Druid And Sorceress Elemental Spells and Builds Detailed Feedback
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Hello all! After playing for month and using exclusively Druid and Sorceress elemental spells I have a lot of feedback about them - what can be addressed, what can be improved, what can be added and likewise. This feedback would be split into subsections for better readability.
Elemental Infusions Feedback
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While infusions have added more cross-element synergies and effects to the game they also added a lot of issues to Sorceress spells: 1) Necessity to pick infusions in almost melee range to enemies (as they spawn mostly on them and their base pickup radius is quite low and requires separate scaling via passives to get manageable) in a game where standing near enemies for even a second as a ranged character can just get you killed. It is both counterintuitive (as a ranged character with mostly ranged spells you should be promoted to stay away from enemies / kite and not to approach / engage them to collect the infusions) and risky (especially in endgame) and should be addressed. Possible solution: Make infusions apply to character without necessity to pick them (up to infusion cap and if there are excess infusions they could spawn as remnants similarly to current infusions) or at least spawn near your character (so you still need to pick them, but at least don't need to engage enemies for that). Increasing their base pickup radius could help too. 2) Lack of synergies with literally all other skill trees. Sorceress tree is the only one to use elemental infusions, even Witch and Druid (who are other spellcaster classes) don't have any synergies or ways to scale their spells with them. That makes Sorceress tree too self-isolated and reduces synergies between classes skills in a franchise that is famed for its build diversity and creativity (at least the first part of franchise) and should be addressed too. Possible solution: Either switch generating and spending empowered spell effects to Power / Frenzy / Endurance Charges (which are much more versatile and are used by multitude of skill trees, so can scale much bigger variety of cross-class builds) or add synergies with infusions to non-Sorceress spells, especially the elemental based ones. 3) Too heavy promoting of cross-element builds with one element builds being in disadvantage due to many spells scaling only when having infusion of different element (which means that you both need to use other element in addition to your main, scale that element in addition to main element as added damage is usually the same damage type as infusion and also use specific set of skills to even generate that kind of infusion that is currently quite limited). This makes one element builds too limited and disadvantaged compared to multi-element builds and should be addressed too. Possible solution: Add to all "designed to be mainly used skill" elemental spells that currently don't have it or scale with infusion of different element a way to scale with infusion of their element which can be alternative or in addition to scaling with other element infusion that they could have currently. That would allow to better scale them on single element focused build while also keeping potential cross element synergy or scaling too via keeping alternative / additional effect from infusion of different element. 4) Too scarce sources of elemental infusions - Fire Infusion is generated only by Living Bomb, Frost Infusion is generated only by Frost Bomb, Lighting Infusion is generated only by Orb of Storms / Lightning Warp and all three kinds can be generated by Snapping enemies affected by according ailments. That is still too low amount of sources, reduces build variety via forcing using specific spells to even play with infusions and should be increased. Possible solution: Add more ways to generate elemental infusions (if they are kept as mechanic) - for example Fire Infusion could be generated by Solar Orb expiring (which is in line with other 2 orb types producing according infusions on expiration and could allow people who don't like Living Bomb or Snap to get an alternative form of Fire Infusion generation), Cold Infusion could be also generated by exploding Frostbolt naturally or with Snap (with possible internal cooldown for Frost Infusion generation to prevent too high generation from Snakepit shenanigans) and Lightning Infusion could also be generated by Mana Tempest expiring (with possibility to scale number of generated Infusions with its duration before expiring, so that people would not be able to abuse that via just casting it for half second, running out, taking Infusion and doing that again and again). In addition to that you could create a support gem that would allow supported spell to generate Infusion of their main element with internal cooldown when used, so that players would be able to sacrifice a bit of spell's damage scaling in support gems for increasing its element Infusion generation if they would want to. 5) Infusions are currently too mandatory to scale a spell's damage and without them it often does extremely low damage, which is especially noticeable in campaign where both spell damage and infusion generation are quite low and require crutches like + X level to spells weapons to address. This overreliance should be addressed too. Possible solution: Increase base damage / effect of many spells and reduce bonus provided by infusions to compensate. Desired result should be that infusions would still be a form of scaling spell damage, but less mandatory and with alternative options for players that don't like their mechanic and simultaneously that would address issue of spell builds performing quite poorly in early campaign. Fire spell builds feedback
