Multiple cast support gem

Ah, our friendly neighborhood necromancer even got a _GGG to respond. His powers are growing, but with great power comes...

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Phaeded wrote:

Ah, our friendly neighborhood necromancer even got a _GGG to respond. His powers are growing, but with great power comes...

...great responsibility.

As to the topic, a multicast support gem doesn't seem worth it. It doesn't matter if I cast the spell two additional times, even without damage penalty, if a penetration gem would do so much more.

Also, one must consider the nerf to leech. Instead of leeching the one big hit with a penetration gem, you'll be leeching only one of the smaller hits that didn't have a penetration support gem. One third of the leeching for almost no additional damage? Pfft.

Then you must also consider the fact that you're stuck there, especially if you rely on freezing-which also means your freeze duration is cut in thirds, assuming the multicast gem has a damage penalty to balance it, and it likely would.

Multistrike works for physical melee, but not for elemental and/or spells. At least not from what I can gather.

They would probably do better to just add on ele damage increases on the penetration gems as it levels. Then make the quality the effect duration or just a "chance to x". Mulitcast would only work well for incinerate, stormcall, and EK.... and maybe firestorm and flameblast. Those are spells that are already used often.

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DarkHeart69 wrote:

They would probably do better to just add on ele damage increases on the penetration gems as it levels. Then make the quality the effect duration or just a "chance to x". Mulitcast would only work well for incinerate, stormcall, and EK.... and maybe firestorm and flameblast. Those are spells that are already used often.

The penetration gems already have the capability to increase elemental damage of the same type.

Fire Penetration

Cold Penetration

Lightning Penetration

It also doesn't make sense for the penetration gems to increase effect duration. They are about dealing damage, so "chance to..." would be logical, but not in this case.

For example, Arc has the only inherent chance to shock which gives it a huge advantage over all of the other lightning skills. Give this to the penetration gem, and every skill now has shock chance besides their own damage. This removes all incentive to use Arc unless you have a very specific desire for it.

Another prime example would be Cold Snap. It has a huge inherent freeze chance, and even though it's huge, it doesn't give enough incentive to use it over other cold spells. I'll use numbers to prove this.

Cold Snap has a cast speed of 0.85 seconds, deals a maximum of 269-404 damage, and has a maximum of 44% chance to freeze. Freezing Pulse has a cast speed of 0.65, deals a maximum of 182-273 damage, and has no inherent attributes. Ice Spear has a cast speed of 0.85, deals a maximum of 157-235 damage, and has a huge increase to critical strike chance.

Now, from the base skills Cold Snap is obviously the best choice if you want to freeze, especially with it's increased freeze and chill duration on enemies. However, once the skills are all supported, Freezing Pulse and Ice Spear are much better options. Here's why:

Freezing Pulse has a faster cast speed, and when you add in even a 10% base chance to freeze from Cold Penetration, that cast speed really increases that support gem's effectiveness. Add in LMP/GMP and you are almost guaranteed a freeze with each cast, whereas Cold Snap only has 54% chance to freeze in one shot. Both are AOE skills and can hit 10+ targets, so this doesn't change much.

Ice Spear has a base 49% crit chance after it hits its first target, and crit always causes a status effect. So this translates into a 49% chance to freeze. Add Cold Penetration, it would have 10% chance to freeze the first target, and 59% chance to freeze the second target. The disadvantage of hitting only two targets per projectile per cast is counterbalanced by it's outright chance to crit, not only freezing but dealing increased damage to freeze longer.

Now let's look at Cold Snap. Cold Snap has a cooldown that one must consider. Unless you invest a lot of your passive skill tree and gear, you have to get Romira's Banquet to be able to cast this reliably and obtain Resolute Technique. Because of it's required set up, it prevents you from taking as much damage increases as you would like. This set up counterbalances the base damage that Cold Snap benefits from.

That inherent freeze chance that is available on Cold Snap makes it extremely desirable, and adding even 10% on the Cold Penetration gem would ruin it. Cold Snap would either be removed or rebalanced completely, if not all of the cold spells.

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Natharias wrote:

For example, Arc has the only inherent chance to shock which gives it a huge advantage over all of the other lightning skills.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Natharias wrote:

For example, Arc has the only inherent chance to shock which gives it a huge advantage over all of the other lightning skills.

Nitpick

Quite right. I forgot that gem because it's just about useless, seeing how it has a "dead zone".

Shock Nova is like a restaurant with a menu labeled, "We don't wash our hands, but we serve good BBQ!".

It's asinine. The only use I found for that item is a dual totem where you try to cover the dead zones, but I'm not sure it would work.

Thanks though Scrotie! XD

Edit:

Actually, that isn't a correct nitpick. The chance to shock is only if you increase the quality on the gem, so it isn't inherent.