Greater Multiple Projectiles

Here's my Multiple Projectiles Ice Spear. It does 410 DPS times three projectiles for a total of 1230 DPS. It costs 53 Mana.




Here's my Firestorm gem. The character screen lists 205.9 DPS, and it fires 12 firebolts per cast for a total of 2470 DPS. It costs 27 Mana.

Twice the damage, for half the mana. And that's nowhere near optimized. If I had a chaos damage gem, I could replace the cold and lightning damage gems, and free up a slot for a concentrate AoE gem for another +50% damage.

Personally it looks to me like Multiple Projectiles is extremely weak. I'm not even sure I would be able to make it through with just my Ice Spear. The damage:mana ratio is just too bad and firestorm is already far more efficient at getting enemies bunched up on top of the AoE. Honestly it seems inferior in every way.

Personally I think that projectile spells should probably get a buff. They are too weak without multiple projectiles, and now that multiple projectiles is nerfed (good step/decision —don't know if it's perfectly balanced or not though), the spells still remain weak with multiple projectiles.

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Strill wrote:

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Here's my Multiple Projectiles Ice Spear. It does 410 DPS times three projectiles for a total of 1230 DPS. It costs 53 Mana.

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Here's my Firestorm gem. The character screen lists 205.9 DPS, and it fires 12 firebolts per cast for a total of 2470 DPS. It costs 27 Mana.

Twice the damage, for half the mana. And that's nowhere near optimized. If I had a chaos damage gem, I could replace the cold and lightning damage gems, and free up a slot for a concentrate AoE gem for another +50% damage.

Personally it looks to me like Multiple Projectiles is extremely weak. I'm not even sure I would be able to make it through with just my Ice Spear. The damage:mana ratio is just too bad and firestorm is already far more efficient at getting enemies bunched up on top of the AoE. Honestly it seems inferior in every way.

I'd say you're making a few improper assertions.

#1. It's not necessarily proving multiple projectiles is weak. I'd say it's more so proving spells that shoot projectiles being too weak

#2. The problem with your proof, aside from comparing it to only one other spell, is that it's being compared to what is possibly the strongest spell witches have available right now (when used with supports).

#3. ESPECIALLY with increased duration, there's no way firestorm would deal full damage to moving targets, which are 80-90% of all targets when soloing unless you're partied with a tank and hide behind him. Even then it's only on the targets that aren't moving (the one's attacking him) — oftentimes monsters will die so fast there won't ever be many standing still. Obviously not all the fireballs will hit them even if they were standing still too (except maybe with concentrate area?)

#4. You're not comparing the spells evenly. One has 3 supports, the other has 2 supports. Other things might be imbalanced too (I don't know), such as increased fire/cold/lightning damage modifiers. Albeit even with uneven supports, the MANA cost is still provable as a problem— a reduced skill cost gem (or increased damage) wouldn't change things enough, but the difference would still be less regardless.

#4.(b)Another difference is inherent difference in spell effects — ice spear has 8% chance to crit, with an increased crit chance gem, and a guaranteed(?) freeze at further distance. This makes it really useful for freezing, just not-so-much for dealing DAMAGE.

#5. Your damage calculation for firestorm's DPS is inaccurate. It's somewhat related to #2 (and I think I mentioned it there) — Just because it shoots 12 projectiles doesn't mean all 12 will hit the target —in fact it's quite guaranteed that even with a 100 casts, not one of them would have all shots hit the target (assuming a small enemy).
Against a single target, maybe 40-60% of the projectiles would hit (hits more in the center than the edges now) —the rest would be spread among the AoE hitting other targets than the primary one. Average DPS per monster would probably drop down to 30% or something when cast at groups.

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Xapti wrote:

#3. ESPECIALLY with increased duration, there's no way firestorm would deal full damage to moving targets, which are 80-90% of all targets when soloing unless you're partied with a tank and hide behind him. Even then it's only on the targets that aren't moving (the one's attacking him) — oftentimes monsters will die so fast there won't ever be many standing still. Obviously not all the fireballs will hit them even if they were standing still too (except maybe with concentrate area?)

What do you mean? They stand still plenty often for me. I just cast it on top of myself or at a crowd of enemies. The cold damage chill/freeze protects me from melee damage, and I get a ton of enemies all sitting in one spot. If I'm ever close to being overwhelmed I cast Frost Wall on top of myself.

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#4. You're not comparing the spells evenly. One has 3 supports, the other has 2 supports. Other things might be imbalanced too (I don't know), such as increased fire/cold/lightning damage modifiers. Albeit even with uneven supports, the MANA cost is still provable as a problem— a reduced skill cost gem (or increased damage) wouldn't change things enough, but the difference would still be less regardless.

I've got a third support - faster casting, and it's still not enough.

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#4.(b)Another difference is inherent difference in spell effects — ice spear has 8% chance to crit, with an increased crit chance gem, and a guaranteed(?) freeze at further distance. This makes it really useful for freezing, just not-so-much for dealing DAMAGE.

I don't know about you, but Firestorm is plenty good at freezing from my experience. And Ice Spear doesn't have a guaranteed freeze, it has +600% Crit chance. If it crits it will freeze, but if it crits it will also deal 744% Critical damage with my current stats.