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Fire spells in general have several issues that make them inferior to cold and lightning spells - often low base damage or big part of their damage being backloaded via Ignite, Ignite lacking scaling in the tree (there are many sources of Flammability magnitude but low amount of Ignite magnitude effects) and stacking mechanic (which makes Fire multi-hit spells like Ember Fusillade produce quite weak Ignite compared to big hit spells like Flameblast) making it the weakest of all elemental ailments, reliance on many channeled spells combined with lack of crowd control effect making it the most risky element to use especially in endgame with no proper offensive compensation - its damage is not that impressive compared to other elements and likewise. These issues combined make fire spell builds undertuned compared to other elemental builds both numbers and mechanically wise and could be addressed. Solutions: 1) Increase base damage of many fire based spells, especially those that produce too low effect without infusions like Fireball and Incinerate. 2) Make Ignite stackable (akin to already existing compound mechanic for Incinerate's Ingite, but additive instead of multiplicative with Ignite value from different hits being able to stack and distribute equally over its refreshed duration) and reduce its base effect to 40% of initial damage over 4 seconds to compensate. While at first glance reducing value from 80% to 40% could seem like a nerf it is actually not - being able to stack Ignite's magnitude on enemy from different hits and sources would make it much more in line with Shock (with shock providing 20% baseline additional damage from all different hits instantly and ignite providing 40% of additional damage over 4 seconds baseline from all hits that trigger it with possibility to scale magnitude value for both ailments) and would both help make multi-hit builds like Ember Fusillade and big hit builds like Flameblast more balanced in their Ignite application and make fire damage over time focused builds much more viable (with possibility to build and proliferate massive Ignites). Speaking about proliferation - it could be buffed a bit as well and have its radius increased or proliferation delay lowered. 3) Add optional crowd control effect that could be specced into by fire builds akin to Electrocute for lightning builds. Fitting crowd control effect could be Conflagration (fear mechanic) that would build-up on each enemy separately and when filled would make affected enemy conflagrate, panic and chaotically move for X seconds (and if you feel generous - it could also apply Ignite proliferation to enemies the panicking target would run into while affected by Conflagration for whole wildfire fantasy). Such control effect could help with both survivability (especially when using channeled spells that make character very exposed) and Ignite proliferation of fire builds (if second part of Conflagration suggestion is implemented) and to compensate for its strong effect and suggeested above Ignite buffs this crowd control effect could be just as optional as Electrocute and also require separate items or skills / support gems to enable and separate passives in passive tree to scale. Fire spells feedback
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In addition to general improvements for fire spell builds suggested above many fire spells have mechanical or effect / value issues that could be addressed. Spells listed here would have these issues explained with possible improvement and solution suggestions and those that are not listed here in my opinion are mostly fine or need numbers tuning at most. Flame Wall - despite hidden limit being 3 I was not ever able to create all 3 walls and had 2 at most. Might be bugged and should be fixed in such case and its own direct and Ignite damage could be buffed, as outside of boosting projectiles its own effect is too low. Fireball - is very weak baseline and does much less dps than even free to cast Firebolt. Could use both damage and radius buff to make its base effect more noticeable and distinguishable from "slightly bigger radius, but actually weaker version of Firebolt" without infusions. Ember Fusillade - its main issue is its stacking and auto-selecting different targets mechanic that both can make its effect too delayed (especially for effects that constantly retrigger it like Dusk Vigil unique staff) and often wasted on not important or secondary targets instead of primary target due to the "prefers picking different enemies" mechanic. Both these issues could be addressed and can even be addressed with one solution. Suggestion: Add "hold button" mechanic to Ember Fusillade that when holding its button for second or more would unleash all stored embers and send them in the direction of player's cursor. Such mechanic would allow to trigger stored Embers when and where they are needed (while keeping auto-trigger mechanic too if player would not hold the button for players that like or play around it) and massively help with its gameplay. Incinerate - is both niche and undertuned. First it requires mana spent based fuel mechanic that makes it decently usable only closer to the endgame when player has high enough mana pool and costs. Then it is a channeled in melee range damage spell with mostly backloaded damage (in form of stacked Ignite) that can often make enemy(ies) kill channeling Incinerate character faster than they would die themselves from its damage and Ignite. This spell needs improvements. Suggestion: Either remove fuel mechanic (with spell just being usable and having mana cost) and still slightly buff damage of Incinerate or keep fuel mechanic and significally buff immediate damage of Incinerate. First solution would make it at least usable when and where character would need it and its melee range and channeling with risk of being damaged or stunned / interrupted are already cons enough. Second solution would make it a proper conditional spell with high enough immediate effect to justify all these melee range and channeling risks and not just hope that enemies would die earlier than they would kill you. Flameblast - does decent damage justifying its "risk-reward" channeling gameplay, but is usable too infrequently to actually use it as effective clearing tool (even supportive to the main one) since when you get to next pack it is usually still on cooldown. Could use a slight cooldown reduction, for example to 8 seconds to make it a bit more frequently usable and in line with cooldown of Lightning Conduit. Volcano - while having decent effect for slam based builds its own area and effect are quite low for caster builds and on top of that it is a channeled spell where its channel part is not used much, but prevents it from being boosted by many important support gems that affect only non-channeled spells and prevents it from being triggerable which could be quite handy for natural disasters caster builds like Multiplying Squalls Stormweaver. The only justification for its channeling could be synergy with Dranocht's Cleansing, but it could just be changed to some other trigger effect. Suggestion: Buff area of Volcano's initial impact and projectiles and remove its channeling part / tag to make it more synergizing with spell support gems and builds. Frost spell builds feedback
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Frost spell builds are in better shape than fire builds and have clear pros like usually high base crit chance (making them most fitting for spell crit builds) and defensive layer of chill / freeze and clear cons like lower damage than many spells of other elements to compensate for benefits above. However, some frost spells and effects were overnerfed in earlier patches resulting in being barely usable or unreliable and could be buffed again a bit. Suggestions: 1) Increase base damage of many frost spells, especially those that neither generate nor consume infusions like Frostbolt. 2) Revisit meta effects that generate Energy based on Power of enemies that were frozen and buff their Energy generation from non-unique enemies. While decent against bosses this generation is currently extremely low against regular enemies (baseline requiring like 20 frozen enemies to trigger / invoke a single Comet) and could be buffed. Frost spells feedback
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In addition to improvements to some frost spells and effects suggested above there are additional issues with specific frost spells that could be addressed. Spells listed here would have these issues explained with possible improvements / suggestions and those that are not listed here in my opinion are mostly fine or need numbers tuning at most. Frost Darts - while their addition slightly helped with single-target damage of frost builds, their baseline effect is still undertuned, especially without infusion and against small size or actively moving enemies that often don't get hit by additional chunks. Since Frost builds already have a powerful single-target damage tool against large enemies (Freezing Shards) Frost Darts should instead focus on being a good tool for smaller or agile enemies and have better effect against them and not necessary requiring infusions to work. Suggestion: Buff base damage of darts themselves. Frostbolt - after all the nerfs that reduced its damage and removed its chilled ground this spell early game is undertuned and mainly used to trigger ranged Ice Nova / Snap (till you get Astral Projection). In endgame it is usable only because of a single unique (Snakepit) and even with it is not that impressive. It could use buffs to make it both better early game and as endgame main skill tool. Suggestion: Buff its non-explosion base damage and make it also capable of consuming Frost Infusion to deal increased damage and explode immediately when colliding with enemy without requiring Snap or Snakepit for that. Such changes would make it more usable on its own and better in both early game (as damaging tool) and endgame (allowing better non-Snakepit builds with infusion scaling). Comet - its selfcast version is usable in endgame only while protected by Ice Wall making the non-triggered Comet focused builds quite slow amd limited. It could use more forms of playing it as a self cast skill. Suggestion: Add a support gem that would make affected spell get significally lower cast time (potentially also removing added total cast time part), but get a short cooldown instead. Such support could allow to play alternative