Not sure if anyone has suggested this before , I cannot hold it anymore as someone who has spent over 2500 hours on this game and mostly on arcanist.
comprehensively speaking, both replicating missiles(PRM) and sky shard(TSS) deserve some attention and fixes. They both are short of damage and come with obvious weakness. personally I think designing concepts on an Arcanist has been truly mean .Because almost every independent skill will require standing still during a combat in order to have efficient output. this applies to all of skills such as replicating missile, sky shard, callidor’s tempest, aether ray along with older version of devastation, while nothing could be more evil than having an arcanist to stand still to take continuous hits.
PRM’s downside is costing too much skill points but doesn’t present equivalent values in damage. Also in order to come up efficient output, player’s better to stand still to conduct nonstop attack which will require great sacrifice for health regen. and protection. I don’t think the damage is totally out of balance but it does need some adjustion for a skill that costs 16+12+12+12 points. Because if you face Fabius, you will have to waste too much on how to be protected. H&R is never an option, because that definitely means you cannot take too much hits and very likely to be terminated by any critical damage which will translate into uncomfortable gaming experience.
TSS is the most unacceptable skill across the whole game. its trajectory emerges from sky and lands on the ground. during which progress ,it 's very likely to land on a beam if you are indoor or in a cave. However this is not the worst part because all these ceiling type of skills have the same issue. Among all the skills that’re set for a standstill fight, TSS has the highest requirements. BTW, when i mention a fight, it mostly refers to a fight against Fabius. For MOST OF TIME, NO STANDSTILL MEANS NO DAMAGE FOR TSS. it has three fragments whose trajectories are mostly random and uncontrollable. so when facing a single hard-to-kill monster like Fabius, it is pain in the aXX. However there’s some pattern you can rely on, like when you stand against Fabius, make sure there’s nothing between you two and of all importance, distance is zero, so to say face to face. Only in this scenario, there’s some guaranteed landing rate of all three fragments targeting the same object.
please I hope someone will read out and make some positive changes to it in the next 1005. as a longtime supporter , I deeply believe reasonable criticism matters as much as compliments.
EDIT 1: If PRM becomes traceable skill that would solve a lot of troubles; while TSS turns into ice spikes coming out of ground to avoid animation conflict with devastation and avoid landing issues.
I haven’t gotten around to playing a PRM build, but sky shard is definitely underwhelming. It has a lot of good item support and is a good source of CC, but it’s not really a viable damage skill. Maybe an AoE Cold/Frostburn ground damage aftereffect would be good? Maybe a second wave of shards? Then again, neither addresses your criticism of needing to stand still, but at least the cooldown on skyshards means that the player won’t be standing still for very long.
Skills like doom bolt (another suboptimal skill) and TSS can be hard to build around because they don’t scale with weapon damage or cast speed. Neither of these skills strike me as being among the worst skills in the game, but they are definitely among the most point-inefficient investments in the game.
I have never really played a PRM char, but I find your criticism of Trozan’s Sky Shard a bit harsh. The radius is good, the damage is excellent, it even packs some freeze… I feel as long as you don’t use it on doorways you are fine. And I really don’t understand the “standstill” vibe you get from it since it has a short cooldown.
If anything, I would reccomend TSS for anyone starting the game. I find it a fun and better than average skill.
as I said when I criticize the poor performance, it’s implied to be engaged in a Nemesis battle. Ordinary monsters was never any issues to any BD. but BOSS battles are true test to maturity of BD.
Not sure if you ever use TSS as your major damage force, but as supporting force ,it doesn’t really matter how it’s performed.
Standstill will be a true plus and demand when you need to fight Fabius. H&R is choosable, but at the cost of great efficiency.
I have a build that’s totally oriented around TSS, no other supporting skills. yet I can still stand against Fabius and take him out without moving in 1 min.
Harsh may it be, but I am not speaking for myself, but the voice from my community of all Arcanist lovers. One man can make mistakes on judgement, but it cannot be all of us.
Sorry when you don’t realize how still and close it needs when you fight Fabius with nothing but TSS, then I don’t think you truly understand this skill and its requirements.
Killing Fabius in only a minute with nothing but TSS is an achievment ! Congrats !
It seems you boost TSS to the maximum possible. I prefer to diverse my skills a lot more: TSS, Callidor’s Tempest, Grenado, etc… I don’t like to stand around doing nothing so I am probably not the best person to get your opinion.
