Hellball and Caster epic strikes

[Raedier]

Moonlance also has no save and has a (currently) no-fail freeze effect, which is conveniently left out of a lot of these discussions when comparing vs pure damage spells. ~All epic strikes have upgrade effects, although many aren't great XD

It's pretty great with the T5, at least IMO. Strike a Chord is also ok. Many/most of the caster strikes don't feel worth using though, which is pretty awkward.

There's someplace between pre-nerf dragonbreath and current dragonbreath that I think epic caster strikes should land at. Worth using, but not invalidating the rest of your kit. Giving them non-damage effects helps make them more useful, but it's hard to balance those as well (like Nightmare Lance for -5 PRR/MRR is excellent for raid bosses, but useless for most questing and the duration is long enough you want to bring a DPS strike as well). Short-term buffs/debuffs seem best maybe? Stuff like Thrive from PA (if it was 100% proc rate) would make even weaker epic strikes more useful as part of combos.

Magus/fatesinger epic strikes are the only viable caster epic strikes atm.

 

[Anurakh]

Why do these still suck?

Am I wrong for thinking these should at least hit harder than a 9th level spell?

Seriously SSG, I know your main developer really loves his crossbows, but this is inexcusably bad game design.

Fix it.

I agree, but I don't think the problem is that they love xbows. I think the problem is that no current developer seems to understand casters or their needs, and the impression they've given through various erroneous assumptions is that they have no practical experience with casters.

I think Tonquin was the only developer who had practical experience with casters and liked the playstyle. So now we're orphaned.

 

[eightspoons]

I can cause far more severe damage if I let off after eating a bunch of broccoli. I call it the Smellball.

 

[lppmor]

The epic strikes are mostly pretty good. They can't hit harder than a lvl 9 spell because they are cheap SLAs.
Epic feats is where the nasty spells should come, and in this case Hellball is indeed lame. They should change it to work like Ruins. Maybe an AoE Ruin..

 

[EinarMal]

Moonlance also has no save and has a (currently) no-fail freeze effect, which is conveniently left out of a lot of these discussions when comparing vs pure damage spells. ~All epic strikes have upgrade effects, although many aren't great XD

It's pretty great with the T5, at least IMO. Strike a Chord is also ok. Many/most of the caster strikes don't feel worth using though, which is pretty awkward.

There's someplace between pre-nerf dragonbreath and current dragonbreath that I think epic caster strikes should land at. Worth using, but not invalidating the rest of your kit. Giving them non-damage effects helps make them more useful, but it's hard to balance those as well (like Nightmare Lance for -5 PRR/MRR is excellent for raid bosses, but useless for most questing and the duration is long enough you want to bring a DPS strike as well). Short-term buffs/debuffs seem best maybe? Stuff like Thrive from PA (if it was 100% proc rate) would make even weaker epic strikes more useful as part of combos.

In almost all cases I would prefer just more damage, I can already freeze stuff, CC stuff etc... for helpless.

Moonlance/Strike a chord as basically the only ones worth using. They are pretty bad when compared to adrenaline, quick cutter, and ranged double/triple hit ones and hunts end.

 

[EinarMal]

As long as they refuse to remove the high reaper penalty, caster DPS at cap is just not good at all.

 

[IanMoon8]

As long as they refuse to remove the high reaper penalty, caster DPS at cap is just not good at all.

We got horses nerfed. If we complain hard enough we can do anything.

 

[DBZ]

It is intentional look at all the useless archtypes and iconics they keep releasing

And all the previously outdated gutted ones

 

[Xgya]

At least when it costs a feat slot, it should be worth the same as a feat slot.

People should hesitate between taking Hellball and Ruin.
They currently do not. The people that would take either of those will only ever take Ruin.

 

[Hobgoblin]

The feat is so bad it makes other feats look not bad

 

[Anurakh]

At least when it costs a feat slot, it should be worth the same as a feat slot.

People should hesitate between taking Hellball and Ruin.
They currently do not. The people that would take either of those will only ever take Ruin.

Ruin isn't good. Intensified Greater Ruin is, but it costs two epic feats and a Tier 5 ED. Comparing Ruins and Hellaball isn't fair.

Hellball needs a lot of help. And Ruins have a ridiculously high tax cost.

Weapon users have everything on a plate in their EDs. But it's the spells that are penalized in high reaper. Great design.

