Spark

"

Bakubylozajete wrote:

I didn't see even once [I didn't use it a ton] spark shocking enemies. I could use this skill as a shock spreader [don't need ton of dmg, just a lot of shocked targets]. This could be nice use of this skill for me.

How can you tell when something is shocked?

-Robin

Does Spark roll criticals separately for each spark? Because I imagine fun fun could be had with lots of sparks and lots of crit enhancement.

-Robin

"

KillyPCP wrote:

This spell just doesn't cut it as a primary source of damage at higher difficulties.

Agreed. Lvl 65 witch, using a combo of

Spark + Faster Cast + Greater Multi + Added Lit Dam

Specced completely towards lightning based passives, but also had to do EVERY mana regen passive possible to be able to sustain the needed regen. Even using Lesser Multi, or combos including pierce, the skill simply doesn't cut it.

At the moment, with my spec, with what I'd consider "above average" gear, I'm doing ~1100 dps on the tooltip, which is per spark ball. Thing is, you can almost never get 1 mob to be hit by all 7, and even in groups of mobs you have several balls just bounce out into nothingness.

Even going as far as to stand on top of the mob, spamming, at most 6 projectiles will hit, with 1-2 almost always flying away as their angle is too short, even at point blank range. So that's 6600dps as my current max, double it for rotating diamond flasks.

Compared to many many other builds, this simply doesn't compete.

I too, took fireball, swapped it in Spark's place, and in just doing that, with no spec changes, I have a higher tooltip dps, AND a much tighter and reliable angle to my multi shots, AND they were getting burned for mucho damage. Something is seriously wrong with the spell if it can't even compete against a spell out of spec.

What I'd honestly like to see is
-Lightning Warp not to suck (delay is waaay too long)
-Shock Nova to be un-nerfed (its almost useless now)
-Another more powerful but single target lightning spell to be added, or for some unique aspect of the lightning spec on the tree made to make it endgame viable.

As far as the behavior of the spell itself in the world, I very much dislike when they hit a fenceline, while a caster skelly just proceeds to unload.

I don't find it as underpowered as a lot of people do. What is does require is Voll's+crit stack (both damage and chance). I can do around 20k dps with okay gear. I can see myself doing about 40k with good gear.

The problem I have stems from the randomness of the lightning damage COUPLED with the random direction of the sparks.

So, I do think something needs to be changed.

This skill seems to be your best choice to use as a main 'nuke' for a lightning caster after playing around with the other spells, and much like the other lightning skills, the skill can be infuriating.

The sparks do ok damage after you attach a few gems to them / level them up a bit, they cast fast, and don't really cost too much mana. What this means is I can stand at the edge of the map and just afk hold down the button and fill the screen with sparks and do something else until everything is dead. This isn't fun though. Half the time the sparks seem to be willfully avoiding hitting the last enemy on the screen, and i wonder to myself why the heck I'm even attemtping to play lightning when I could have a nice straightforward nuke with another element.

"

lilbuddha wrote:

-Another more powerful but single target lightning spell to be added, or for some unique aspect of the lightning spec on the tree made to make it endgame viable.

I've gotta second this. Spark, with its multiple projectiles and random path, is mainly an AoE ability, as are Lightning Nova and Lightning Warp. Lightning has no single-target attacks at the moment.

"

lilbuddha wrote:

"

KillyPCP wrote:

This spell just doesn't cut it as a primary source of damage at higher difficulties.

Agreed. Lvl 65 witch, using a combo of

Spark + Faster Cast + Greater Multi + Added Lit Dam

Specced completely towards lightning based passives, but also had to do EVERY mana regen passive possible to be able to sustain the needed regen. Even using Lesser Multi, or combos including pierce, the skill simply doesn't cut it.

Your problem is that that is simply a bad combo for spark. Spark has a -50% penalty on additional damage bonuses, making your added lightning weaker, and Greater Multiple Projectiles only increases Spark's maximum potential damage by 33% in the ideal case where all the sparks hit, but doubles the mana cost.

You'd be much better off with Faster Cast + Increased Duration + Piercing. Not only is it much more mana efficient, but the greatly improved accuracy from duration and multi-hit from pierce provides far more multi-target damage than greater multi and added lightning. Its only weakness is in single-target damage.

Even with just 3 projectiles it felt too strong. This was mainly due to cost though. I used it with my Templar, added two support gems and at level one I had unlimited fire capacity, trashing Aliras Loyals or whatever they were, in bulk.

I would vote, increase cost, decrease damage and casting speed slightly.

"

LaughingSeraphim wrote:

Even with just 3 projectiles it felt too strong. This was mainly due to cost though. I used it with my Templar, added two support gems and at level one I had unlimited fire capacity, trashing Aliras Loyals or whatever they were, in bulk.

I would vote, increase cost, decrease damage and casting speed slightly.

I wouldn't base your judgment upon non merciless/ruthless difficulties.

Spark is decent early on, and honestly i found it viable/forced it to be viable until level 30 or so, but past that point it just pales in comparison to Ice and the piercing abilities it has.


-Sparks should pierce, it's a spammy spell and should be good against groups of enemies.

-Where as my ice spears + Greater Projectile + Lesser projectile do roughly 150 damage each, Sparks + the same two support gems do less than 30 damage each. Damage should really really be tweaked at later levels, since you can pretty much assume 30-50% of the sparks will never reach a target.

I agree with what a lot of people are saying. I've tried using sparks with both greater multi and lesser multi and tried to focus the shots with a far cast to keep the spread tighter but the randomness still guarantees that I miss a high percentage of the shots.

I am also of the opinion that sparks should just be made to become shocks forward arc AoE like freezing pulse currently is for frost. I think lightning just needs a new single target spell or spark needs to be revamped a bit.

personally, I would like to see sparks changed into more of a chain lightning skill that hits one and bounces to others nearby. this could possibly make it more of a single target spell while keeping it in flavor of the spark AoE style. It could even possible hit the same target more than once with bounces, making it good against small numbers but weaker against large numbers.

In general, sparks is just currently underwhelming along with a lot of lightning spells right now.

p.s. Why does ice have the high crit damage move, doesn't that seem like lightning's forte? Lightning is precise and insanely quick(the phrase "quick as lightning" comes to mind.) Shouldn't lightning have the high critical chance skill?