Suggested Changes to Unique Wands for 2.5

General Discussion
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Unique Wands:

Torch of Iro:

Well, +1 Necromancer skills at level 5 is nice, but without staff mods you are better off with a wand bought from the vendors. Also, Life Steal on a wand is silly.

1: Replace the 6% Life Steal with +2 Life For Every Kill
2: Add +3 to Dim Vision (Necromancer Only)
3: Add +3 to Weaken (Necromancer Only)
4: Add +3 to Clay Golem (Necromancer Only)

Arguably a +3 to Amp Damage would be more useful than Dim Vision, but since it’s called a Torch I figure the flavor argues for it. Besides, at level 5 a Necromancer probably already has a point in Amp Damage. This wand ought to be usable for a low level summoner.

Maelstrom:

Okay… this is a difficult one. A maelstrom is a huge damaging storm, more specifically a whirlpool, hurricane, or tornado. Doesn’t really have anything to do with Corpse Explosion or Iron Maiden. If anything, this wand seems more like it ought to be designed for a Wind Druid instead of a Necromancer. It even makes sense to be a Yew Wand, since yew is associated with Druidic magic.

Specific spells that fit with “maelstrom” are Hurricane, Tornado, Twister, Cyclone Armor, and Frozen Orb. Necromancer effects that would be suitable are Terror and Confuse. Lesser Resist would synergize with the cold effects, and Amp Damage with wind (since it’s physical damage). Twister could support a summoner with stun.

I’m going to go ahead and propose a wand that fits the flavor, despite this meaning the use of O-Skills.

Maelstrom Version 1:

1: Remove + Iron Maiden and + Corpse Explosion
2: Add +3 Confuse (Necromancer Only), increase level requirement to 18.
3: Add +3 to Cyclone Armor
4: Add +5 to Twister
5: Add 40% Cold Resistance

The idea behind this wand would be to support a Summoner Necromancer. You use Amp Damage as your main curse, and then spam Twister into the enemy to do damage and support your summons with the stun effect. Terror and Confuse are available as alternative crowd control. It’s just a little… bleh for a wand named Maelstrom for which I’d expect something more like Hurricane.

Maelstrom version 2:

1: Remove + Iron Maiden and + Corpse Explosion
2: Remove Necromancer Only from Terror and Amplify Damage (make them O-skills)
3: Add +3 Confuse
4: Add +8 Twister
5: Add +6 Hurricane, increase level requirement to level 36.
6: Add +6 Frozen Orb
7: Add +10% Cold Skill Damage
8: Add 40% Cold Resistance

This version is a lot more powerful, and instead of being aimed exclusively at a Necromancer, this would also be useful to a Cold Sorceress (though still weaker than end game gear) and a Wind Druid. With the cold damage it’s not as suitable for a skeleton focused summoner, but maybe a Fire Golem Necromancer? (Assuming they make the Fire Golem viable). A Wind Druid would get the most use out of it though, even with the O-skills being reduced to +3 for him. Because Amp Damage would be wonderful for him to have. Amp Damage might also make melee characters have this on weapon switch. It certainly would need a lot of testing, the devs would need to try this out at the very start of PTR and see just how much it really is used and if it really does break things, and if so, can it be tweaked to work or needs to be discarded as an option? It’s just so much better flavor that I feel I have to suggest it despite the power concerns.

Either version has one big problem though. I’m pretty sure Maelstrom is a Classic Diablo item, which means there is no access to Druid Skills right? The first and easiest option is to remove Maelstrom from Classic Diablo. A second possibility would be to switch bases with the Carin Wand, but that damages the flavor of the Yew Wand being Druid oriented. The third possible solution would be to simply have a different version of the Maelstrom for Classic Diablo. If using the version 2 wand, I guess that would just mean the Druid skills not being available, and Frozen Orb being the whirling maelstorm. However, I suspect the first solution is probably the best.

Gravenspine:

Again, it suffers from the lack of staff mods, it doesn’t even have any Faster Cast either, putting it firmly behind other options. Mana steal is also pointless on a wand.

