Sorceress / Monk Elemental Skills and Builds Feedback: Issues And Possible Solutions

After reading multiple other feedback posts about elemental skills there is also a bunch of quite commonly raised question in them - "why is fire inferior to cold and especially lightning", "why lightning spells are so much worse that lightning attacks" (not even counting Lightning Spear, but in general) and quite common "how can this game be balanced with melee builds being both riskier and slower than ranged builds?" I decided to provide a point of view how semi-balance between all these builds can be achieved, so that when outlier skills / builds get addressed it would be possible to achieve state of "whatever element you pick, whatever type of build (attacks / spells / hybrid) and whatever range (melee / ranged / hybrid) you can be semi-viable at least till / in early endgame and not inferior to some other build".

Assuming GGG does want to reach some build balance in PoE2 eventually and not just dictate meta builds every season / league like Diablo 4 developers that can be achieved via finding some "average expected single-target / AoE dps" for a "good & geared build" and bringing most build types (mentioned above) to this level. However, of course perfect balance is impossible since there are undiscovered interactions between skills, tons of support gems etc, but it is not even needed. What is needed is using this "average dps" as starting point for each build type to tune their skills and mechanics to reach close level of dps to this point when fully geared / geared with similar Divine cost and have some pros / cons to each other, so that whatever kind of build you play would have at least some advantages to other builds.

Here is an example - assuming that PoE2 developers would decide that optimal AoE dps when fully geared is 300k and single-target dps number is 500k all kinds of builds can be balanced with this number as average and different pros / cons to each other:
Fire spell builds - have inherent flaw of big part of damage being done over time via Ignite, so have already existing issue of clear speed (slower than other builds) and vulnerability (no additional ailment to hold off enemies like chill / freeze / electrocute), so their inherent advantage should be dealing most amount of damage among elemental spell builds if given enough time to ramp it up. Accordingly they should be tuned to deal slightly higher that average dps (for example 330k AoE dps and 550k single-target dps) to account for big part of this damage being done over time and lack of inhibiting / boosting ailments like chill and shock. That would give them the pros of being best at rare packs clearing (AoE) and best boss dps (single-target) since these kinds of enemies are tankier than regular packs and can survive long enough to receive most of stacked by fire builds damage over time and cons of being worse at clearing white mobs (because part of damage is done over time and fire builds would have to wait longer for enemies to die than builds of more directly frontloaded elements).
Cold spells builds - have inherent pros of passively slowing and freezing enemies, so accordingly should have slightly lower than average dps (like 270k AoE and 450k single-target) to account for this additional layer of safety via chills and freezes. That would give them the niche of "safest elemental build to play in endgame" (where death penalties get more and more punishing) with cons of also being the slowest which is a fair tradeoff.
Lightning spell builds - have inherent pros of spreading to multiple enemies and chaining and frontloaded direct damage boosting ailment, so can just have close to average dps (300k AoE and 500k single-target) with pros of being faster at clearing regular packs than two other elements (because of chaining / spreading and being frontloaded) and cons of being a bit riskier than cold builds and less effective against rares and bosses than fire builds.
Attack vs spell builds balance - assuming attack builds should have issue with accuracy and stacking its rating (also provided by Dexterity) and spells should have issues with mana cost and stacking enough mana for sustain (also provided by Intelligence) situation seems like already being on par mechanic wise, but in 0.2 it is not - spells require using mana cost stacking abilities (Archmage, Mana Tempest etc) to provide semi-competitive output that makes spell builds run out of mana too easily (when they already have much higher base mana costs to meet ratio mentioned above), spells often have bad base damage (which unlike attacks does not scale with simply getting a better weapon) and much less ways to scale damage to attacks (less item modifiers and less Spirit gems) and for some reason strong spell builds require sitting in a limited and specific area (Orb of Storms / Mana Tempest / Sigil of Power etc) and risk being swarmed / hit by rare or boss mechanic when attack builds can just run and kite around and provide similar output with much less risk and resource issues. That makes current balance heavily skewed towards attack builds and should be addressed - assuming that ranged elemental attack builds and ranged elemental spell builds should have comparable output spells need more support - better base damage, more ways to scale them, less punishing mana cost increasing modifiers and either less reliance on limited areas to do meaningful damage or higher output than attack builds to compensate for increased risk of sitting in such areas.
Melee vs ranged builds balance - usual pros / cons idea is that ranged builds should be squishier and faster at clearing (since they need less movement to clear the pack) while melee are slower at clearing, but tankier and less susceptible to ailments and CC (to compensate for necessity to stay in melee range and eat most of the hits / ailments / CC from enemies), but in 0.2 such ratio is not achieved - for example Monk melee builds don't have any inherent survivability increase compared to ranged builds of other classes (they simply use mix of Evasion and Energy Shield while ranged builds use either Evasion or Energy Shield) and don't have any additional tools to mitigate ailments / crowd control resulting in playing both slower and riskier without any actual upsides compared to ranged builds. That makes current situation skewed towards ranged builds and should be addressed - melee builds should get additional tools for mitigation and ailment / CC avoiding (which can be built-in directly into melee skills, so that they cannot be abused by ranged builds of same class) and since they would still have downsides like bigger risk via staying in melee range and having potential disconnected from target downtime they should also have upsides like dealing slightly higher dps than ranged builds of same element (so that if ranged lightning builds would deal average 300k AoE dps and 500k single-target dps melee lightning builds accordingly should deal 315-330k AoE / 525-550k single-target dps assuming full uptime which would compensate for the riskier / slower gameplay and mitigate the downtime issues).

