Arc

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Take nine chains and two mobs; each will be hit five times (1st hit, then nine chains). This results in clearing those two monsters five times faster than if there had only been one mob or ten+ mobs. Basically, with nine chains, Arc under the current rules can only possibly be balanced either for '1 <= x <= 9' or 'x = 1 or x > 9'.

Who cares?

Why is that an issue? What is the balance issue?

Split Arrow can hit between 1 and 5 targets. Is it balanced to hit 1 target or balanced to hit 5? Attacks that pierce can hit an infinite number of targets. What's the difference between one piercing arrow hitting 10 enemies, and Arc hitting 2 enemies 5 times each? If the damage is the same, then it will take both attacks equally as long to kill 10 enemies. The only difference is how the damage is distributed as it accumulates across the total number of targets. Arc would actually likely be at a disadvantage due to overkill concerns.

I don't get why it's a problem that you seem to think needs fixing? The only monster groups that come in 1's and 2's are the elementals. And if Arc can kill them faster, so much the better. Everything else comes in groups of 5-15.

Arc with 8 chains (9 hits) won't kill a group of monsters any quicker than Fireball that can hit them all every time.

And if you can separate them so you're dealing with 2 monsters of a larger group a couple at a time, and 1 shotting those 2, it will take you longer to kill the whole group than just flinging fireballs at the whole group.

Edit:

Let's use this as an example. Leaving aside shock and burning, passives, damage increases and the unreliability of Arc's damage, the average damage of level 20 Fireball is 460.5 per cast and the average damage of level 20 Arc is 281.

Say there's a group of 10 monsters with 1000 hit points, and say the fireball hits 5 of them at a time. The Fireball is doing 2302.5 damage per cast, and will kill the entire group of 10 monsters in 6 casts.

Arc with 7 chains (8 hits) will hit 8 times per cast. Whether it hits 8 separate monsters or the same 2 monsters 4 times, it will inflict 2248 damage per cast. If it hits 8 monsters each cast, it will take at least 5 casts to kill them all (at least 5 monsters will be dead after the 4th cast, and then it will take at least one more cast to kill the remaining 5).

If it hits 2 monsters at a time, it will 1 shot those 2 monsters, therefore taking 5 casts to kill the group.

If the monsters had 1200 hit points instead of 1000, the number of Fireballs needed to kill the group would be unchanged, while it would take at least 1 more Arc in all situations due to the "overkill caps" for the two spells. If you factor in the unreliability of Arc's damage, it will take a further additional cast in all cases, because, statistically, some monsters will be left alive, while others will be massively overkilled unnecessarily, leading to a waste of damage that would otherwise be included in the average.

Now if the group is spread out, then Arc could be somewhat better than Fireball. If the group is more tightly packed so that Fireball can hit more of them, then Fireball is the better spell.

At best, Arc would be 3 times better than Fireball, because it would take 1 cast to kill 2 monsters compared to 3 for Fireball. Against a single target, Fireball is better because it would take 3 casts rather than 4. Against a tightly packed group, Fireball would be better whenever it can hit more than 5 targets at a time. The only upper limit to how many targets Fireball can hit (and how much better it ends up being than Arc) is how many enemies are packed into a tight group.

In the end result, Fireball would become best against single targets and tightly packed large groups, while Arc would be, on average, best against loosely packed large groups and 2 targets - but unreliably so, do to the wide variance in damage.

This is contrasted with the current situation where Fireball is better against single targets, 2 targets, tightly packed large groups, and loosely packed large groups.

So please explain how having different spells be useful in different situations is a bad thing.

You said it yourself - Arc would be better at groups of a particular number of mobs or loosely-packed mob groups (both of which occur infrequently) while Fireball would be better at basically everything else. That is the issue. You are also treating both as existing within a bubble - you have to account for the supports available too, such as GMP (shotgunning), iAoE, etc. These supports change the situation.

You could change the numbers so that Arc would be very good at single-target and many targets; say equal to Fireball. The issue then would be that Fireball has several conditions on its damage (getting close for shotgunning, tightly-packed for aoe, etc), which Arc would not, and Fireball wouldn't be as amazing as Arc would be against a few targets (where Arc's chaining between would amp the damage).

'Who cares?' Presumably the Devs would.

Note: I'm not against any buff, regardless of whether it was overpowered or not. Personally I would love to be blazing through packs with lightning shooting from my fingers. I am just trying to put it out there why additional chains (and then balancing for this) would cause a widening gap between two extremes of which only one extreme can be balanced towards. This is important because it may be the very reason it has not been buffed like this already.

I've suggested a solution, one hit per mob per cast. Like it or not, it would make it easier to balance, which has a real possibility of actually seeing Arc get balanced (i.e., buffed).

But I just gave you the numbers there. Increasing the number of hits doesn't lead to the conclusion you are afraid of.

Both Fireball and Arc would continue to be useful in different situations even if Arc chained 7 times! Note that in my proposal, Arc would only chain a maximum of 6 times - and that's at Level 26! The maximum for level 20 would be 4 chains (5 hits). You would have to boost your gem level by at least +1 to get to 5 chains (6 hits), and there's incentive for players to boost it all the way to +6 for the full 6 chains (7 hits).

So even with a 4 fold increase over the current number of chains, Fireball retains its utility in a wide array of circumstances. This shows how tragically bad Arc is in its current pathetic form.

I see absolutely no balance concerns whatsoever with the progression I proposed on the previous page.

