This thread has nothing to do with patch 2.6.10, and is mostly for fun; but if you could buff the singular elemental or multi-elemental builds; how would you go about doing it? Would you change and/or rework existing sets to do so, or introduce additional legendary powers and let LoN/LoD take role?
Personally I would buff our passives that are correlated to the elements then introduce legendary powers, or buff existing ones so that they complement with the elemental passives (similar to the manald heal and paralysis combo).
For example:
Fire:
• Conflagration:
Fire damage dealt to enemies applies a burning effect, increasing their chance to be critically hit by 12% for 5 seconds.
• Atrophy:
Enemies afflicted with Conflagration take 25% more damage from your non-critical attacks, and 75% more damage from your critical attacks. Fire attacks gains triple these bonuses.
Cold:
• Cold Blood:
Enemies chilled or frozen by you take 25% more damage from all sources for the duration of the chill or Freeze
• Winter Flurry:
Cold Blood effect persists for 3 seconds after an enemy has been chilled or frozen. Casting Frost Nova also summons a Frost Nova at an enemy’s location. Enemies hit by a Frost Nova take 175-200% more damage from your cold attacks for 7 seconds. This bonus is halved for attacks of elements other than cold.
Lightning:
• Paralysis:
Lightning spells have a 15% chance to stun all targets hit for 1.5 seconds.
• Manald Heal:
The chance of inflicting paralysis on enemies is quadrupled. Enemies also take 175-250% more damage from your lightning attacks when stunned with paralysis and for 3 seconds afterwards.
Arcane:
• Temporal Flux:
Enemies take 10% less damage and slowed by 80% for 3 seconds when damaged by arcane attacks. Attacking with arcane increases your attack and movement speed by 20% for 5 seconds.
• Moonlight Ward:
Slowing enemies with Temporal Flux ward you with shards of Arcane energy that explode when enemies get close, dealing 320% weapon damage as Arcane to enemies within 15 yards. For 5 seconds after an enemy’s been slowed with Temporal Flux, increase your arcane damage by 175-200%.
I don’t really have anything in mind for mult-elements.
Because there is no viable way, unless you do some really insane stuff. They literally killed all multi-element builds when they began to introduce these obscene damage buffs to specific skills. Those being multipliers makes it nearly impossible to ignore them. It wouldn’t be an issue if it was one item per skill, but for most skills we have more than one item.
The issue with that is simple:
Most of these cannot be mixed or used together freely because they crowd the same gear slots or collide with our class sets. For a real Multi-Element build you need to use different skills, since the elemental damage type is tied to runes and you cannot place multiple instance the same skill in your bar.
The solution would be to either lift that restriction or think about a workaround that makes it possible to ignore some of those required items because you gain the necessary damage from a different source. Your could also introduce items that buff multiple skills in one go…
Your Secondary and Force skills deal xxx% more damage.
Or you introduce really insane stuff:
Tal Rasha’s Signet Ring:
Your static damage bonus to any resource spending skill now increases the damage of all your arcane power spending skills. Skill bonus affixes on your equipment, static sets bonus effects and legendary powers are included in this.
Buffing through the backdoor would also work to some degree - meaning you gain a damage buff for actively casting different skills - this is what Tal Rasha does in essence. Obviously buff Primordial Soul / Elemental Exposure…
I’d have to think long and hard on how to really make a working multi-element playstyle possible. Most likely it would end up as a dual element, maybe linked with a signature/spender mechanic?
Tough one.
Yeah, I imagine so.
Perhaps they could introduce a legendary power that does the following (probably a weapon):
Proposed Legendary item (probably weapon):
- Gain 25% of your combined static elemental damage bonus as increased damage. Attacking consecutively with a signature spell or arcane spender now causes that attack to cycle through their different available elemental rune type. The number of different elemental runes that are cycled through are determined by the number of different equipped elemental bonuses you possess.
- So how it’d work is if you have lightning bonus in amulet, fire bonus in bracers, cold bonus in a ring, and arcane bonus in pants (4 different elemental bonuses) then your spells could cycle through up to 4 different elemental rune types, with the first element being determined by the selected rune.
- For spells with only 3 or less different elemental rune types, then consecutive casts would only cycle through available spells (so Electrocute would only cycle through two different elemental runes (lightning and fire), while Ray of Frost wouldn’t change it’s rune at all (since all of it’s runes are cold based))
- The order that the spells cycle through is the same as the CoE rotation.
- So Arcane → Cold → Fire → and Lightning
- For spells with more than one rune of the same elemental type (for example: meteor, electrocute, magic missile, arcane orb, hydra, etc.), the spell would randomly select the rune of the same element.
- So using Meteor with the Thunder Crash rune selected as an example. Consecutively casting meteor would result in the follow: Thunder Crash → Star Pact → Comet → Meteor Shower/Molten Impact (it would be randomly chosen) → Thunder Crash and so on.
- Assuming that random rune types are undesirable then this can be alleviated by selecting either Meteor Shower or Molten Impact as the rune which would then result in: Meteor Shower → Thunder Crash → Star Pact → Comet → Meteor Shower and so on
Then to complement the item, they could introduce a legendary power (or change SoJ to this effect):
- Each static elemental bonus equally increases all of your elemental bonus damage to skill.
So ideally, instead of the current SoJ effect whereas having the following elemental bonuses:
- Amulet: 20% fire
- Bracer: 20% fire
- Ring: 15% cold
Would result in the following elemental bonuses since the Fire bonus is the highest:
- 40% Fire attack
- 40% Cold attack
- 40% Lightning attack
- 40% Arcane attack
The elemental damage bonuses are instead added together which would result in this:
- 55% Fire attack
- 55% Cold attack
- 55% Lightning attack
- 55% Arcane attack
Follow those up with a buff to Elemental Exposure and Primordial Soul, and this could potentially see some interesting multi-elemental builds while also ease up on the necessary attack spells that are needed for the Tal-Rasha set as the Proposed legendary weapon different elemental rune type function would benefit the set in its entirety.
Edit:
That said some skills wouldn’t benefit very much from this as some runes are far weaker than their counterparts (arcane orb comes to mind).