While most of us will agree that the ES and DW combination needed to be addressed, the Devs chose for the most idiotic way of going about it. And not for the first time either.
Even if they mean to change DW later on it’s still a moronic way of doing things. With 2 items so co-depending on each other you don’t ‘fix’ one and completly ignore the other and as a result reducing the small amount of viable builds we have even more just to force the class using yet another clunky Wizard class set (now made even clunkier) and a neglected skill.
It’s precisely because of changes like this I can only muster thinly veiled scorn when I see posts that feeback in the PTR is being passed on (yeah right, just to be totally ignored as usual).
Yes, it’s a terrible change, and I voiced my thoughts about that at length on the PTR forum. Yes, it’s completely killed my motivation to check out the patch on Live or play the upcoming season. But I think the most disappointing part has been seeing other users defend this change, not because they actually agree with it, but because of all the other changes they imagine the developers will make in response.
“Now that Etched Sigil has been ̶r̶e̶s̶t̶r̶i̶c̶t̶e̶d̶ fixed, we can get a buffed Smoldering Core, and a buffed Tal Rasha orb, and new channeling mechanics, and…”
It’s fine to hope for further changes like these - I hope for many of these changes myself! But we should give feedback based on what’s actually being implemented, not what we wish was being implemented. The developers have given us zero information on their long-term plans for the Wizard, and zero reason to form such specific expectations. For all we know, they might think they’ve done an outstanding job balancing Wizard, and are planning to move on to other classes for the next PTR cycle. Until we get more details on specific item/skill changes, I’m not going to get carried away with speculation.
That’s exactly the problem - that Teleport is mandatory for most builds. That is not a good thing. Especially for Wizards. The other classes suffer from this as well (Epiphany for Monks, Akarat’s Champion for Crusaders), but the Wizard suffers from it more. Wizards need a variety of movement options so they can choose what fits best rather than shoehorn Teleport in everywhere.
That is a separate issue than needing to move while channeling, however. Wizards should be able to move while channeling simply because it better matches how the game plays now. Channeled spells have been garbage tier for a loooooooong time for 2 basic reasons: The need to stay still and the lack of AoE.
Channeling Whatever never really made sense to me anyway. The channeled spells should be able to function on their own rather than be a means to an end. That’s all they were in all the Sigil builds.
The multi-element “flair” is more annoyance than anything. It wouldn’t be if we weren’t limited to 6 slots, but requiring 3-4 of them to have specific elemental attacks really hinders our choices.
Oh, good, another CDR build.
That aside… I really don’t want auto-cast Meteors. I want to be casting it. I wanna press the button and have a rock drop outta the sky and kill things. I don’t want to do something else that triggers it by proxy.
For a redesign of Tal Tasha I’d love if they did something like they tried with Seeker of the Light for the Crusaders… only, you know, planning it instead of trying to shove Falling Sword where it didn’t need to be. I’m going to go nuts with an unused skill that could shine:
Diamond Skin: The Enduring Skin Rune has been redesigned. Enduring Skin now negates enemy projectiles (limit: 1 per second).
Redesigning the most useless Rune.
Tal Rasha’s Mastery
2 piece: Diamond Skin no longer has a duration and all Runes are active. All Meteor ground effects cover a wider area, last twice as long, and return 1 AP for each enemy damaged.
4 piece: Diamond Skin now provides an additional 60% damage reduction.
6 piece: Meteor damage is increased by XXXX%. All Meteors are doubled per cast.
Simple, yet effective. Diamond Skin already has basically all of the tools needed to help a Meteor build if all the Runes are active: Movement speed, a flat AP cost reduction, and a life shield. Projectile negation sounds like something it could be capable of and helps with the problem of ranged damage. Doubling all the Meteor mayhem would just be that much more fun.
As far as specific Meteor Runes go for the different elements… well, individual legendary items could direct that choice.
I may be the minority here, but I really don’t want to move while channeling; at least not with a twister build. It would absolutely destroy my tactics. I agree with the idea of fixing Teleport instead.
Should Teleport be needed in every build ever? Of course not. I don’t like the idea of anything being “required” in order to make a build viable. But that’s where the game is right now.
