Arelith

yup.

sorry for the double posting.

I'm actually gonna call into question why infernals keep fireball.. I get that it has friendly fire but both the warlock and the summon are practically immune to fire, and it potentially deals more damage than withering rays since it has no target limit.

I guess evasion is a factor still?
All the spells that got cooldown on it ignored evasion through being fort save and all.

Plus fire damage is more commonly resisted in pve too. I assume that's a factor as well.

Being able to infinispam empowered version of withering ray without any restrictions can clear most spawns by clicking practically any random spot on the ground for 2-4 rounds.

Fireball has much smaller AoE, so careful targetting is actually relevant here (even if you can afford catching your toon/summon in it).
Additionally, a lot of monsters have straight up fire immunity and/or imp evasion.

But I get that fireball can still operate as sorta proxy Eldritch Doom, while spellbooks don't really offer any Eldritch Spear-like options.

Withering ray was obscene on warlocks.
Dark bolt let you stun lock entire mobs you did bugger all damage but you kept them static.
Sound lance you know im not sure why that got nerfed it's decent damage but tiny AoE so it's more a single target spell, great against rock monsters mind you.
Ice storm again it's good and disrupts casters every time but not party friendly i suppose now we have AoE radius markers it makes using spell like it much easier, before you had to guess how far away to cast it to not hit yourself now you can see it clearly.

You know why Sound Lance is nerfed? Try to solo the Singing Song writ with a mundane then try it with a warlock.

Sound lance is saveless, empowered MAv = 62.5
AoE is large enough to catch at least two enemies most of the time, so 2x62.5 dmg twice per round while hasted = 250 saveless damage split between two targets each round.

So technically even stronger than Withering Ray.

-XXX- wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 26, 2024 11:09 am

Sound lance is saveless, empowered MAv = 62.5
AoE is large enough to catch at least two enemies most of the time, so 2x62.5 dmg twice per round while hasted = 250 saveless damage split between two targets each round.

So technically even stronger than Withering Ray.

The wiki is misleading there. The damage is not saveless, it's Fort-for-half.
The value of Sound Lance is that it can hit more than 5 enemies, unlike withering ray (but those enemies need to have small hit boxes and very clustered together), and that it's damage scales earlier than withering ray, resulting in withering ray only outshining it around lvls 15-20 depending on what you're fighting.

AstralUniverse wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 26, 2024 5:37 am

I kinda really regret phrasing myself the way I did.
Guys, I didnt mean to say that I think rolls of 1 happen more than 5% of the time (although I definitely believe that when it comes to touch attacks at least), because it's beside the point tbh. Even if you roll 1s only 5% of the time, it is extremely notable on Chain blast, because when you roll a 1 on a target, the chain breaks and it doesnt even attempt to roll vs the next target.

For giggles, I trotted out my precision blaster on the live server and chained 50x.

To my point, I missed only on a "1."

To your point, on x50 blasts, I rolled x4 "1s"...
...but get this, also x5 "20s".

So maybe it is all the tiny RNG gods, but it is interesting.

Wouldn't mind seeing chain changed to attempt to process on all available targets. The damage drop is penalty enough.