Archmage is NOT the Problem

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Omegasybers#0029 wrote:

Just to entertain your statement let's do an experiment with a random spell and 5K mana pool (that is fairly easy to reach with all the multipliers on the tree and such)

A lvl 20 fully quality Archmage does give you 400% of ANY given spell damage as extra lightning damage. So JUST by stacking mana (that is also your defense through MoM) you multiply your damage by 5 BEFORE any other multipliers apply. How is that behaviour not problematic?

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Three9#5631 wrote:

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Omegasybers#0029 wrote:

Just to entertain your statement let's do an experiment with a random spell and 5K mana pool (that is fairly easy to reach with all the multipliers on the tree and such)

A lvl 20 fully quality Archmage does give you 400% of ANY given spell damage as extra lightning damage. So JUST by stacking mana (that is also your defense through MoM) you multiply your damage by 5 BEFORE any other multipliers apply. How is that behaviour not problematic?

do you even realize how much investment u need to get to the point u can do a 5k mana swap, and have enough regen for 30m+ fights with spark. You might be able to do a boss killer, and change setup for spark mapping, and with 5k mana and no ES if you're going full glass spark mapping will still get u killed from time to time. You make it sound as if it's giving you everything with no tradeoffs, feel free to show how broken it is streaming from lvl 1 to 97 starting with no currency

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Polantaris#1920 wrote:

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Three9#5631 wrote:

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Omegasybers#0029 wrote:

Just to entertain your statement let's do an experiment with a random spell and 5K mana pool (that is fairly easy to reach with all the multipliers on the tree and such)

A lvl 20 fully quality Archmage does give you 400% of ANY given spell damage as extra lightning damage. So JUST by stacking mana (that is also your defense through MoM) you multiply your damage by 5 BEFORE any other multipliers apply. How is that behaviour not problematic?

do you even realize how much investment u need to get to the point u can do a 5k mana swap, and have enough regen for 30m+ fights with spark. You might be able to do a boss killer, and change setup for spark mapping, and with 5k mana and no ES if you're going full glass spark mapping will still get u killed from time to time. You make it sound as if it's giving you everything with no tradeoffs, feel free to show how broken it is streaming from lvl 1 to 97 starting with no currency

Just because they used an extreme to prove their point doesn't make it less valid. My Stormweaver has 900 Max Mana. I swapped from "Cast on Freeze" to "Archmage" on my Freeze-spamming Cold build, and I effectively doubled my DPS. The Lightning Damage from Archmage crits all the time because my build is crit focused to trigger Elemental Storm. Crits from Lightning Damage cause Shock. Shock increases damage done. Crits also spawn Elemental Storms en masse, which also receive the Lightning Damage bonus from Archmage.

In contrast, Cast on Freeze triggered a bunch in mobs but whenever I really needed it during a hard rare or boss fight, it was effectively worthless. Cast on Ignite and Shock were worse, because they take forever to build up and trigger.

One buff defines half of my DPS. I put no effort into stacking Mana on this build, I was simply testing a theory and it paid extreme dividends.

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Three9#5631 wrote:

But you need to give full context other than pointing to extremes when defining a problem around something you want changed, if you cant define the problem sufficient without realizing the effect it will have on every player, not only at the extremes (mirror budget builds) then you can only encourage further discussion without being taken seriously.

So you're saying 60spi freeze vs 100spi full dps gem almost doubled your damage, also while freeze builds offer a lot more utility (control).

Can you give more info about the modifiers you used to scale in both cases, such as freeze magnitude, gem lvl, penetration, which boss, total health etc?

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Polantaris#1920 wrote:

If I get a ton of time to go into my full build details I can but you missed the point that literally nothing changed about my build besides changing one Spirit buff. I can say off hand that I have almost every single Exposure passive on the tree (including the Stormweaver additional bonus), and when I apply Cold Exposure it's at 66%.

My Freeze Threshold is exactly the same with or without Archmage. I nearly instantaneously freeze monsters, but Freeze doesn't go off on rare/boss fights non-stop. Once they're frozen, they cannot be re-frozen until it ends and Cast on Freeze does not trigger on already frozen monsters, meaning the spell gets cast one time per freeze at most.

In contrast, Archmage is constantly in effect. You can freeze a monster once, keep them frozen for 4-5 seconds, and the entire time Archmage will add massive damage bonuses to your spells while Cast on Freeze will do literally nothing. The difference is night and day, build details are irrelevant because of how Cast on Freeze works fundamentally.

50-100% damage buff (because you cannot ignore the impact of Shock being applied at high values implicitly) or cast an extra spell once every 5 seconds is an easy choice, unless you're going to tell me that there are spells that do 250-500% additional damage every cast and can consistently be cast on a single freeze of a rare or unique monster. Within the context of any build, in a 1-on-1 fight, those are the choices.

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Three9#5631 wrote:

You believe that you can't build around solely CoF and maybe one more dmg spirit gem (60) to justify the utility and dmg it offers over archmage at around what budget and level? And what about progression later going archmage and one 60 spi, or builds not using archmage but for example choir of the storm to trigger cast on gems.

In short what about other complexities other than comparing the two to each other it seems there's a lot more to it before you can justify changes?

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Polantaris#1920 wrote:

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Three9#5631 wrote:

You believe that you can't build around solely CoF and maybe one more dmg spirit gem (60) to justify the utility and dmg it offers over archmage at around what budget and level? And what about progression later going archmage and one 60 spi, or builds not using archmage but for example choir of the storm to trigger cast on gems.

In short what about other complexities other than comparing the two to each other it seems there's a lot more to it before you can justify changes?

Honestly, the better exercise is to discuss what build can make better use of 100 Spirit, with any collection of overall build value. The raw bonus of 5% additional damage as Lightning Damage per 100 Mana on everything you do is an incredible bonus. I find it hard to believe there's a better expenditure of 100 Spirit in the game. The more valuable your gear becomes (the higher overall cost of your build), the more value this buff has because it's not raw damage, it's percent damage based on your existing final damage. Its return on investment increases as you get more powerful.

This isn't a "Cast on Freeze is worse," debate. This is a, "Literally nothing compares to the return on investment," debate. If I can spare 100 Spirit, I have absolutely no reason to use it on something other than Archmage.

If there is no build that can spend 100 Spirit more wisely on a Sorceress, then it becomes a mandatory usage of 100 Spirit which becomes antithesis to the core of the game.