quick cast and cooldown based Comet builds in endgame, make self casting Comet builds more viable and would have additional synergy with Chronomancer and her cooldown based nodes. Eye of Winter - was massively improved in 0.4 and is a decent cooldown based skill now, especially when combined with Orbs and ground surfaces, but just like Flameblast is still available too infrequently. Consider reducing its cooldown a bit (like to 8 seconds to match Lightning Conduit cooldown) as well. Arctic Armour - after all the nerfs has questionable purpose with being weak offensively (dealing low damage that also requires being hit in melee that you usually try to avoid and play against) and not providing any defensive benefits either. Consider making it also reduce physical damage taken like in PoE1, so that it would be more valuable as offense + defense hybrid and useful even if you are actively avoiding being hit in melee (which you should when you play ranged builds). Suggested addition: Snowstorm / Whirlpool - currently Druid does not have any frost spells and that is very odd considering he is a master of all 3 elements proven by effects like Apocalypse and Turning of the Seasons. At the same time both Druid and Sorceress caster frost builds lack access to AoE Primed for Freeze effects (when frost based attack builds have access to AoE Primed for Freeze via Wave of Frost or Arctic Howl). Both issues could be addressed simultaneously via introducing a fitting Druid spell that would both cover frost Druid spell niche and AoE Primed for Freeze gap while keeping the natural theme to distinguish it from spells like Ice Storm. Suggestion: Add spell Whirlpool (vortex of water) or Snowstorm (vortex of snow) with decent area that would deal Cold damage over time and make enemies within its area considered Primed for Freeze enabling synergies with other frost spells / attacks. Such spell would fit the natural and damage over time based spell themes of Druid and could be added for example to tier 9 (which currently contains too low amount of abilities in general). Lightning spell builds feedback
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Lightning spell builds are in decent shape currently with having good damage and clearing potential often compensated by tradeoffs (like necessity to stay in small areas like Orb of Storms and Mana Tempest or high mana consumption like Archmage and Mana Tempest). Their biggest issue is significant discrepancy between different "main" spells (Spark > Arc >>> Ball Lightning) and old and new mechanical issues (Lightning Conduit Energy cost is still bugged / not fixed, combo of Ball Lightning and Lightning Warp is badly playable because of 0.4 changes and likewise) that should be addressed. More about them in the lightning spells feedback section below. Lightning spells feedback
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Several lightning based spells are undertuned or have old and new issues that should be addressed. They include: Ball Lightning - even after 0.4 buffs it is very inferior to both Arc and Spark because of low damage against moving targets (and in this game most enemies move towards you at high speed and in opposite direction to Ball Lightning's movement and get barely hit by it), low area of effect and lack of synergies with other boosting spells like Flame Wall and Mana Tempest (Ball Lightning's beams are not considered projectiles and are not boosted by either when both Arc and Spark are projectiles and are boosted). It needs both damage and mechanic boosts to bring it more in line with the other 2 spells. Suggestion: Buff its damage and area of effect for unleashing beams and make beams considered as projectiles and buffed by spells mentioned above and other projectile boosting effects. Such tweaks would help bring Ball Lightning more in line with other lightning spells. Lightning Warp - added in 0.4 delayed / debuff based interaction broke its usability with Ball Lightning projectiles and should be addressed. Consider just removing it and providing a support gem with similar debuff / delayed culling effect for players that would want to play with it. Lightning Conduit - is bugged / not fixed yet for trigger effects (still costs 300 Energy to trigger despite having 2 seconds base cast time so should be 200 and being nerfed multiple times) and is just undertuned after the nerfs. For math comparison - Comet and Lightning Conduit have same base cast time, but Lightning Conduit even when buffed by shock magnitude boost does 70% of base Comet damage while both having cooldown and shocked requirement that Comet does not have. It has additional bolts against shocked targets, but they are still not that impressive compared to Spell Echo / Unleash / Zarokh's Refrain / Zarokh's Revolt that are all usable with Comet and make it deal much higher damage to all affected enemies instead of just 1. Lightning Conduit is quite weak in comparison outside of very high shock magnitude stacking builds and should be buffed. Suggestion: Significally buff base damage of Lightning Conduit and if needed reduce its shock magnitude scaling (to compensate and not to make shock magnitude stacking builds too powerful with it). That sums up my feedback for now. Thank you for reading! Last edited by Volsal#8024 on Jan 15, 2026, 11:48:18 PM Last bumped on Jan 21, 2026, 7:47:47 AM
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Additional feedback about weapon related elemental spells.
