Elemental druid skills: balance issues

The Seven Lances mod forum has moved to http://www.sevenlances.com.
Locked

0
No votes
 
Total votes: 0

User avatar
Brother Laz
Forum Legend
Dominion
Posts: 6715
Joined: Mon Jun 03, 2002 10:06 am
Location: Fallen Like Lightning
Contact:

Hand-picked

Elemental druid skills: balance issues

Post by Brother Laz » Fri Oct 18, 2002 1:23 pm

Found out some things about the elemental druid in act 5 Hell. I tested most damage skills by taking my boulder/barbs elemental druid I 3dotted a week ago, and moving his skill points around with Shadowmaster. I did the entire act 5 with each skill combo to even out monster differences. Took me a full day, too. :)

Firestorm: not tested, but its 'average' damage per bolt and 22 bolts at level 20 scare me. Might be charged strike all over again with slightly less damage. Easy to get up to 140 damage and 30 bolts. That's like CLoD charged bolt. Needs testing. Will do so once I have 3dotted my 'elemental' bear, and after that make a char that is hopefully some fun to play.

Boulder: nice skill, good damage, not overpowered but buggy in that it does no damage from some angles, probably due to the fact that it does not fill the entire AoE with fire, but has gaps. Spam this into a crowd occupied with your wolves for some good and balanced damage. It's very fun to use with or without minions, but there is unfortunately no other elemental skill that is fun and does actual damage.

Arctic: useless, does less damage than boulder, cannot be stacked, requires the char to stand still, and only hits one or two targets.

Fissure: not tested, it just does not inspire me. Boring to look at, boring to use, and blizzard looks better. (why the timer on blizzard? Bliz has less gfx than fissure!!) Damage seems ok, but these skills tend to hit a monster only occasionally, probably making it useless later on. Though that might actually be a good thing.

Volcano: requires wolves to go with it, but it's amazingly powerful. Cast it on someone who's not a boss, and they die before it ends. Not much fun to use though. The area effect damage is useless, and its long timer is annoying. It's well balanced, great with wolves, useless without, it's just the skill itself that is not much fun.

Twister: useless; stun length is good without being too long, but the hits are too random: even just 5 game yards away from the target, it misses! Even in their face, it misses! This results in the player being forced to concentrate on one target at a time, and it just does not do enough damage to kill him quickly enough to survive against the rest of the mob. It would be a decent skill if only the # of twisters was increased to 8.

Tornado: second worst skill in the tree. I'm very sure it does not do 300 damage at level 20, it is affected by two resistances/immunities, and its ridiculous misses even at point blank make it a wasted skill point.

Hurricane: worst druid skill. Low damage, short radius, long delay between hits, requires 20 seconds to kill a 0% resistant foe in act 5 Hell in players 1, short cold length, basically does nothing. Wasted skill point. Does too little damage for having such a limited radius. Double its radius but leave the damage as it is. IIRC even the graphics change when you change hurricane's radius, so it should be no problem to set it to 12-15 units and make it worth something.

Armageddon: useless, radius increase without density increase resulted in a lot of misses. Even in act 1 normal, one-hit killing everything it takes at least 5-10 seconds before the pack of archers is dead. Fire resist makes it even worse. FoxBat: decrease radius and increase frequency.

Raven: something is wrong here. It says it does good damage, but it doesn't. Not sure why; maybe they can be blocked, miss due to AR/DR rolls, or maybe the damage in skills.txt is just for show (Armageddon's damage in skills.txt is fake: it's ArmageddonFire that does the damage, and it is in missiles.txt). As it is now, it obscures your vision, does lowly damage, but is better than hurricane. Not that this means anything.

Poison creeper: decent support skill, nice damage, does not kill enemies by itself in act 5 Hell but weakens them quite nicely, but ultimately its damage is a bit too low to matter in act 5 Hell. Balanced as it should be.

Spirit wolf: only like 25% less HP than a grizzly, 15% less than a direwolf, and you get 5 of them? That's what I call powerful. Sure they do no damage, sure you have to invest in direwolf to make them useful (but you only need 5 points in spirit wolf), but there is a certain spirit that makes them take 600-1500 damage when they hit your wolves, and with 5 wolves running around, they won't often target you.

Direwolf: max to make spirit wolves useful, but has only a sliver more life than spirit wolf, does more damage but not enough to actually kill anything by themselves (though the life drain is noticable and it is possible to do act 5 Hell with direwolf and heart of wolverine) and there are less of them.