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#5. Your damage calculation for firestorm's DPS is inaccurate. It's somewhat related to #2 (and I think I mentioned it there) — Just because it shoots 12 projectiles doesn't mean all 12 will hit the target —in fact it's quite guaranteed that even with a 100 casts, not one of them would have all shots hit the target (assuming a small enemy).
Against a single target, maybe 40-60% of the projectiles would hit (hits more in the center than the edges now) —the rest would be spread among the AoE hitting other targets than the primary one. Average DPS per monster would probably drop down to 30% or something when cast at groups.

This brings up a good point, but not the one you made. The point is that Multiple Projectiles drastically reduces Ice Spear's single-target effectiveness, and doesn't improve its group effectiveness enough. Without Multiple Projectiles, a single crit is almost always enough to kill a normal enemy. With multiple projectiles, it's a challenge just to land all the shots on a single enemy. At the same time, it's not good against groups either since it's still much more of a challenge to line up a shot compared to how easy it is to land a Firestorm. Multiple projectiles on the character sheet makes Ice Spear slightly more mana efficient, but that's only if you ignore the +600% crit bonus, and only if ALL the projectiles hit their target, neither of which was true for me. Firestorm is better because it's much more accurate against single targets and groups than Multi-projectile Ice Spear.

Well I've gotten around to trying Multiple Projectiles now without the crit penalty and I gotta say it's just amazingly overpowered compared to any other support gem (except Added Chaos Damage). I'm literally one-shotting five chaos mobs at once due to this combined with the massive DPS boost from Power Charges. Even the 96 mana cost combined with Voll's Armour isn't a deterrent. Here's the Ice Spear I'm now using.



My previous Ice Spear had a level 16 Faster Casting gem in place of the Multiple Projectiles. My current Ice Spear deals 100% more DPS, and is 50% MORE (not less, MORE) mana efficient than it was before. And that's just listed DPS.

After playing for a month with Multi-projectiles, I think what this needs most of all is a minimum spread angle for spells.

Multi-projectiles for ranged attacks can only hit one enemy per projectile, but that's not true for spells. As a result there is absolutely no reason not to use Multiple Projectiles. It's the best skill for both single-target and multi-target damage since it's easy to hit a single enemy with at least two shots, and you can so easily prevent yourself from wasting any damage when firing into a given group of enemies.

Therefore, I think that if multiple projectiles fired a wider spread there would be a more significant choice between area damage and single-target damage.

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Strill wrote:

After playing for a month with Multi-projectiles, I think what this needs most of all is a minimum spread angle for spells.

Multi-projectiles for ranged attacks can only hit one enemy per projectile, but that's not true for spells. As a result there is absolutely no reason not to use Multiple Projectiles. It's the best skill for both single-target and multi-target damage since it's easy to hit a single enemy with at least two shots, and you can so easily prevent yourself from wasting any damage when firing into a given group of enemies.

Therefore, I think that if multiple projectiles fired a wider spread there would be a more significant choice between area damage and single-target damage.

I agree on this. It doesn't make any sense that multi-projectile bow attacks will only hit each target with one projectile, but an Ice Spear or Fireball build can hit a single target with all or nearly all of its projectiles from across the screen for anyone smart enough to aim behind their target. A choice for Multiple Projectiles should be a choice for AoE. I think either increasing the minimum spread or following the one target:one projectile rule for bow attacks would fix this up nicely. And as a bonus, it will force a change in one-skill-spamming for many builds. They'll probably just spam a non-MP copy of the same skill unless they have a better single target option, but it's progress of a sort.

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UristMcDwarfy wrote:

A choice for Multiple Projectiles should be a choice for AoE. I think either increasing the minimum spread or following the one target:one projectile rule...

Totally agree. If such a change happened, then the "anti-elemental" aspects might be unnecessary, but given how popular it is, probably not.

PRE-EDIT: Please tell me my math is right on the following. Yes Lightning Strike is 50% less damage, but the example is considering the projectile alone.

Another problem I noticed is using level 1 Multi on attacks with multiple projectiles to start. Standard use: one projectile for -30%, total damage is 40% more (Two 70% attacks, 140% vs one at 100%). But, Lightning Strike: -6.67% (4 * 70% = 280% vs 3 * 100% = 300%). Spark: -12.5% (5 * 70% = 350% vs 400%). I suggest Multi-projectile also give a percentage boost to projectiles to compensate for this, as it will be severely gimped on attacks with base projectile counts over 1. The obvious problem I see is communicating how it rounds the projectile count, but thankfully the newest character screen shows projectile count.

EDIT: Oh, I should mention that rant came from my Lightning Strike Templar hitting 31, finally able to equip Multi-proj, but how disappointing when I did the math. Lower my total damage AND double the cost? No thanks.

Honestly, multi projectiles isn't really worthwhile at low levels on most skills anyway. In 0.9.4, a lot of the supports were changed so that they started with larger bonuses and increased relatively slowly in power from there. Multiple projectiles might benefit from a similar treatment. Start at, say, 2 projectiles, then slowly increase physical damage till the 3 projectile mark, ect.

There would be less feeling of progress as it levels, but I think that would be offset because the support would be more sustainable early on. The cost is quite hefty to only be adding one projectile.

I linked multiple projectiles and pierce to raise spectre. The skill states "minions fire x additional projectiles" and "minions have x% increased chance of projectiles piercing but in practice they only ever fire 1 projectile and I've seen none pierce in an hour of testing.

Edit: Apologies, I clicked and nothing happened, clicked it again a minute later and got a double post.