Solar Orb - while effect of this skill itself is decent it lacks synergy with other Sorceress skills outside of Flameblast. Consider making it more synergizing with other fire spells too. Suggestion: Make Solar Orb in addition to current effect drop Fire Infusion when expiring (which is in line with other 2 elemental orb skills that produce according infusion when they expire), providing both more synergy with non-Flameblast fire spells and alternative way to generate Fire Infusion for people who don't like Living Bomb / Snap. Freezing Shards - decent skill to deal single-target damage to large enemies, but spread of projectiles is a bit too large for that role, especially when having max quality applied. Consider reducing the spread of its projectiles a little. Enervating Nova - this skill currently is both undertuned and overcomplicated to use. It has less radius and does less damage than analogue skill Ice Nova while also requiring placing enemies on the outer edge of nova to even deal full damage. That makes it overcomplicated and not competitive enough with other weapon based skills, especially since Electrocute is also available from support gem and Kitoko's Current without all these positioning shenanigans and could be addressed. Suggestion: Remove positioning requirement to deal full damage and increase its damage and radius to match Ice Nova's (maybe a bit lower to account for this skill being free, but not as much as currently). Lightning Bolt - does much less dps than Firebolt (which is also a projectile and additionally gets boosted by Flame Wall / Mana Tempest / projectile effects on top of that) and could use a minor damage buff. Last edited by Volsal#8024 on Jan 14, 2026, 4:34:42 AM
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Additional feedback about synergizing and supportive spells to elemental builds.
Blink - helpful for better mobility in and out of combat, but its interaction with sprint is not right - you often start sprinting right after you use Blink (even if you tap its button very quickly) and that can get you just killed by excess movement (like on Arbiter's falling orbs where sometimes even second of excess movement can be fatal) or in tight areas where there can be enemies at your destination that just heavy stun and kill you (like Simulacrum / Ritual and likewise). Please address this issue for both Blink and regular dodge and either allow players to disable sprint or give sprint its own button (like Shift that is often associated with sprinting in RPG games). Convalescence - decent defensive skill, but its base cooldown seems too high, especially compared to skills like Temporal Rift and Meditate that are available much more frequently and have their cooldown reduced with higher skill rank. Consider giving Convalescence similar treatment and make skill ranks reduce its cooldown too. Time of Need - currently has big countersynergy with most elemental builds that prefer to increase skill duration (to extend all the elemental damage over time spells and effects) and that also increases period between its ticks making it synergize exclusively with builds that reduce skill duration and there are not that many of them. Consider making its ticking mechanic more synergizing with majority of builds and be cooldown based or not affected by skill duration increase modifiers. Last edited by Volsal#8024 on Jan 14, 2026, 6:08:50 PM
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Additional feedback on main Ascendancy classes related to Druid / Sorceress elemental caster builds, starting with Shaman.
