I agree. Since Disintegration Wave is practically a channeling skill; items like Death Wish and Mantle of Channeling should affect it. Only Taeguk shouldn’t provide any benefits to Disintegration Wave, since that requires a channeling skill with a resource cost.
Yeah, funnily enough the only free spots that Vyr Archon has would be the weapons.
Yeah, * Sigh *, that’s a reason why I keep saying that Vyr 6 piece bonus should be something akin to:
Gain one Archon stack per hit or per tick of damage of any Archon ability. Archon stacks also reduce damage taken by 0.15% each and their damage bonus increases to 100% per stack. Increase the damage of all Archon abilities by XX% per Archon Stack.
Tbh, most of this could be achieved if they changed the Archon skill runes themselves; but chances of that happening is incredibly low.
As it currently stand, Vyr Archon has two specific legendaries pertaining to it, Fazula and Swami. I think they could be used.
Fazula for example:
You automatically start with 50 stacks when entering Archon form. Arcane Strike and Arcane Blast have a chance, 5-10% of Archon stacks, of triggering twice.
The Swami:
The bonuses from Archon stacks now last for 15-20 seconds after Archon expires. Attacks made outside of Archon form Increases the damage of your Archon skills by xxx%, this effect stacks 5 times.
Still a problem though, it would still promote the use of DW/ES outside channel builds just for the extra dps. To effectively counter that you’d have to change the way these items work in an even harsher way. That being said, ideally I would say Deathwish shouldn’t buff non-channeling skills (or more precisely: apply a general damage buff) at all. I would limit that buff even further and change the following three items like this:
Etched Sigil:
While channeling Arcane Torrent, Disintegrate, Electrocute or Ray of Frost you automatically cast one of your other Arcane Power Spenders every second. Attacks originating from this effect deal three times their normal damage while the damage of your channeling skills is increased by 450-600%.
Deathwish:
Arcane Torrent, Disintegrate, Electrocute and Ray of Frost attack 100% faster and deal 250-300% increased damage. This effect also applies to your Disintegration Wave while in Archon Form.
Hergbrash’s Bindings:
Arcane Torrent, Disintegrate and Ray of Frost deal 250-300% increased damage and have their Arcane Power costs reduced by 80%.
See what I did there?
This would cut down the damage dealt by autocasts to a third of the current value. Instead the channeling skills (including Electrocute) deal way more damage now. Also Deathwish now works on Disintegration Wave.
but you had to give up the weapon and the off-hand just to have 100% increased damage from each, while another weapon and off-hand might give you 400% increased damage each to the skill of your choice.
Well, three times the damage is twice as much as previously., which would make Meteor channelling even worse.
You know, this thought just came to me: maybe the problem isn’t DW and ES, but rather the Meteor boots…
This on the other hand would be strong nerf for Meteor channelling…
Yeah, that indeed would be a ~65% nerf to procs from ES. That probably would be enough, however Meteor would still be the strongest thing to use with it.
Maybe the Meteor staff and/or boots should only apply to non-proced Meteors.
The idea behind this is that the current Deathwish and Etched Sigil have to be seen as a unit rather than singular items. Reason being the Deathwish mechanic causes channeling to infest nearly every wizard build just because it is too easy a way for a massive x4 multiplier on all damage.
Originally this must have been intended to boost the autocasts from Etched Sigil, which is okay, but they went overboard with this. It lead the wizard astray and in the end it brought up crap like Bazooka. My suggestion here would essentially kill Bazooka without gimping channeling itself like the current fix. Simply because channeling no longer offers a global damage buff. The autocasts are still buffed by Etched Sigil, yeah, but only those. Manual casts won’t benefit from Etched Sigil or Deathwish the same way they do today.
This is also why my Etched Sigil bonus to autocasts is twice as strong than now… It’s because Etched Sigil is the sole item that should grant a buff to its autocasts. Okay, Mantle would still come on top as a global damage buff… but since it’s only 25% at best, it doesn’t matter that much. The primary offender, Deathwish, would be out of the picture for good.
