Lightning Tendrils

As i posted in the Spell Echo section the skill still works for some reason with SE, even though it shouldn't as a channeled skill.
For the practical uses of the skill it is underwhelming.
I played around with it a lot before and after 3.1 and it is a lot of fun to blink around and instantly trash everything in one touch, but for harder enemies the skill is just not working.

1. You need at least some AoE notes before the skill makes sense to use,
but
2. other skills are just way more effective in using this AoE (Ball Lightning especially).

The skill is a lot of fun in the right set up, as long as you don't compare it to the safety and clearspeed of more mainstream skills. I think the skill should reward the player with way more damage for the risk you take by 1. standing still and 2. being in somewhat close range. Not to make it viable (with buffs it could be viable as a boss killer at least), but to reward a player for the risk that is using this skill over something more save.

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osesek wrote:

How do you sustain yourself? Lightning Tendrils has short range, you have to stand there and face tank monsters with no vaal pact.

Sustain has proven to be quite difficult and i am currently using the Call of the Brotherhood unique ring to add additional survivability in the form of chill and freeze. Other than that you will need a large health and mana pool with the Mind over Matter keystone and some added ES on top. Heavy use of Stibnite and other defensive flasks is still necessary!
My hope is that with the full Inquisitor ascendacy (crit + consecrated ground paths), the high combined regen of life, mana and ES will be enough to sustain most fights.

I went for a similar approach in my Blight Trickster last league, which managed to clear both Shaper and Hall of the Grandmasters (used Scorching Ray for the CI exiles). However, at this point it might be important to note that, without counting the ramp up time, Blight comes on top in terms of AoE and damage output. But the key difference is the added survivability through the strong hinder effect. It allows to kill most regular mobs before they can even reach you and is equally potent in the more mechanically intense Guardian and Shaper fights, giving you a good window to deal a lot of damage every few seconds between their powerful attacks.

I posted this in the bug subforum but is anyone else not feeling the more dmg multi of the 4th pulse? Not feeling it at all and even tested it with resolute technique to eliminate potential crits.

As mentioned above the damage feels pretty low and risky for a channeled spell with no added benefit to it. I wish it would atleast have built in Storm Barrier or something to add to your survivability the same way that Blight has hinder.

I am trying very, very hard to like LT. I got tabula around level 5 (thank $DEITY for abysses), but unfortunately just plain Arc seems much, much better. Only saving grace is that LT seems slightly less mana-hungry, but I cannot see any other reason to use it.

Compared to arc
-- range
- clunky targeting
+ better single-target damage
+ no target # limit
+ better sp efficiency

I was originally planning on doing the basic arc+-summon league starter I go with, and it seems I am probably winding up that way this league too. Half-assed summons+decoy totem for easy bossfights and arc for trash :p Life with lightning tendrils seems very, very challenging even with 6L available early on (maybe it gets better once I can toss in life leech gem or something, who knows).

Honestly, the visual effects for the fourth "pulse" which does extra damage are completely unnoticeable. Are there even effects to give players visual feedback when the fourth pulse occurs? If there are, it is very difficult to recognize when this happens to adapt my play mechanics.

Please add more significant visual effects so that we can at least NOTICE when the fourth pulse occurs, such a large increase in brightness of the tendrils, or something along those lines.

In my opinion GGG doesn't value visual feedback as much as they should, but when it ties directly to mechanical control something needs to change. Please add something for the fourth pulse.

There is a problem with Lightning Tendrils and Spell Totem Support. The totems have a "targeting range" that is way too short, even if you increase the radius and aoe of the lightning tendrils spell itself.

Sometimes I can set a totem next to an enemy (easy to test with stationary ones like Vaal Oversoul) and the totem does nothing, you have to put it down really close to him for the totem to start attacking. I'm sure this can easily be checked by your internal team GGG, please look into this and it doesn't seem right.

I took an example pic for you:

Look how close the totem is to this enemy. It does not attack, too far away. This cannot be right.

A bit late... but anyway :)


I really like the 3.1 rework, feels alot better to play with then before.
The damage is fine, no real issues there.