That being said, killing Fabius in 1 minute is fine. As would be 2 minutes. There is no endgame competition in Grim Dawn. Hell ! there is not a whole lot of endgame… and I personnaly find it very nice like that. I am drawn to GD because it has so many accessible build possibilities.
I do understand that there is a competitive endgame centric crowd out there. I just want to point out that I have not the best mindset to understand this crowd, since for me killing Fabius in 10 seconds or 3 minutes is essentially the same thing.
And gameplay wise I am very happy with TSS.
Do you mean that you would like to be able to move and aim trozan more accurately, because you have to click in a place to move, and then on the target to aim? Yeah it’s not the best thing for gameplay, the ideal would be to use something like w a s d to move and the mouse to aim, ala fps, and you probably wouldn’t notice the dps loss so much.
I can see the problem here, but you sure you guys don’t build characters too offensive and squishy? Basically if you stack HP and defensive devotion moving to kill him becomes less necessary. I loved the concept of the build you posted here but can’t help but find it has really low health, even if it was impressive to watch!
Time is not a measurement to how fun the game should be. but by contrast to other skill performance and builds, it does tell about the efficiency and maturity of the skill.
TSS does have an serious issue with landing accuracy. it’s not about how fast you can kill but whether you are able to kill then that makes it an issue.
BTW personally I enjoy the back and forth wrestling with bosses. but the kill ability does show how good your BD is or if the skill is shortcoming or bugged.
I don’t mind spending 3 mins to kill Fabius, but if others are capable to kill in 20S , and yours never get close to 1 min… there is definitely something wrong.
That’s why we need to feedback. so designer can spare more time finishing this game and fix errors… and that’s why HF is necessity.
Hi there …
it’s just trajectory, not about selecting target. the thing is if anyone have a TSS only build, you can make a video when you encounter Fabius then observe the randomness of fragment patterns.
this is my video , you can see how I manage to control the fragments to fall down properly. not sure if you can see it though…
Trozan Sky Shard is fine as is IMO. So tired of everyone trying to make everything over powered by saying the skills suck. Not everything is going to kill at the same speed, nor should they. I have many different builds that use TSS and I never felt like it needed to be buffed while playing them.
Yes the skill isn’t always accurate but thats just how they mechanically made the skill.
You keep saying everyone says it sucks but I have only seen a handful of people who actually say this. The trajectory really isn’t a huge issue as you play it you learn how to properly aim it. Sure it doesn’t have 100% accuracy but thats by design.
And certain things can block it from working at all, but thats no different from ground attacks not being able to be cast because of the grounds design. Or being to close to a wall and not be able to cast PRM/Frenetic Throw.
you can see my video from links replied to others. I think it doesn’t matter what you think or what I think. But in my community, thousands of players. You cannot hear any satisfaction with TSS. honestly I doubt you ever truly played with this skill and make it your major damage force. You can like the way it it’s fine you are free to have your choice . But over my 2500 hours playing this game , I have seen how skills evolved and changed, turned upside down.
If game designers see this post and fine some reasons in their flawed design, they will change to make it better; if they don’t agree they will ignore the post.
Even though it’s never about you and me , but I will tell you onething that alot of feedback from my community has been taken in and changed the course this game. So for all who are truly enthusiastic we hope this game can get more perfect not just by accepting it the way it is. If that so , you should be playing alpha version now rather than 1004.
I would never only use 1 skill with a cooldown, thats just plain dumb IMO. As you have nothing to do when its on cooldown.
I have made over 20 builds using TSS since I started playing this game in December 2013.
I too have over 2500 hours played, and I agree that my opinion isnt fact. But they have had plenty of time to change the mechanic of TSS if they wanted to. People have complained about the trajectory before, so they no there are people who dislike it.
Here are the 4 builds that use TSS that I still have left. None of them will be the greatest builds alive, but none of them are the worst builds ever either. TSS is easily 1 of my 3 favorite skills in the game along with BWC & Sigil.
I respect your opinion, and this is just communication.
since you are not a newbie to this game. i think our exchange of opinion can be more friendly and staight.
Before I see your video , dare to say this none of it TSS is your major damage. Then it can not be a TSS build.
AND it’s not dumb. it’s exploration. if you can go beyond someone else’s thinking box, that’s creative not dumb.
and I was right none of it USES TSS as the major attack source . so they are not typically a TSS build.
and going to BOC and other places doesn’t equal to challenges against Fabius. you might be easily sweep out BOC, but Fabius is capable of surprising attack and sends you back to devil’s cross in a sec.
