I am pretty sure Chain Lightning is the worst core spell in the game right now.
Not only it does really low dmg it also chains only to 4 targets and costs a lot of mana. Legendary aspect for chain lightning is a joke… 20-30% to chain 2 more times. At this point they could double the dmg of Chain Lightning and make it chain like 8 times and it still wouldn’t be top tier sorc build. Instead of buffing Crackling Energy just make core skills useable.
The more enemies you fight the more useless chain lightning feels. Just nerf (or even rework) Greater Chain Lightning passive to not make it op for signle target again and buff base dmg and make it chain like i don’t know 7-8 times.
15 Likes
I agree, the mana cost doesn’t really fit the damage. However, with a bunch of damage to stunned/frozen damage, it wrecks. Having rely on cooldowns every pack just feels bad, though.
3 Likes
This is the build i wanna play. But its just so bad
Please buff
6 Likes
I enjoyed playing chain lighting last years betas, super fun! this years betas it was still pretty good but yeah its a waste. i still like the visual of it but its been nerf’d by so much, last year it was AMAZINGLY fun and super good. Now its just like dragging our feet across some carpet and touching a metal doorknob
2 Likes
They had a panic attack because chain lightning was performing well and people were having fun during the beta so they threw it in the trash can along with hydras and now you can play ice shards Like the Devs Intended(trademark Blizzard Entertainment)
6 Likes
I was hoping to do chain lightning when I got to play Sorc but now it just feels like I can’t play the sorc I want to play. (Mained light sorc in d2)
3 Likes
Yeah I think they nerfed things waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too hard in the beta tests lol. Kind of a massive overreaction tbh by them. Especially with Hydra getting hit so hard it lost like 2/3 or more of its damage.
Time to bring those numbers back up imo Blizz.
2 Likes
Exactly chain has no paragon board for it self. Some stupid crackling energy for arc lash ball builds also plenty of passive for shock are stupid crackling energy.
Has zero support items.
Didnt even get buffed in recent patch.
Wake up Blizzard we want our chain lightning gameplay from D2R back. Its so weak its unplayable.
There is even glyph which increase lightning damage but there is no lightning damage nod on any paragon. Blizzard is joke
3 Likes
Yeah, it was amazing in the beta, but everyone cries sooooooooo hard on these forums, they successfully got it nerfed.
I’m not sure what’s more insane, nerfing a skill based on the feedback of players who only played 20-25 levels, or crying your eyes out like a spoiled toddler after playing 20-25 levels.
4 Likes
played Chain Lightning until WT3 and just couldn’t kill anything, switched to Ice Shards and it’s a joke, Ice Shards has one aspect that basically turns it into Chain Lightning but good when enemies are frozen
1 Like
I was very surprised to not see chain lightning buffed in the patch notes. I don’t know what Blizzard was thinking honestly. The whole patch was pretty underwhelming with buffs. Hydra still over nerfed from last time too.
4 Likes
So many people love Hyrda forever too, like why are two of the most iconic sorc spells bad ?
2 Likes
This is why ai’m not playing Sprc when season 1 comes. Seems like this class needs the most rework.
2 Likes
Because it’s Blizzard and they don’t play test their games or listen to feedback from players in beta who do actually playtest for them.
5 Likes
Chain lightning and hydra both need buffed, and they were both nerfed after player feedback from 20 levels of gameplay, lol.
I’m sure Blizzard will buff them for season one, though. I genuinely think they’re doing pretty damned good for it being preseason. They just need to lay off the heavy handed nerfs.
1 Like
The bigger problem is that it just shows that the devs are incompetent and have no vision. They make reflex decisions that don’t make sense based on social media or whatever, not from a deep understanding of the game mechanics. Why would anyone trust them to balance this game or add depth when they can’t even handle basic stuff like this that even the most casual players can see is poorly implemented?
Back in the day they would make balance changes to games like WC3 and no-one got mad because you could tell they were doing things with care and it was tightly polished and balanced and you had the sense they knew what they were doing.
Agreed. It genuinely seems like they had no playtesting data from the closed beta.
You’re right. And for them to fail soooooooooooo hard on the itemization front blows my mind when D2 had the greatest itemization ever used in any game ever created… and it’s their game! Lol…
They could have simply copy/pasted the itemization and it would have been perfect.
I’m just hoping they have learned their lesson. Clearly, this is the worst point of the game, because it’s still in beta. I don’t even know if season one can really count as true release since they are still so clueless about their own game, but we’ll see.
If one could refrain from knowing D4 even exists until a year after release, that’d be the best way to play.
3 Likes
they dont need to be buffed! They just need to be reverted back before the first open beta (way super fun in closed beta last year). But even if they restored the first pre-sale/chicken chaser beta, it stil would fall in the ‘fun’ catergory… heaven forbid a game is fun
3 Likes
CL is great for leveling, though, so it is getting lots of use. I don’t think their goal here was to improve late game builds. They didn’t change anything with paragon in this patch.
Maybe they have a round of paragon updates for season 1, but my guess is that they are going to focus on 1-60 gameplay except when something is really broken or stagnant. I doubt “Ice Shards does more damage than me” falls into that.
1 Like
Agreed, but we didn’t see how it works in the mid and late game. It may have had bad scaling, for all we know.