Hi, here are some videos of another forgotten build that’s in dire need of a faceLIFT.
Suggestions: i don’t even know what to ask for… I will let people chime in and come with suggestions.
But as a general idea regarding tri ele damage type: both T3s don’t have tri ele burn, there’s no tri ele damage affix, passive sustain is a big issue with 2 T3s with no wd% or adtch, and damage numbers across the board for tri ele are way too small for the available amounts of flat rr and % reduced.
Maybe Iskandra’s identity can be fully FIRE TSS with FIERY RED animation (gotta change that conduit to smth else then tho). Single elements are much easier to build around. This tri-elemental split just makes it harder to support your main skill with approriate -rr% on a class that doesn’t have any -rr% (OFF doesn’t count, sorry)
I want to point out that there isnt a single tri ele build in a decent spot at this moment, not even tri ele cadence witchblade with turbocharged support. The damage numbers and rr is impossible to achieve.
Piggybacking on this to raise a more general point:
The entire point of running tri-elemental compared to single-element is that you can catch Nemeses who are fully resistant to one element by having your damage in elements they don’t resist. However, Grava fully resists both Fire & Lightning / Maiden resists Fire & Lightning / Fabius resists Cold and Fire, and Kaisan resists everything.
Can a full tri-elemental build (especially Arcanist, who has no elemental RR or RR of any kind) succeed when the negatives of a tri-elemental build outweigh the positives? Yes, there are ways to build around a lack of RR, but usually the top end builds can accomplish both really high RR and those other methods to supercharge their damage.
I don’t want to phase out tri-elemental / dual damage builds, but whatever buffs we do give to dual-damage builds we have to find a way so that single-element builds don’t get disproportionally stronger becuase of those buffs.
Well you chose one example of recently mega buffed skill with like a whole freaking ARSENAL of powerful supporting items granting a bunch of rr procs. And also it does worse than Invoker or Aether or Cold/Lightning. For the same reason: resist reduction. It’s possible to have two damage reductions in devotions (talking about elemental damage types) nowadays without losing much value and skills like PRM got enough activators for that. But getting three resist reduction devotions on tri-elemental without selling a lot of value and then suffering to activate all three efficiently is impossible/unlikely.
And then dual element builds carry as much flat on their spells as tri-elemental ones.
i feel like that’s probably often the big one, in so many cases it just feels super clunky
perhaps with FoA and all dem spiffy modifiers perhaps a special devo modifier occurs where if you pick widow+murmur+witchblade it combines them into a 1 proc ? … #copium
Pretty simple, you buff the sets and their item mods, not the skills, tadaaaa. And ofc you buff those 2 devotions because no other build will use them.
Edit. I wanted to mention a very important aspect, no legendary tri ele rings. Also i noticed you cannot hardcap mirror on this set, closest you can get being 21 points for 20.3 cd and 3 seconds duration which makes me thing it wouldnt be a bad idea to maybe facelift mirror a bit, like scaling its duration or smth.
The mods in FoA are looking great! It does raise several questions about how builds feel to play in general and how both skills and item modifiers to said skills lead to a genuinely good experience without everything being the same (like how to distinguish AAR / FOI / Drain Essence for channeled skills or how to make sure DEE isn’t just Panetti’s with Poison flavor)
I don’t have access to internal FoA testing (I think I’m a Praetorian for the city-builder, and I’m pretty bad at city building), but it seems a lot of feedback from the hardcore players boils down to “this build doesn’t have the same numbers as this build, therefore this build is meta and the other build is trash,” but when you’re managing things like primary skills, debuff application and uptime, skill rotations to maximize one’s DPS, it’s really difficult to take wildly different playstyles and give them a relatively balanced power level.
What ends up happening is that one of those unique playstyles ends up wildly underperforming, people ask the devs to give up on the concept since it’ll never compare with more “established” styles, and the devs eventually relent and turn an actually unique playstyle into the same ol’ same ol. I’ve seen it with Stun Jacks & AAR where it was meant to be high risk, massive DPS reward and sustain was a unique problem to solve, but why have to think about problems when you can just slap life leech onto these skills and make them just like any other build?
