Well, this is more of a QoL adjustment than an actual rework but I do believe that the ability should be changed to only cast skills that are on your bar.
This would be a tremendous boost for both Chain & Ball Lightning builds, and make the skill much more consistent overall. I understand that traditionally Lightning has always had some element of randomness to it but frankly considering this is supposed to be an “Ultimate” ability, an exception can and should be made.
Also the new Stable Aspect is complete and utter garbage - the way it’s worded implies you have a low chance to get a free cast of your Ultimate - which would be incredible.
That’s not what happens at all. It just gives you a free proc, essentially casting one of the possible skills it can shoot off while active (and in my experience it was literally only ever Ball Lightning out of the 30+ times I saw it go off before I scrapped it)
Just a complete utter waste of a legendary power.
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you could combine the stable aspect, overwhelming currents, and abundant energy aspects and it would still be trash. you can tell the devs clearly started running out of ideas but felt the need to add a bunch of garbage to the aspect pool with no potential to be useful or interesting.
they need to either significantly buff or just prune most of the garbage bloat aspects for this class.
Its fine as it is. The only thing that messes up the skill is charged bolts.
Just get rid of charge bolts from unstable currents and its 100 X better.
No, that’s just silly and won’t fix the problem.
The whole point of the Ultimate is you get to go ham for a few seconds except when you’re casting a bunch of skills you haven’t invested into it feels really bad.
Just change it to only cast skills on the hotbar, problem solved and the skill becomes a million times better - moreso if the associated aspects are buffed.
As it stands I’m actually considering removing it from my build, and the more I dive into it the less excited I’m becoming. The whole reason I rolled a a Lightning Sorc was because I wanted to fill the screen with lightning and spam stuns - and there actually is a fair amount of support for that already present.
But there doesn’t quite seem to be enough, and certain skills and power options need to be adjusted. I was very much hoping to run Charged Bolt alongside Chain Lightning as my Enchantments for maximum zappage.
Speaking of, does anyone know how exactly the Enchanting Legendary Paragon affects those ? It just says 20% stronger, but that’s honestly pretty vague when I don’t have access to it and can’t check the tooltips after the fact (assuming it even updates them).
My preference would be skills you’ve invested skill points into. So even if it’s not on your bar, if you’ve put points into something specifically for unstable currents that’d be cool. But if you have 0 points in CB then don’t use it.
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The skill is very strong on my build currently. I do about double the dmg when activated but they could rework it a little. I don’t feel there’s anything wrong with it though.
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It’s better to have your skill bar free to use other things like defensive skills than to fill it up with lightning skills so you would be able to shoot them out when you hit unstable currents.
I like not having ball lightning in my skill bar but it still shoots a ball lightning out when I hit unstable currents.
In my opinion the only thing I don’t like when it shoots out is charge bolts.
Charged bolts is an awful skill that should be removed or reworked altogether. Hate arc lash as well.
If I only have chain lightning and lightning spear in my skill bar, what’s the point of just shooting more of those out during unstable currents. In that case just drop the ultimate and invest more on mana Regen or whatever so you can shoot the skills on you bar out more frequently.
“Just change it to only cast skills on the hotbar”
Would break my build. Part of the greatness of this ultimate is that it can cast skills that are NOT on your bar, freeing your bar up for other things. I invest in both chain lightning and charged bolts, but neither of them are on my bar. They get cast automatically by both stable and unstable currents.
If your problem is that it’s casting skills you haven’t invested in, it seems a lot easier of a fix to just… like… invest in them.
TLDR: Unstable Currents in it’s current state is, IMO, the best ultimate in the game.
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As a side note, regarding the charged bolt hate:
Yeah, it’s a bad main damage skill. Anybody who has tried to put it on their bar and use it as a main spender figures that out pretty quick. But, it has extremely good uses. Use the charged bolt enchant that launches it from enemies that are stunned, and you get mass charged bolts being generated right in the middle of tight packs, often triggering the passive that causes an AoE burst. A single lightning spear (which stuns constantly) will detonate entire packs like this, due to the power of an invested charged bolt plus its enchant.
I would be happy if these just reduce its CD. With the nerf to CDR, it has really fallen off.
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This is exactly what I was thinking of doing on my CL Sorc - have bolts go off from all the stuns, along with the upgrade that makes them AoE after hitting 3 times.
Can those additional bolts proc the passive skills like the lucky hit ones ?
And I think the happy middle ground would be to change Unstable to just use any applicable skills you have invested points into then.
I just don’t like having it fire off the other skills when I wish it would simply double up on my chain lightning.
I’m pretty sure the bolts formed by the enchant can proc the passives, like the AoE explosion and the either extra damage to stunned or damage reduction debuff (which I use currently) but I’m not a thorough tester and it’s pretty hard to see. I’m not sure if it can proc lucky hit, since I’ve mostly moved away from lucky hit due to barber complications. It also only launches 3 bolts, not the 5 of the main skill, so all 3 need to hit the same target to trigger the AoE. But, since it launches from the mobs and not from the player, in a tight group, it’s still likely to trigger on a few of them.
