Summon Lightning Golem

Orb of Sparks is too loud and its damage almost non existent. such noisy skill should stunlock or instantly kill monsters 2 screens around.

For example Slab Slam is perfectly made; animation, sound effect and damage are 'comparable'.

I find this a very useful golem on spellcasters for its cast speed bonus, but a rather useless golem for damage purposes. It's the only golem without an AoE attack, which by itself is reason enough not to take it for anything but the cast speed.

I also agree with the previous poster that the Orb of Sparks makes too much noise.

I do not like this skill being dex/int. They should replace the requirements with the chaos golem. Intelligence is associated with lightning.

Hey GGG staff.

When you guys first introduced the golems i was super exited. I thought the lightning golem was the most awesome looking, and the best for most of my builds.

The first time i summoned the lightning golem, was the last time I summoned it. ( that's not entirely true )

The problem was the noise of the ball it summons on the ground. "IT'S SO LOUD"

Later i tried to make a golem build when the "Clay shaper" was introduced, and ofcause i just had to use lightning golems. I simple only wanted lightning golems, but again my ears got Ra***.

I've been wanting to make a golem build ever since they were introduced, but i've been left in the dust for what over a year now?

It could be as simple as to lower the sound of the lighting golem or atleast get the choice to lower the sound. Think about when you got 3-5 lighting golems running around. "IT'S SO LOUD"

Have you even play tested them for a longer period of time? I can't stand playing with lightning golems for over an hour.. Honestly. Give me the option to play the build i want to play.

I've played since early beta poured over 5000 hours into the game, and i've payed around 500 Euro can I please get some kind of response?? I've never gotten a single response. I feel left out. :(

Many Regards a happy poe player - Ferablekeft - Tue Aamo Dyrberg

Hi GGG,

Any chance of letting Orb of Sparks chain like Orb of Storms does? I think this would go a long way in making it more competitive with other golems for AoE clearing.

I also kind of understand where the noise complaints are coming from :P

Hey GGG i'm here again.

Since the last time i wrote here, nothing happened. I hope you read what people write about these skill gems...

Many people choose not to write here, even though they find a skill gem underperforming/underbalanced.

I've had alot of pasion for the golems, and again i have always wanted to make a golem build.

I was going to make a lightning golem build, but people already told me to go flame golems even before i started...


The balance between the 5 golems is beyond crasy. ( for golem builds )

If you want to be a successfull golem build all you need to go is Flame Golem. If you'r doing anything else you'r failing.

If i should make a list of golem ranking from 1 to 100 where 1 is the best it would look like this.

1. flame golem
2
5
10
25. Chaos Golem
50 Stone Golem
99. Ligtning Golem
100. Ice Golem


maybe i'm overexxagerating, but its just to prove my point.

Flame golem is so easy to build with, allmost every ability is scaling with the same supports, and every ability is aoe.


I'm mostly in love with lightning golem, but i still think you should work on lightning golem and ice golem equaly much.

The lightning golem is in need of either alot more dmg, or some kind of aoe...
Make it so that the lightning orb chains. Or remake lightning golems projectile attack. So that it works more like arc or something. As it stands now you got no aoe unless you use GMP, and thats still sucky aoe compared to a standard flame golem.

Please listen to my prayers. I know by fact i'm not alone on this. Read on reddit, everyone says people should go flame golem.

I've had problems with how high the lightning golems sound was, but i have gotten that fixed by writing to a audio guy directly. Thank goodness that someone listens.

So finnaly i made my lightning golem build, but at level 70 i tried to change a level 17 4 linked lightning golem out with a level 10 3 linked flame golem, and what happens?
The flame golem out performs the lightning by far.

Clear speed went alot faster.

(Thats a joke honestly)

I don't get how you don't see these results when you play tested the golem builds, almost seems like you havnt been playtesting them, atleast not by the same person then, because thers such a big difference in clearspeed, and everything about this game is about clearspeed now a days.

If it was 10% differents i wouldnt mind, but were talking like 50-80% faster with flame golems. People would be stupid not to go for flame golems.

unless they just want to chill, and don't mind being left behind by everyone else.


I hope you guys are reading this, and please take everything i say with a gram of salt, I'm not gonna kill anyone i'm just really fond of you'r game so it hits me ekstra hard when i find stuff like this in you'r game :)

Many Regards Ferablkeft - A long forgotten beta player.

"

Ferablekeft wrote:

The lightning golem is in need of either alot more dmg, or some kind of aoe...
Make it so that the lightning orb chains. Or remake lightning golems projectile attack. So that it works more like arc or something.

I'd also like to see the orb be able to chain :)

I think GGG is trying to make them a mini version of the player spells:

Magma Orb - bounces once for an extra hit (or two if you have the threshold jewel)
↓
Magma Ball - no bounce and I think smaller AOE

Orb of Storms - chains up to 4x
↓
Orb of Sparks - chains 0x

I don't think they have to be this mini though. If GGG really insists on keeping the golem versions mini, then a 2x chain for Orb of Sparks is still quite reasonable I think.