With such approach all mentioned builds would have pros / cons to each other and if tuning is done properly and outlier builds are being addressed rapidly the state of "you can play any element / range / type you like and stay relevant" can be actually achieved. Hopefully this post can give GGG food for thought and since they stated that they plan to look at builds soon and tune them one by one it could point them into a possible direction.

Some additional feedback about elemental skills, this time about weapon based ones:
Firebolt - is useful till you get Ember Fusillade and then completely outclassed by it. To make it have a niche even after getting EF and have them both have their potential usages consider making Firebolt also pierce by default - such approach allows to keep using it as a piercing projectile when needed and focus Ember Fusillade on stacking damage to a single target.
Living Bomb - can be useful in early game till you get access to Fireball but after that is outclassed as well. To address that and give it a niche - consider making it also apply Fire Exposure to affected enemy, so that both fire builds would get access to exposure effect without requiring high level support gems or channeled Incinerate and Living Bomb would have niche / value even if its direct effect would be outclassed by other fire skills.
Freezing Shards - maybe reduction to number of projectiles was warranted, but it was not compensated enough for and results in this ability dealing too low total damage, especially against smaller enemies. Consider also buffing its damage a bit.
Lightning Bolt - can be used as single-target damage tool, but also quickly gets outclassed by Spark where even if 2-3 spark bolts hit a same target they would deal more total damage. Consider buffing this skill's damage to make it better at its niche.

Monk Invoker with Ice Strike and Charged Staff is still very powerful. However, it is also very depended on your Main Weapon. For endgame be prepared to invest a div or two into a Quarterstaff with at least 600dps, the more the better. And as in 0.1, crit chance/damage and high attack speed is key to make it work. Heralds also do still a ton of damage but only locally around you, they do not trigger each other anymore. I'm having a blast with my monk and I don't feel the need for a buff (yet).

Some additional feedback, this time about some of currently underused ice monk abilities / combos with suggestions how to improve them.

Supposedly intended by developers combination is Shattering Palm (gap closer and attach shards) -> Frozen Locus (put a crystal and jump backwards) -> X Waves of Frost to freeze enemies and get into right distance for Glacial Cascade -> Y Glacial Cascades to shatter both frozen enemies and crystals.

Current issues:
1) Combo takes long time to execute for mediocre output, especially compared to meta builds that can clear faster and need to use much less skills.
2) Combo relies on freezing and shattering enemies and stops reliably working after first freeze since enemies get diminishing returns. That does not matter much against regular mobs, but can quickly become an issue with stronger enemies and especially bosses.
3) Combo is inflexible - Ice Strike does not fit into it much and just stands apart from other cold abilities. There could be more synergies between Ice Strike and abilities mentioned above too.