Let’s start with Aether Walker. Tooltip says it “removes” the cooldown, but there is still a small delay between teleports that we don’t get with Vault. I don’t see how it is at all appropriate for a resource-consuming mobility skill to have a delay in the first place when we have another that is arguably just as fast…and doesn’t. We can’t even use stun, passing through enemies, or damage as reasons to delay Teleport casting either, since Vault can do all three as well.
Even if they don’t change how the stock Teleport skill works, they should at least remove the small delay present in Aether Walker. That, and remove the completely pointless “stuck on a wall” effect which requires surgical precision to teleport through narrow walkways. Vault can navigate around corners…why not Teleport?
On the issue of channeling while moving…I can’t say I support that. I play mostly on PS4 because I’m developing some issues with my mouse arm that limit my ability to play games like this on PC, and I rely heavily on aiming with the stick while channeling. If they changed channeling to allow movement, that would absolutely remove my ability to effectively target enemies. I’d have to pick one out of the crowd, target lock with L2, and leave the stick alone. I’m not sure how it would translate to PC, but if we at least had the option to force standstill while channeling, that would do something to mitigate this problem, but…can’t do that on PS4.
If I had to choose between teleport being mandatory or needing a bunch of different skill/item combinations in order to gain a massive buff to movement speed; I’d choose teleport every time. On the other hand, if we could get both, then that’d be just great. However with how Blizzard has been handling things as of late, especially when it comes to the wizard class, even that seems like a pipe dream.
Again being able to channel and move would only help the following runes of our channeling skills:
Arcane Torrent – Only Death Blossom Rune
Disintegrate – Only the Entropy Rune (and maybe the Chaos Nexus rune, not too sure tbh)
Ray of Frost – Only the Sleet Storm Rune
The other runes of the skills would barely gain the same amount of benefit (as they would lack the aoe advantage). Favoring one skill rune over the rest is the last thing we need as wizards. Enough of our skills do that as it is (arcane orb comes to mind). At least just buffing the channeling skills and then improving teleport will allow most if not all of the channeling skills and their runes (including the ones listed above) to gain a close enough equal amount of benefits. Having teleport become mandatory in return for greater and more reliable mobility would be a small price to pay imo.
Indeed, I got a decent ancient from over a year ago + a near-primal Deathwish. Neither of them updated to the new trash version, only the cubed leg power did.
Tal Rasha’s Mastery
2 piece: Diamond Skin no longer has a duration and all Runes are active. All Meteor ground effects cover a wider area, last twice as long, and return 1 AP for each enemy damaged.
4 piece: Diamond Skin now provides an additional 60% damage reduction.
6 piece: Meteor damage is increased by XXXX%. All Meteors are doubled per cast.
I dont think its a solution to rework Tals into Meteor only. Traditionally Tals is a multi elemental set. It woul dbe a huge improvements if you have to hit 3 different instead of 4. And ofc - a Damage buff.
With that logic I wonder what your thoughts are on the Sader bombardment build.
Also by fix if you mean castrated then you are right, because that is the case here.
If the players wanted to use the twisters while channeling they were free to do so even before.
Viable alternative’s isn’t equal to destroying a working combination.
Probably, but I’m with you. Moving while channeling is called strafing. I fully expect to have to remain stationairy while channeling (although I expect a big trade off for presenting myself as a sitting duck).
We have only one build that does moving and killing at the same time (Wave of force blows [pun intended] so that doesn’t count) and that’s Explosive Blast. Not that’s anywhere near strong enough, but fun for lower content.
Nope. Legendary nerfs are retroactive (buffs are not). I get ticked at the devs every time I see my useless 3.7k DPS Calamity in stash, it was nerfed retroactively.
I am grateful they did not change the older version of the etched sigil in the current patch because it’s still usable. So now all players have two options unless you have just begun the game in the current patch.
I personally think they could have done a separate source for twister, but that’s only my opinion.
I’m not proposing a bunch of different skill/item combinations to get a massive buff. I’m proposing they put movement speed on different skills so we have a choice. Not so we can stack them.
I don’t see it that way. I mean, yeah, Sleet Storm would be helped more… but being unable to move freely is a weakness to all the channeled spells.
Gonna happen anyway. Besides, that’s the point of legendary or set bonuses that say “now acquires X Rune.”
You’re kidding, right? I mean, pretty much every skill in the game has Runes that aren’t used. The channeling skills wouldn’t be any different. Numb sucks, Arcane Mines and Death Blossom are garbage, and there’s probably never been anybody that’s bothered with Entropy or Chaos Nexus.