I do feel that the charged bolt enchant does a lot more than the ball lightning enchant, which gets more press. The ball lightning definitely looks cooler, and it’s certainly not weak. But the charged bolt enchant can instantly delete rooms. It’s not uncommon for a sorc to enter a dense pack and instantly stun the whole room, in which case half of those mobs are launching charged bolts instantly. There’s no waiting time for lucky hits to proc like with ball lightning, which ramps up as the fight goes on.,
Sustained single target DPS, ball lightning enchant is probably a lot better. But for speed clearing rooms, charged bolt is great.
Hmm, but there is also a Paragon that increases Enchantments by 20% - dunno if that makes any difference at all, likely just increases the chance on stun.
The Devs have also stated in the last stream that they believe too many of the Ultimate Skills simply don’t feel good to use at all and are basically only picked as a temporary buff (UC falls under this criticism for sure) so there very likely is some kind of buff or rework coming for it.
Besides that though as an aside I’m probably going to take my points out of Lightning Spear - such a horribly disappointing skill. Low damage, long cooldown, random pathing and while the 2 second stun on Crit is nice (the main reason I took it) they would have to improve the legendary aspect to guarantee the 2nd bolt on cast at a minimum to make thay skill even remotely viable.
The paragon buff increases the chance to 48%.
Lightning Spear is the central focus of my build. 
But yeah, it’s one of those skills you need to build around in order for it to shine. As a side skill for another build, it’s not much.
I posted this in the other thread about Conjuration Builds, so I’m just gonna copy it here, since a lot of my view comes from my off-meta build.
My sorc is basically a conjuration build, and it has no problem with tier 50-60 at the current level of 85.
- I don’t use hydra.
- My enchants are Ice Blades, and Charged Bolt
- My skill bar is Spark - Teleport - Flame Shield - Lightning Spear - Ice Blades - Unstable Currents
- I buy the passives for chain lightning and charged bolt
- I prioritize cooldown reduction, and attack speed, particularly basic skill attack speed, which lets me proc Stable Currents, and get more casts in during Unstable Currents
- I use Barber, Tal Rasha, and Picana (though I might switch to the 20% absorb soon)
- I use the cooldown reduction Key Passive
- I prioritize +Max HP to get the most out of barrier spam from cooldowns
The build uses 0 mana. It’s literally just spamming Spark, and hitting cooldowns. The cooldowns are so fast, you can ult in pretty much every big fight if you want, but you don’t need to.
The best part is that it kills things off screen for miles. Lightning Spear can go pretty far off screen, and when it finds a pack, it’s going to crit on some (or all) of them, triggering stuns. Stuns trigger the Charge Bolt enchant, launching a ton of charged bolts in the tightly grouped pack, which often results in the passive AoE explosion from charged bolt. Picana triggers on everything too. Barber soaks it all up, then bursts, and wipes the pack. It’s not uncommon for me to find collections of loot from entire elite packs that I never saw, even 15-20 levels above me.
It’s absolutely hilarious in Hell Tides or the PvP zone.
edit to add:
As an side, I also use the aspect for extra chain lightnings when casting it, which applies to casts from Stable and Unstable currents. From the Ice Blades enchant filling the room with ice blades due to cooldown spam, and lightning spears from the aspect and Stable Currents casts, my Conjuration Mastery passive counter (+damage per active conjuration) is usually around 5 or 6, and jumps to 10-12 while using Unstable Currents. That passive is more effective than glass cannon in this build.
Interesting. Guessing you run wand and focus ?
Curious how Lam Essen would work
I do, though originally for the wand lucky hit, which I’m not sure I need any more. I get my stuns from lightning spear spam, and I get my crackling energy from chain lightning procs, so there really isn’t much I’m missing by dropping lucky hit entirely. But, fast attack speed is important, so it’s either wand or dagger, and I don’t generally make an effort to get close so the damage to close is minimally useful for me also. Dagger would help a bit for bosses though, which I generally sit on top of.
The focus is important for sure.
I’ve been curious about the charged bolt unique also, but it’s tough dropping any of my aspects. I usually avoid uniques unless absolutely necessary.
I tried something similar but gave up. I noticed teleport triggered both unstable currents and barrier, and you have infinite random teleport with oculus. Dodge teleport has zero cooldown and instant cast. It was quite fun but never managed to balance the damage.
Could you share your build and all aspects somehow? Would like to try it with occy 
If I get some time I’ll figure a way to link the details of my build, and I’ll tag you.
I haven’t tried oculus yet, though I have a few in storage. It sounds fun, but basically my cooldowns are short enough that I don’t have an issue with cooldown barrier spam, and spark triggers stable/unstable currents well, so it’s hard to justify putting it in. I rarely use uniques, as a general rule. The special unique aspect needs to be so good that it’s not only better than the general aspect you were using before, but it’s actually so much better that it accounts for the generally mediocre or half useless affixes the item comes with.