The Spell problem

I'm one of those guys that like to do the opposite that everyone is doing, so i spent an entire week trying differents combination of gems, support gems, uniques...all to try to make my own spell build (some of them not so original, i know) (I'm an Abyssal lich), and here is some of my feedback:

1 build:
Spark with Thuderstorm

The Idea - Using the fact that enemies are drenched to use shock conduction II and coursing current to spread shock and deal damage, i also tried elemental discharge to consume shock and do more damage.

The Problem - Coursing current and discharge don't do enough damage, heavily outclassed by just spark + comet


2 build:
Doedre's Undoing (not so original i know)

The Idea: Actually managed somehow to get the golden 5.0 curse area, opptimized the build with spell echo and spell cascade to have 3 intersections of damage

The Problem - After the gem's nerf, even after all that i did and invested, the damage couldn't keep up


3 build
Elemental weakness with incinerate and cast on ignite living bomb

The Idea - Using elemental weakness to generate fuel, then using incinerate to proc living bomb wich would give me a fire inusion for incinerate

The Problem - Incinerate requires too much fuel to use for only a few seconds, i managed to have ele weak costing +800 mana (the more mana, the more fuel it generates), but even so i couldn't keep incinerate up for long. Also living bomb is limited to only a single bomb for some reason and the damage wasn't even worth it. Tried using flame wall instead of incinerate, even with a lot of flammability and inc mag flame wall was just too slow to trigger flame bomb


4 build
Hayoxi's Fulmination Lineage Gem

The Idea: Using that giant beam o laser to kill things i curse

The Problem - It requires 7 sec for the beam to proc with no absolutely no way to reduce that, an awesome gem with awesome effect, bricked by this 7 sec activation time


5 build
Frostbolt + Ice Wall + Snap

The idea: Using frostbolt near an ice wall and snap to detonate the crystals

The Problem: Slow setup, Ice Wall is bad in narrow passages, snap has a cooldown wich you have to go around it, only using frostbolt + snap does no almost no damage, no way for nap to trigger more than one frostbolt in one cast (no shotgun effect)


I'm not gonna write every build i've tried (to many), but a problem every single one of them shared is...All of them fall short to Coc Comet, it's not even close

Everything fells so clanky, heavy and slow, to many barries to use skills, to many restrictions and a lot of cool concepts that do absolutely no damage at all, skill and supports with too many limitations or drawback and nerfs that literally killed some builds

No build diversity is real, looks like i'll have to play Coc Comet like everyone else

I swear the moment they give comet the incinerate treatment, spell caster archetype will be dead just like warrior.

This is why i hate the fact that they made the game revolve around all these combos.

So much effort and the payoff doesn't even work.

It would have been way easier to balance skills by themselves.

Play incinerate by only using incinerate etc but no. GGG dug themselves in their grave trying to balance combos.

If you force me to dance around gathering infusions, generating charges, using 3 skills in a sequence, the payoff better be melt 3 screens away or i'm deleting that trash character.

Yeah. I recently obtained a really nice wand and PoB designed a really really nice build using Arc. A zero Duration Titan build. AKA Skill Duration is 0.06 seconds to basically everything. What this basically allows is for the Time of Need spirit gems 10 second trigger to trigger every 0.06 seconds. AKA I gain 1000 Life and remove any ailments and curses from me every 0.06 seconds.

In other words... As long as I can dodge the red heavy attacks that things do, I am essentially Immortal.
But it comes with a tradeoff. I cannot use anything that has a duration. Namely Spark, Orb of Storms, Thunderstorm, Living Bomb, etc. etc.

Taking Spark as an example. If you use Spark with a Zero Duration build you see a tiny blue cone show up in the direction you "shot" the Sparks out at but nothing actually happens. Because the Sparks are only on the map for 0.06 seconds.

So the only thing I can really use is Arc. Don't get me wrong Arc is SUPER strong. Combine with the fact that I basically cannot take damage ever, unless I run into one of those breach mobs that cut healing in half... Ugh. Basically mapping is a breeze. It's the single target damage that SUX though. You can somewhat get around the single target damage being mediocre by having a Cast on Critical Orb of Storms. Because when Orb of Storms duration ends it leaves a Lightning Remnant. Lightning Remnants give Arc a 200% MORE damage multiplier. Really nice btw. But even with Cast speed on basically everything I have AND 100% crit chance for Arc, Casting is just super slow and takes forever to kill single targets.
OH also this is a level 35 Arc as well.

So I AM USING their Infusion system that they want me to use. But Spells feel extremely lack luster unless you stack them. AKA the CoC Comet. And Arc is a VERY good spell, especially now that it has become a "projectile" but even then its still slow and clunky. So I feel OP pain. I think GGG's Vision is just too strict and the result is stiffing skills into mediocrity. Also doesn't help that every patch they nerf all the powerful things that worked during the league and in so doing they nerfed everything else as collateral damage. Like for example I am expecting to see a nerf to Mana Flare and then because of the interaction of Mana Flare they will see that XYZ skills were used by most players in the game. Therefore not only do they nerf Mana Flare but they also nerf XYZ skills into the ground and they didn't deserve the nerf because what made them the most used was the interaction of Mana Flare. Hence, everything takes Collateral damage. Kind of a big problem.

I've tested most spells. The problem is you can mostly get a couple of infusions every 5 seconds or so. Which means you can only infuse maybe 1/10 casts. So infusing is barely ever worth the effort. This is why players mostly just ignore it completely.


So the only spell I played in 0.3 and 0.4 was ED+Contagion. None of that infusion stuff required. However it does have a damage cap of around 1mill with near perfect gear. So a 30mill hp boss is going to take 30 seconds to kill after max investment and you can't do it any faster. So it's pretty much going to be unplayable as well if things with massive monster HP scaling stays in the game (like Temple where were rare mobs can get 20mill HP and each room has multiple of them).

I agree that while GGG did provide some interesing spell combos and interactions they often don't do much / enough damage and often don't feel worth all the investment / comboing when some other classes (ahem bows) and even spell builds (ahem Bloodmage Spark CoC Comet) can just press 1-2 buttons and perform much better than all these combo gameplay builds. That is a tuning issue on their end that they should address.

There are also issues with specific spells and elemental builds that could be addressed and improved too. I wroth them in this thread - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3905543