Can have a buff to Teleport in Patch 2.7?

I made a topic on this exact issue about 1 year ago and it got a lot of responses, but now with the upcoming Patch 2.7, which is said to focus a lot on balance changes, I though I could bring the issue of Teleport up again in the hope that this skill might see some improvements.

Although very iconic, Teleport probably is one of the more worse movement skills in the game compared to other classes.

  • Monks have 2 charges of Dashing Strike that each take 8 seconds to recharge and a rune that gives them a third.
  • Barbarians have the Leap Quake build that allows them to use Leap three times within 2 seconds, they also have 3 charges of Furious Charge and can Whirlwind through enemies.
  • Demon Hunter obviously has Vault.
  • Necromancer has Blood Rush on a 5 second cooldown.

… just to name some of them

And Wizard have Teleport on an 11 second cooldown, which compared to the other movement skills is not too impressive and the only legendary that reasonably improves it is a weapon (Aether Walker, which turns the cooldown into a resource cost), which mean that you would loose out on a large damage multiplier if you equip that weapon.

Here are a few ways to improve Teleport:

  • Option 1 : give Teleport 2 charges that each take 8 seconds to recharge (than it would be in line with Dashing Strike) and change the Wormhole rune to give Teleport a 3rd charge.
  • Option 2 : reduce the cooldown of Teleport to ~6 seconds (then it would be in line with Blood Rush, but Blood Rush also costs life, so a bit more than 5 seconds would be appropriate)
  • Option 3 : Teleport should cost resource and not have a cooldown (so basically give it the Aether Walker legendary effect as a baseline).

Although Option 2 is the most simple solution, it also is the most inferior, compared to the others.

I personally would prefer Option 1 with the charges, because it would allow you to use Teleport a few times in a row, but still not allow it to be spammed.

And although Option 3 (resource instead of cooldown) would be alright as well, I am afraid it eventually might turn out to be overpowered when used with a lot of Resource Cost Reduction. However, some people seem to prefer this option. Also with Option 1, one of the runes can be redesiged to give a third charge (probably the Wormhole rune), so that might be a good option as well.

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EDIT: One additional thing that should be done to improve Teleport is to make its casting animation speed scale with your attack speed.

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Do you have other ideas on how to improve Teleport?
How would you like to see Teleport changed in Patch 2.7?
Write it down below.

And a big thanks to the devs for buffing Teleport (if you decide to buff Teleport, which you totally should do). ty!

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Warning… wall of text ahead :smile:

Teleport has a lot of issues - let me state some:

  • abysmally long cooldown of 11 seconds
  • horrible path finding / cannot teleport through “closed doors”
  • Reversal rune is utterly useless
  • Teleport runes need elemental effects other than arcane.
  • the casting animation of the regular Teleport is too long/slow
  • we have three (!) Teleport related legendaries and all crowd the same cube slot - namely weapon/offhand. Not to mention that only one of these is remotely usable, being
  • Aether Walker … and this eyesore is a weapon which is unusable in end game because you’d gimp your damage if you do.
  • even with Aether Walker a micro cooldown remains and that thing is extremely annoying (yeah yeah, the devs who created AW introduced it to prevent accidental spamming, but that argument is dumb, sorry to be blunt)

Now, @clueso… I won’t argue against charges… to each their own. Let me just say that It’s not my cup of tea and I don’t want wizards to mirror mechanics from monks. Classes should be more unique, and so be it. I want to be able to spam Teleport, at a reasonable drawback. But NOT on the dps part!

The issue with any solution for Teleport is that we have interactions that need to be kept in mind. We have existing legendaries and we have a passive like Illusionist. So, what to do? This is my suggestion:

Teleport [Defensive]

Costs: 50 Arcane Power per cast.
Teleport through the ether to the selected location up to 50 yards away.

Runes:

  • Safe Passage [Level 26] [Cold]
    For 5 seconds after you Teleport, you will take 25% less damage.
  • Wormhole [Level 31] [Lightning]
    Your pickup radius increases the maximum range of Teleport (up to a maximum of 65 yards) and leaves a after image at your old location.
  • Rush [Level 37] [Fire]
    Reduces the costs to 30 Arcane Power per cast and increases your resource regeneration by 30% for three seconds.
  • Fracture [Level 43] [Arcane]
    You summon 2 Mirror Images after using teleporting.
  • Calamity [Level 59] [Arcane]
    Cast a short range Wave of Force upon arrival, dealing 175% weapon damage as Arcane to all nearby enemies and stunning them for 1 second.