Regarding Meteor staff/boots … they are fine as they are. It’s not that they are too strong, the rest pales in comparison. What would you do, if they nerf those items? We’d end up with Chantodo Archon as the only top build and that’s not what I would want. I want alternatives. Ideally Hydra, Meteor, Blizzard, Arcane Orb, Energy Twister, Channeling skills and Archon (with Chantodo and without it) should be close in terms of power. And I don’t think nerfing Meteor would make the rest any better.
It’d be nice if blizzard did buff the archon skills directly. I can settle for either that, skill runes buffs, or just vyr buffs. I honestly hope that they just buff chantodo and call it a day. I want the vyr set to be able to stand on it’s own, with the chantodo set as a viable option instead of being the only option.
I agree as well, and that is why this aspect of these two items either needs to go, or to be nerfed significantly.
It still makes a Meteor channelling build deal heavy amounts of damage (yeah, the Meteor would deal ~65% less damage under your proposal, but still much more than any other proc from Etched).
It is not that I don’t like your idea, on the contrary, I am totally in favor of it, but as someone who primarily plays non-mete LoD builds, including LoD Meteor Channelling builds, I can tell you that it would feel weird if a majority of the damage would still come from the Meteor and not the channelled skill.
I just think that eventually the Meteor boots and the staff have to be adjusted as well. That is all I am trying to say, especially since the boots do not have compete with another weapon, like the Arcane Orb items etc.
That wouldn’t be such an issue anymore. Just look at the figures, let’s make a brief conparison:
Channeling skills today gain 325% from Deathwish and 150% from Deathwish through their global damage buffs. That’s roughly x10.6 for a total multiplier. Meteor gains the same, and has its dedicated items on top. That’s why Meteor deals the brunt of the damage.
With my change the damage gain for the channeling skills would be +300% (DW) and +600% from ES, which is a total multiplier of x28, so three times of what we have today. Now, if you include Hergbrash in that calculation, you’ll end up with another x4 multiplier on top of this. So we are talking about more than ten times the damage they get today - extra dps gained through the attack speed increase from DW is not even included in this picture. I consider this some serious power shift.
you MIGHT get 600% on Deathwish to all Channeling skills,but there is no way in hell you’d get 600% on ES in addition to it’s legendary power. Another 200% on Hergbrash is reasonable as well, though.
If you take 350% global modifier from Deathwish and 150% from ES, you’ve taken 500% multiplier off whatever ES is casting, and put it all into channeling, you’ve dramatically shifted where the damage of the build is coming from. That’s a win; and that’s how we told them to fix Star pact in the first place. Repeatedly. Over and over again.
Even if they leave ES alone at an 150% global modifier and pump up Deathwish to 600% channeling (only), that's probably enough to fix the mechanics. Then, you'd just need to fix the damage.
When you think of how much time and effort they put in trying to shorten damage windows for star pact, and messing with Mantle of Channeling instead of the obvious fix, you damn well know why Diablo 3 development was cut short.
I kinda agree that something like that should be done, but it would basically make the proc from ES useless, aka turn it into a gimmick, and that might be something the devs don’t want to do, also it would fix a lot of problems.
Maybe they could make it so that the spell proced by ES does not benefit from single skill damage multipliers (e.g. 800% increased damage from the meteor boots), but rather that it gains a multiplier that is dependent on your highest channelling skill multiplier (e.g. if you have 10.000% increased Arcane Torrent Damage or channelling skill damage, then the proced skill gains 20% of that, aka 2000% (or more or less.)
It is possible that the feedback was not received or ignored by the devs.
Maybe it was not even handed over to them, I don’t know, or maybe it was not noticed in the first place.
That is something that I noticed as well. There are some very easy fixes to builds and some of the problems D3 has, but the devs are going 10 extra miles in order to come up with a needlessly complicated solution that might not even be working well, like in this case.
I understand, but the issue that remained for me was that Meteor still would be the skill that would work with the channelling proc from ES, since it has items available that you can put into your build more easily than others to buff the skill (aka the Meteor BOOTS, which have the advantage of neither being a weapon nor an off-hand).
You have to wonder why there are no Blizzard Shoulders or Wave of Force Gloves (or whatever), no channeling wand. God, it frustrates me how badly the D3 developers, so called professionals, failed in itemization.