For ease of reference I'll repeat it here:

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level 1 = 1 chain = 2 hits;
level 6 = 2 chains = 3 hits;
level 11 = 3 chains = 4 hits;
level 16 = 4 chains = 5 hits;
level 21 = 5 chains = 6 hits; and
level 26 = 6 chains = 7 hits.

BUT, in addition to that make each subsequent hit deal 10% more damage:
first hit - 100%
second - 110%
third - 121%
fourth - 133%
fifth - 146%
sixth - 161%
seventh - 177%

More chains and more damage means the Chain support isn't totally shit, because the eighth and ninth hits would do 194% and 214%, respectively. So even with the 50% LESS on Chain, you could still do some decent (if not respectable) damage, and hit more targets.

With this scheme, it would follow the pattern I described above:
1 target: Fireball is the spell of choice (actually Glacial Spear, but I digress);
2 targets: Arc;
loose group: Arc; and
tight group: Fireball.

Ta da! Every spell is useful.

2 targets and loose-grouping are far rarer than the alternatives. Sure, Arc could be kept around specifically for when that happens... or just don't bother and stick with Fireball since it hardly has any issues here anyway.

Exactly. But the nice thing about the changes proposed is that Arc wouldn't be utterly useless, like it is now.

The difference between Arc and Fireball (even when Fireball is clearly better) would be, at most 15-25%. Now it's more like 300-500% (in Fireball's favour).

It wouldn't be a runaway race anymore, and if you geared or used passives/relied on shock/crit/etc. you could make viable builds that would be at least close to what Fireball could do.

I can see what you are attempting. However, the issue is the supports; LMP/GMP (shotgunning, multiple mobs), iAoE (multiple mobs), cAoE (single-target), etc, buff Fireball by a lot - Arc doesn't have anything remotely similar. I doubt Arc will truly be balanced until it is made compatible with such multipliers, but I also don't feel additional chains by itself it will solve anything.

I am not sure I agree that Arc should be weak against single-targets and many targets in order to be good against a few targets and loosely-grouped mob packs - the probability of coming up against the latter (which it is good against) would be far lower than the probability of coming up against the former (which it would be weak against). However, if that is what you want then additional chaining without one hit per mob per cast is indeed the way to go.

I think it would be boring too. Still, the point stands that such multipliers being inaccessible to Arc are causing imbalance.

Personally, I would like them to come up with new supports that give Arc similar potential but cause it to act differently to those that already exist (and therefore its playstyle would be different). However, I am a realist and I know the Devs putting in new content specifically to balance Arc is highly unlikely.

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Aimeryan wrote:

I can see what you are attempting. However, the issue is the supports; LMP/GMP (shotgunning, multiple mobs), iAoE (multiple mobs), cAoE (single-target), etc, buff Fireball by a lot - Arc doesn't have anything remotely similar. I doubt Arc will truly be balanced until it is made compatible with such multipliers, but I also don't feel additional chains by itself it will solve anything.

I am not sure I agree that Arc should be weak against single-targets and many targets in order to be good against a few targets and loosely-grouped mob packs - the probability of coming up against the latter (which it is good against) would be far lower than the probability of coming up against the former (which it would be weak against). However, if that is what you want then additional chaining without one hit per mob per cast is indeed the way to go.

I have no problem with it being weak against single targets in the same way as Split Arrow and Poison Arrow and Ground Slam and Cleave and Leap Slam and Rain of Arrows and Shockwave Totem and and and and...

But it has to have some viable use. Arc has none right now. That's the problem.

Some abilities are good for single target damage. Others are good for groups.

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RickyDMMontoya wrote:

Some abilities are good for single target damage. Others are good for groups.

Arc is, and still would be with your suggestion, neither. Everything being relative, Arc is poor against single-target AND groups. Right now, Arc is also poor against everything else too.

Again, everything relative, with your suggestion Arc would become possibly good against a select number of targets (2 or 3) and better than most against scattered targets up to the number of chains (although it still wouldn't be good). Relatively, it would fail against tightly-clustered groups and against single-targets. For scattered groups that number greater than the number of chains Arc would be no better than anything else.

So, to summarise (with 6 chains), all relative:

Good
2 or 3 targets (especially if scattered).

Better than most
Scattered targets numbering somewhere between 4 to about 6 (the lower the number the better for Arc).

No/Insignificant difference
Scattered targets numbering above about 6 (the higher the number the worse for Arc).

Poor
Single-target.
Non-scattered groups above about 3 targets.

Do you agree with this? If so, in what order you put these in terms of probability of coming against?

My issue is that under these circumstances the only reason to use Arc would be when you come against specifically a few targets (scattered or not); not more than a few, not one. Comparatively, this would occur very infrequently. Furthermore, it would only perform better in these cases if everything else is equal - i.e., you are using a build that uses spell damage, cast speed, crit chance, and/or crit multiplier (as fire/cold/projectile/physical/attack speed/melee/bow/etc would mean Arc would not be getting equal benefit from the build and would likely fare worse in even its optimal conditions).

So, I could see a niche it could perform in - say you are using a Stormcall build (completely compatible with Arc); you may wish to switch to Arc for when there are 2 or 3 targets, especially if they are scattered. Still, would it be worth the gem sockets? Or the effort of consciously making the choice to switch to Arc specifically for these cases? If so, maybe this would work for you - I would probably not bother myself.

It's the number of casts to clear a group that matters.

Arc would be barely different from Fireball in most cases. It would take, perhaps, one more cast in some cases, and perhaps one less in others.

That's the kind of difference that makes both skills viable.