1: Add +3 to Bone Spear
2: Add +3 to Blood Golem
3: Add +3 to Golem Mastery
4: Replace 5% Mana Steal with +5 Mana After Each Kill
5: Replace Add 4-8 Cold Damage with 30% Faster Cast

This makes it a decent mid level wand for a Bone Spear Necromancer until you reach level 41 and can use a White Wand. Plays with Blood Golem as an alternative golem. Maybe if they fix Blood Golem to be useful (probably by making it synergize with Bone skills instead of Golem skills) it might be useful longer for a Bone Spear variant. Made the Necromancer skills O-skills to give it a little more flexibility in who would want to use it. Since Bone Spear won’t become very powerful without synergies for a non-Necromancer the isn’t really a power concern, however, it could be useful in early nightmare as a weapon switch for a Sorceress to deal with Immune monsters.

Ume’s Lament:

Obviously a refence to the banshee wail, this wand is flavorful and decent. Maybe just a few changes to make it a little more viable. Considering the level (28) it probably ought to have some resistances to make it more attractive for nightmare.

1: Add +4 Attract (Necromancer Only)
2: Add +3 Iron Maiden (Necromancer Only)
3: Remove (Necromancer Only) from Terror (make it an O-skill)
4: All Resistances +10

This makes a curse focused wand, with the Attract/Iron Maiden combo. Making Terror an O-skill fits the flavor of a banshee wand and might find some niche use for other casters who want some crowd control. Maybe something like a Hydra Sorceress might find it useful to be able to cast Terror?

Suicide Branch:

Fine, moving on.

Carin Shard:

Is this a typo? Was this supposed to be a Cairn Shard? Obviously meant to be a summoner wand, but what differentiates it from Arm of King Leoric? I guess we can make it Revive and Golem focused instead of Skeleton focused? Perhaps also give it a defensive focus? Cairn means a pile of stones to identify a location (usually a grave).

1: Add +3 to Revive (Necromancer Only)
2: Add +3 to Iron Golem (Necromancer Only)
3: Add +3 to Golem Mastery (Necromancer Only)
4: Add +3 to Summon Resist
5: Add +3 to Grim Ward
6: Add +3 to Iron Skin

Grim Ward suits a “Cairn” wand and can help support a summoner. Iron Skin is defensive, and suits both a stone cairn and the petrified wand. Still not going to be a popular wand, but maybe a few people will use it.

Arm of King Leoric:

Summoner wand for a skeleton army. Needs the chance to cast to be increased (like most chance to cast items). More importantly the Bone Prison needs to be changed to the monster skill version instead of the player version which can trap the player and get him killed.

1: Increase Chance to Cast Bone Spirit to 15%
2: Increase Chance to Cast Bone Prison to 25%
3: Change Bone Prison to a version that won’t get the player killed.

Blackhand Key:

The original source of the term “Black Hand” is Italian mafia, who would extort money from wealthy people. However, I’d guess that it’s actually a reference to the Black Hand villain from the Green Lantern series, and the first Black Lantern, who would kill and consume corpses to power their ring. Flavor wise this wand seems more suited to Assassin Shadow skills, Necromancer curses, and things like Find Item, since the name suggests a thief or black magic. It has Grim Ward, so I suppose it should be suited for crowd control and supporting a summoner build?

Blackhand Key version 1:

1: Add +12 to Dim Vision (Necromancer Only)
2: Add +6 to Iron Maiden (Necromancer Only)
3: Add +3 to Attract (Necromancer Only)
4: Add Level 8 Find Item charges (30/30)

This version is trying to make it as Necromancer focused as possible. Honestly however, I don’t know that many people will use it. The only thing that makes it really attractive is the Find Item charges.

