Chain

"

Does pierce really help chain? For example, I'm currently playing a dual wield wand shadow and it's sort of hard to tell how it works, if my projectiles pierce a monster does it still trigger chain or does it only trigger on the final hit?

If you have pierce and chain, you shoot a group of monsters, an arrow pierces the first layer and hits a second monster then 'stops', it will then chain from there.

If the arrow pierces the second monsters also and there is nothing behind it, the arrow will continue on until it reaches its maximum distance or hits an object, not triggering a chain.

So then pierce can actually be redundant or less useful if the group of mobs isn't really deep, thanks for the info.

I really hope the 1week race (or spending 10 minutes in chat listening to wtb chain pst spam) has convinced someone that adding Chain as a support was a bad idea. Any build that uses projectiles wants Chain. It's free damage, it doesn't replace other supports functionally, and the mana cost is completely manageable given the damage increase.

Casters and archers were not weak in the past and they're extremely dominant now due to Chain. GGGpls.

"

pneuma wrote:

I really hope the 1week race (or spending 10 minutes in chat listening to wtb chain pst spam) has convinced someone that adding Chain as a support was a bad idea. Any build that uses projectiles wants Chain. It's free damage, it doesn't replace other supports functionally, and the mana cost is completely manageable given the damage increase.

Casters and archers were not weak in the past and they're extremely dominant now due to Chain. GGGpls.

Couldn't agree more.

Chain has actually become a currency now. I tried to buy a unique, and the price was Chain, and Chain only. Everyone and their mother want this gem, because it's so good, while elemental reflect has this "it is there but won't affect me probably" mindset.

Here's a question: Chin Sol + Chain = ?

If the first target is hit in range of the 100% increased damage, does the whole chain have 100% increased damage?
If an arrow chains off a distant mob (no +100%) onto a mob standing right next to it (within the close range of +100%), does that bounce add the 100% increased damage?

I've seen a pretty significant increase in damage since I got Chin Sol on my Chain LA archer, but I'm not sure if it's thanks to that 100% bonus proccing or just better stats from Chin Sol.

currently distance is recalculated each "bounce", so point blank and chin sol effects will apply at whichever new distance it takes for arrow to hit second foe from origin of the first.

Chain needs to be hit with a nerf bat so hard it doesn't even look like the same gem afterwards.

"

pneuma wrote:

I really hope the 1week race (or spending 10 minutes in chat listening to wtb chain pst spam) has convinced someone that adding Chain as a support was a bad idea. Any build that uses projectiles wants Chain. It's free damage, it doesn't replace other supports functionally, and the mana cost is completely manageable given the damage increase.

Casters and archers were not weak in the past and they're extremely dominant now due to Chain. GGGpls.

After playing a Split Arrow ranger to 76 I couldn't agree more. There isn't an option of support gems for ranged characters to use anymore, if you aren't using Chain right now you aren't playing efficiently. If there was another support combination that provided the same kill speed then maybe this feedback wouldn't be warranted, but there isn't a single combination that even comes close.

I think GGG should either remove this gem completely, or temporarily remove this to rebalance it, I don't see any significant downsides besides making some builds less effective.

My suggestion in regards to rebalancing would be to make each consecutive chain do significantly less damage. As in, the initial impact would do full damage, then as it bounces to the next target, it loses 50% damage and so on. In a way it makes sense, that a projectile's momentum would slow down or energy dissipate the more people it passes through.

Besides increasing the mana cost multiplier or increasing the damage penalty, I don't know what else you could do with it.