Technical changes:
Teleport micro cooldown should be removed or at least significantly shortened. Also casting animation should be faster and take attack speed into account on top of that. And pretty please take a look at the nasty path finding for Teleport.

Now things that would also need changes if they go for something like my Teleport suggestion:

Illusionist [Passive]

When you take more than 15% of your maximum Life in damage within 1 second, the cooldowns on Mirror Image and Slow Time are reset and your Teleport skill will not consume Arcane Power for three seconds.

When you use Mirror Image, Slow Time, or Teleport, your movement speed is increased by 30% for 3 seconds.

… and now the existing items. Here it comes, the most heretical part of my idea: two retroactive changes! Yeah, those are hated and not to be taken lightly, but changing Teleport to resources would simply require this because the old affixes would become entirely pointless when the skill no longer has a cooldown:

Cosmic Strand [Legendary Source] [NOT RETROACTIVE]
Blizzard deals 500-600% more damage and enemies inside its area of effect take 300% more damage from your other arcane power spending or generating attacks.

Aether Walker [Legendary Wand] [RETROACTIVE CHANGE]
Teleport gains the Calamity rune, releases your Wave of Force and now stuns for 2 seconds. Enemies hit by Wave of Force take 300% increased damage from your arcane power spending or generating skills for 5 seconds.

The Oculus [Legendary Source] [RETROACTIVE CHANGE]
blue affix “Reduces cooldown of Teleport by [1 - 4] seconds” retroactively replaced by “Reduces cooldown of Black Hole by [1 - 4] seconds”
Legendary Affix retroactively replaced by:
Black Hole gains the Event Horizon rune and deals 600% increased damage. If Black Hole hits less than 3 targets, the damage is increased by 750-1000%.
The value of 15-20 that defines the % chance from the old Teleport related affix will be multiplied with a flat 50% to calculate the updated damage buff. For new items, the damage range will be at random.

I have not done any math for the damage buffs or whether the increased costs would be enough of a drawback, just take it as an example on how it could work.

As you can see, old Cosmic Strand items can stay, because granting a rune does not hurt later on. The legacy item would be pretty weak, but who cares since it’s a crafted item anyways. Retroactive changes of Oculus and Aether Walker are a must, though.

My alternatives with Black Hole and Blizzard are simply meant as an example, it could very well be something else… but we definetly don’t need more than one mobility item, especially not if all crowd the same cube slot.

So, that’s about it.

I’m really hoping for improvements to Teleport.

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np, I’ll read all of it.

That is a good analysis.

Yes, I respect that and I encourage you to advocate for your own ideas/solutions for that issue.

I personally wouldn’t have too much of an issue with a little less uniqueness if it solves the problems of Teleport and other movement skills.

Well, I would say that if you had to spend a reasonable amount of resource on Teleport, it is a drawback on the DPS part, since you have less resource available to use your spells.

That is one reason for why I prefer charges over resource costs.

However, I definitely think that Teleport with resource costs is better than with a cooldown.

Yes, the interactions indeed have to be kept in mind.

I think that since the Legendaries for Teleport are already kinda useless, it wouldn’t be a huge deal if their powers get disabled, which would be the worst-case-scenario.

I have to say that I like that you put elements of the specific runes. That will help things like Tal Rashas.

I think a reduction to 30 AP would already be enough. No need for additional resource regeneration of top of that.

Also, there is an interaction with Cindercoat, since it reduced the resource costs of Fire Skills by 30%, which would stack with this rune and maybe make it too powerful by making the resource costs redundant. Eventually that could be a problem.

Maybe turn it into an Arcane rune and Calamity into a Fire rune.

A ‘yes’ to all of these from me, especially the first two.

If Teleport is being changed the way you suggest it, then this change makes sense.

yeah, but in case of the Teleport legendaries it would not be really problematic, since they are already fairly useless.

You mean the Wave of Force that gets released from Teleport, right?

If that is so, that is a nice change.

I really like this!
However, what I would do is instead of specifically increasing the damage of Black Hole, why not let all “enemies that have been hit by Black Hole take xx% more damage from all your spells for x seconds”?

That would make it universally much more useful since it would synergize with other skills.

Or maybe it does both: increasing the damage of Black Hole directly,a s well as enemies taking more damage for a while from all other skills after they have been hit by Black Hole?

Yeah, at a certain point it gets too much.

Was a good read, thank you!

I think the rest of the Wizard community does that as well.