Turning of the Seasons - decent effect, but having Exposure as aura on a build that is supposed to stay away from enemies and kite when they get nearby makes it often contradict this design. Presence area is also in general undertuned and not visible in combat, so players that use effects attached to it often don't even know that they got too much distance from their targets and disabled Presence based effects (as for example they cannot and would not track Exposure debuff effect on every single enemy nearby). Suggestion: Increase Presence base area to 5 meters and make its boundaries visible in combat akin to how they can be tracked when hovering over ability's tooltip. In addition to that consider providing more Presence area boosting effects in the passive tree and more synergizing item effects for it (currently main synergizing item is Alpha's Howl that is even supposedly already Druid themed, but it for some reason provides Evasion Rating that Druid as a Strength / Intelligence based class has absolutely no scaling for and ruins this synergy). Apocalypse - powerful and visually pleasing effect that makes you feel like a true master of the elements unleashing their wrath. However, it currently has mechanical issues like not being affected by many support gems that can be socketed into it (like Deliberation) and even having some recommended support gems that provide no effect for it (like Considered Casting). These issues should be fixed. Reactive Growth - powerful defensive effect for mitigating elemental damage with decent UI indication via rune in buff section and coloured shields around the character. No suggestions here. Avatar of Evolution - adds physical damage conversion / mitigation and enhances elemental damage mitigation of Reactive Growth. Effects are decent, but 5 seconds duration of affected Adaptations seems too low, especially for caster and hyrbid ES / Armour builds that often try to avoid taking damage for several seconds to recharge Energy Shield and just get Adaptation effect entirely lost before taking another hit because of that. Consider increasing duration of affected Adaptations a bit to address that. Druidic Champion - on its own this node is quite odd. Without Furious Wellspring it has low value even for caster builds (who usually don't generate much Rage as most Rage generating effects are tied to dealing / taking melee damage and support gems that can be slotted in only attacks like Rage X) and this node does not provide any value for attack builds either. While Furious Wellspring can solve this issue that essentially makes effect of Druidic Champion cost 4 Ascendancy points (which are not that easy to get, especially last 4 Ascendancy points) to benefit from and could be improved. Suggestion: Make Druidic Champion in addition to current effect also permit socketing Rage generation support gems (that initially support only melee attacks) into spells. That would allow to play Druidic Champion as more capable / valuable on its own and not require Furious Wellspring to benefit from it just like Reactive Growth does not require taking Avatar of Evolution to benefit from it. Furious Wellspring - provides interesting gameplay tweak for adding both Rage regeneration and Rage cost to skills, but is currently undertuned baseline - its base effect is making maximum Rage 43 (when stacked with mandatory minor nodes required to take it) and regenerate 2.5 Rage per second while requiring 5 Rage per cast of ability making you run out of Rage very quickly, especially with faster cast spells. It could be buffed to enable more effective gameplay and not require so much mana regeneration stacking to even become properly playable. In addition to that this node could be useful even for non-spell based builds, so requiring Druidic Champion to take (which does not provide any benefit for non-spell builds) can make it too expensive / too low benefit to take for them and could be addressed too. Suggestion: Buff Shaman's Rage maximum increasing nodes to +5 (minor) and +10 (Furious Wellspring). That would make base maximum Rage equal 50 when taking Furious Wellspring with base Rage regeneration at 3 per second (6% of maximum stated in the tooltip) and Rage cost at 5 per cast and allow to both make it better playable initially and better scalable with regeneration nodes. As for making this node more generally accessible for non-spell builds - consider splitting its branch in two and have two sub branches (there is even enough space at the center of Shaman's Ascendancy tree for that) that would each start with minor passive (+ X to maximum Rage) with one leading to Druidic Champion (fitting for caster builds) and one leading to Furious Wellspring (fitting for both non-caster builds and caster builds that would want to play around Rage regeneration and spending gameplay). Wisdom of the Maji - has decent effect on its own that makes Augments provide additional benefits when taken, but many Augments have quite meh additional effects that are not worth spending 2 Ascendancy points upon, especially