Arc

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

I was playing another build and stumbled onto something that I should have realised sooner regarding how Arc works, and what makes it different to virtually every other spell in the game.

Interesting! Looking forward to your post.

Did you have no option to triple penetrate the lightning resistance? (Wondering)

That's pretty much the experience with every other sub-par gem. It's not that the game is impossible with them, it's just it takes more patience, more time, and more luck(gear drops) in some cases to be on par with other more mainstream skills/builds.

So what was the revelation about arc you had?

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Lucid_ wrote:

So what was the revelation about arc you had?

From what he wrote he does not seem to be using added xyz gems, does not use CoC. He does use power charges; he is not using power siphon and he solos (not conduit, therefore), so he is using either Voll's or PCoC?

For either Voll's or PCoC he needs crit chance. Assumably, he is building high crit chance, maybe high crit multiplier, high +%lightning damage, probably high cast speed, maybe mana leech. He is probably stacking shock (crits). He is probably using conductivity.

He is thinking(?) about taking advantage of the good(?) power charge building speed, to manually cast discharge, which would be lightning damage. The crit chance/multiplier, +%lightning damage, and conductivity would all help with discharge too.

Or, I'm totally wrong :P.

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

Half right. :)

Discharge is tempting but not the focus.

Heh! I assumed discharge was in there maybe for something akin to culling (one final burst to finish something off) - maybe with an culling gem as well?...

Anyhow, the current implication of Arc is stuck in a hardly-ever-optimal zone of not being amazing for single target (and by this, I mean one single really-tough target, rather than a single normal mob), yet being fairly awful for mass mobs too. The inability to shotgun this spell or hit many mobs with it, along with poor support of the 'added xyz damage' gems due to low damage effectiveness, is what really kills damage scaling with this gem.

Personally, I really think a large improvement would be a more normal-style 'chain lightning'; first hit is high damage effectiveness, unlimited/very high number of chaining (but can only hit one time per mob per cast), each chain loses damage effectiveness.

Storm Call should be the final dagger in arc.

Faster cast speed, higher damage, half the mana cost, hits all targets in a group instead of 3 max, and it's an AOE so can be better supported with passives and support gems.

You would have to be stupid to pick Arc over Storm Call.

I dare suggest that if CharanJaydemyr immediately switched his main skill to Storm Call from Arc, his experimental character would be twice as good (aside from the "Bam! Dead" possibility reflect poses).

My suggestion:
Change the quality to "+0.5% chance to generate an additional Arc on hit."

Each of the newly generated arcs would cast from the location of the enemy hit and would chain as normal and have a chance to generate further hits and further Arcs.

This would still provide good synergy with shock stacks, cast speed, etc., but would make the Chain support gem potentially useful, by providing further synergy by unlocking the potential of long chains from a single cast.

Another option would be to increase the chance to 0.75 or 1% per quality, and make the additional Arcs generated unable to chain.

I'm with ricky, except that now I totally wanna try Charan's build (except, you know, with a skill that doesn't suck monkey testicles). :D

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RickyDMMontoya wrote:

Storm Call should be the final dagger in arc.

Faster cast speed, higher damage, half the mana cost, hits all targets in a group instead of 3 max, and it's an AOE so can be better supported with passives and support gems.

You would have to be stupid to pick Arc over Storm Call.

I dare suggest that if CharanJaydemyr immediately switched his main skill to Storm Call from Arc, his experimental character would be twice as good (aside from the "Bam! Dead" possibility reflect poses).

My suggestion:
Change the quality to "+0.5% chance to generate an additional Arc on hit."

Each of the newly generated arcs would cast from the location of the enemy hit and would chain as normal and have a chance to generate further hits and further Arcs.

This would still provide good synergy with shock stacks, cast speed, etc., but would make the Chain support gem potentially useful, by providing further synergy by unlocking the potential of long chains from a single cast.

Another option would be to increase the chance to 0.75 or 1% per quality, and make the additional Arcs generated unable to chain.

The problem is that arc is still a crap spell, and a 20% quality wouldn't be as good as more shock chance - the only thing arc has going for it.

But spells shouldn't be balanced around their quality - quality should make a spell BETTER, not just USABLE.

I agree with the storm call point though

The problems are: low damage, high mana cost, inconsistent damage (htiting debris), bad big group damage, bad single target damage, unsupportable by damage gems, and - imo - pixelated and low quality effects.

You know I wasn't insulting you when I said that. I only meant that It's such a no-brainer to decide between Storm Call and Arc.

I actually levelled up a hard caster Arc user before you did. Have her at level 63, and she can run content.


(And yes, my build needs a crap-ton more defence. But she's been so destructive, it hasn't really held her back yet).

I just run double Moonsorrow:

My Arc is linked like so:

So I break the cardinal rule. I use Chain with Arc. But with Curse on Hit, E. Weakness and Conductivity, my moderate chance to crit and my high chance to shock, enemies are almost never taking its base damage, but are being critted, shocked and cursed to take many times the base damage, even though I haven't invested in ginormous Crit Multipliers. Chain is useful because it creates more hits, which creates more chances to shock, more chances to curse, more chances to crit. Against enemies with massive lightning resistance, I do switch to Spark with increased crit, increased crit damage and lightning pen, but only after they've been double cursed.

My build was created before Storm Call, I'm not sure if it would be better with Storm Call in place of Arc, but I have a suspicion that switching to Storm Call with Increased Radius would be better than Arc + Chain.