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Tal-Rasha only gain stacks from attack based spells, so sadly giving teleport different elemental runes wouldn’t benefit Tal-Rasha unless said runes also dealt damage. Another option would be to alter Tal-Rasha so that it gave stacks from elemental spells instead of just elemental attack spells.

Take a good long look at my Aether Walker :wink:

Also, @clueso:
Actually the reworked AW affix is meant as stated. Calamity launches an unruned Wave of Force (also damage wise). In case you have that skill on your bar it would mirror the rune, so using Heat Wave or Static Pulse releases a respective elemental attack as Fire or Lightning. If you don’t use WoF, you can still activate a different rune for Teleport and change its element to cold, fire or lightning. Thus, no… the damage effect would apply to both, Teleport and regular Wave of Force. I didn’t do the math, though… it’s a draft that might be too weak or overdoing it. Anyhow, AW is a weapon. As such it should do something meaningful for dps.

Hm… that might be so. I still think it’s kind of okay. But as I mentioned, not maths done. Anyhow, if Cindercoat would be an issue, that’s most likely only applying to LoN/LoD based builds. The class sets cannot incorporate that item so neatly.

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So Aether Walker would release a wave a force, whose element would be based on Teleport’s or the the Wave of Force rune? Since that’s the case, that would very well work in Tal-Rasha’s favor.

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Ah, okay, I see. That is how it would work with the Tal Raasha set.
You mean that when you e.g. have the frost rune for Teleport, it would change that element of the WoF triggered by Teleport to frost.
Yeah, that makes sense.

That is right, but it still is something to keep in mind.

In Lexa’s concept, if you do not have WoF on your hotbar, the WoF triggered by your Teleport would adjust to the element of your Teleport (which would be reworked to gain elemental runes).

I forgot to comment on this one… yeah, but Black Hole needs a damage buff no matter what - it just pales if you compare it to Meteor. Plus you have to keep in mind that Black Hole currently is in a sorry state when it comes to meaningful item support. I do agree that the skill should get some improved utility and maybe a debuff mechanic, but that’s still possible to do on a revised Jang’s. But as I mentioned, my suggestions are but one option. I just needed something to change the existing useless Teleport orbs to.

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Yeah, it could a decent damage buff.

But would people rather use a spammable Meteor, or a Black Hole on a CD?
Also factor in the Etched Sigil builds that rely on having a spamable skill.

That is why I would also ad a debuff on enemies that are hit by Black Hole to take more damage from your skills for x seconds, because Black Hole is already kind of a support skill by its very own nature.

Yes. As far as I know, there is only one item that adds a slow effect to enemies are damaged by Black Hole but no damage buff, right?

ah, it might have been the Jang’s belt that I thought of.
Yeah, maybe this belt could add that enemies hit by Black Hole take xx% more damage from your skills for x seconds.

Yes, but they are still very good and inspirational.

Teleport Orbs?
You mean Teleport runes, right?

I think Safe Passage, Fracture and Calamity are good, which leaves Wormhole and Reversal to be redesigned.

There needs to be one rune that either reduces the Arcane Power Costs of Teleport or gives it an additional charge (depending on how the skill gets redesigned)…

… which leaves one rune open for something different. Let’s say that Teleport indeed gets resource costs. In this case, this last remaining rune could remove the resource costs and give the skill 2 or 3 charges instead (or vice versa).

I think with this we both can be happy, right?

Ergh… no. Orb = Source, so I meant replacements for the useless Oculus+Cosmic affixes. My D2 habits :wink:

appreciated :slight_smile:

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I think it’s unlikely we’ll see the damage of Black Hole buffed to an appreciable level.

It’s not supposed to be a DPS skill, it’s a utility skill. You’re not supposed to spam it to do DPS. Adding items to buff it’s damage seems counterproductive.

This seems way more realistic. It increases it’s value as a utility skill, which is exactly what a legendary power supporting Black Hole should do. Just slap a modifier like this on Jang’s Envelopment, an item literally no one uses because it’s practically useless, and bingo, you have a better use case for Black Hole!

I also see it more as an utility skill rather than a dps skill, but I also think that a dps buff in addition to an utility buff or an enemy debuff still would be nice.

I think it would be nice for the Jang’s belt to look something like this:

  • Increase the damage of Black Hole by 600% and cause enemies take 40% more damage from your skills and be slowed by 80% for 4 seconds after they have been hit by Black Hole.

Ah, okay.

In this case I would make Cosmic Strand the Legendary that revolves around Black Hole (however, The Orb of Infinite Depth would fit even better thematically in regards to revolve around Black Hole, but that would require to redesign OoID as well).

