Yeah…but it gets brownie points for procing devotions nicely.
I gotta agree that Uzuin’s Chosen is the pointless skill to end all pointless skills from what I’ve seen. Hopefully they might spruce it up eventually.
Wouldn’t say Blade Spirit is the worst skill, but indeed could use a bit of tweaking to be of acceptable use. Right now it’s best use is proccing devotion debuff skills.
I wouldn’t even change a lot, but some smaller things with a lot of impact.
For personal testing I created a new version… the stuff I changed:
- summon limit depending on level (2/10 ; 3/18 ; 4/24)
- way longer duration
- same damage
- blade burst projectile count reduced (6 > 3)
- blade burst angle reduced (360° > 40°)
- blade burst cooldown set to 3s as an active skill
- 33% pierce chance for blade burst
- blade burst now removes 30% of the spirits life on use
(also symbolizes that it fires “a part if itself” at enemies)
So… what is it good for…
This makes for 4 uses every 3s -> 12s duration in combat as before, but summons can be “accumulated” that way and have a limited way to attack over range, pretty much a necessity as it’s attack gives aggro toward the player so almost all the time enemies run past it. The angle helps that it hits anything at all with BB, plus the limited “shotgun” allows for a slightly higher use against bosses, where BS is pretty much useless otherwise, while it doesn’t influence normal enemies that much.
And finally it creates new synergies for example with wendigo totem.
Tested it a bit, and, imho, works pretty well.
- Skills that actually make your character worse.
Upheaval - Replaces Feral hunger and Zolhan’s technique, and doesn’t do nearly enough damage to justify it. Should be triggered on any crit at 33% rate, like Deathmarked weapon procs.
Cadence - Everything has been said already. When even Blademasters who do a lot of physical damage prefer to use Shard of Beronath which converts some damage to elemental, you know you have a horrible skill on your hands. Needs to stop overriding attack procs, but even then it would probably not be worth investing many points into. Needs a damage buff as well.
Infernal breath - This is weaker than the Hellhound’s normal attack and he will use it constantly lowering his dps. It should be an aura around him rather than an actual attack, though it still probably wouldn’t be worth the points. Alternatively, making more items that give cast speed to summons could let you build an interesting alternative to the classical Conjurer summoner, as well as make the bird more useful (I’m assuming Infernal breath and the birds default attack are cast speed based).
- Skills that do nothing.
Second Rite - 95 vitality damage at 22/12 (which is almost unattainable) and nothing else. It needs an additional bonus like you get from Flame touched or a better damage type (vitality is horrible). And no, bringing back the mana burn effect is not a good idea, it doesn’t work on bosses and only screws the player trough reflect.
Arcane will - Should trigger on attack, so it could affect ranged skills like Devastation and Phantasmal blades instead of only being activated once the enemies have surrounded and damaged you.
Merciless repertoire, Overload, Fabric of reality… - 90% to a specific damage type is usually worse than bonuses you get from high level weapons and rings. Not worth 12 points, barely worth 1 point when you have +5 or such to skills. I understand that something like doubling the numbers (which would still make them meh after lvl 75) would make levelling too easy. A possible fix would be to make these bonuses character level dependent, something like x% times character level (mb even a faster progression like lvl^1.5) + y%.
Terrifying gaze, Supercharged… - Same problem again, % damage bonuses either have to be insanely high or they are useless. Crowd control effects don’t work on bosses, and this is the only situation where levelling those skills may be useful. Give those skills reduction to CC resistance which increases with level.
Stun jacks - What’s with the physical damage? Lightning is underepresented in spammable skills anyway, unlike physical (which is also useless since there are no dedicated items for physical dmg casters).
Forcewave - Speaking of physical damage spammable spells. Unimpressive damage (though weapon damage is nice) and no item support.
Doom bolt - Not worth bothering with an extra button to push. Laughable compared to Devastation. It should be a similar skill, attacking in pulses in a large aoe (and moved up to lvl 50 mastery). Also needs more item support, Occultist seriously lacks cooldown reduction.
Bloody pox - Like Doom bolt, but needs a ton of skill points as well. Procs things, but so does the Sigil which is easier to use. It should be a proc, with the transmuter making it castable. Speaking of which, the transmuter needs some fine tuning, the Occultist can’t tank mobs when this is active.
Blade spirit - It’s dumb, it’s slow and the damage is unimpressive. Drains mana that the NB doesn’t have, and slows you down since you have to recast it constantly. Make it a passive proc tied to normal attack crits (like Upheaval) to avoid abuse with PB. Make it die and trigger the aoe damage when resummoned.
Lightning strike, Ember claw, Ground slam - Summons suck at using them effectively, and they don’t do enough considering how skill point hungry summoners are.
- Skills that do something, but should be buffed to be on-par wth similar ones.
Phantasmal blades - Overnerfed. Switch all instances of vitality damage with cold and vice versa. This way, Witch hunters could focus on the chaos + vitality aspect in Nether edge, while Spellbreakers could focus on cold. Reduce mana cost because it’s ridiculous. Proccing things extremely effectively is the only benefit of PB, mb nerf the number of blades to keep the skill balanced.
Aether ray - Straight up worse than CT and PRM. Make it piercing like the Tome of arcane wastes skill. Reduce the damage if needed, though I don’t think it is since it eats around 1000 energy/second.