Result: Ice monk builds instead use Ice Strike with Heralds and Charged Staff (like stated by previous poster), since it is both easier and safer than attempting to execute a long combo while being swarmed by enemies for a mediocre result even if you succeed.

Solution: Make ice monk's abilities more synergizing to allow shorter combos for cases, where full combo cannot be executed because of risk being swarmed or where their effect would not be relevant (like Shattering Palm against bosses) and reduce reliance on freeze effects, so that even if freeze is diminished combo can provide reliable output. Here are several suggestions how that could be done:
Frozen Locus - turn it into a leap forward that creates current crystal at the point of landing. This will allow to use mentioned combo with possibility to skip Shattering Palm (against bosses) and cover currently missing for ice monk builds synergizing gap closer that does not require a target (so can be used as a travel skill akin to Vaulting Impact for physical builds and Gathering Storm for lightning builds). It would also make it have different niche from Ice Wall instead of just being inferior version of it like currently.
Wave of Frost - make it deal more damage and reduce freeze modifier to compensate. Like stated above, overreliance on freeze effects can be detrimental because of diminishing returns, so as Wave of Frost is the only spammable non-melee AoE skill for ice monk builds it should be more damaging on its own and less reliant on limited freeze to make this combo actually deal damage (via Glacial Cascade).
Glacial Cascade - add a way to make its final spike targeted (instead of current necessity to stay at range from target to land it and relocate for each frozen target) and add a way to make it cover much larger area for cases where Wave of Frost had frozen multiple spread enemies that should be shattered (instead of relocating to shatter each of them with final spike while freeze timer is ticking). Simple way to make it is via making it capable of consuming Power Charges and spawning a much larger and stronger final spike in such case - that would both provide way for better AoE shattering and currently missing Power Charge spender for ice monk builds. Also consider adding a synergizing way to build Power Charges for ice monk builds, so that they would not need gimmick sources like Lingering Illusion and Resonance.
Ice Strike - consider making final attack of Ice Strike instantly shatter Ice Crystals including from Frozen Locus (like final spike from Glacial Cascade does) - that would allow to provide a combo gameplay between them (gap close with Frozen Locus and put a crystal -> combo attacks from Ice Strike -> final strike also shatters Ice Crystal for additional burst of damage) and provide currently missing for ice builds tool to quickly shatter Ice Crystal in melee range (since Glacial Cascade always requires having range for that).

I fully support the problem with mana in the game. I play on hardcore sorcerer, I got to level 81. Everything is great, but just a comet costs 800 mana, when the hero's full mana reserve is 1300. I have a mana recovery of 5% per kill, I tried pumping regeneration to the maximum - nothing helps. It is unrealistic to use a comet + other skills. Also, in battle, comet casts can be stoped by hits - it takes mana anyway. I just stopped playing today, all I hear is "no mana".

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Volsal#8024 wrote:

Some additional feedback about elemental skills, this time about weapon based ones:
Firebolt - is useful till you get Ember Fusillade and then completely outclassed by it. To make it have a niche even after getting EF and have them both have their potential usages consider making Firebolt also pierce by default - such approach allows to keep using it as a piercing projectile when needed and focus Ember Fusillade on stacking damage to a single target.
Living Bomb - can be useful in early game till you get access to Fireball but after that is outclassed as well. To address that and give it a niche - consider making it also apply Fire Exposure to affected enemy, so that both fire builds would get access to exposure effect without requiring high level support gems or channeled Incinerate and Living Bomb would have niche / value even if its direct effect would be outclassed by other fire skills.
Freezing Shards - maybe reduction to number of projectiles was warranted, but it was not compensated enough for and results in this ability dealing too low total damage, especially against smaller enemies. Consider also buffing its damage a bit.
Lightning Bolt - can be used as single-target damage tool, but also quickly gets outclassed by Spark where even if 2-3 spark bolts hit a same target they would deal more total damage. Consider buffing this skill's damage to make it better at its niche.

