Arc

What do you call an instantly-hitting undodgeable long-range fast-casting heavy-hitting attack that rapidly stacks shock on your opponent and can be fired from 2 totems?

I've been meaning to make a post about this. I made a witch named Crith when the patch came out, to play around with the new Arc spell. It sucks as a main spell (I use spark instead) but in pvp its really effective when combined with two totems.

I've done about 16 or 17 1v1 duels so far and only lost twice. I don't even have the stun immune amulet yet but my totems destroy people before they can stunlock me to death, and if people attack my totems instead I just recast them.

This is my spec:


This is my gear:

For pvp I swap out mana leech on my spark skill for faster projectiles, and I swap out elemental proliferation on my arc totem with lightning penetration.

There are possibly 5 problems here:

1) Arc hits instantly and can't be avoided. Arrows were changed to dodgeable projectiles because this was considered to be overpowered.

2)Theres barely any counter to the shocked debuff. The passives to avoid being shocked don't work effectively because two totems and 3 sparks hitting someone is going stack the debuff anyway even with all the passives. I fought someone who had all those passives and he was shocked repeatedly. The only item that counters this is a low level unique helm which provides shock immunity, while both the ignite and frozen debuffs can be cured by flasks.

3)With good gear energy shield is kind of powerful. I've specced completely offensively yet I have 6k energy shield. This just increases my damage output further.

4)Diamond flasks. Arc has a base 4% crit chance, yet I can just use a flask and my totems have 100% crit for almost 2 seconds, which is all they need. When it looks like I might die and I have my totems up I just use a diamond flask and the other players dies almost instantly.

5)The new resistance penetration gems. I don't think having resists over cap helps against these, but I haven't tested this.

Still, this doesn't really mean that this spec is overpowered. Although I've won most duels so far I do die often, mostly due to getting out of position or putting my totems in a bad spot, or having mana problems trying to recast totems when they die too quickly. I'm pretty sure the totems can be out ranged, a bow user or a caster that doesn't use freezing pulse could probably kill them off and avoid being hit by them. I haven't fought anyone who has done that yet though.

Crith, I did exactly that on our second match.

Added increased projectile speed to my 6L. And was able to BARELY reach his totems with my FP.

Was a fun fight, but yes, the long auto attack/hit range and crazy cast speed is pretty OP

Was an epic fight though

Good luck on your next build.

EDIT: had you used conductivity or elemental weakness, I would have lost the second fight.

Oh that's right, sorry I forgot. :P That was one of my losses.

I did a bunch of 3v3s tonight and it's really powerful in groups as well. Obviously I guess, since Arc can hit up to 3 people. A couple bow users and ice spear witches were in the group and they easily managed to kill my totems spamming arrows/spells from off screen, so I guess just having more range is an effective counter. In smaller maps there generally isn't enough room to out range them though.

Yes it's really the instantly-hit from far away that makes it overpowered.
Multi-projectile ice spear totems are some of the most devastating things in the game, but at least you can strafe them to avoid getting hit, then leap in and kill it while getting hit maybe once. But if you put instant-hit on any ranged move (ie remove the travel time), even one considered underpowered atm, it'd instantly be op in pvp (especially on totems).


Edit:
I would also like to know if overstacked resists helps against lightning/fire/cold penetration... if not that would suck =\

If enemy has 80 resists, and arc user uses conductivity or elemental weakness, you down to around 35 resists + light penetration puts you at 0

Good luck.

I have beaten Arc builds with my 28 crit mult ranger. But those arc builds did not use totems. I imagine it's a much different story at higher levels too. But at the low levels, I've not had any problems with it.

Totems are an entirely different story.

Yeah, just a player casting single target Arc, especially from a lvl 28, is pretty awful DPS.

I also don't like a speel that can't be dodged. And I'm a lightining caster.

Talking about resistances;
Physical dmg can be reduced easily by 40-more% but it will be very hard to reach more than 60% I think.
Elemental dmg can be reduced by 75%/85% resistances..the penetration gem just simply let elemental builds deal more than 15-25% of their dmg in pvp. On the other hand elemental weakness and the new elemental curses will probably make the resistances of the cursed target close to zero in combination with the penetration gems..but hey..curses cost a lot of mana, they're temporary without passives, and more importantly there are flasks to avoid them.

In conclusion the amount of reduction you can get to protect from elemental dmg seem now similiar to the one you can get from physical dmg, wich is good IMHO. Curses are extremely good, but I think everyone will have at least 2 anti-curse flasks in pvp, for these curses, for temporal chains.. etc. So: it's balanced!