Wind devil - Only in this category because it reduces resistances and because caster Shamans are better than caster NBs. Otherwise just as bad as Blade spirit for the same reasons. Physical damage of the base skill is useless, no Warder will invest points in WD for it.
Blackwater cocktail - Same thing as Wind devil, only good for resistance reduction.
Star pact - Only decent for SS Spellbreaker munchkins because of how it stacks with NJE. Reckless power and Stormcaller’s pact are straight up better in 99% of the cases. Why does RP, an already insane skill, give flat aether dmg while this thing gives frost burn? Giving it flat cold damage is a good start.
Demolitionist cooldown spells - Straight up worse than the Shaman and Occultist alternatives because of nonsense damage types like piercing and trauma.
Summon familiar - Simply not worth the points, which is a shame because it’s the only ranged summon. Again, making more items that give cast speed to summons could make it good.
Bloody Pox needs better scaling if you want it to do higher flat damage, but the HP reduction damage aspect is fine. Still works great versus mobs at a mere 12-ish point investment, and procs stuff like crazy.
In case it wasn’t obvious, the skill was changed in recent patches so that if you wanted it to do high flat damage you focused on the leveling Wasting/Black Death, while if you only wanted the HP reduction you only focused on the base skill.
Adding a major flat damage aspect to the skill (plus the fact that DoTs can now crit) implies that they are considering turning it a primary DPS skill instead of just a supportive one. To help that along, perhaps it’s about time that Fevered Rage was changed so that it significantly increases the flat damage aspect of BP at the cost of reduced HP reduction damage (combined with an increase to the HP reduction damage of the base skill, since bosses are immune anyway).
The thing is that the current Fevered Rage is now little more than a novelty skill, it was much more useful back when the -25% DA enemy penalty actually meant something.
Conversion.
Bloody pox is awesome. And grasping vines sucks? You guys are looking at this all wrong. Little investment, big returns.
Cadence could use a rework. So could Ulzuin’s chosen, both which are underwhelming.
Thermite mines could use a mechanics change. I can never get them off well to keep as a skill.
Demolitionist explosives are annoying to use, they take to long to kick off. They work well but the compromise in userfriendliness and required positioning vs functioj and outcome is unattractive. Still great as 1 point wonders.
I am not impressed with doom bolt. Or trozans sky shard.
Occultist raven pet only limited use as a buff pet? I have nevrr scaled it out tho…
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It is a very good devotion proc and slows mobs way more than CoF for example.
It’s actually intended to be buff/heal pet, in 1-st place, i think.
But yeah, leveling it isnt work points therefore.
My first character was basically based around Thermite Mines and I personally found they work pretty well. They work better on ranged characters where you can keep monsters inside and Stun Jacks help. I also had the Elemental Storm proc on them.
My biggest complaint with them is the unpredictability of the throw. Sometimes they are horizontally away from you, sometimes vertically, and I have no idea what decides that. They fly weird and some mobs (most bosses), don’t like directly stepping on them, which is hilarious because you can exploit and trap many bosses because of that (Gutworm in particular).
I level the raven on some of my summoners. He’s great, except for the AI.
Non buffing pet skills in general though (Lightning Strike, Ember Claw, Mend Flesh, etc) need work, but the devs already know that and are hopefully already working on a long term solution.
Thermite Mines I find useful for the fire debuff with my sorcerer.
Really only use it on bosses though.
Brute Force is junk. No one ever maxes it! Damage bonus it far too low for both physical and lightning builds.
It gives like 108% bleeding bonus when maxed which makes Grasping Vines even better. But I guess it’s only really useful in very specific builds.
Wind Devil would be a better choice for Shaman.
I don’t invest in it because between primal strike and modifiers, savagery and modifiers there’s really not enough skill points to go around.
Ulzuins chosen - worst skill in the game.
I think cadence, callidors tempest and eye of dreeg could do with a buff or something, And storm totem always seems weak even with vit transmuter.
Ulzuin’s Chosen is definitely the worst of the worst in terms of passive bonuses… Also, I find it funny that it affects 3 skills that has nothing to do with Ulzuin, while not affecting Vindictive Flame/Ulzuin’s Wrath, the only skill that is actually related to Ulzuin himself. :rolleyes:
Ulzuin’s Chosen could be awesome if it added flat CDR instead of a chance to reset CD, and increased radius as well as affecting ALL DA SKILLZ. Because I’ve never seen cannister bomb or blackwater cocktail used as main damage skills. Cannister is a nice stun and proc generator, BWC is a nice debuff, but save the debuff, it’s a 1 pt wonder… 1PW
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My first build is a Sorcerer who uses these two as main damage skills. Canister bomb’s radius is HUGE, that’s certainly not its problem. It also deals a crapoload of damage, usually almost clearing a screen of trash by itself, the only problem is that its limited by its cooldown against heroes and bosses. Flat CDR would make it really good and competitive with other top-tier builds imo.
Is that in Ultimate? All I’ve ever used Cannister Bomb is for procs and stuns. Never been able to coax enough damage to justify spendong points comparatively with other skills. Is it possible to get it up to 15-20K DPS?
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Doom Bolt - high mana cost, high cd, need to aim, all for some pathetic damage