Chain Lightning Nerf

PC General Discussion
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I know a lot of people are going to disagree.

However, the chain lightning nerf is absolutely ridiculous.

The skill, which I pointed out in more than one post during beta, needed a slight rebalance. NOT a nerf. I played my sorceress all the way to lvl 25. Unless you get specific gear, you SUCK as chain lightning (this from a person who hates fire skills to hell and back). I quite literally ONLY care about lightning and maybe some frost. This nerf is going to make me not play the game at all, as I am not a fan of the other classes. Some of the changes to other classes, I can agree with (I played every class to atleast lvl 20 in beta).

Chain lightnings weaknesses [POV Beta limitations of gameplay] revolve around attack speed, and the amount of damage the lightning does per mob type (trash mob, tougher mob, boss, world boss, etc). The chain lightning skill needed a bit of rebalance (and so did other classes, as many noted in varying ways).

What really opens up the chain lightning skill (especially for someone with not so great RNG loot luck, or limited gear) is the Legendary staff “Rapid Brilliance”. Without, you attack slow and constantly have to kite even trash mobs. The Staff’s attack speed boost is what allows you to actually stand your ground.

Now, this is also from the perspective of someone (me) who is a limited player. I can not use skills like “teleport” as they screw with my eyes. If too much graphic happens on the screen from skill/attack graphics, I go blind and can not see my cursor or character (yay for military injuries).

The nerf to damage only guarantees that either nobody will use chain lightning at all, or it will get used only in a group with someone to hide behind. The nerf will make the skill non-solo friendly. Especially for people like me.

Just revert the nerf and rebalance the skill slightly. its all that is needed. Seriously. I do not want this [new] game to devolve into diablo 3 junk, or being yet another fire loving nightmare game. If you are going to nerf lightning, then nerf fire as well for balance.

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in the build i ran, it was getting me constant procs. and those procs i can really see to get my dmg totally through the roof if i were enabled to fill in also paragon boards and add some other perks as i will be at release. i mean, i already didn’t realise i had turned butch to a bunch of ashes before he could become a serious threat ever, basically “booyaaa”-zaaapp! dling, cleaver, recognised him only from the remains, poor thing. and that was lev 25. can really figure it becoming a instagibber for pretty much everything.

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We only know that chain lightning was overperforming in early game. Perhaps Blizzard checked that it only escalated further and was even stronger for endgame characters. You do not know that, I do not know that - and if that was the case nerf was a good move.
And that comes from someone who mained Wiz for 2 weekends.

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you mean the aspect “accelleration aspect” i think. More Attackspeed with coreskills if they crit. right?

Your arguing is a bit exxagerated, since we dont know what numbers they exactly changed into what.

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btw. not to spoil your considerations, each one their own of course, but i’d really want to point out (as a main shockbased sorc myself) that you are doing chain lightning wrong. the main thing is not attack speed. as a skill which most useful bit is the fact it repeatedly hits with each single cast, you basically need to cast it only once to grant yourself multiple hits and procs.

ie, you couldn’t care less about attack speed, nor you should stand your ground and aim to “reach mob, stop, stand, aim, fire!”. not how it should work for you (nor how it works for me). a weapon like a staff is well performing with chain lightning not because of the speed (it’s slower than wand and offhand, but even in case of a drop with +attack speed), but because it’s sheer dmg is higher. hence the multiple repeated hits, quickly sum up for a total crisp. disregarding attack speed.

on the material practical level, you shouldn’t go find a mob, stand, and glue your finger to mouse til mana is gone. you can run around all map, aggroing mobs along the way, and each now and then, when you have created a huge raging ball of minions chasing you, all nicely grouped up, you turn quickly, press rapidly unleashing 2-3 consecutive zaaaps watching the light bouncing through all of that while you keep moving happily around picking flowers, and then go gather what remains in the fuming empty wasteland. in short, chain lightning isn’t to be used actually chaining it. i know, rather counterintuitive, but if you try that works better (and you’ll immediately discover you at that point are basically not depending on mana anymore, nor you could care less about attack speed).

btw, in the end i’m more for a wand+offhand than a staff, but not depending on the way the skills work, nor for some more attack speed. just because, simply, i can get one aspect more on the gear loadout and some more affixes courtesy of one item more. but at low levs the sheer dmg a staff offers of course can be interesting making leveling quicker (as it was in beta). still, it’s main advantage isn’t attack speed, even in the case of the specific drop (and least of all, to a chain lightning user).

