About Meteor, Explosive Blast, Black Hole and Tal Rasha

Wizard
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Here is a small collection of ideas regarding the things mentioned in the topic… why? Because it would be cool to see updates to these things and Tal Rasha and Meteor need love, now that Etched Sigil was castrated.

Jang’s Envelopment [Legendary Belt]
Halves the cooldown of Black Hole and increases its area of effect by your pickup radius. A Black Hole pulls 3-5 Meteors of the same element from the sky.

The Smoldering Core [Legendary 2H Staff]
Removes the cooldown and resource costs from the Molten Impact rune of Meteor and triples its damage dealt. Your gold pickup radius increases the area of effect and you now gain a Meteor charge every 5 seconds, up to a maximum of 4-6 charges. Your cooldown reduction affects the recharge time.

Primordial Soul [Legendary Source]
Increases the damage bonus per stack of Elemental Exposure to 40-50%.

Orb of Infinite Depth [Legendary Source]
Explosive Blast deals 500-600% increased damage, Hitting an enemy with Explosive Blast increases your damage reduction by 20% for 6 seconds, stacking up to four times.

Cathan’s Guard [Legendary Shoulders] [NEW]
Attacking with Arcane, Cold, Fire or Lightning draws a Meteor of the same element from sky and Meteors other than Meteor Shower detonate a corresponding Explosive Blast on impact. Each damage type can pull a Meteor once every 6 seconds. This is susceptible to cooldown reduction effects.

…and finally the Tal Rasha set - as you can guess from the shoulders it will look a bit different, having auto-meteors removed:

Tal Rasha’s Elements
(2) piece bonus:
Arcane, Cold, Fire and Lightning attacks each grant a stack of Elemental Fury for 8 seconds. At 4 stacks, switching between different elemental attacks extends the duration by 2 seconds, up to a maximum of 12 seconds. Primary skills deal 50% more damage per stack of Elemental Fury, and attack 25% faster.
(4) piece bonus:
You take 15% less damage per stack of Elemental Fury.
(6) piece bonus:
Each stack of Elemental Fury increases all damage dealt by 3000% and reduces the cooldown time of Arcane Power spenders by 10%.

Please take all % figures with a grain of salt, as a base for discussion, and let me hear your toughts.

EDIT:
Prim.Soul and OoID adjusted, thanks for reminding me, Tinne…

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I like this. It even makes sense, because Black Hole can pick up gold. If you wanted to add some more utility, they could even let it pick up globes too.

That might be a bit too strong. A chargeable meteor with Star Pact levels of damage spammable in a CoE window (the optimal way to play this bonus would be to save all your charges and drop 4-6 in a single CoE window)? I guess that’s what PTRs are for though. Might just need a number tuning.

Wording is complicated. I’d keep it simpler and just focus on the bonus per stack.

First part is an easy change. Second part is probably WAY too strong in density. That second part will probably break the group meta. Just imagine a barb pulling 100 enemies, a wizard with Pain Enhancer at close to 5 APS popping off 100x5 = 500 EBs per second. But wait, it’s chain reaction + Wand of Woh, so it’s actually 12*500 = 6000 EBs per second. I think this one is a no-go.

I don’t mind this, just moving the Tal’s 2p to a shoulder. It seems overly complicated with the Explosive Blast part though, might be better to just stick with meteors.

This seems like it’s trying to do too many things. I get that Tal’s is the jack of all trades set, but it doesn’t need these extra bonuses to reinforce that. The cooldown stuff doesn’t really seem necessary?

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Meteor Molten Impact gains charges. Star Pact is like normal, Well, the thing is, you can’t use Grand Vizier and Smoldering Core together, unless you drop a source.

Look at the shoulders and the belt again… :wink:

The idea behind this and the stuff on the shoulders is that you can go for either Explosive Blast or Meteor as your damage disher. If Meteor Impacts will detonate Explosive Blast, you can also opt for EB items instead of Meteor stuff.

Ouch… obviously. You got me there, I forgot to change that while copying the stuff from older posts… I will change that!

Hm… you think so? I might agree to limiting it to the stacks, but I don’t think it’s too hard to understand. But, well… let’s simplify it, then.

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No I know. It’s just that with triple damage, a Molten Impact will do Star Pact levels of damage potentially. And the charge mechanic would make it more spammable in a CoE window. Maybe it would be fine, just might need some number tuning if it ends up too strong. Although I guess you’re locked out from using an off-hand if you use both Smoldering Core and Grand Vizier, which would temper the damage problem somewhat. Can’t combine it with something like your proposed Primordial Soul and still use both meteor staffs (unless there’s another cube-based season theme, anyway). Might be okay then.

