Combat Feedback (Chain Lightning and others)

Chain Lightning is and was a broken skill. Altho -

Thought i would jump in on this since it was actually me who recently through up a forum.
And its funny because, i brought it up BECAUSE of a pvp death, and that was literally the counter from people. So being a realist, i decided to actually go and test the skill ( suddenly that thread turned into a half decent discussion ).

The reality was when testing CL is pretty significantly better then any other spell its level. And when spammed with a proper deck using 5 copies, its dominent.

It is VERY easy to take 5 lightnings, 5 CL and permanently stun people. And essentially, the argument was *well you can do the same thing* which means unless your a tank.. the solution was *hit them with it first*.
To argue its Balanced in PVP is a joke, as if you have actually fought the popular PVP ers, its an essential part of their decks. Kinda hard to argue that its balanced , implying its on par with other things, when its quite obviously a *must need* in any serious pvper's deck.

That all being said, this thread i made was a before this last release and SINCE THEN (and being PM'ed from several people that they had been informed it WASNT working properly, and they were looking into it) It has already been adjusted.

For 1, the CC buff had 0 effect on it. So you know that air ressist you think makes you immune? It was only effecting damage, not the stun chance/duration. Meaning that first one to stun wins. (how you say? ) A deck with 5 light, 5 Chain lightiniings, on an average deck of 21 glyphs is just undeer 50% chance of drawing. Meaning you can quite literally spam.. as that stun chance goes up to what? 7+ seconds? (i feel like your 4 sec at 100 is wrong) (but lets play with the 4 second duration ) Meaning, and what most mages were doing, was spamming CL, then lighting, ensuring theres a stun on them, then casting something else ( usually a burn) , then returning back to stunning. Casting 1 of the 2 every 2 seconds roughly. which even at 4 seconds, is enough to get 2 casts off, each with 50% chance of stunning = perma stun for most part.
That CC buff that triggers to give you 20% resist towards this, to prevent spamming, had 0 effect on chain lightning. This was tested and proven. Aswell as the RESIST doesnt actually reduce the stun, or the stun chance, only the blunt dmg. But that wasnt the real issue in PVP.
Edit - Your forgetting the sheer passive boost towards the stun effectiveness. So yes 4 sec is wrong by quite a bit.


This has been adjusted i believe as when testing i now see a damage difference when it kicks on. - So thats good.
They also JUST MADE THE CHANGE so now you can jump out of it like any other stun.
This was simply not in effect before, you could NOT jump out or break the stun using focuse like every other stun / root. This change does WONDERS for your side of arguing that its good how it is.. now.

The blatent truth is, up untill these adjustments, the argument that CL was balanced was weak. And as im sure preach hasnt tested, i have, they have adjusted it in the last 2 weeks to make these 2 very.. very important changes.. which helps your argument that CL doesnt need to be looked at.. as much.

TL/DR - It definitly wasnt balanced, and the people that were claiming it wasnt broken, were blatently proved wrong by the fact they had to go and adjust it because the mechanics on it wernt working lol =P

I still feel its a prety BS PVE skill that is kinda funny that 8 people on a CP can just spam CL and immolation and kill the highest mobs in the game without dieing... and ignoring that it still has LOS, and range issues, it IS much better right now then it was when comparing it in PVP. Enough that i can live with it till they do another pass.

And also about the time duration - im yet to see a mesmerize or stun NOT do the max duration when used on a player? Or has that been adjusted with this last adjustment as well?
And actually, comparing it to earthquake isnt even fair.
Earthquake - chance to knockdown , reduced by the targets dexterity.
CL - Both damage and stun % INCREASED by casters dexterity.
So.. CL gets a boost, while EQ only has a chance at reduction .. lol..
You would think CL would be the same? Stun chance reduced based on targets dex? Nah.

And once agian i bring up the point of you can have as much air resistance as you want.. it doesnt (or wasnt 2 weeks ago) effecting the stun chance. You guys like to just keep implying it does. Thats the issue in PVP, not the actual DMG.

 

May be chain lighting was OP, my opinion its not OP now. I`m much lower level than most hardcore PVP players, but for my build death mages are much more dangerous than guys who use 5Cl 5L.
Also what really need a fix it is obsidian arrow. Enormous damage tiny focus cost fast cast time. If i`m not wrong its N1 spell by damage in a game if you focused build on it.

 

Obsidian is the most dangerous vs armored pvpers cause it bypasses those checks.

 

Long post with good information but

If they fixed it so you can jump out of the stun and it helped great. Love that they took a different direction to fix it. I would rather see them work on the resistances than lowering the spells.

As for balancing 8 high level people using chain lightning. That is a hard one since once you balance for a group of 8, individually it would be worthless. The only thing I could think of that might help, but not really sure how much it would hurt, would be to have the stun from CL counter itself. So if a mob is stunned and it gets stun again it is released from stun. So if multiples are casting it works more like a light switch instead of perms stun

 

I also wish resistances were worked on better. But i mean being able to break thst stun ties it in with all the other cc spells.. evening it out a bit.

Honestly for 8 guys spamming it. ImO that 20% cc buff should be shorter but should stack. And THAT resist should effect stun. Not just dmg.
So instead of 15 sec of 20% cc buff after being stunned.. that does nothing. Should be like 5 sec 20% adding additional 5 sec and 20% per use.
Control spells should be used strategicly.. not mindlessly spammed.

Also yea original post was long. And 4 sec on cl is a blatent lie. Higher level plus the passive its much much longer.

 

I don't see the problem in having 1 spell which is OP (I don't really find it's that OP). Everyone can learn and use it. Everyone can participate of the OPness so everyone has the same chances. I like chainlightning as only magic spell I use JUST because it has the ability to stun. I think there needs no change.

When I stack 5 glyphs of rapid fire, I kill archers and mages with 600hp with this. Focus costs are at 12. I have never reached that with CL.

 

Well, it's no wonder people enjoy it so much it does everything but heal. OP stands for over powered though, and anything that is in obsess is not such a good thing for game balance. Although you're correct that all people have an opportunity to use Chain Lightning, it seems like that's a lot of work for the devs to be doing making all these other spells in the game when all they really need is the one. We could even rename the game to Chain Lightning of the Avatar. Heck, we could do that with weapons and armor too. Just pick one single armor and weapon type that is the best for everything and make all players use the same thing. That would save us tons of development time and we'd probably get the game done a lot faster.

 

That's exactly how all those games go: there will be always a few best spells/skills/weapons/gear/decks which most of people use as long it fits to their playstyle. Nothing wrong with it, in the end wins the one who uses it at it's best.

 

It only works that way because developers get lazy or make poor design decisions. We can do better.