Spellslinger

Character details
Necro Volatile dead LVL 94
-Used spellslinger as six link volatile dead ,and a 3 link desecrate spell cascade spellslinger
-Took 14% mana reservation reduction on the tree and annointed on blight items another 12% for a total of 26% reduced mana reserved and on and off was using spell slinger helmet enchant for even more
-took as much cooldown reduction as i could get my hands on
Defensively used mostly divine flesh and high block from bone offering for defense layers

Build was very fun, during most for the leveling process got to use spellslinger with body swap which felt amasing , but it had to get removed as socket pressure and reservation pressure got too high

Spellslinger has a really good gameplay feel, however it feels like its constantly being put in awkward positions for gearing and building which can heavily limit it, for example in my build i had to balance, getting attack speed , high amounts of cool down reduction ,extreme investment in mana reservation reduction , feeling the helmet enchants were basically mandatory making my helmet slot awkward , needing high tier oils for specific anoints before i can even start to get the things normal characters need like HP , spell damage and various more multipliers from auras or curses ect ..

Ultimately i'd say if i was ignoring how good it feels to play i can't really see how it would be worth it over most other casting methods in terms of power because the investment in late game to get the character functional feels very in contrast to performance , even after pouring like 20-40 exalts at it ,it wasn't really that good late game and that was with one of the best skills for it , as volatile dead got a huge benefit from not having to cast desecrate and rotating through corpses for nerco , for any skill that your not cheating on the set up to a two button skill it seems pretty unimpressive

Tried at various points to use a attack skill with spell slinger and wand nodes but it always felt awful , ether the attack does no damage or your spell does none , and just putting 1-2 curses on frenzy or bsrrage was just better every time , which feels kinda sad

The biggest thing i'd like to see is to have the helmet enchants for cooldown reduction and reduced mana reservation killed and bake some of that power into the base as a build with this much going on really doesn't need that extra helmet slot pressure on top of everything else

Checking something like POE Ninja for such a great playstyle thats been well received , its very sad that north of 95% of all of the builds using it are ether volatile dead , detonate dead or blade blast

Anyway Looking forward to your next expansion , best wishes for the team

[3.11]
I was pretty busy, got to it very late. Harvest looked fun. Made a Spellslinger based on the Volatile Dead forum post. At about level 28 I was able to get a tabula rasa and was able to run three slinger spells. It was really fun.
Only got to play it about three days...
[3.12]
Logged into standard to continue playing. Only I found I suddenly was unable to actually play the character. You nerfed Spellslinger way too damned hard. The char is no longer playable. Seriously feel jacked over it.

Char is lvl 32 now, running 3 slingers at 1/3 power and cannot do ought else with 25 mana left. Again, thanks very little for the nerf.

One thing you CAN square is that in a setup of
Wave of Conviction + Desecrate + Volatile Dead... The Desecrate hits last. So I have to use the skill(s) twice to get Volatile dead to activate sufficiently to do anything that approaches decent damage. In Act one this is just an annoyance. End Game it will mean getting slaughtered.

1. Please reduce the nerf of spellslinger or beef up the reduced Mana reserve in the Witch tree or something to let it be a decent early game play style. As it is it's just frustrating.
2. Please see if you can adjust the order of operations such that Desecrate will fire ahead of skills that can make use of it.

"

Thunderbunny wrote:

[3.11]
I was pretty busy, got to it very late. Harvest looked fun. Made a Spellslinger based on the Volatile Dead forum post. At about level 28 I was able to get a tabula rasa and was able to run three slinger spells. It was really fun.
Only got to play it about three days...
[3.12]
Logged into standard to continue playing. Only I found I suddenly was unable to actually play the character. You nerfed Spellslinger way too damned hard. The char is no longer playable. Seriously feel jacked over it.

Char is lvl 32 now, running 3 slingers at 1/3 power and cannot do ought else with 25 mana left. Again, thanks very little for the nerf.

One thing you CAN square is that in a setup of
Wave of Conviction + Desecrate + Volatile Dead... The Desecrate hits last. So I have to use the skill(s) twice to get Volatile dead to activate sufficiently to do anything that approaches decent damage. In Act one this is just an annoyance. End Game it will mean getting slaughtered.

1. Please reduce the nerf of spellslinger or beef up the reduced Mana reserve in the Witch tree or something to let it be a decent early game play style. As it is it's just frustrating.
2. Please see if you can adjust the order of operations such that Desecrate will fire ahead of skills that can make use of it.

+1

Where can I find the updated gem info on spellslinger?
The gem level progression above level 20 and cooldown, I can only find the old stats online, even PoB can't get it right.

I don't mind the early restrictions on the gem, but would like to see a lower mana reservation at level 20+, instead you can make the level requirement higher for example. I have only played ED/Soulrend/Contagion, it's a great playstyle but the damage isn't OP at all, to bad some builds have to suffer cause other build was deemed to strong or something. Guess the league stats will tell how bad the changes were in the player numbers that utilize the gem. The fact that now that Harvest is gone and players are left with trash gear compared to Harvest, the nerfs to Spellslinger double dipped in a way.

Looking at softcore league stats on poe.ninja Spellslinger went from being used by 37% of all Necromancers in Harvest to only 2-3% in Heist. Trickster ED builds went from 22% to 5%. This is stats for high level characters. Looking at Trickster's in Heist it seems mandatory to go low life with shavs to get a decent ED build out of the gem.

It will be interesting to see if the gem will be balanced a little next league, I hope so because it made me play my first ever chaos DoT build, cause I always deemed the classic ED playstyle to tedious in the pre-slinger times.

5.15 Skill got completely destroyed this patch. I have to pay the mana AND it still reserves it? Unreal. Just remove it from the game like phase walk if you are going to leave it in this state. It's actually unusable. It is a dead gem. I can't even leave any constructive feedback the skill has been so scuttled. My fav skill got the axe.

The 3.17 nerf was kind of logical, but unfairly big.
The damage of normal skills has not changed according to your idea, but the damage over time of "chaoslinger" and "coldslinger" have been nerfed.
Moreover, unlike CoC, which has from 7 to 10 casts per second, which looks unethical, the spellslinger has only 2-3 casts + reserves mana.
Not fair.

I was really excited to use this skill gem, it changes the build style and gameplay... the idea that you can sacrifice mana (which is usually reserved for auras) and combine the cast of spells should be an option.

However, it's just not viable. Makes sense to combine desecrate and volatile/detonate dead into a single combo, but the mana regen required is too demanding especially when you're already sacrificing your mana pool significantly reducing your auras.
With the damage reduction and mana sacrifice, you're better off just pushing two buttons, constantly rotating between the two buttons, for every fight.
Thus, had potential, but nowadays is definitely not worth it.

"

Jixa87 wrote:

I was really excited to use this skill gem, it changes the build style and gameplay... the idea that you can sacrifice mana (which is usually reserved for auras) and combine the cast of spells should be an option.

However, it's just not viable. Makes sense to combine desecrate and volatile/detonate dead into a single combo, but the mana regen required is too demanding especially when you're already sacrificing your mana pool significantly reducing your auras.
With the damage reduction and mana sacrifice, you're better off just pushing two buttons, constantly rotating between the two buttons, for every fight.
Thus, had potential, but nowadays is definitely not worth it.

agreed
but [Removed by Support] i dont see any changes to this once really cool skill