Blackhand Key version 2:

1: Add +3 to Bone Prison
2: Add +1 All Skills
3: Add +20 Psychic Hammer
4: Add +6 Cloak of Shadows
5: Add Level 8 Fade charges (15/15)
6: Add +6 Solar Creeper
7: Add +4 to Slow Missiles
8: Add +3 to Shadow Disciplines (Assassin Only)

This version I tried to make more like a Black Lantern type thing, so it has a lot of O-skills. Psychic Hammer isn’t really that amazing, at level 21 (which is what is granted) that’s only 40 physical and 40 magical damage. Even if the skill damage was increased 1000% it still wouldn’t be overpowered, it’s honestly there more for flavor. I wanted a “consume corpses to regenerate mana” skill, and that meant either Solar Creeper or Redemption, and I thought Redemption didn’t fit the theme. Fade, Bone Prison, Cloak of Shadows, and Slow Missiles all felt like the kind of spells that fit the Black Lantern theme. I made Fade charges so as to limit the strength of that ability.

I could see this being used by caster who wants to control the battlefield more. A summoner Necromancer might find some use in it because of the Cloak of Shadow, and then spam Psychic Hammer while your army fights the enemy. It also works with Amp Damage, in case you want to use that instead. A summoner Druid might find this useful to provide battlefield control. In fact, I considered that Raven might be an in-theme spell to use instead of Psychic Hammer. Maybe a Sorceress might use the Bone Prison to control Immunes while killing minions. Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t think it’s overpowered. Still should probably be tested in a PTR environment to make sure.

Boneshade:

This is supposed to be the best Bone Necromancer wand, but it’s completely eclipsed by the White runeword.

1: Add +3 to Bone and Poison Skills (Necromancer Only).
2: Add +8 Mana After Each Kill
3: Add +8 Life After Each Kill

That gives it a max of +8 to Bone Spear, and +7 to Bone Spirit, compared to White which can get +8 to Bone Spear, and +6 to Bone Spirit. The mana regeneration and extra 5% Faster Cast means that with these changes a perfect Boneshade become ever so slightly better than a White wand.

Death’s Web:

Doesn’t really need anything. I suppose we could add a couple staff mods.

1: Add +3 to Lower Resist (Necromancer Only)
2: Add +3 to Life Tap (Necromancer Only)

Doesn’t really need it though.

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I would argue the normal wands are fine the way they are. The only change I’d say would be nice is 10% fcr to Iro. Can’t have Twister, cyclone armor, twister, or Hurricane on Maelstrom because of classic (non-expansion). Some of the other changes to the norms would be a bit too strong for classic as well. Even though you probably don’t play classic, they would make the change for both so you have to take both into consideration.

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I specifically address the issue of Maelstrom in Classic Diablo. Is Maelstrom a used wand in Classic Diablo? I see no reason why it would be outside a very narrow window. I think it would be better to make a thematic wand that actually is worth using than to not because Classic would lose out on a wand that isn’t used.

As for the other normal wands, how are these changes too powerful? You say Iro is fine, but how is it fine when you can buy a wand at a vendor with +skill staff mods that make the purchased wand better than Iro? That’s really all I’m doing for the normal wands (other than Maelstrom) is adding staff mods, and a few minor clean ups like replacing mana steal with +Mana per kill.

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There is almost zero utility in Weaken early game when Amp Damage doubles your summon damage.

Skeleton Mastery is the best low level skill to dump points into and you only need 1 point into Amp.

For early game, shopping for a +3 SM and +1-3 Raise Skeletons wand is the best option. Iro should mimic the same.

Both Clay golem and Weaken are also higher skill levels than the wand…

Absolutely no one uses Twister over Tornado. The Necro won’t have synergies for it to do any damage (bone spear is better) and a druid will still stick with Tornado.

Same issue with Cyclone Armor, it will not scale on Necro at all.

BIS cold sorc weapon :eyes:

Completely useless for Necro though, decrep and cold mages apply slow. There is no way to scale the damage of the skills through skill synergies

Curses don’t stack so having two on a stick really just means utility is from a single skill only. Attract is definitely the only curse that can’t be overwritten by another curse but it can’t be cast on uniques and bosses so Iron Maiden isn’t as useful. +3 CE might be a better alternative to IM as clustered mobs make for ideal CE opportunities. Curses also have 1/4 the duration in hell so maybe increase the level of attract to +6?