I would have started, at the very least, two make a legendary of some sort for every skill. then I would have moved into elemental damage legendaries, like frostburn, magefists, and cindercoat) and finally to convenience stuff; like “pick up materials automatically” and “more XP” “get more gems” and “get more crafting materials.” I consistently ask myself what the hell happened.
I also intellectually know that I have the benefit of retrospect, but there’s a famous quote by one of the D3 guys saying “It doesn’t matter what the affix does, we’ll make it good one day, just get it in-game.”
well, there is a channelling sword, ut it also annoys me that I can not at least transmog it into a wand.
I would never ever implement a single skill-specific legendary (maybe just very little exceptions, like 1-2% of all legendaries). Instead, I would have made legendaries much more universally useful, similar to these:
https://imgur.com/a/Z5NswCo
Travis Day was one of the few people (at least to my knowledge), who spoke out against skill-specific legendaries and the insanely high multipliers on sets and legendaries.
afaik, it is because of him that the Necromancer sets are leaving more room for customization than most of the other class sets in the game.
He also has an interesting GDC Talk on YouTube. You should watch it if you haven’t already. It is really interesting.
He actually wanted itemization to be a lot more complicated, but he was hold off on that by a superior developer (can’t remember who that was atm).
But he was by far not the worst person who worked on D3.
There is this legendary belt that makes them attack faster.
Two Electrocute Legendaries iirc (the orb that doubles the amount of times the lightning can jump and another one iirc)
Mirrorball gives additional Magic Missiles
a wand that makes Spectral Blade attack faster
Has a wand that reduces the cooldown and a wizard hat that gives access to all runes at the same time.
But ou are right, there are no support legendaries for most of the skills you listed, which is sad.
True, but they need to also boost the skills damage to make them viable (ugh I hate that this game revolves around waiting for damage boosting via items…).
Fragment of Destiny honestly needs to benefit all signatures instead of just one, just like the Barbarian’s Oathkeeper.
Ooph, I forgot all about Primus. Good catch there. That said, it’d be nice if Slow Time could deal damage like how it used to in the old iteration of the delsere set.
Someone should make a post about all the improvements that the Wizard could need. I could do it but it would be a lot of work and it would more reflect my own thoughts and feelings rather than being something that is more objective.
I have already regularly posted suggestions for skill improvements in the last three PTR’s, so maybe the next time I could include items in it as well. Or the Thread I recently made and General Discussion about some Movement Skills like Teleport or Leap needing 2 or 3 charges instead of a CD.
There are much, much more legendaries - not just on the Wizard - that could have some very simple, but still powerful and impactful adjustments made to them.
That would be great as well, especially if every rune had its own element, and not just every of them being arcane.
Gesture of Orpheus:
+15-20% [Elemental] damage [one of Arcane, Cold, Fire or Lighting]
+Min/Max damage
+4 random magic properties
Legendary: Reduces the cool down of Slow Time by 10 seconds and the skill now drains 20 Arcane Power per cast. Enemies inside Slow Time take 2500-3000% weapon damage every second. The element of Slow Time is determined by your highest elemental damage bonus and the effect of multiple Slow Time can stack.
This is really interesting. I’ll look into that. But I have no objection to single-skill legendaries. As long as the affixes do things like the Jang’s Envelopment, like increase the radius or functionality of a skill; but things like 500% multipliers are where it becomes obscene.
Yes, this can work as well, but I kinda would prefer that every rune gets its own element, because then it can also work (better) with the Tal Rasha set.
I agree to the extent that legendaries in D3 would be better if these massive multipliers would not exist, but still would say that skill-specific affixes do not belong on legendaries, but rather on the skill system (like Last Epoch or Wolcen). imo having skill specific legendaries makes it feel as if you are missing out on something if you don’t use the item.
Another factor in the failure of Firebirds was…Where was the Fire Legendary gem? It would have been easy to make a legendary gem the increases the damage (and resource cost) of fire spells and fit nicely with the philosophy of Fire. Destruction, at any cost, and it would have fit beautifully with Cindercoat.
I believe Fire is the main elemental damage type of Diablo 3, with every class having access to Fire elements, with the exception of Necromancer (Which easily could have, should have) had Fire spells.