it falls” (Something like that, get it?)
The entire Good/Evil theme has been done before and is indeed great if done again but another AAR like skill with yet another AAR like transmuter isn’t very nice (imo).
If anything it makes more sense for the Inquisitor to have it than Arcanist but too late to change Arcanist (yes I am aware both Albrecht and Agrivix called upon the Eldritch Gods to harness Chaos energy but Arcanist doesn’t fit the “Moral Dilemma” theme in inquisitor
I’m also in the “anything but chaos” camp, but my vote goes to a poison conversion rather than cold conversion. Inquisitor, necromancer, arcanist, and nightblade have access to cold damage already whereas poison is more rare. Most cold skills are cooldown dependent rather than cast speed dependent though so I wouldn’t mind a cold conversion, but poison needs some caster love as well
What is the real difference? You hold down the mouse or key on either one will keep firing (so long as it has no cooldown) doing damage and costing energy at regular intervals. I’m not trying to be snarky here, if there is some significant difference here that I am unaware of let me know.
As for poison fitting the lore as well, I don’t agree. Poison is a real life, non-magical thing. Are you suggesting that Poison is forbidden by the Luminari? There is some poison amongst Eldritch/Cthonian beings but it is not synonymous with them the same way as Chaos is. Nightblades use poison, Necromancers use poison, and so do spiders.
I never said it wasn’t a channeled skill. I said there is no great fundamental difference between a channeled skill and any attacking skill that doesn’t have a cooldown or excessive casting animation.
I’ll also just point out here that assuming the transmuter is mainly intended for the Inquisitor/Occultist combination, the Occultist already has a spammable poison attack. It doesn’t need another one.
There are already enough poison skills, there are already enough cold skills. And there will be more of each of those with the Necromancer.
Wow. You really…? Wow. Channeling skills require you to stand still to use them. Things like, say, Ice Spike… Don’t. So the skills are balanced accordingly. There’s NO kiting in a Channeling build, because you have to stand there, start the Channel, and THEN you’re doing damage. Again using your Ice Spike example… You cast it, and if it hits, it does damage. Done. You don’t need to stand there, no waiting, and kiting is not only possible, but often needed.
Nightblades use Poisoned weapons, no magic. Occultists call on the power of Dreeg to magically generate Poison. DREEG is forbidden by the Luminari, anything to do with the Three is forbidden. If the transmuter WAS changed to poison, you would be magically generating Poison by calling on Dreeg’s power in some fashion. Inquisitors fight BOTH Chthon and his cult, but ALSO Occultists and the Three. So any magically generated Poison is taboo to them, because it comes from Dreeg.
Also, using Necromancers as an example makes no sense, because Inquisitors don’t seem very fond of them. Not as bad as Kymon’s, AFAIK, but… They fight Void creatures, and people using magical poison, chaos, and summoned monstrosities. Do they actually sound like people who APPROVE of resurrecting the dead? If the Order wasn’t useful, and fairly self-monitoring, I’m pretty sure Creed wouldn’t want them anywhere near Homestead. He’s kinda desperate, so he’d deal, but that wouldn’t mean he’d be happy with it.
Really? USABLE ones? I can think of ONE Poison Skill that actually WORKS for a main damage source. And outside of items and a WHOLE lot of effort… NO Cold Skills.
Unless you’re counting everything that has even a small amount of Poison/Cold, or maybe Devotion Procs, or maybe bad Component skills that don’t work into Elite… Yeah, we really DON’T have much for those.
You click activating AAR and it will deal damage straight away. If you click once with Ice spike it will send out a single spike that deals some damage straight away. If you stand still activating Ice Spike it will send a series of ice spikes out. In both cases to achieve anywhere near optimum DPS you need to be standing still.
No, it does not. It has an initial cast time. KITING. It’s a big deal. It’s not an option with AAR, that initial cast time screws it up, you lose almost 100% of your DPS. With Ice Spike, you lose maybe half your DPS by kiting. Big difference.
Also, FTR… AAR hits about five times as often as Ice Spikes would at 200% cast speed. So there’s also THAT difference of Channeling to consider, it hits more. Helps for proc chances. Costs far more energy to make up for it, but it’s still worth considering, and affects your build.
The only actual poison caster skill is DEE. Blood pox is too weak to qualify, and converted Forcewave is too weak
Necromancer’s upcoming skill doesn’t have a lot of Poison to qualify as a major damage source
And for Cold skills, you are kidding right? There are literally three possible Cold Casters in GD right now even if I include item skills
Cold PB, Winter King’s Might, TSS
Again I am not against new chaos skills i just want the transmuter to do anything but Chaos conversion
As much as i’d love to see this we both know it’s too late to change AAR, not to only do they have to change the skill but a bunch of items that support it
Inquisitor is the far safer option
And if anything the AAR transmuter should’ve used Fire to Lightning from the start imo considering they gave us an Aether/Lightning constellation
While I definitely still like the idea of a cold transmuter (pretty sure I was one of the first ones to suggest it, after all), now that I have a better idea of how the new classes work I’m starting to warm up to the idea of the chaos transmuter a bit more.
Sure, we already have a chaos channeling skill, but the similarities pretty much end there. AAR hits a single target at any range for pure damage, while Ignaffar is a short-medium range AoE-ish attack which can also fumble enemies and reduce their physical resistance. Plus, Chaos/Lightning is a damage type we’ve always had quietly lurking in the background but without much support for, so this is a good opportunity for it to finally become a ‘proper’ damage combination.
