Lightning Tendrils

So I INTENDED to make a pure lightning tendrils (LT) character. And I tried Damn hard. I got to low 60s only using LT. By then I had died a little over 100 times because this skill is so terrible.

LT was So terrible, I rage quit it and swapped over to frostbolt. Million bloody F-ing times better.


LT DPS: something is wrong with the calculations and actual DPS. Using two skills with same DPS, the single target is worse with LT. Honestly, the DPS is not good, not really worth the downsides of this MELEE skill.

LT Range: Abyssmal. Utter complete dog pile of burning trash.

LT Mechanics: Terrible - why does it not auto cast upon the hotkey like Blight does? Having my character run up to the area to cast it instead of just casting it is ridiculous and has gotten me killed a few dozen times.


Fix: Range literally need to double or triple. Not a joke. The damage needs a boost of .. 10 to 25%.


The ONLY way LT works, is if its a cast while channeling. Which, at that point, JUST PLAY THE CWC SPELL.


The amount of swearing I did while playing this POS skill ...

The two most annoying things about this skill:

1. the fact that your character runs to the target to start channeling, there treating this as a melee skill

2. target lock preventing you from turning while channeling until the primary target is dead

Number 2 is one of my overall worst issues with Path of Exile tbh. I never, EVER want to target lock, with any skill. Why does the game make me do this, and why is there no option to disable it?

Additional feedback:

I set out in Incursion, determined to make Lightning Tendrils work. I swapped to it as main skill as soon as I had a 4 link available and had both AoE clusters in the passive tree (the 3 nodes near Witch and the 3 near Templar). I have to admit though, it was bad. Very bad. Only when I got some more damage boosts from the tree, blasphemy + conductivity and Occultist's cursed enemy explosions did it feel like something playable. Not good, just playable. A bare minimum for clearing. The single target damage was abysmal though.

Then, as soon as I got a 5-link, I unequipped my Elemental Focus and put in Cast While Channeling + Arc. And wow... just wow. What a world of difference. It went from bad and bare minimum to clearing screens in a second. It is, of course, Arc that's really doing this though, not Lightning Tendrils.

Conclusions about LT itself:

- the option that the patch gave to disable move to target is great and makes it better
- the area damage is OK, but for single target it's just abysmal, have fun channeling 2 minutes straight to kill a unique or particularly tough rare
- the radius is far too small, only with 2 passive tree clusters + massive shrine buff did it feel like a satisfying area of damage
- additional note about tha latter: it would be better if we could use an AoE support gem, but due to current AoE mechanics, if you already have passive tree buffs to area, the support gem adds very little, I couldn't even tell the difference when I equipped / unequipped my lvl 12 one

Well, most of feedbacks are bad, and with a good reason, this is because I agree too.

The AoE is very small, it's not enough to get close of Incinerate AoE and damage, and the way of AoE works is bad for farming, it will be better if the area gets longer.

With four lesser hits (or maybe less, unconfirmed for me) is bad with life leech.

Even with a good lightning damage build focused on lightning tendrils, if you put a incinerate
with Added lightning damage support it will be much better, in damage and AoE, with pratically the same gear, no need to change anything.

The added damage multipler is pretty bad.

Well the problem is, the incinerate is better. For crit builds I discord just because Incinerate can't crit at this own.

In general, the char attached AoE skills have a pretty low damage, blade vortex is a exception of course. But this is another skills, I don't want to discuss here.

It will be good if Lightning Tendrils become a dot damage spell, by the way here is a nice idea!

Mana cost is to high needs to be bring closer what blight and Incinerate is

The visuals for the skill since its update are beautiful.

The damage output not so much. It also has extremely bad totem interactions, it keeps activating and deactivating as it targets individual enemies. Rendering it completely useless on totems as the 4th hit is never achieved due to the skill ending, it also greatly reduces any possible clear speed it might have.

Scalability is poor.

old Lightning Tendrils was so mutch better... pls give it back...

Why does this skill's radius of effect not increase during channeling like Incinerate's does?

Was leveling through act3 sewers with lightning tendril, and i keep running into the issue of Lightning Tendrils name locking to dead monsters (corpses). At least that's what I see.
It's very annoying for this (or any?) channeling skill to name lock. It makes perfect sense for strike skills. But then i run into weird situations like this:
https://clips.twitch.tv/VictoriousSnappyFungusArsonNoSexy
No i did not send this to Chris.

But yeah, i wish it wouldn't get stuck like that and just keep turning to the mouse pointer. Name locking is super bothersome and doesn't feel good with this skill (especially when enemies start surrounding you and you can't even turn naturally... and have to recast with a (this) channel skill.

Edit: Also sorry in for being a little on the aggravated side on that clip. This issue with this skill has been there for a pretty long time now, and I'm just annoyed that it hasn't been changed/fixed yet.

I'm confused by the alternate quality on lightning tendrils:

Per 1% Quality:
Deals 98% of Damage
Stronger Pulses deal 10% more Damage with Hits and Ailments

I've done some calculations and across 4 pulses (3 normal + 1 stronger) it seems worse to put quality onto the gem for overall DPS (the best point is 2 or 3 quality).

The stronger pulse gets higher damage until 17 or 18 quality, but it drops again at 19 or 20 quality.

Am I just making a mistake with my calculation?

Base is the base damage after everything else. As the quality provides more damage and reduced base damage, all other values that effect damage should multiply equally and can be ignored.

Base = 100 Damage

Weak Pulse = Base * (1 - 0.02 * Quality);
Strong Pulse = Base * (1 - 0.02 * Quality) * (1.5 + 0.1 * Quality);
Overall Damage = Base * (1 - 0.02 * Quality) * (3 + (1.5 + 0.1 * Quality));

Taking the above through 0 to 20 Quality gives the following:

https://imgur.com/a/nWuO6bQ

Conclusion:
It feels like they wanted the smaller pulses to do less damage and the stronger pulse to do more damage. A better implementation would have been

Per 1% Quality:
Weaker pulses Deals 2% less Damage with Hits and Ailments
Stronger Pulses deal 10% more Damage with Hits and Ailments

This would cause the weaker hits to do the same lesser damage as above, while still allowing the stronger pulse to do a huge hit off the base damage.

Taking this through 0 to 20 Quality gives the following:
https://imgur.com/a/5P3NFBk


Note: Apologies but I couldn't figure out how to link the Imgur images directly onto the post.