Yeah I saw that, it just seems like it’s a bit complicated. Most items (not set bonuses, just items) either boost a single skill or a logical group of skills. There aren’t many items that specifically buff two completely different skills in this way (although I guess there’s been some exceptions, the new Fragment of Destiny definitely comes to mind). In my opinion it’s better to make more items, one for each skill, instead of buffing two completely independent skills on the same item. If it’s a group of skills, like Arcane Power spenders or all primary skills or something that’s different. Grouping Meteor + Explosive Blast on an item seems a bit odd to me though.

There’s a theme here, I tend to prefer more straightforward mechanics for items. Especially in a case where it doesn’t really change anything except more damage. It’s easier to just make the damage bonus to Elemental Exposure bigger instead of having a completely separate mechanic relating to elemental damage on the same item. I think that bonus would be more appropriate for SoJ anyway (and should have been added to SoJ when they updated it, frankly).

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Maybe, but unless we get a dev to explain their thoughts on the latest changes, which are at least similar in terms of strangeness (Winterflurry anyone?)… but as I said, it’s a base for discussion. I could very well imagine Blaster Boots or something like that.

Well, I changed it, but regarding SoJ. Honestly… that thing is pretty much a stillborn and if I had a word in this, it would probably have looked like this:

Stone of Jordan
Any static elemental bonus to skill is increased by XX% and now affects every element available to your class.

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Nice idea imo. I had a similar one to that a while back.

A bit much imo. Maybe just have Smoldering Core increase Meteor’s Size, and damage (have it do so more than the Grand Vizier).

No issue with these two

Interesting addition of explosive blast, however it may prove chaotic considering that it procs on all meteors (except shower). Most of your other ideas gives either an autocast effect to meteor or help lessens it’s cooldown; so yeah that’s a lot of meteor + explosive blast action going about imo.

I’ll be honest, I think the only major change to Tal-Rasha that would make me happy with the set is if they actually get rid of needing to use and/or juggle multiple different elemental attacks just to gain buffs.

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Yeah. In theory, it’s a good idea. It just doesn’t play well at all.

It’s tricky, because they’ll want to preserve the multi-element nature of the set. But surely there’s a better way to stay true to that design goal instead of making us constantly jump through hoops to keep the buff up.

I don’t know what the answer is, but there has to be a better one.

I don’t have particularly high hopes for major set redesigns beyond number tweaking though. And if they are going to completely redesign a wizard set, and they don’t have enough development time to do multiple sets… I’d rather have them redesign Firebird’s.

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Agreed. it would be one thing if we could use more than 6 skills at once, or at least had a mechanic where we could quickly alternate out some skills for others, then it would be bearable. Or if they made a change to Tal-Rasha where skills of all type would count for giving it’s buff; meaning that they wouldn’t need to be attack spells in order to gain a buff. So if you use storm, ice, or energy armor, you would gain a buff corresponding with the armor’s element (so either lightning, ice, or arcane). Afterwhich, they could then change the elements of some skills to add more diversity and help add more variations to potential Tal-Rasha builds (like a ice, fire, and lightning teleport).

Unfortunately that’s probably far more work than what Blizzard is willing or able to put in, so it’s definitely not something that I would expect.

Closest I can think of is to both up the duration of the 4 and 6 piece (and actually have the two coincide with one another), and then change the requirement to just casting an elemental attack (instead of needing a different one). Now if they’re dead set on keeping the multi-elemental master, then they could up the number of stacks to like 8 or 10 (damage and defense buffs would need to be adjusted), and have the player gain double 2 stacks instead of one when they cast a different element from the last. So in short, while you would be able to play using a singular attack element, you’d be rewarded for going multi-element with reaching your max damage/defense buffs higher.

You will never get an argument from me regarding that. Firebird is just that bad.

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Yeah… the issue with multi-element is that it doesn’tt work. Period.

At least given the current items where you need to wear multiple items to get your damage up. Combine that with the elemental damage tied to runes and the fact that you can’t place the same skill with different runes in your bar… there you have it.

It could work with signature skills, at least for now - that is if they add/update ONE item for each skill and introduce more items that affect all signature skills on equal footing, like Fragment does. Then, maybe…

Another idea would be to do it the reverse way… have different attacks for the elements that literally deal no damage but trigger autocasts of the same element that actually deal damage. Basically the current Tal Rasha (2), but not only for Meteor. Explosive Blast could works the same way. Maybe Arcane Orb as well. Hydra… surely not.