Every useless skill on one Wand, nice. :rofl:

Lower Resist doesn’t scale at all…

At level 10 it’s -55% all, at 20 itvs - 62% all, and at 40 it’s a whopping -67% all. The radius and duration gains aren’t really worth it.

There is a reason why virtually all curses are 1 point wonders.

Literally every normal wand is inferior to what can be bought from Drognan :rofl:

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Well, I’m trying to make the wand fit the name. Torch of Iro is obviously supposed to be the “debuffing torch” theme. Clay Golem slows the enemy, while Weaken reduces their damage. True it’s probably not as powerful as + Skeleton and Skeleton Mastery, but it’s hopefully enough to make the wand a viable variant at low levels. (IE Before Act III Normal).

As for levels, Clay Golem and Weaken are level 6 skills, while the wand is level 5. Additionally, the staff mods +3 to Clay Golem and +3 to Weaken are item level 1. So I don’t see it as a problem appearing on a level 5 wand. Although if you really want to you could increase the level requirement to level 6.

Well, actually, Amp Damage allows doubling the Twister damage. And since you probably have Amp Damage on the enemy anyway to support your summons damage it synergizes decently well, (basically giving you around 40-44 damage per Twister). You can surpass it in damage with Bone Spear, but at the cost of having to put all your spare points into Teeth instead of Summon skills. This version of the Maelstrom wand is designed to support a Summon Necromancer, which means that the Stun effect of the Twister is useful, especially since it stacks with curses.

It’s basically gives a little spell to spam while your army of summons does the real work. It’s also a level 18 wand, so we’re looking to last into early Nightmare at best. It’s not supposed to be end game equipment.

It’s nowhere near BIS for a Cold Sorceress. Not only is Death’s Fathom better (up to 30% Cold Skill Damage increase, and +3 Sorceress Skills), but so is Tal Rasha’s set. Remember that a Sorceress only gets +3 from O-skills, and so doesn’t even get more skills out of this thing compared to a normal Orb. In fact I suspect a rare Orb with +2 Sorceress Skills and +3 Blizzard staff mod would be better than this wand, even if it does mean losing the +10% Cold Skill Damage increase.

It’s really the Wind Druid that might find this best in slot. Which is why it needs testing to make sure it’s not overpowered. It’s just so flavorful and fitting for a Maelstrom wand that I felt I had to suggest it even if it might be overpowered.

Again, for a Necromancer this is not end game, but mid game gear. The idea would be to use the Hurricane not for damage, as much as for the slow effect to support a summoned army. That way instead of using Decrepify you can continue using Amp Damage. And then the Frozen Orb and Twister damage are just icing on the cake. Things for your summoner to cast while waiting for the summons to defeat the enemy. Of course, cold doesn’t really fit will with a skeleton summoner, as I pointed out. So it probably wouldn’t see much use on a Necromancer, unless they buff the Fire Golem to viability, in which case suddenly a Fire/Cold Necromancer becomes possible.

Ume’s Lament is level 28 and so ought to be a Nightmare wand, it can be less effective in Hell. Although curse duration is also reduced in Nightmare, so you might have a point about increasing the level of Attract. The main point of Attract and Iron Maiden is that they synergize. You cast Iron Maiden on a group of monsters and then Attract on one of them, and thus not only the monster getting attacked takes damage, but so do the other monsters, even though they are not attacking you. Corpse Explosion doesn’t fit the banshee theme at all.

Well, they tend to be useless to their specific classes, but as they are O-skills on this wand it would allow other classes to take advantage of them. Cloak of Shadows isn’t super useful for an Assassin, but a Summon Druid could make decent use of it. Slow Missile isn’t very useful for an Amazon, but a Sorceress or a Bone/Poison Necromancer could make good use of it. True that Psychic Hammer and Solar Creeper aren’t super useful, but they’re there mainly for flavor. I’m trying to make items that are thematic and flavorful, not just powerful.