in endgame (like Runes that provide + 10 health and mana as bonded effect - even taking into account having multiple of them equipped total effect is quite minor in endgame and might be not worth the cost). Consider looking at bonded effects of most augments and buffing / redesigning it for Augments that are not used much on their own or for bonded effect (as you likely have usage statistic for them). Sacred Flow - strong effect with strong tradeoff. Mostly fair and fine, but consider it also taking into account excess Charm slots (like having 3 charm slot belt + 1 charm slot from Valley of Titans quest), so that finding 3 charm slot belt for such Shaman would be a gain over using a 2 charm slot belt just like Invoker gets increased benefit for his analogue node (Lead Me through Grace) when equipping better Body Armour. Suggested additions to Shaman's Ascendancy tree: - More minor and notable nodes to scale elemental damage / spells without requiring to play Rage based build for that. Currently there are only 4 nodes for that (lowest branch) with other nodes all being either Rage based or defensive / utility based. - More support for attack based elemental builds in the tree too. That can be even combined with first suggestion via providing generally useful for elemental based builds new minor nodes (like elemental damage increase) and notable nodes (like Turning of the Seasons that is useful for both attack, spell and hybrid builds). Last edited by Volsal#8024 on Jan 15, 2026, 8:28:12 AM
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Damn bro, i have been thinking something similar these days, about how infusions and spells fell kinda bad
Aside all that problems you already mentioned, i also dont like how infusions buf your spell just once and then you have to pick infusion again, why not make it a temporary buff where your spells are buffed for the duration of the infusion? Also instead of one infusion of each element, why not making it just a single type infusion to buff all spells? Also, about incinerate, because the skill is a channeling skill that doesnt "hit" enemies, a lot of support gems and nodes in the skill tree doesnt affect the skill, and the fact that they locked the ignited ground around an infusion (wich you had it for free before) and limited the usage of the skill (fuel mechanic) and increasing the lvl requirement for the skill just pissed me off. Why nerf a skill that was already underperforming? Especially when there is no support that helps with the fuel gain and consumption, at least make it so that when consuiming an infusion, the skill does not consume fuel. I always liked the skill, it just needed a little bit more damage, and then GGG butchered it into this shit we have today, and the split of ignite into flammability didnt helped either. To me its by far the worst skill in the game |
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Here is continuation of feedback about main Ascendancy classes related to Druid / Sorceress elemental caster builds, this time for Stormweaver.
Refracted Infusion - adds additional Infusion of different element when you pick an Elemental Infusion. Can be decent for multi-element builds, no suggestions here. Storm's Recollection - now this one is much more odd, since while it can work in boss fight to return to previous location 3 seconds later and pick respawned Infusion it works badly in maps where you are constantly moving forward. Its mechanic could be tweaked to be more generally applicable. Suggestion: Change its mechanic to make each generated Infusion remnant duplicated and spawned at a different location. That is a slight improvement to current version where you still need to move to different location to pick the second spawned Infusion, but at least no longer need to backtrack or delay movement forward for 3 seconds to do so making it much more compatible with maps. Constant Gale - on its own constant Arcane Surge is really not that impressive, as its high uptime is available with usage of single support gem, especially if you use Mana Tempest. It should provide some additional effect to provide enough boost for an Ascendancy notable passive and also not require Force of Will for that. Suggestion: Make Constant Gale also cause Arcane Surge to increase spell damage by X% while active in addition to current effect. That would both improve value of Constant Gale to a more reasonable level and simultaneously solve the issue of Stormweaver having too low amount of effects to directly increase damage of her spells (with double shock being pretty much the only one where others instead increase Infusion generation / cast speed / mana regeneration and likewise). Force of Will - decent effect and gets indirectly buffed by suggested above tweak to Constant Gale. No further suggestions here. Strike Twice - decent offensive effect, no suggestions here. Shaper of Storms - decent offensive effect for cross-elemental builds, no suggestions here. Heavy Snows - decent defensive effect. Consider though raising its cap to 37.5% per