BUT AoE... even with all AoE odes, inc AoE and items boosting area it's still too small
It doesn't feel good at all to play with as a main skill.
Not to mention when your leveling with it... that plainly sucks...
Level 1 skills that aren't usuable at all until lvl50+... well thats a sign that something is just wrong....

As a single target skill it's ok, but so was the case before 3.1..


So sadly it's demoted to skills that are cool and have lots of potential but aren't workable in practice. In other words... not used.

I find Lightning Tendrils AoE too small to comfortably use. You have to constantly change your position to target individual mobs, so you rarely get the 4th tick.
However, you can fix that issue by mixing LT + Cast while Channeling + spell with large range. Currently I'm playing LT+CwC+Arc and it works great. I melt down tough enemies with LT, while Arc clears all the trash mobs around.

If anyone's interested, I even made a guide about my build:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2082942
I tried many different setups and this is the best thing, I came up with for new Lightning Tendrils.

Note to anyone interested in leveling with this skill: don't. It's cancerously awful due to the tiny AOE. A level 10 Tendrils with 56% increased AOE is still so small that I have to reposition constantly just to kill a pack. If the pack's spaced out, I'm basically using a single target skill to kill them all. I end up skipping tons of monsters that most clear skills would effortlessly kill.

I failed almost every single Abyss while leveling with Tendrils due to its insane clunkiness. You have to get right up in the face of tanky, high-damage monsters, then kill a few at a time while trying to reposition yourself around giant holes you can't walk over. Use Ball Lightning instead if you want to play an AOE lightning skill. That one actually feels good and handles breaches well.

Feedback for GGG:

I posted ages ago that the AOE nerf Tendrils received (26 radius slashed to 22) made the skill unfun and weak for clearing. Then you nerfed how AOE works, completely killing the skill. The recent rework adds up to 7 base radius, but due to how thoroughly you ruined AOE mechanics, the AOE is still much smaller than it used to be if I stacked AOE.

Options if I want to play Tendrils now:

1) Don't stack AOE. Play it as a single target melee skill. This has always worked, so the AOE changes have all been irrelevant for this use of the skill.

2) Stack AOE. Play as clear skill. The AOE changes you keep throwing around make it seem like Tendrils being a clear skill is one of your goals. This used to be possible years ago before the first AOE gutting you gave Tendrils. I needed to get damn near every source of increased AOE back then to make it feel good. The max size now is much smaller than that, and definitely less than it needs to be to feel good. It will always feel bad now no matter how much AOE I stack, since later AOE gains become increasingly negligible.

Solution for fixing the problem:

Fix AOE. You broke it. It sucks now. This problem isn't Tendrils-specific. You hurt the game in its entirety when you ruined this mechanic. AOE skills that relied on stacking AOE are all garbage now. AOE skills that didn't care about stacking AOE like Sunder still don't care, and were mostly buffed for some reason by the change. This ridiculous AOE fiasco was one of the worst changes you've ever made to the game.

Also, Tendrils has always been garbage while leveling. You need to fix that. Back when it had a 26 radius and you hadn't ruined the AOE mechanics yet, it started to feel almost playable when I had the Witch and Templar clusters along with a level 1 Increased AOE gem. It was still vastly inferior to Ball Lightning, but I could at least see someone wanting to use it at that point. Now you need a level 18 Tendrils, both AOE clusters, and a high level Increased AOE gem to get to that same level of AOE (both examples are 39 radius). Ridiculous. All that for "almost playable."

Keep in mind that the "almost playable" a few years ago wasn't even close to done. I'd end up at over 50 radius with a Carcass and 20% quality gems. That 39 now, though? You can get it up to 41 with a Carcass and level 21 gems. Even the end-game setup's still garbage now.

Just throwing my 2c here to make LT more satisfying, keeping it brief since others have covered the awful aoe issues.

The more damage on 4th hit is interesting but completely invisible during gameplay. Lightning damage varies so greatly per hit that a 50% boost is impossible to percieve. It's a really wasted opportunity.

Boost the powerful hit damage in some way, whether by buffing the numbers or making it lucky (it just needs to be more visible), then give the powerful hit a strong audio cue, something really snappy and satisfying to contrast the weak buzzing of the normal audio. And if it could be changed to a 25% change to proc it would sound much better than a rhythmic 4th hit, but that might to too uninteresting and mechanically similar to crit.