Spell Cascade Support

I was really disappointed with how few skills are actually supported by this one. Snubbing Ice Nova, Shock Nova and Vortex by not letting it support them was such a letdown, and because it doesn't work with traps you can't even support Fire Trap or Ice Trap which would work perfectly with it.

I like the support and what it does, I just wish it worked with more things.

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Hemmingfish wrote:

I like the support and what it does, I just wish it worked with more things.

This is pretty much all that needs to be said about this support gem.

I still don't understand why this support can only support spells. Feels like Blast Rain and Rain of Arrows would feel really good with this.

Accidentally posted twice, whoops

I love it when using frost bomb and curses as it makes 3 overlapping circles in front of me covering more ground.

What spells can you even support with this skill?

It seems pretty cool, but the description makes it hard to know what it works with or doesn't work with.

As an example, is it supposed to work with trigger gems? It doesn't seem to with CWDT/CoC/etc.
I've heard though that it does work with spells triggered by an item, such as Poet's Pen.

Is one of those a bug or perhaps the reason for the description being lacking?

First, the gem works on too few skills, and doesn't feel like it has a purpose. It can increase single-target damage at high levels, which I'll talk about later, but all it seems it's meant for is taking skills with their own niches and throwing niches on top to mimic Magma Orb or Glacial Cascade. It doesn't work on enough skills to feel like it impacts a skill in particular, it simply works or it doesn't.

And second, the scaling by level is monstrous, like many "less damage" skills that lessen by level. Level 1 feels like a waste since even the overlaps, if you get an overlap, are simply base damage, but many enemies end up at half. If you're not spreading debuffs on enemies with it, you're wasting your time, and let's face it, nobody has debuffs to spread this early. After early game, though, damage spikes from 50% less to 31% less, an actual DPS improvement of 38%. By contrast, strong "more damage" improvements barely change from level 1, like Concentrated Effect, which improves from 35% more to 54% more, overall only a 14% DPS increase. And as if that wasn't enough, Spell Cascade goes from 25% less AoE to 16% less, an overall 12% more AoE increase, which means Spell Cascade is scaling strongly from both ends.

If it's going to be an early level spell, it needs to have viability there. And even if not, the skill needs some tuning to become more viable around act 3, at very least, instead of being avoided altogether until lategame, if then.

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On a separate note, I'd like to see a stat bring these cascading spells together or further apart. I don't personally like Projectile Speed effect on Magma Orb, but that's the idea, and workable if you wanted to make that apply to all cascades. Another you could try is to make it based on cast speed, but I have 2 other ideas for it that might allow better customization of builds:

1. Other typically useless stats for the spells, such as Accuracy or Dexterity. Heck, even a useful stat that has minimal direct impact, such as Intelligence or Mana.

2. Remove Crit Damage from all the skills, and instead make Crit Chance decrease distance between AoEs for sharper single-target.

That's just some of my thoughts.

Hi, I've discovered that spell cascade doesn't support triggered skills (e.g cwdt), even though the gem description doesn't state that it can't work with triggered skills, like spell echo. If this is intentional shouldn't the descriptions be reworded to reflect this?