Yes, I know, but a wand with a staff mod to Lower Resist can save you as much as 6 prerequisite skill points that you can now put somewhere else. It’s not a super powerful buff, but it is a buff.

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Yes, means they can spawn on any drop in game. But the level requirements still end up as 6 or higher.

Problem with this logic is that there is no boost in life and the attracted monster dies fairly quickly. There is also the issue of Iron Maiden being atrocious for regular monsters which do very little damage to begin with.

It’s a much weaker Thorns and the only utility is has is cheesing act bosses where your summons die instantly…

You are talking about a normal wand that has +6 orb and +10% cold damage. That is BIS until you get a DF.

Same would be true for wind druid until end game gear.

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Maelstrom is a low level temp for necro and sorcs in classic. For Iro, you get 1+ all skills, a tiny bit of mana and mana regen for utility. Very good for low level. You could shop a 3/3 skill wand but good luck getting that much gold early game if you can ever get it to ever spawn. A 3/3 skill wand also quickly becomes less effective as 1+ skills as you invest in other skills. Teeth, skeletons, bone armor, clay golem, amp etc. If you still feel it is outclassed, then maybe 1+ various skills instead. 3+ is much too high for such a low level item.

Literally every normal wand is inferior to what can be bought from Drognan :rofl: <
30% fcr 40 light res and 14 mana is godly for sorc early game on maelstrom. Better than anything you can shop by far.
2+ 20 fcr 40 mana and decrep are very nice at level 29. May or may not be better than a 1/3 fcr wand you could should depending on your build.

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It’s an O-skill. That means the Sorceress only gets +3 to Frozen Orb from it, and most Cold Sorceresses are using Blizzard not Frozen Orb. Compare this to Tal Rasha’s, which has +15% Cold Skill damage, +1 to Sorceress Skill levels, +2 to Cold Mastery, which is much better for a Cold Sorceress who is using Blizzard.

Or for a more level appropriate comparison, a rare Orb with +2 Cold Skills and +3 Blizzard, is required level 37, about the same as the suggested Maelstrom level 36. At level 43, you can have 20 points in Blizzard, and 20 points in Ice Blast. That gives ~1300 Blizzard damage. From the suggested Maelstrom, 10% of that is +130 damage.

On the other hand, the +5 skill points to Blizzard from the level 37 rare Orb is +545 damage. It’s not even close, the rare Orb is better.

Okay, let’s say you have a bunch of +skills, Stone of Jordan, Magefist, rare +2 skill amulet and circlet. A Spirit shield, so you’re at level 54 and have another 12 hard points into Blizzard synergies, and are level 29 Blizzard. That increases the base damage for the +% Cold Skill to work on right? It’s now ~2950, so +10% Cold Skill Damage as on the suggested Maelstrom is +295. Compared to the rare level 37 Orb which gives +875 damage to Blizzard.

I did the math on this to pick a +% Cold Damage so that it would not be best in slot for a Cold Sorceress. Nice for sure, but not anywhere near best in slot, not at any level. You keep saying it’s best in slot for a Cold Sorceress, but you are wrong. I highly doubt you actually did any comparison, you just assumed that it must be amazing since you saw the Cold Skill damage increase and you didn’t think about what that meant in terms of actual damage increase.

Wind Druid it certainly could be best in slot. I acknowledge that. However, that’s more because there really aren’t any great weapon slot items designed for a Wind Druid, it’s all Spirit swords and Heart of the Oak. So I suggest that it should be tested to see if it’s too overpowered or not, since I can’t get a good read on it by comparing it to other things. Unlike the Cold Sorceress where I was able to and did compare it to other options to verify that it was not BIS.

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+6 orb +10% cold damage >>> Tal Orb Blizzard

Orb will out DPS Blizzard until end game gear because of the + skills.