Allowing multiple instances of the same skill to be added to the skillbar would be another way to make it work - at least for the select few skills that have the necessary item support and the respective elemental runes. Now think that in a situation where you have a skill like Meteor that has all four runes… combined with SoJ (better version of the affix needed) and CoE? Could be something… but I won’t dare to hope anything like this will happen.

My gut feeling is they won’t change the general mechanic of skill rotation. That’s why I kept it, with a bare minimum of hassle.

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Another way would be adding a legendary effect of some kind to let us change the element of a skill by consecutively casting it. For example:

Yeah, I have no expectations for them to do that either. I was only saying that I would be satisfied if they did, as I’m rather tired of Wizards getting weird, inefficient, painful, and/or discouraging gimmicks that folks may call a build.

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That could work, but I see some issues with that. Example:

Meteor:
unruned (fire)
Thundercrash (lightning)
Star Pact (arcane)
Comet (cold)
Meteor Shower (fire)
Molten Impact (fire)

Let’s say you have arcane, cold and lightning % affixes on gear. Then, from how I understand your suggestion, the first cast would be Thundercrash, afterwards will be a Star Pact Meteor and the third cast a Comet… and finally it would loop back to Thundercrash. So far so good.

Okay, then… let’s mess things up a bit:

  1. From my understanding the effect rotates through Meteor’s elemental runes. What happens to the rune you have chosen? That’s a non-issue if your rune is Thundercrash or Star Pact or Comet, but what about Meteor Shower in my example, since fire % is not on your gear?
    Will you cast your chosen rune first and then rotate through the other three or will your own rune be ignored?
  2. you wrote “attacking consecutively” - what exactly does this mean? Will there be a (short) time window during which you have to cast the skill again? Or will the rune switch no matter how long it takes as long as the cast is your next attack? Not Meteor related, but how about channeling, then…
  3. Back to Meteor… your chosen rune is Molten Impact… what happens now in regards to the cooldown and a potential time window (consecutive attack)?
  4. now lets replace lightning % with fire % and we now have affixes for fire, cold and arcane on gear… how will the rotation look now? Will it rotate through all options and skip Thundercrash? Or will only the first fire rune (Meteor Shower) be chosen… because “unruned” is not a rune. If it rotates through all fire runes, will the skill go on cooldown when it rotates on Molten Impact?

And that’s just for Meteor, what about Black Hole, Energy Twister, Arcane Orb… or channeling skills. Not to mention there are times when this mechanic can be detrimental or even bite you - Spectral Blades, Flame Blade for instance - stacking? Or what will happen with Familiar… it’s a spender and it can attack? Will that make it rotate?

Such a mechanic could produce a lot of chaos, I guess…

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The proposed item wouldn’t count unruned variants of the skills.

Your first cast would always be the rune you selected, however if you don’t have an elemental bonus to your gear that matches the rune (so no fire %) then you won’t cast your rune again and instead will cycle through the other elements. So in this case if you have Meteor shower selected, but only lightning and ice % elemental bonus on your gear; then what you would have would be:

1st Meteor Cast – Meteor Shower

2nd Meteor Cast – Thunder Crash

3rd Meteor Cast – Comet

4th Meteor Cast – Thunder Crash

5th Meteor Cast – Comet

And so forth.

On the other hand, if you have only 1 other elemental damage bonus that’s, let’s say ice, then after the first Meteor-Meteor Shower is cast, subsequent meteor casts will all be Comet. However, you can reset this and the first example by using another skill and be able to cast Meteor-Meteor Shower again.

Consecutively as in you cast only that attack and use no other arcane spender or signature. So for example, using meteor again while equipped with ice and lightning elemental bonuses (with thundercrash runed); if I were to cast Meteor, the first would be Thundercrash, then even if I don’t cast meteor again for another 30 seconds or more, the next meteor cast would be Comet. The only exceptions would be if I casted another arcane spender or signature, so let’s say magic missle, and/or probably if I go into a different area (similar to how the seasonal shadow clones leave you when you go to a new area); if any of those actions are taken, then the order is reset.
So for example, if I cast meteor-thundercrash, and 2 seconds later magic missle, then my next casted meteor will be thundercrash again as the cycle was reset.

In the case that your runed meteor is Molten Impact, then you will only have a cooldown if you casted for the Molten Impact variant, your other meteors casted won’t cause a cooldown. Similar to Starpact, if you cast starpact, then you’ll eat up all of your arcane, however your other meteors will still cost the usual amount of arcane power. By the way, these casts are still affected by other stats like rcr and cdr (Molten Impact at least).