I know it’s a tangent outside of Iskandra specifically, but this is one of many sets that tries to do something unique (in this case being tri-elemental and having unique modifiers for TSS that single damage types won’t have access to) and ends up falling flat. I know balance is a really hard thing, and I hope the team puts in the effort to make it alright.
i kinda felt the same, and at a basic level it would make massive sense that different builds end up wildly different
But… Roman? Lee, someone tried to explain it to me that it’s not really just purely about numbers, like not all builds have to do 4.30 SR
but it’s bad if a version of an otherwise strong build, cold/lightning trozan, then has a version that falls “massively” behind trie ele trozan. And ofc if “many” builds does 4.30, but you have these “50” builds doing 6.30+ (wild exaggeration)
Besides that it was also a portion about “feel”, and to that i really think PRM was a great example, because after trying Lee’s ultra lazy setup, (despite me still switching to PRM pistol ), i can definitely get behind how much difference the mere feel of build can add to enjoyment factor also even if performance difference might not be significant to me.
That’s not to say there isn’t or wont be some degree of inherent flaw always trying to attempt to apply the same metric/baseline judge builds by time(rs). But over time i do feel like the “toxic elite” has grown to expand considerations beyond merely eking out the same numbers/not purely being a numbers game.
*other example would be Roman once asked me if i could try 3? different versions of a shieldbreaker, and the “best” one was actually the middleground setup, because of feel, despite falling behind in performance from the nr 1 when strictly based on clear times
doesn’t mean everything is perfect ofc, there is def still stuff where more acceptances of “poor performance” need to be allowed so different builds do get to exist/“memes allowed”
Not that simple… for example if you use a spectral bludgeon you suddenly only have cold & fire damage. Or if you use two bands of eternal pire (not saying it’s a good choice), you end up with mostly fire damage. Then if you have buffed the set with extra flat or % damage, you could end up with more a single type damage than was intended.
at a surface level sure, but might not be that simple/mean bludgeon iskandra turns out that much better i guess?
at a technical level the solution is super easy tho(iirc from mods), Crate probably just don’t want to do it because it “looks” weird - convert elemental dmg into elemental dmg preventing other conversions/stacking different conversions
Still a question here, while MoE is designed as an emergency skill rather than spamming buff skills like Ascension, so how would it synergy with Iskandra? A mod that -cdr but -total dmg reduction is suitable I think.
when i saw it my guess was
MoE = oh shit situation/“enemies killing me”,
therefor “engage emergency nuclear arsenal”, so enemy is dead/threat is dealt with, by the time MoE expires
*naturally probably wont unfold as basic as that since many times MoE is just an intermission thing
i mean sure, but that’s because it might work differently than you expect (or how i assume ofc)
Ulzuin chosen is “clunky” because it effectively has a CD, it can only be triggered on the actual bomb cast, no trigger = effective CD is the same as bomb cd/next chance is next bomb toss
If i’m assuming this interaction correct, which to be fair might be way off, it’s on a buff skill, so the effect is a buff(ex bloodlord blade) not UC condition, so it might essentially be the same as a regular passive item proc. Then consider how super easy it is to trigger crit procs, because you have soooo much stuff flying that can trigger it, and even some procs themselves will count as a crit trigger for other crit procs.
So a mage hunter with box or wop rolling on 10 enemies, that’s 10x potential triggers per second for those 3 seconds of MoE, not counting everything else flying too ofc.
If it doesn’t work like that and it’s exactly like Ulzuin chosen/only trozan hit crits themselves can trigger this condition, then sure it might be kinda a dud by that comparison, but probably still cooler than nothing(terms if fun even if not the same emergency nuke arsenal factor)
), i can definitely get behind how much difference the mere feel of build can add to enjoyment factor also even if performance difference might not be significant to me.
- convert elemental dmg into elemental dmg preventing other conversions/stacking different conversions 