Now, maybe my suggestion for a redesign of Jang’s Envelopment would fit better here on this orb instead of the belt.

Cosmic Strand
Increase the damage of Black Hole by 600% and cause enemies take 40% more damage from your skills for 4 seconds after they have been hit by Black Hole.

Jang’s Envelopment
Increase the damage of Black Hole by 300% and increases the duration of Black Hole by 1-2 seconds. In addition to that, enemies are being slowed by 80% for 3 seconds after they have been hit by Black Hole.

Then the Oculus would increase the damage of Blizzard, etc, the way you suggested Cosmic Strand could do.

What you think?

Please don’t nerf the best wizard speedrun build haha.

Cosmic Strand is a key component of wizard Sprinter/Speed Racer/speedruns. I use it all the time. Removing it’s current affix would be a straight up nerf to our speedrun potential. I know that’s not a super popular thing to do, but it is a thing.

I know you want teleport changes too, but if there aren’t any changes to teleport mechanics AND Cosmic Strand gets changed, that would be brutal. Just a straight up nerf.

You mean “The Oculus”, not Cosmic Strand, I assume, right?

Cosmic Strand currently only gives you the Wormhole rune. You can just select that rune one Teleport. You don’t need Cosmic Strand for that imo, unless I am missing something.

The Calamity rune is also quite nice to have.

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Also, Cosmic Strand works on Archon teleport. Where you can’t just select the Wormhole rune. And the Archon Teleport animation scales with attack speed, where the regular teleport is a fixed animation length.

Cosmic Strand + Archon teleport is significantly faster than anything else. Changing Cosmic Strand kills that.

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If The Oculus gets worn on the char and the Cosmic Strand gets equiped in the cube, then I would rather want to have Aether Walker with the Prides Fall helm equipped and a Leoric’s Crown in the cube + a Perfect Topaz in the helm.

Seems to be better than Cosmic Strand + Oculus imo.

EDIT

Ah, okay, I did not know that. interesting.
But for the Sprinter Conquest I would rather want to have Leorics Crown + Prides Fall, + Aether Walker + Topaz in helm than Archon Teleport + Cosmic Strand tbh.

And you’d be wrong.

My top solo time is under 51 min with Archon teleport + Cosmic Strand. My top non-Archon teleport time is 58 min.

Pokeytoe’s top solo time with Archon teleport is under 50 min.

Even if you go the non-Archon route, you still actually want Cosmic Strand. There’s a big reason why you want this: Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac. Aether Walker makes it cost Arcane Power, Calamity rune makes it do damage. Aether Walker + Calamity means you get Obsidian procs. If Teleport is your only cooldown, then Aether Walker + Calamity + Obsidian Ring cancels the short cooldown on Teleport. But that leaves you without Wormhole. The only way to get that setup while also having Wormhole is with Cosmic Strand.

Archon + Vyr4 + Aether Walker + Cosmic Strand is the fastest setup, and it’s not particularly close. non-Archon Aether Walker + Cosmic Strand + Calamity + Obsidian Ring is the next fastest setup, but it’s a good 5+ minutes behind Archon + Vyr4 + Cosmic Strand . non-Archon non-Cosmic Strand setup is slower than both of the first two.

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I never knew this…

Thanks for sharing.

I would have simply gone with a ton resource cost reduction and with Astral Presence on top of all of this to do it… but when you say that Archon + Strand is superior… at first it sounds unbelievable to me, but with Calamity + ORotZ it makes more sense.

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It’s because of how much faster the animation is. Archon Teleport at high attack speed just has a way faster animation, and when you’re trying to go as fast as possible, that matters.

It’s harder to gear for though, you need a ton of cooldown. You want to be in Archon as much as possible. Messerschmidt’s in the cube helps, but you still need a lot of CDR gear.

If you’re going for a high rank on Sprinter, you wouldn’t bother with the Archon setup, you’d just go with a basic Aether Walker setup. It’s way faster to gear for. If you’re planning on taking your time and want to maximize your chances to succeed, you’ll do the Archon setup. It’s noticeably faster if you have the gear for it.

In 2.4.3 patch they made the Archon teleport scale with attack speed. Before then, it wasn’t really worth running it with Archon. Regular teleport was just easier to set up and run and Archon teleport didn’t offer any advantages. After they made Archon teleport scale with attack speed though, the Archon setup was just way better. That patch was what first let me solo Sprinter on wizard. I first managed to do it solo wizard that season, a few weeks after the patch dropped. It doesn’t seem like the Archon setup would be that much better, but once you try running it that way, you’ll never go back.

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