chill to match already existing 75% slow cap on enemies. Shaper of Winter - decent defensive effect for cross-elemental builds, no suggestions here. Tempest Caller - needs work currently as generated Elemental Storms are quite weak and low radius and on top of that Ice and Lightning Elemental Storms for some reason deal much less damage than Fire Elemental Storm. Suggestion: Buff damage and radius of Elemental Storms in general and bring damage of Cold and Lightning Elemental Storms in line with Fire Elemental Storm. Multiplying Squalls - is odd to be positioned at the end of crit branch when it has no direct connection to crits. This can be addressed. Suggestion: Move Multiplying Squalls to its own branch (starting with elemental damage increase minor passive instead of current critical chance boosting one) and put some notable node to enhance effect or reduce cooldown of Elemental Storms to its current position at the end of crit based branch. That would both allow to take Multiplying Squalls for according builds without necessity to take multiple crit based talents beforehand and allow enhancing Elemental Storm crit based builds to further level with a more synergizing effect at the end ot its branch. That would also still not make number of Stormweaver nodes excessive as it would just increase to 22 and match number of Disciple of Varashta's nodes. Last edited by Volsal#8024 on Jan 15, 2026, 11:09:34 PM
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Here is also feedback about some of elemental storm based skills and effects (which became their own category in 0.4) with possible suggestions and improvements to make their effect / gameplay better.
Tornado - while decent when combined with elemental surfaces its base effect is quite weak - damage is low and pull effect is barely noticeable. Tornado could use improvements to its base effect to make it a solid tool to use even for non-elemental builds like plant builds that share its base damage type. Suggestion: Increase its base physical damage and its pull effect (making it a better tool to force weaker enemies stay within planted area and keep taking damage from entangle and vines). Elemental ground surfaces - currently Druid despite his spell Tornado being boosted by elemental ground surfaces has very limited access to them - burning ground only from Vyvern's oil shenanigans or Burning Incription, no innate chill ground (so has to use crutches like Chilled Ground on Freeze support gem and infused Ice Nova) and no innate shocked ground (so uses proxy effects like Charged Mark attached to Mark skills from other classes or Wake of Destruction that is currently an item more fitting for attack builds). Druid and casters in general could use more / better sources of elemental ground surfaces to improve this gameplay. Suggestion: For chilled ground - consider giving Druids their own source for it and creating Energy Shield + Armour boots that would leave chilled ground in character's wake and would complement Wake of Destruction (shocked ground version) and Birth of Fury (ignited ground version). For shocked ground - consider giving Druid more ability based sources of it and making Wake of Destruction also boost lightning spell damage to make it offensively useful for caster builds too. Thunderstorm - while effect is decent its radius (2.3m) is surprisingly low compared to other storm spells (Icestorm with 2.6m radius and Firestorm with 3m radius). Consider increasing its radius to 2.5-3 meters too to bring them more in line. Morgana's Tempest - very underwhelming support gem that while providing effects of both Overabundance and Travelling Storm is inferior to any of them (Overabundance does not reduce damage done and its duration reduction often does not matter much for storms since enemies die or leave their area often before duration expires anyway) and Travelling Storm does not reduce damage of affected storm either. Consider boosting and redesigning Morgana's Tempest to instead provide just Travelling Storm with bonus effect like also making affected storm grow in size and potency (damage) each second it is active, making it a good complementing gem to selected storm spell(s) and actually useful and worth being a Lineage Support gem. Last edited by Volsal#8024 on Jan 16, 2026, 7:10:32 AM
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I only read the fire spells feedback. +1
Fire spells and ignite could use some buffs. Especially fireball and infused fireball imo. |
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You wrote very well about fire spells, I especially liked about control in the form of fear.
I would like the developers to implement your suggestions in the game. |
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I don't understand how they can mess up Fireball.
Shoots a projectile and explodes. It's been done so many times... it's so simple. Diablo II fireball is perfect. Just shoot a fireball that explodes. No extra projectiles, none of that crap. |
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