MANA STRIKE :
Mana strike is a great skill but there’s one part of it that’s a bit underwhelming, the manaless playstyle. I call it playstyle because its more then one node, it requires some investment and planning to make it work (on one side very mana heavy skill(s), on the other many points into mana strike. Having played it, it feels great and fun ! However, it feels a bit unrewarding as the gameplay is one of the hardest ive seen all classes mixed, due to a great amount of focus on your mana levels, skill cooldowns and positionning required. I’ve died a lot to it on my SC mage, and cant dream to try it on HC (though I do play spellblade, lich and forgeguard on hc).
Suggestions for [Avatar of Hunger] and/or [Starved Strikes] :
- increase/change the rewards while adding conditions. For instance, add some big attack speed instead of %damage to one of the two passives. Or some ward on hit.
- make the opposite of Mana Spark (+flat lightning per current mana) : give it a big flat lightning per current missing mana. Now that wont stay too long
- have a spellproc the likes of fireball for flamereave gated behind negative mana : balanced by weight of choice (this playstyle already requires some heavy spell(s) + spellblades always have lots of options such as fireshield, ice guard, often both flamereave and manastrike, flash freeze, etc…) and by putting it behind the other negative mana passives, who’s bonuses only affects… attacks.
Other Manastrike considerations :
The recently added ward on hit stuff is really nice, and fits the “pure utility tool niche” much better then the 54354 mana on hit/kill passives. What I mean is a bit of cleanup could be used, there’s so much +mana gain on the skill that it’s a bit too much I feel. Right now there are SIX passives that grant mana on top of the base 10/hit (3 are on hit, one on hit if negative mana, one on critical hits, and one on kill). Certainly thats a bit too much, and the passive tree is getting a bit cluttered because it has a lot of different stuff ongoing (which is great by the way ! It feels like an awesome skill to build around)
Flame Reave :
Overall awesome progress on the skill, very satisfying for various playstyles and way better with each passing version, congratz !
One small thing that remains to be said : the southern part of the passive tree (the ignite stuff mostly) feels really underwhelming right now. Not only are the options not as good as elsewhere in the tree, they are gated by negative conditions (smaller flame reave).
Suggestion are mostly improving the damage of the ignites themselves, seeing as there’s already a lot of chances to ignite in this tree and the mage/spellblade/sorcerer passive trees.
- Scorching Tide : very bad, simply put : chance to ignite combined with a cooldown, considering that ignite’s damage relies on applying a lot of it, its simply very underwhelming. Either add some amazingly good ignite damage behind, or simply change it for something ignite-damage (more damage over time for a few seconds if you ignite with flame reave?)
- Infernal Subjugation : there’s “more damage” for flamereave everywhere on the tree, and this is so far down that it’s in fact not even a good one. Replace with something fitting the ignite theme such as +%incresead ignite damage or damage over time, or % ignite duration perhaps?