While it’s true that cold casters aren’t in the best place right now, they do still have a few easily accessible options and are getting a few more in the xpac. But chaos casters aren’t exactly in the best place either, since most attacks that include chaos damage seem to have it as a secondary damage type which isn’t often that well supported. Caster builds that do use chaos as a main damage type usually have to jump through a bunch of awkward hoops to get it working, often in the form of Blood Orb or other gear with specific procs on it. Aside from AAR, I can’t think of any other predominantly-chaos caster skills from masteries that are good enough to be the main damage source in a build. Having a chaos-based caster skill for people to choose at low levels without requiring specific gear or components is definitely a good thing.
Also, it looks totally badass, so y’know.
But still, I’d definitely like to see a cold version of it, either as a second transmuter on the skill tree or via a legendary. An acid/poison version of it would be nice too, but at least we have the spammable skill on the Venomblade Amulet if nothing else (though I’ve never tried it, so it might be terrible for all I know).
-Venomblade Amulet skill is pretty bad, and we have zero major non DEE poison sources in classes. DIG and DAS are item granted.
An alternative major Poison skill that doesn’t say “Dreeg” would be nice.
Poison has little options, even if one were to build around Blood pox poison they’d still be stuck with the name “Dreeg” thanks to DiG and DAS
-Chaos on the other hand has support in Phantasmal Blades for Chaos/Vitality PB which can either be built around Vitality (JoV’s setup) or Chaos (Blood Orb)
Whatever you do it’ll deal decent amounts of Chaos damage.
There also exists Doom Bolt which is a major nuker with TD and you already mentioned AAR.
While most people are willing to ignore items but i’d still like to point out that Blood Orb will turn pretty much any Elemental skill to Chaos. And it is very likely whatever you create can be made to beat the end game if not solo gladiator
-Cold support is almost laughable imo, one side we have 6 second Rashalga destroyer SS build on the other hand we two class based skills that require significant work to build around - Cold PB and Cold TSS
WK Might is one of the best Cold Casters but it is item dependent
-I like the idea of Chaos Lightning/Vitality Lightning but a chaos transmuter is really a mood killer imo
I like the idea of two transmuters but then the question occurs how these transmuters interact with one another. Someone suggested adding weapon limitations (could work).
And Chaos Lightning support in flames looks weird if anything it should be more like Chain lightning. I mean we already call down Chaos Lightning through Doom Bolt so a Chain Lightning type skill fits the theme. I am sure they’ll figure it out since they did a pretty awesome job with Storm Box in terms of how unique the skill is
=Ignafar definitely isn’t another AAR imitation but having yet another Chaos transmuter is kinda stale.
I’d still say if synergy is the main reason then we could use more Acid/Poison diversity
-Just because something is destroying the content doesn’t mean it has good support.
If anything Cold, Poison, 2h builds in general severely lack diversity even if they are OP.
Chaos is suffering in the shield department while Siegebreaker is nice and all i’d prefer a Chaos Shield since we have one for Aether
Aether/Chaos generally have a massive advantage through conversions
But that’s my point exactly - even if it deals a decent amount of it, the chaos damage is just…there. Looking through Grim Tools, there are literally zero epic or legendary items that both support skills from the PB line and also offer bonuses to chaos damage. Heck, even rares seem to mostly focus on the cold and vitality side of things. While you can definitely find ways around it using JoV’s or the Blood Orb setup, it doesn’t change the fact that chaos damage seems like a massive afterthought that can only be built around by specifically choosing either chaos gear not designed for a PB build, or PB gear not designed for a chaos build. Even if the itemisation issue was fixed, chaos damage on PB would still feel left out due to the fact that it’s one of five damage types in PB, is located at the very end of the PB line and is the one which has absolutely no synergy with any other skills in Nightblade. In no way could I ever call PB a chaos-focused skill, and that’s what we’re lacking right now.
We need more early-game “pick up and play” chaos caster skills that can hold their own and have decent support from gear - we’re currently stuck with transmuted AAR and that’s it, which is costly and isn’t even properly available until near the end of the mastery bar anyway. Sure, there’s Blackwater Cocktail, but even that’s a predominantly-fire skill with some chaos damage thrown in half way down the line. Transmuted Ignaffar fills the void of “I am a chaos skill which looks like chaos, feels like chaos and mostly deals chaos damage while being available reasonably early on in the game and can also hold its own as a main attack”. Granted, there’s also chaos bolt, but that’s…not exactly the best skill in the universe, and new players would have to spend time hunting down the components anyway.
Doom Bolt can definitely be good, yes, but it can’t really hold up a build by itself until late-game - and even then, you’d still need either a very specific setup or additional support from other more spammable attacks.
Actually, we both know nothing about it, because the expansion will introduce 2 new masteries, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the current sets/gear pieces gets reworked to support the Inquisitor and the Necromancer… I think they already stated that some gear pieces will be changed to accommodate the new masteries.
I’m just saying that it would be nice if Crate took this opportunity to add a Aether/Lightning themed skill to the Arcanist in the form of a transmuter, as there is quite a few Legendaries/constellations/affixes that supports this damage combination, and that the best time to this change, assuming they ever take this idea into consideration, would be while the expansion is still in development.