Assuming 40 total points for the skill and Ice Bolt Synergy:

Full Tal Set + Spirit = 2390-2528 damage Blizzard at level 28.

+6 wand + Spirit + Shako + vipermagi + Tal ammy = 672-704 shard damage.

Total of 42 shards of which the end nova releases 16. Direct hits will result in anywhere from 5 to 16 shards hits the target (Direct hits on Meph across the moat would hit for ~11k damage before cold mastery is calculated) .

A full synergy Blizzard does 4554-4816 at level 28 with full Tals + Spirit shield

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You keep on ignoring that a Sorceress does not get +6 Frozen Orb.

I’ve said three times now, why do you keep ignoring it? O-skill cannot add more than +3 to a skill on a native character. Frozen Orb is native to the Sorceress, thus the wand only gives the Sorceress +3 Frozen Orb. Which is already available to a Sorceress on a staff mod on an orb.

At level 37 when you get this wand, assuming you have Skin of the Vipermagi, 1 Stone of Jordan, Magefist, and Lore you have +4 to skills before equipping a weapon. So that puts Frozen Orb at level 11, with 20 hard points in Ice bolt for synergy. That puts Frozen Orb at 218 damage. Add +3 skills from the proposed Maelstrom wand and that’s 270, add +10% and that’s 297 damage.

Compare to using a rare Orb with +2 Cold Skills and +3 Frozen Orb. Which gives 305 damage. So the Rare Orb is slightly better, in pure damage. As you level up this will change. At level 45 the wand and orb give the same level of damage.

Assuming you have level 29 Frozen Orb (about the max reasonably available before skillers) and 20 points in Ice Bolt, that’s 575 Frozen Orb Damage. Going to level 32 from the +3 Frozen Orb is 640 damage, and 10% of that is 64, so that’s puts Frozen Orb at 704 damage with the proposed Maelstrom wand.

Compared to using a rare Orb with +2 Cold Skills and +3 Frozen Orb, which gives 683, so 21 less damage than the proposed Maelstrom wand.

I suppose that Maelstrom is indeed best in slot for a Frozen Orb Sorceress at somewhere around level 46 until you get a Death’s Fathom. That is, ignoring the effect of the +2 Cold Skills and other staff mods elsewhere that you can get on the orb. Such as for example +3 to Cold Mastery, which at that level is actually still rather important because you only have 3 extra skill points to put into Cold Mastery (assuming you have all the usual 1 point utility skills).

I admit I didn’t look as closely at Frozen Orb numbers as I did Blizzard, since people usually use Blizzard instead of Frozen Orb because of the more consistent damage, (plus you can cast Blizzard and then spam Ice Blast) so I saw that as the more important numbers for comparison. Maybe you are right that it’s better to run Frozen Orb than Blizzard but that’s not what I see most people doing, they use Blizzard and Ice Blast instead (no casting delay on the Ice Blast), so that’s what I choose for comparisons.

Still, I think I was rather close in the numbers in that it really isn’t that much more powerful, even at full max synergies and max +skill points at level 54 (when you can start wearing a Spirit shield) Frozen Orb is only 21 damage more than a rare orb you can get at level 37, and that still doesn’t take into account any other +skills you can get on the orb.

And actually, if we want to be pedantic about it, at level 51, you can start using a magic Glacial Orb of the Magus, that has +3 Frozen Orb staff mod and +3 Cold Skills, as well as Faster Cast. And that wand gives Frozen Orb 705 damage, which is 1 damage than you can get from the proposed Maelstrom.

So really, I don’t think it’s anywhere near as powerful as you think it is.

11

I understand the logic, just doubt the implementation :rofl:

Every patch is a power creep

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Ah, okay.

I can understand that, but it at least right now it’s still that way in game.

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Can we get only one change to Unique wands… Change the Bone prison trigger on Arm of King Leoric to the Monster-skill and not the craptastic Player-skill that has probably caused more deaths than it saved?

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