I’ll take a viable Sleet Storm build over no Ray of Frost build at all.
No it isn’t. It gravitates to Meteors because of the set bonuses. The only time Tals hasn’t been used for Meteors is way back when it was first introduced - but I don’t think it had the Meteor set bonus back then.
Heck, the Source even rolls with a set stat of higher-than-normal Meteor damage. And there’s a reason they put Nilfur’s Boast as Boots - because it doesn’t compete with a Tal’s slot.
Further, even though Tal’s gives bonuses to using multiple elements, it never matters because we’re only able to focus on 1 spender to be 99% of the damage. Even though you’re technically boosting all 4, the other 3 skills’ damage output will suck.
They’re either going to have to boost our movement speed by a lot to be worth using or you are going to have to use a number of name (hence stacking) in order to get a sufficient speed boost; otherwise they’ll just fall short in comparison to AW teleport.
I don’t see how you don’t, the skill runes I’ve listed all possess a larger radius than the other skill runes.
Improving teleport will solve that and many more issues.
A player, or even the community, choosing to favor a rune on their own accord is fine. However making a balance change(s) that would purposely favor a single skill rune, to the point where that skill rune far exceeds the other runes, isn’t fine. It’s hardly the same as a legendary effect that grants a rune.
No I’m quite serious. If I were to play a Ray of Frost channeling build, I’d rather have the option of choosing any of the runes that I would feel to suit me or the playstyle I envisioned instead of only having the option of going Sleet Storm because most balance changes were made with that rune in mind, like being able to channel while moving.
You’re never going to have that option if you’re wanting to play anywhere close to optimally, and if you’re not playing optimally then who cares how close the Runes are in the first place?
You’d have a point, if the wizard’s channeling skill runes vastly differed from one another in terms of damage, effect, and mechanic. However, save for a few of them (like Arcane Torrent – Deathblossom), the skill runes are actually pretty close to one another. So it would be more than possible to buff them without overly favoring one of them.
No it isn’t. It gravitates to Meteors because of the set bonuses. The only time Tals hasn’t been used for Meteors is way back when it was first introduced - but I don’t think it had the Meteor set bonus back then.
I see your point. When Tals is reworked, why not moving away from one skill. I mean. We would have: 1 set for archon, 1 set for Hydra, 1 set for Meteor.
Why not reworking it in a way in which we can use it for more than one primary skill? We are running out of sets if we want to get certain skills to be usefull.
In theory you could do so now since Tal Rasha buffs all damage. But the set and Meteor fit so nicely today because of Nilfur’s Boast, which is essentially “Tal Rashas Steady Feet” (the missing TR boots) without actually being a set piece. Just look at the visual.
This is also why Tal Rasha and channeling worked (until they destroyed it)… Mantle of Channeling being shoulders, and the set not having those.
If only they had introduced similar items instead of more weapons. What if instead of turning Etched Sigil into Twisters, they had added shoulders or boots with a strong buff? Ten thousand times better.This is what I fail to understand - where are buffs to Mirrorball or Mykens? They want to break the channeling, so why not give us working alternatives instead of just destroying the channeling item.
You objected to just making channeled spells work while moving because it favored a few Runes more than others. Now you’re saying I don’t have a point because the Runes are all pretty much close together.
Which one is it? You can’t have both.
Assuming we had a set for channeling, that is exactly what I would do.
However, with Tal’s… Meteor happens to be my favorite Wizard skill, and we technically haven’t had a true Meteor build… ever. You could get to the point of endless Meteor spam in classic, but your defenses were pretty compromised as a result. And in Reaper we’ve only ever used it since Etched Sigil became a thing, and even then it’s reliant on channeling bonuses and using a channeled spell instead of casting Meteor yourself.
I find it silly that Crusaders have a few skills that cost 40 Wrath and yet can get to the point of endlessly spamming them, and Wizards can’t do it with Meteor. Had to bypass the cost entirely up til now… and now that Sigil is gone, so is Meteor.
For some reason they’ve never been happy when Wizards were using Signature spells for damage - to the point that they changed Depth Diggers to specifically exclude them. Doesn’t make much sense, really, since they have the Monk over there with a generator build and tried to prop up the Witch Doctor’s mana returning abilities.
