Some feedback/impressions on select classes and skill gems.

This thread will primarily highlight the woes and experiences playing with various classes and skill gems. I've played multiple classes & ascendancies pushing them into maps.


Acolyte of Chayula
With what little support Quarterstaves have for Chaos damage, Chayula just feels like a little brother to Invoker, copying much of Invoker's build but with less support from the ascendancy. Of course, there are Bow skills as a secondary option, but how is Acolyte expected to excel in Bow skills compared to Ranger? or Spells when compared to a Sorcerer?

Into the Breach: A small suggestion - make purple flames stacks drop off at a maximum of once per 5-10 seconds. This is strictly a QoL request, it feels bad to rapidly lose all your stacks within a short time frame. Especially with the minigame of having to chase down stacks. If possible, allow Combo to additionally build up purple flame stacks.

Darkness: Needs to do much more for losing all spirit if spirit gems are going to retain even half their power level. There is little temptation for Darkness when Grim Feast, Heralds and Wind/Ghost dance are there. Likewise, Grasp of the Void should be made to be unconditional 100% uptime for the blatant sacrifice of spirit.

Infernalist
Demon Form: Extremely gear dependant making SSF feel awful. Lengthy downtime needs to be revised or scrapped even for 1st choice viability. That being said, it's nice to see a class utilize multiple uniques in the build. The 2nd Demon Form node "Mastered Darkness" feels very redundant; especially when weapon slots can feasibly match Demon Forms bonuses to +skills, spell damage and cast speed until 30+ demonflame stacks.

Witchhunter
Just needs some number tuning on Sorcery Ward penalties, less conditionals on enemy concentration. overall feels more balanced between the mercenary ascendancies

Warrior
The most frustrating part of Warrior is a double whammy between skill gems and the tree; some core mace skills are forced into animations that make the player vulnerable. This problem is compounded with needless attack speed penalties on the strength clusters on the tree.

Given the nature of slam skills (almost all of them commit to a lengthy MELEE animation), slam skills should provide a slight damage reduction during its channel (5-10%). Attack speed penalties should be removed in strength portion of the tree. Overall feels great during the campaign, less so with end game.

Warbringer: Turtle Charm retained its hefty block chance penalties while giving away a massive portion of its effect to everyone who wields a shield. Overall shield changes were great, but the cost remains too steep for Turtle Charm.

Spells & elemental support on tree
Fire spells feel woefully undertuned. Both Ember Fusillade and Fireball must utilize support gems that penalize their damage in order to feel like a usable spell. Compared to lightning spells which utilize support gems with strictly upsides, it's no wonder Fire spells are seldom utilized in the late game. It's also for this reason that ignite falls a bit flat compared to shock. Solar Orb feels like a trap with pitiful scaling; Speaking of which.... Flameblast, a lot of it's potential is locked behind using Solar Orb. Maybe more support gems will make Flameblast more formiddable, but currently it doesn't feel like a pinnacle fire spell. Firestorm also needs some much needed love.


I urge you to go to the skill tree and ctr+f lightning. Then fire, then cold.
Lightning has way too much support compared to other elements, and it's far more convenient to do a lightning build on the tree than it is for cold or fire. There's literally a fire cluster on the tree that requires you to travel 6 attribute nodes to finish. Again, compared to Lightning clusters which are very interconnected and or convenient to chase down clusters, or double dip into another classes tree. Both in skill gems and tree support, it is heavily imbalanced in favor of lightning.


Unique Items
Some unique's work. Most Don't. There's a hefty portion of unique's that just offer raw stats, but are early-mid game focused. This gives them 0 value once a rare item drops that can outvalue the raw stats. This is all too common for many uniques unfortunately.