[Invoker] Elemental Expression needs a MAJOR buff

The Elemental Expression skill from the Invoker ascendancy feels so unbelievably underwhelming for the high investment that is required of it. High mana cost from proccing the ability alongside the investment of four whole ascendancy points to get to it whereas Stormweaver with an arguably much better skill that scales alongside its intended kit (spell for spell proc) only requires two ascendancy points.

Not to even mention that even getting this to work requires you to have to diversify and spread your passive tree thin for raising your critical chance and then on top have to find some way to scale the damage without compromising damage from attacking means your options are ultimately subpar at best (either going into spell damage or triggered spell damage which does nothing for your attack based abilities or going flat elemental damage which is so far from where monk starts that the investment is not worth it).

I see a few options that would really help with the ability;

- The obvious is raising the flat damage of the ability where it can still shine without being reliant on heavy spell investment from the passive tree and can still be reasonably effective alongside attack based builds.

- Another is just raising the base critical chance of the spell(s) to work better with the previous two invested ascendancy points. I've invested a fair percentage of my passive tree and get gear with increases to critical chance to try and supplement the attack and spell, and the lightning only gets up to 27% critical strike chance. A few points of base crit chance will really go a long way for the build and I honestly prefer this to just a flat base increase to the spell as it will work more in line with "Sunder my Enemies" as previously mentioned.

- I'm also thinking that more support gem availability would be huge for this skill. Most of the ones available as of now are fairly basic so having some options like Spell Echo would be wildly beneficial to the feel of the ability as a whole.

- The last would be lowering the mana cost or removing it entirely so that the smaller damage can be justified for free additional procs. This is the option I like the LEAST but I can see it being there.

(One other thing I forgot about, why doesn't this ascendancy have quality? I think its the same thing with the Elemental Storm skill for the Stormweaver ascendancy. Would be something nice to invest into for sure. Maybe 0.5% chance to echo/trigger twice per quality? something like that would be super worth to invest into)

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the idea of Elemental expression and I've been a fan of the idea of Wild Strike from POE 1 even since I started playing it, but the current implementation of Elemental Expression feels so lackluster and frankly disheartening to run in comparison to most builds that are being played and gain way more benefit from their ascendancies. There feels like there's so little benefit for the amount of compromising one needs to do to try and make it work at the current state of the ability.

I'll still be running it and trying to find some solution, but in all honesty I don't know what I can do to find a reasonable way to make it work as of now.
These are just my thoughts and might not be the best solutions for the ascendancy so I'm curious as to what other people playing Invoker have to say about this. Thanks for reading.

Totally agree, elemental expression is not working as designed right now. The most important point is it can not be sustained with its ridiculous mana cost, support options being fire/cold/lighting mastery = cost is just sky rockets with levels. And you cant control base level of the skill

I think if they changed its resource from Mana to Energy that functions like CoC it would be great.

It does not do enough dps to be viable, no matter the cost. The cost is the secondary issue here. The damage is so bad that even if they double it, its still not going to be viable. 1k damage on crit for literally doubling the mana cost of my attacks, who designed it?
The first change that needs to be done is they MUST m ake it an attack and not a spell. Monks are not casters, we use attacks. Everything we have MUST scale based on Attack Damage, not Spell damage.

I could take it if there was no mana cost tbh. Currently with that mana cost, hell no.

I disagree, Invoker monks utilize spells and spell damage. They may not synch well with attacks but they function. This ability with the Wyrm Staff at high levels can be level 32 with just the unique and level, before any other ability modifiers. This actually makes the damage respectable for area clear but causes it to cost like 400 mana.

I would be extremely happy with this ability if it was cost based on energy to synergize with Invoker energy cost reductions and gains, rather than on Mana.

The fact that you can jack this ability up to very high levels would make it a blast if it wasn’t costing half of your mana pool per attack.

I couldn't agree more, I played invoker looking forward to "... and scatter them to the wind", expecting to have an agile melee brawler unleashing elements through basic attacks.
Right now, it is just a waste of point that grants minor visual improves to attack with barely no effect at alL... It should definitly scale with attacks or we need a rework of invoker making it a melee spellcaster ?

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blgmike#5184 wrote:

I disagree, Invoker monks utilize spells and spell damage. They may not synch well with attacks but they function. This ability with the Wyrm Staff at high levels can be level 32 with just the unique and level, before any other ability modifiers. This actually makes the damage respectable for area clear but causes it to cost like 400 mana.

I would be extremely happy with this ability if it was cost based on energy to synergize with Invoker energy cost reductions and gains, rather than on Mana.

The fact that you can jack this ability up to very high levels would make it a blast if it wasn’t costing half of your mana pool per attack.

Elemental Expression only triggers on MELEE critical hits, meaning melee ATTACKS only since there is no such thing as spell with "melee" tag. You cant even activate it with spells.
The skill is literally based on melee attacks crits yet it scales with spell damage. If its not a bug then its designers incompetency.

Also, just because you can equip a spell does not mean it is viable. Monk is based around elemental DAMAGE, not spells.

Yes it triggers off of melee critical hits which are done by CoC monks.

I play CoC invoker and I have literally a 100% crit chance with attack. I am also CoC so I’ve taken some spell damage nodes which help with EE. Would love if EE built energy like CoC rather than spend mana.

Also elemental damage buffs amplify EE. There’s a few herald nodes that help its damage output significantly. There’s also a trifecta of damage nodes between Monk & Sorc that do work.

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blgmike#5184 wrote:

Yes it triggers off of melee critical hits which are done by CoC monks.

I play CoC invoker and I have literally a 100% crit chance with attack. I am also CoC so I’ve taken some spell damage nodes which help with EE. Would love if EE built energy like CoC rather than spend mana.

Also elemental damage buffs amplify EE. There’s a few herald nodes that help its damage output significantly. There’s also a trifecta of damage nodes between Monk & Sorc that do work.

It does not matter how much you invest into Elemental Expression; its damage won't be sufficient to even consider it. I doubt it will be sufficient if you go full cosplay sorc and spec only spell damage nodes.
Again, you can create whatever abomination you wish warrior monk, sorc monk, whatever rocks your boat. It does not make EE a viable option, period. Its damage is a joke due to it scaling off spell damage and not attack damage. But even if they make it scale off of attack damage, in its current state, it would not raise its damage enough to make it viable.
And no, making it reserve Spirit instead of cost mana will not make it any better. Spirit is a precious commodity and no sane monk will allocate spirit for such dog poopoo skill.

As OP mentioned, EE as it stands now, needs a MAJOR buff. And mana costs of skills in general need a major overhaul, no one but sorcs can use a high level skill atm without running out of mana almost instantly; which is another poor design choice by devs. The whole game seems to be balanced around sorcs.