After the changes in 3.2 for skeletons (50% more added damage) I tried this golem, since it got a inferior wrath aura that have synergy. My build is s classic summoner, I think, with 5L skeleton mages and 5L frost sentinel spectres for dps; zombies and srs as filler; and 2 lighting golems for support. The golems are 4L with IAoE, IncDuration and MinionDamage (planing to 5L in a hungry loop with SpellEcho)

The golem in almost all aspects is underwhelming for a summoner, even though it is the only one that tangentially affects other minions via its aura.

First, the damage. The spells it cast are extremely difficult to support efficiently, since the orb of sparks is AoE spell that cannot chain and the projectile is a non AoE spell. This means that there is no other behavior changing link besides echo that helps both of them. Beside that, even the golem at level 20, supported with lvl 19 anger and generosity and all aura passives, deals poor damage casting the orb (maybe added damage is set to be low). The projectile is slow and also it doesn't seem to do noticeable damage. This design is counter intuitive, since it cannot be linked to do AoE (like the flame golem), one would think it single target damage could compensate, but even then the golem is lacking. If one decides to put mostly damage links, the cast speed is slow, the movement of the projectile make it easy to miss, and the short area of the orb make the low damage it deals unreliable (mobs move away from it). If one choose supporting it with more area or multiple projectiles (make the spell even weaker), only one of the spells is affected, making the link sub optimal and sacrificing damage.

Second, the wrath aura is very hard to benefit as a summoner because of the small area and the very short duration it has. Most minions, or the summoner, can easily move away from the golem while is casting the aura. Even if one can manage to summon mages near it, the golem moves erratically, or the duration simply ends and it takes a cooldown to reapply. The aura right now benefits nicely with increased duration, but even with increased area the radius is really small.

My suggestions is to change some of the spells and giving a redesign with a common philosophy on the overall behavior of the golem:

1. Duration: If you change the projectile spell for any lighting spell tagged with duration, supporting increased duration could benefit the aura and orb at the same time, making it easier to link. For example, giving it a firestorm like spell that bring down lighting. Changing the behavior of the orb to be limited only by duration would benefit this change too (since now it is limited to only 2 orbs per golem). I think this change could take too much effort and could be detrimental to any build because it is very hard to get increased minion's skill duration besides the increased duration gem, that is tied to strength.

2. Area: Replacing the projectile with an AoE spell (like storm call or ball lighting), could make the golem easier to link and more useful for clearing. With this change it has a reliable single target via orb of sparks, an a AoE spell for packs, and giving also the wrath aura more viability. A change that could make this work even more is giving the gem "+X radius to the golem shills" while it levels. This is kind of coherent since the IArea support gem is linked to intelligence too.

3. Chain: Thanks to arc and orb of storms looking that cool, I find intuitive to improve the clearing capacity and style of the golem by giving a natural chain to it skills. This could be done by replacing the projectile with a lesser arc that chains only one time (like the blackguard arcmage monster), and giving the orb of sparks a natural +1 chain. If this change is made, the aura skill could be changed to a buff like "you and your minions deal additional lighting damage with attacks and spells", using the same values as the current aura, to avoid the need of IArea supports.

4. Single Target: Changing the golem to be more useful to single target would require to review the current damage and added damage values, I think. Even so, changing the projectile to a spell like the galvanic sentinel monster (a non chained arc that repeats) or any non-projectile spell could be good. Also, the change to the golem aura is still recommended in this regard.

I have no experience as a developer, so this recommendations could be way off in terms of viability, but I think the current state of the golem as a damage or support minion can be improved vastly, but some reworking is needed. Or please, give us a golem that is oriented towards summoners.

Finally, as last feedback, I find it kind of strange that the element lighting associated with intelligence is not the only one required to level the gem; even more given that the chaos type golem, associated with poison and degen, is not tied ad the hybrid int-dex, as the lighting golem.

Played to level 95 with most bosses down.

Damage seems fine coming from the perspective of someone who normally plays melee attack skills, but there's still a significant discrepancy between Lightning Golems and the crowd favorite Ice/Flame Golems. That's just a numbers tweak however and I think undoing the damage nerf to the Orb of Sparks spell would be step in the right direction. Or don't if nerfs to other golems/minions builds are incoming.

Additionally, the biggest flaw of Lightning Golems compared to others is the just how much they struggle at tracking moving enemies. Increase projectile speed and increase the radius of the Orb of Sparks ability a bit.

The other problem with Lightning Golems is their Wrath aura which does not stack and results in wasted cast time when they all refresh the aura at once. Make the miniature Wrath aura like a second Orb of Sparks centered around the golem in addition to the aura buff.

Other than that, Pierce and/or GMP support allows them to clear packs with reasonable speed.