The Problem:
Chain Lightning is hella-fun and I’m not here to advocate for pulling it back to what it was in the BETA because obviously that was just ridiculous; no mortal should ever be trusted to wield the power of a god. The biggest issue I have with Chain Lightning at its fundamental core is that it is the only AoE spell in the game that has a static (lulz pun) amount of damage potential; no other AoE can only hit X number of targets. Due to this, the cost-to-damage ratio is so mediocre that as soon as you scale beyond the initial point of one-shotting mobs it becomes vastly out-classed by any other core skill in the game.
Example: Lob a fireball at 1 mob, it deals 100 damage. Lob a fireball at 5 mobs, it deals 500 damage. Lob a fireball at 100 mobs, it can potentially deal 10000 damage.
Chain Lightning, however, will only ever hit for the number of bounces that it can make, which is a factor limited by the skill itself (+2-3, based on an aspect).
My Suggestion: reduce the maximum distance that a chain lightning “bounce” can make, but always target the furthest possible enemy from the current bounce, while dealing % damage to all mobs that are passed through.
Thoughts on this?
3 Likes
Each skill level should add a ‘chain’ to the lightning. Like one more enemy hit. And it needs a crit bonus or do more damage per hit. Then reduce mana cost by 1 per hard point in the skill as well.
2 Likes
The damage scaling itself could be a little bit better, but I think adding chains would quickly get out of control and create a nearly infinite circuit. As for mana cost, as long as it stays within the same price range as the other core skills, I don’t know that it needs to be adjusted. I played it as my primary damage dealer up to around Lv.63-64 and I never felt like I just couldn’t use it as an ability. Yeah, I had some downtime but my gear was also not optimized with CDR and mana cost reduction.
One of the biggest things, right now, is that Lightning builds have no paragon support unless you’re using arc lash to proc stuns. All of the paragon stuff seems to be tied into dealing all of your damage based on an effect (chilled, vuln, burning, etc) but the lightning tree doesn’t have any of that going on. Honestly, I think crackling energy needs a major re-work in the context of this system. As it is right now, it’s useless for all practical purposes because the damage scaling is so awful – it’d be cool if crackling turned into a status effect that caused periodic shock damage similar to burning maybe? Less damage per tick, but had a small chance to spawn a charged bolt, maybe? I dunno, lightning just doesn’t have the synergy and really lacks any kind of end-game potential right now.
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I enjoyed leveling with Chain Lightning up to around lvl 40. It’s the perfect AoE solution when mobs are not tightly packed and CL one-shot zaps from one end of the screen to the other. But as you approached World Tier 3, CL’s efficiency quickly drops off a cliff. So I’m all for buffing it to make it fun again.
Extra bounces wouldn’t hurt. Bouncing off of the caster should not count against its number of bounces. That should make it competitive with Ice Shards for single target. My biggest concern is against damage reduction aura mobs since there’s effectively no way to focus fire a single target with CL in a mob pack. A secondary concern is with any Shock skills in general. Since Unstable Currents exist, any buffs to any individual Shock skills inevitably buffs Arc Lash builds so that’s something to consider from a balance perspective. Not that I’m saying Arc Lash builds are OP, we just have to be careful how buffing one build affects another.
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Dunno how much this accounts for really, but my CL build very much still works on lvl 74 against lvl 40 Nightmare keys and i have yet to feel anything that really can hold me back other than the game being like “these enemies take 60% less lightning / crit / distant dmg” … well and oneshots, which do occasionally happen…but i mean… mobs are 20 lvl higher so …i guess xP
The worstt possible situation i can find myself in really is having two or three mobs as enemies, as i cant count on crackling energy spawns for manareg really, now can i count on the bounce off of me reg.
What i would kinda love would really be some kind of legendary or so, that changes how chain lightning works. e.g. that removes the bounces and instead makes it like a 90° frontal cone attack with medium range or smth
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What they really need to do is cut the mana cost. If they dropped it down to say twenty it would play much better.
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In my opinion it’s just needed to buff the damage. Then manacost will be okay and I think the way it bounces is okay too. It’s just too weak.
(but reducing the manacost would probably working too, so you cast it 2x times instead of 1 time…)
What did you swap to at level 40?
I’m 42 running chain lightning and to be frank it is poop. Looking for what to switch into to get back to smooth gameplay.
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Id like to know as well. Im at the same point; trash mobs are taking as long as boss fights used to, and im barely squeeking by on bosses.
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Frost Nova with Ice Shards Enchantment while swapping between Frozen Orb and Ice Shards as my core spam ability, trying to decide which one played better. I eventually settled for Ice Shards, and this was before I read up on any meta build guides. Freezing stuff and running with Ice Shards Enchantment just makes so much sense when you see it in action.
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I ran chain lightning till 30 then switched to a crazy conjuration build that focuses on summoning as many minions as possible. It uses frost nova and ice shard enchantments and its really fun. Everything is permafrozen and the shards are continuously blasting even though they aren’t on my bar.
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I went from leveling with Chain Lightning to using an Arc Lash build to down Elias for T4 clear. I’d managed to stick with CL as my primary spam all the way up to clearing that entire capstone dungeon, but I just could not clear that boss due to the number of adds he spams while simultaneously throwing more and more crap at you as the fight goes on.
So to clear him, I ended up switching to an Arc Lash + Unstable Currents.
From this point forward, though, I transitioned into Ice Shards + Frost Nova for all of T4 because I just hated being a melee sorc. Without the constant uptime and lucky hit procs, arc lash builds just feel terrible
I think lightning magic can refer to Diablo 2, with smaller minimum damage and bigger maximum damage, adding some randomness.
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And thats how i know you dont know what youre talking about. Let me lnow when youre trying to push high tier nm dungeons or see what other classes can do for dmg
Calm down, all he said was that it’s fun.
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Relax, im just saying he doesnt know what hes talking about if he thinks chain lightning was too strong in beta. Not a big deal
Why do people keep referencing beta state of sorc , we didn’t need nerfed because of level 25 balance lol. Look at sorc balance now at endgame, it makes you wonder what the short sighted nerfs in beta were really for. Nerf a class that is under performing so hard in late game because of a shortlived performance at a lower level?
Omg eww people… Lol
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