 

[Anurakh]

We got horses nerfed. If we complain hard enough we can do anything.

That works for nerfs, not for unnerfs.

 

[SpartanKiller13]

In almost all cases I would prefer just more damage, I can already freeze stuff, CC stuff etc... for helpless.

Moonlance/Strike a chord as basically the only ones worth using. They are pretty bad when compared to adrenaline, quick cutter, and ranged double/triple hit ones and hunts end.

Oh yeah, but like the melee/ranged CC strikes are pretty eh as well lol. Like Dire Charge/Shot, or even Drifting Lotus; or Pin, which I've seen literally nobody take since the Shiradi rework.

There sorta aren't any caster strikes for pure DPS currently, like Dragonbreath is the closest and it got overnerfed.

I'm just saying it's more comparing Feydark Faerielights with Dire Charge vs comparing Fire Pillar against Quick Cutter.

Like Moonlance is IMO better than Sword Sings b/c the CC is guaranteed and the damage is in the ballpark. Adrenaline (plus some active) is better than Moonlance though, since it's much better damage & still has no-fail CC.

Hunt's End as a non-epic-strike ED ability is competing more with abilities like Echoes of Discord (esp with the heal), Shard Storm, Reborn in Fire (which heals enough to work on Skelly platforms), EA's MCMW, etc. It's a solid ability but even Tonquin's is competitive for leveling IMO. I'm totally on board with like Flaming Sphere not competing though lol, I'm not sure who thought it belonged anywhere with the word "epic" nearby.

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As far as the OP, I would absolutely love huge buffs to Hellball, Spirit Blades, and Arcane Pulse, and a smaller but still meaningful buff to Ruin/GRuin (IMO add +50/100 per legendary level - would be a +40% buff scaling into the future).

And I would like more utility added to epic caster strikes, since they seem determined to not give them big damage lol. Have them give short buffs to you or debuffs to the enemy. I'd also like to see more stacking stuff for casters in raids, as an option to give damage back without breaking questing again.

 

[IanMoon8]

People should hesitate between taking Hellball and Ruin.

The main reason no one hesitates is because Ruin is pre-req for Greater Ruin.

That doesn't make Hellball any less pointless and terrible. If either one worked for Greater Ruin everyone would still take regular Ruin.

Hellball is so bad it doesn't even show up on the epic feats page.

 

[Anurakh]

The feat is so bad it makes other feats look not bad

There was a time when Hellball was decent. Not op, just decent, but it was a decent return for an epic feat. This was because there was a bug that made it double-cast. You could see it wasn't op in any build that used it.

What did the devs do? Fix the bug without taking into account that the spell was so bad it was completely destroyed. We told the devs: people are only using it because it now has halfway decent damage. If you nerf it, you kill it. Increase the damage if you remove the double-cast.

The devs didn't do that, of course. That was with the old EDs, so count the years...

 

[IanMoon8]

There was a time when Hellball was decent.

Let's not forget the heyday of the shiradi builds when it applied the damage procs 4 separate times and thus had 4 chances to proc shiradi.

Of course that was a lot of nerfs ago.

 

[Xaxx]

hellballs only use in all the time its existed was for shiradi with its bugged double burst.... other than that your better throwing pretty much ... no not prety much.... ANY other aoe spell in any casters spell book instead of using hellball and it costs a feat... we bitched about it for a decade... but good luck lol

 

[Vua]

Right now I'm strictly running melee, but it makes no sense that the best melee strikes can come from epic destinies, but epic caster strikes can't be more powerful than heroic level spells.

 

[Frantik]

I see a few obvious differences:
The SLA is an SLA - it gets all the metas for free.
The spell has a saving throw.
Someone that can only cast level 3 spells can still get access to caster strikes at full caster level.

By design, the devs chose to make SLAs, even the Epic ones, weaker than what the best available spell is.
Now, I don't fully agree with that decision, but I can understand the reasoning behind it.

One if the best combinations at end game vs reapers and champions is Clr Necrotic Ray SLA + Word of Balance from DD T5.

 

[IanMoon8]

Right now I'm strictly running melee, but it makes no sense that the best melee strikes can come from epic destinies, but epic caster strikes can't be more powerful than heroic level spells.

Its also friggin annoying that so many spells just do not scale into epics. Look at Scorching Ray. The damage falls right off after lvl 11. The cap is now 34. I hate how most of my spells aren't even worth slotting.