Grizzly: ignore. Has a minimal life advantage over direwolf, but you only get one of them (less total HP!), and this makes them a monster magnet, and they spin round to face the one who struck the last hit on them, constantly attacking different enemies and never actually killing any. With wolves at least not all enemies are attacking one minion, giving each wolf less targets to choose from. Not a bad skill, but wolves are better.

Oak sage: nerfed the FoxBat way (see also FO and its 1 second of cold length), making it useless for a char who has any use for any other spirit.

Spirit of barbs: on the verge of being overpowered. Strikes back at melee attackers, doing 500-700% damage back (this kills anyone not >50% resistant to physical in act 5 Hell in 4-8 seconds!), and compared to iron maiden you don't have to recast it, not all attackers are piling on one golem but are spread out over 5 wolves with 2500 HP each, and there is no other spell in the mod that does 500-700 area effect damage per second. Get this and use it. I used it on my first boulder/barbs druid, and the difference in difficulty between melee and ranged attackers was very noticable.

Shockwave: 300 area effect damage is good in this mod, but the stun is too much. Nothing can ever touch me, and unlike warcry and shockwave in CLoD it actually does enough damage to kill, eliminating the need for a secondary skill to kill with. Cast 10 times, 5 seconds, entire mob dead. Does not work well with barbs of course, but it is even more powerful than barbs on its own.

Ideal build: 20 shockwave, 20 barbs, 20 direwolf, 5 spirit wolf, 20 lycanthropy, remaining points into volcano or boulder. Turn into a bear, use barbs/spirit wolf on everything and watch them hit the floor 5-8 seconds later. Be sure to hotkey unsummon so you can check the life of each individual spirit wolf, cause if only one or two take a beating, the remaining three or four will die all at once to the life drain or get one-hit killed before you know it.

Against ranged attackers or phys immunes use shockwave or volcano/boulder if they happen to be immune to shockwave. Never shift out of bear form. Never die thanks to maxed lycanthropy and 12K HP of meat shield tanking for you in players 1. Stack FC eq. The bear doesn't get a casting speed penalty, allowing him to cast faster than he can swing a weapon.

Not as fast as a CLoD 1-second-kill LF cowzon, but it allows you to get through HC without dying once. Melee attackers never touch you, ranged attackers are distracted with one wolf cast in a strategic spot, then you put them on ice with shockwave and kill them.

Fun build: 20 direwolf, 20 boulder, 20 heart of wolverine. Don't use shockwave or any of the elemental skills above level 12 if you like your game to be fun. The only >12 elemental skill that won't make you pull your hair out in frustration is hurricane, and it does no damage. Boulder is a great fun skill and the reason you should try an elemental druid too. :)
19.may.2007 | Adun Tori Laz.
Median XL released!
Flesyht sa ruobhgien yht etah.


y dont u play the game the way its supposta be played? -SlothNathan

aurikan
Posts: 11
Joined: Thu Sep 19, 2002 3:10 am

Post by aurikan » Fri Oct 18, 2002 3:15 pm

I'd just like to point out that Ravens is actually viable. I've got a conqueror that says so.

My build is 5 Spirit Wolves 23 Ravens and 20 in Poison Creeper and 1 point in OS and I do quite fine (I'm currently starting a3 hell, HC). The ravens do sufficient amounts of damage to kill things easily in players 1. The things that slow me down are PIs and heavily physically resistant enemies. For this reason, I have a merc with a 3-450 lit bow, and investing in Volcano. The ravens eat up everything else.

This build is actually safe enough to go low-resists through most of the game. I'm carrying about 500% gold find on the guy to collect money to gamble with - gambled gear is an excellent way to fund successors.

The monsters in a5h are probably too difficult to farm for gold, so I'll probably end up repeatedly clearing certain areas in earlier acts.

User avatar
Brother Laz
Forum Legend
Dominion
Posts: 6715
Joined: Mon Jun 03, 2002 10:06 am
Location: Fallen Like Lightning
Contact:

Hand-picked

Post by Brother Laz » Sat Oct 19, 2002 7:34 pm

aurikan" wrote:This build is actually safe enough to go low-resists through most of the game.
I had base resistances throughout the entire game. :)
19.may.2007 | Adun Tori Laz.
Median XL released!
Flesyht sa ruobhgien yht etah.


y dont u play the game the way its supposta be played? -SlothNathan

Locked

Return to “Seven Lances”