Initially I was hesitating to share feedback about parts of the sorc that work, to not give GGG ideas (they are terrible at balancing and can only make players experience miserable), but your thread is good quality, so you deserve to know:

Fire sorc prioritizing ignite scaling is much more viable than current consensus here.

- During leveling I had to use full rotation to maximize damage in different situations: open with solar orb, cast flameblast on it if available, then finish remaining mobs with incinerate. Learn how to channel while walking without WASD and you can ramp it up without much danger.

- In endgame combos become unnecessary: incinerate is devastating when fully scaled, added ignite proliferation and fire-specific corpse explosion. It defeats any bosses and medium sized mob packs alone, but on rituals/breaches and such you need the last piece:

- COI fireball: with right supports and mana flow from mana remnants it makes so big mess LS cannot hold a candle to, clearing ritual in seconds. You need to learn positioning to keep collecting mana remnants to keep the loop going, if done right, incinerate is only an ignition spark for killing first few mobs, fireball is the engine.

- for defense, chronomancer does the job: time freeze, temporal rift, cast speed to ramp up incinerate quickly, temporal chains.

I also frequently partied with LS-bearing friend, so parity with #1 build was the following:

- While he was alive, all kills were his because ignite damage is still delayed. By the time I cast a spell, everything was already dead.

- But whenever my friend got randomly oneshot due to rhoa stun or being swarmed or barraged with unlucky projectiles, I never failed to finish the map, with only slightly slower total time.

Please fix arc and eldritch battery. I am in standard lvl 96 with very strong gear and both damage and survivability is an issue. I tried a tier 4 breach and could not clear fast enough to even beat the timer. Then I didn't have the damage or survivability to kill the boss before he destroyed me.

Without buffs there is no way I will entertain making this build again.

True, EB nerf was one of the most dumbass in 0.2. Keystones are supposed to have a benefit and a drawback:

benefit: you gain new mana pool

drawback: you gain new mana cost to consume all new mana pool

wtf is the point of this keystone currently?:)

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Echothesis#7320 wrote:

True, EB nerf was one of the most dumbass in 0.2. Keystones are supposed to have a benefit and a drawback:

benefit: you gain new mana pool

drawback: you gain new mana cost to consume all new mana pool

wtf is the point of this keystone currently?:)

It has no point. I haven't seen a single player saying that they use it effectively.

Some additional feedback:
- As Monk melee lightning builds lack survivability and output to justify using them in endgame over ranged builds of Monks and other classes, there could be a way to better support them without giving a boost for their ranged counterparts. That could be done via providing either additional boosts into their melee skills themselves or adding uniques that would support such playstyles and address these issues. Example of such unique could be a Crackling Quarterstaff unique that would provide access to Tempest Flurry instead of general autoattack (promoting lightning based melee playstyle) and would provide stacking short duration buff for hitting enemies with strikes that would both increase lightning damage done and reduce damage taken, providing both risk / reward playstyle and mitigation increase while properly playing it with melee build. If implemented, such unique should also be properly tuned to be competitive enough with rare quarterstaves with + X to melee skills and stacked offensive mods, otherwise it would not be a good enough solution.
- Monk builds (in general) while having builds and synergies to build elemental ailments (like Unbound Avatar) also lack ways to quickly AoE consume these ailments - Siphoning Strike consumes one shock at a time, Glacial Cascade's final spike has very small area and there are no Ignite consuming attack skills compatible with Monks at all. That should be addressed via either providing such tools (via enhanced by Power Charges effects of existing skills or new skills) or via allowing to borrow such tools from other classes (like Ranger can borrow Barrage from Huntress to amplify bow output and elemental attack builds can borrow her Trinity). For example, Elemental Sundering could be a fitting AoE ailment consumption tool for melee elemental builds in general - it does not need to be spear specific (maces, quarterstaves and other large enough martial weapons can all hit the ground and cause the shockwave) and it is versatile enough to prevent GGG from necessity to create such AoE ailment consuming tool for every melee class that has / would have elemental melee builds. Consider such option as well.