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I made 3 sorcs the first beta weekend and leveled with each of the pure elemental specs just to get a feel for which I liked the best. Lightning was the last one I tried and it was by far the strongest from the start (though obviously Hydra is pretty absurd too). I did not have particularly amazing gear and the first beta weekend I didn’t pay as much attention to choosing the best nodes or gear and still the spell (along with the rest of the lightning arsenal was super strong.

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We haven’t seen half of the aspects. Hang in there and see what builds can be devised before ducking

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well thats all nice and fine. But to be fair, you could play chain lightning in more then one way.

As you describe that is the crackling energy kite build.

But chainlightning scales extremely well with attack speed once you made it free with some managain. so the other build more scentric on bursting with chainlightning was insane after you build it. I can completeley relate why it was nerfed a bit. It was probably mainly because of its insane scaling with AS.

You were hitting 6-8+ times per second on multitargets with a damage multiplier of 50%(or more depending on skill rank) of your base damage. With the manareturn you could hold down the button. It would become even more crazy lategame with paragon and more as/dmg multipliers.

On Bosses you were hitting them 3-4 times with that multiplier each second. +25% extra each attack on bosses with the single target talent.

And dont forget the cl enchant, if it was also equiped you would make it even more ridicoulous.

And then there is the Lightning Ultimate.

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I think it still will be strong as heck, just not as strong as in the beta.

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yeah, i agree with all of that actually (sooner or later also eager to give a go to a stun-centered build but yeah, my main focus is going to be on a crack-one for a while). while what i was saying related of course to that build, even what you say though to me appears quite evidently flying high above the op, that was the point i was making (taking that build for example).

he basically claims “the skill is gear depending i already had so many troubles with it, it worked only thx to this staff w +as, and now that you nerf it you break it” (only makes clear that he doesn’t grasp it’s just the opposite since in a sense it’s gear that is build dependant, being the main point of the game simply hunting and equipping the gear to make whatever your build reach its full potential, not changing build depending on whatever drop, and in case of an attack speed centered build then clearly for example not using a staff nevermind with +as affix, since it would always be under-performing compared to a wand+offhand).

in that sense it’s clearly pointless making a discussion about attack speed being an issue or not in relation to a skill or an item, when it’s evident that what is lacking is the basic comprehension of how that skill (or item, or build) works, that was what i was addressing.

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Yes, I’m not concerned at all about this nerf. I feel we haven’t even begun to see the Sorc at peak power.

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I believe this nerf was done due to having more variety in leveling. Because now everybody would level up using chain lightening. Now we might actually see frost or fire sorcerers while leveling.

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You will likely have to get used to sorc nerfs, so if the first one of many more to come is already killing your desire to play the game then tough luck.

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I dunno what game you played, but chain light was just broken OP for my run. I didn’t grind out gear for it, and I didn’t do any more than just spec towards it with my skill points and a couple refunds to optimize, but I was able to just kinda spam it, put a hydra down, spam it some more, maybe move a little if I was fighting a boss, then grab my loot.

It 100% needed a nerf. I spec’d into fire and ice too, and both felt super underwhelming without gear to help them along. Chain light just goes PEW PEW with 0 thought or effort, which was kinda boring after just a short while with how reliably I could just steamroll everything.

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15

Dude. Chain lightning was disgustingly broken.

You just wasted way too much time writing way too much about a spell that was completely broken

Grass feels good tho

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16

Chain lightning was broken. It would be cool to see the other schools of magic brought up a bit more to compensate for the nerf.

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17

I love all the manchilds that cry over a video game nerf like their entire world is falling apart.

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Just need to buff other Sorcerer spells now so they too can do 350k hits like barbarian

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What’s the difference between a slight rebalance and a nerf?

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yeah chain lightning was just too good at too much

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