Ball Lightning

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sidtherat wrote:

arc - added cold - added lightning - faster casting and they cry: 'craaap'
while few more creative dudes toy with Empower and claim that 'arc is fine'
it is the same story

Don't see what's so creative about it, there's no special behavior or mechanics, just simple math, like this:

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Added lighting isn't much worse than empower if you can handle the mana cost, and I'd call it even if it's quality, between straight 20% more damage and 14% more plus shock chance and duration I pick the latter.

I see the effect, it's nice but I already said why I don't like relying on knockback and support slots for spells got crowded now that we got echo. One slot for skill, one for mandatory penetration, one for leech, one for echo, so only one slot left in a quintessential 5-link setup.

So, slower projectiles, knockback, or faster casting?

leech? what for?

thanks to ggg 'uniques are not supposed to be BiS items' policy that is now defunct with Atziri uniques being pretty much BiS pretty much every non-LL spellcaster should and is running Atziri belt (and weapon). for BL it is enough.

i can run ele reflect maps without any issues - BL has a nice leech interaction that helps a lot

btw - and im pretty much sure that arc has worse single target capabilities than BL. nothing to chain from and to and its damage is cut a lot

and echo is a noob trap if BL is not augmented before. you are still thinking about it as about any other 'impact' spell. BL is NOT an impact spell and making it cast faster without playing to its strenghts is making it shot more duds.

but people are free to do what they want..

@sidtherat
Problem is, you are still shooting duds where it counts - boss fights. Since becuse of how unreliable knockback is you have to constantly cast the spell (which goes against what you say in your own guides - 2 casts and move if I remember correctly). In that latest video you cast a lot of duds simply because knockback is unreliable and damage is low.


When played to its strenghts BL is not crap (you convinced me this much), but it isn't great either.

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sidtherat wrote:

leech? what for?

thanks to ggg 'uniques are not supposed to be BiS items' policy that is now defunct with Atziri uniques being pretty much BiS pretty much every non-LL spellcaster should and is running Atziri belt (and weapon). for BL it is enough.

i can run ele reflect maps without any issues - BL has a nice leech interaction that helps a lot

btw - and im pretty much sure that arc has worse single target capabilities than BL. nothing to chain from and to and its damage is cut a lot

and echo is a noob trap if BL is not augmented before. you are still thinking about it as about any other 'impact' spell. BL is NOT an impact spell and making it cast faster without playing to its strenghts is making it shot more duds.

but people are free to do what they want..

No i dissagree,its not a noobtrap at all,you can effectively make more balls,more balls= more dps,more knockback chance,the downside of echo is so small it is a no brainer for this skill.But only if you extensively use it with and without echo you will start noticing that echo is indeed something that goes well with this skill

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Allnamestaken wrote:

@sidtherat
Problem is, you are still shooting duds where it counts - boss fights. Since becuse of how unreliable knockback is you have to constantly cast the spell (which goes against what you say in your own guides - 2 casts and move if I remember correctly). In that latest video you cast a lot of duds simply because knockback is unreliable and damage is low.


When played to its strenghts BL is not crap (you convinced me this much), but it isn't great either.

He did it in responce that he cant keep oak away,an oak that leap slams relentlessly.

Also,if oak is pushed that way back which has some skill to approach,all other bosses are just with the back against the wall all the time.

2 and move was for mobs,and also in response to the one who said incinerate was better in the mob clearing department.

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sidtherat wrote:

and echo is a noob trap if BL is not augmented before. you are still thinking about it as about any other 'impact' spell. BL is NOT an impact spell and making it cast faster without playing to its strenghts is making it shot more duds.

You waste dps with it only if you can break five casts per second, which is a bit of a tall order. Or if you use knockback, I suppose it might knock it back too fast so the balls in the back won't be able to reach the target.

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Allnamestaken wrote:

@sidtherat
Problem is, you are still shooting duds where it counts - boss fights. Since becuse of how unreliable knockback is you have to constantly cast the spell (which goes against what you say in your own guides - 2 casts and move if I remember correctly). In that latest video you cast a lot of duds simply because knockback is unreliable and damage is low.


When played to its strenghts BL is not crap (you convinced me this much), but it isn't great either.

arc is just as 'bad' vs bosses as BL is. difference is - arc provides no added defences knockback does. i can pay the price of bit less dmg to get an inherent safety KB provides. except for invader Totem and invader Devouer - what bosses CANNOT be knocked back (examples, names and maps they exist - not 'many')

could we stop with 'unreliable' knockback please? it is 50% chance from gem. chances of NOT moving your enemy around are nil in practice. and my problem is not the knockback but casting too many empty shots that hit already dead targets. it is hard habit to change.



and can we please stop discussing our 'feelings' but experiences instead? people claiming it is crap - show your trees and builds. it is getting old already


btw - yes. arc is better. even a monkey in a zoo knows that. ggg went full banana with arc and we now have a new and stupid benchmark people are going to compare everything. and even arc with its crazy damage has weaknesses - like single target damage.

btw2 - echo is good. but only after KB/SlowProj/AOE interaction is exploited. before that - it is just wasted effort

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sidtherat wrote:

and can we please stop discussing our 'feelings' but experiences instead? people claiming it is crap - show your trees and builds. it is getting old already

All right. Reached docks. When I get a crit - one-shot shatter of the whole pack and screen freeze. Nice. When I don't and/or fight resistant mobs/rares takes 2-4 shots (and all of my mana).

Thinking of getting corrupted asenath's touch with ele weakness on hit. That way no curse self-casting will be needed and freezes will last very long. Curse on hit seems like a very nice idea, since with many monsters casting curse means losing a lot of first ball's dps thanks to it's mechanics. Freezes under Themporal chains actually allow on-foot repositioning, was able to run around very big packs, lol.


Right now the skill is a 1 trick pony - only 1 setup works good, like the old arc (well, a bit better than that) - overlevel worked pretty good before the buff too. This makes making any sort of different build with the skill harder - both 3dragon freeze and iron will builds need other supports and the skill is already support gem hungry.

It seems to only be good with single target with knockback, which is a shame as I don't have a spare socket, lol.

P.S. It can't be used as an argument against the skill, but 2L searing bond in Searing Touch makes many hard figts for BL seem laughably easy. Still keeping it on swap for emergencies.

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Allnamestaken wrote:

P.S. It can't be used as an argument against the skill, but 2L searing bond in Searing Touch makes many hard figts for BL seem laughably easy. Still keeping it on swap for emergencies.

GGG has made a lot of skills trivial with the introduction of Searing Bond and Spectral Throw. They are simply so good that it begs the question, "why play with similar skills at all?". The more gems that are introduced, the more we see that the need to improve existing skills is just as important as the introduction of a new one.

To those with builds built around it, which would you say is more necessary: lightning penetration, knockback or AOE? Can knockback gem be skipped if you take the fending passive?