This is explained a bit in my previous linked post. However, in the case that you have Fire, Cold, and Arcane % on your gear, then your rotation would like this:

1st Meteor Cast (selected rune Thundercrash, or unruned meteor) - > Starpact (arcane) - > Comet (Cold) - > Either Molten Impact or Meteor Shower (Fire (for spells with multiple elements, it will always be random, unless you actually have a rune for the element selected)) - > Starpact (arcane) - > Comet (Cold) - > Either Molten Impact or Meteor Shower (Fire) and so forth.

And yes if the meteor does go to Molten Impact, then meteor will go through the cooldown (only after the Molten Impact variant; every other meteor wouldn’t activate a cooldown after casting).

Same with those spells, if you wear the proposed item and cast those spells in consecutive, then as long as you don’t reset the cycle, then those spells will cycle through their available runes based on your equipped elemental bonuses %.

The only channeling skill that would be noticeably affected would be arcane torrent and a bit of Disintegrate (assuming that the player selects an arcane rune instead of Convergence), and Ray of Frost has no other elemental runes (and as such it wouldn’t cycle at all).

Not really. I mean if you’re using Spectral Blades, and Flame Blade for that matter, then you either wouldn’t be stacking different elemental bonuses, or you would be using a different weapon. Also if you must use the item with Spectral Blades, then If a player can stack only fire %, then spectral blade wouldn’t cycle unless they had another rune selected. Besides the proposed item would be for builds to utilize multi-elemental attacks, for most builds that goes for singular elemental, it wouldn’t be very effective as those builds would likely have better alternatives.

Eh, does etched sigil proc Familiar, because if not, then I wouldn’t consider it in arcane spender in all honesty. Instead it’s more like a buff like magic weapon. However on the chance that it is an arcane spender, then Familiar would only change runes if you actively cast the skill (and that shouldn’t happen too frequently as Wizards buffs aren’t passive and active based like Monks, DH, and Necromancer), not when it attacks.

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Thanks, I understand the concept now… not sure whether I’d really like it, though. I would like to play around with something like that a little. But I won’t be able to… they will never do something like that :smiley:

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It’s unfortunate, however you’re right haha.

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It’s unfortunate, however you’re right haha.

Sigh, I fear as much myself.

Nice ideas @Lexa, I am covered by Time’s answer’s. Non the less I would like to point out two things. Firstly Tal set has been improved already as far as I remember, you need to cast the four elements in the start but afterwards it’s easier to maintain.
Secondly too many autocast’s, they are tempting I’ll agree on that.

I like that you still try though :slight_smile:

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Some new input after revisiting the wizard for S22, i am fumbling around all spells trying to test them out and one thing I noticed is that the wicked wind (arcane) twister is better at grouping than black hole. Quite annoying tbh, so your suggestion came to mind.
First of all this spell has so much utility and it is a shame not fitting it in a build.
An item granting several times would be golden plus an increase to the radius.
As for a damage buff I wouldn’t care at all because I would like to use it for grouping.
Now for the down sides if an item gave all runes and another triggered black hole we might get too much tbh then a scenario where you got black hole without having in the spell bar could occur and I honestly don’t know if that would be so good. I’ll admit I would exploit it but too much powercreep can backlash.
Secondly Explosive blast another wonderful spell. In order to be able to create a build around it that is viable maybe an option to be able to set it off around a target, for ranged use, might do it more versatile.
I have to stop now otherwise the wall of text will become immense.

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Yes and no.

Energy Twister + Ranslor’s Folly makes an extremely tight pull (some players call this a “pixel pull”). Essentially, it ignores enemy hit boxes when pulling and packs enemies very tightly together. This is fantastic for area damage.

However, Energy Twister + Ranslor’s does not pull large enemies or elites. Black Hole does have a bit of an advantage in that it can pull certain types of enemies that Energy Twister + Ranslor’s cannot. Also, Black Hole has a better rune selection in my opinion. Absolute Zero is an extremely potent buff for certain cold builds, and the Spellsteal and Event Horizon runes are also pretty strong. Energy Twister runes, outside of Wicked Wind, are basically just different damage mechanics or damage types. Black Hole has better utility runes.

Energy Twister is definitely a superior pull for an AD heavy build that kills trash, but Black Hole does have some use cases outside of that.

Black Hole definitely needs some improvements, but I don’t think I would say that Energy Twister is a universally better pull. Black Hole still has use cases where you would prefer it.

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Agree to all you say that’s what I was trying to get at, I meant the area that energy twister plus ranslor’s folly manages.
If changes like those that Lexa has proposed we could get a very strong must have for new and existing builds.

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As Lexa knows, I support the change to the OoID and anything that improves a Explosive Blast build.

1 Like