Thank you!
I am not opposed to this change, however I am not sure why you say that that making it adaptive would force you to use different skills. I felt it was the opposite rather.
So could you could explain as to why that is the case.
With regards as to why, at the time I felt that thematically appropriate to have flat damage of different elements, and since I was making a custom base item I did not see why not.
No particular reason. I simply did not think about it at the time of writing.
Part of the issue is that in order to properly present the idea, I felt it was most effective to present a ‘‘complete’’ design rather than remaining vague. So at a certain point I had to commit to some specifics.
In any case, there might have been a misunderstanding, the affix adds flat damage, not increased damage. Flat damage is always valuable for all elements, so if possible you want to use all elements at all times.
This is honestly the main pitfall with the design,
My hope is that the necessity of actively casting damaging abilities of all elements is enough of a commitment that only multi-element builds will use it.
The tuning of the item definitely needs to be made carefully so that on a single element an exalted option is still preferred.
In any case If you have suggestions, let me know.
I do not have the expertise to make a balanced item for the game. I opted to make an evocative design, with mechanics that sound interesting (at least that was the intent).
If the design ever gets considered, I have no doubt that EHG will address potential balance pitfalls.
That is not to say that discussion of balance are not useful, but I believe it is fair to say that the balancing is not entirely our responsibility.
Adaptive matches the tags of the skill, so you switch from using fire to lightning, where as adding all flat could be used by skills that convert added damage to get unreasonable amounts of flat damage.
Also @Houlala brought up a good point about the Flat added while manifesting orbs. This could be changed to a Fire orb adds flat Adaptive damage for Cold and Lightning skills etc. So that you only get this buff from using a different element. I change to adaptive for the same reason as above.
Interesting, I was working under the assumption that flat elemental damage was always worse than adaptive damage, but from what you tell me it seems I was mistaken.
Then, there are a number of ways this could be changed.
In making the changes, there are two things I would like to avoid.
1 - making it cyclic: each element should buff both other elements, so that having three orbs is always desired, if you were to make it cyclic, you would cast only the element that precedes your main skill and get all the benefits.
2 - making it only for spells: i like the fact that it works for both attacks and spells.
One soft constraint in making the change is that the tooltip of the affix should not be too long.
So I feel that the easiest way would be to simply change the affix to:
- +x adaptive spell damage for elemental skill per manifested orb
- +y fire, cold, and lightning damage to melee attacks per manifested orb
This is not really that different from saying
‘’+x adaptive spell damage for lighting and cold skills while manifesting a fire orb’’,
but requires a single line instead of three in the tooltip.
When balancing the item, you take the innate adaptive spell damage you would have given in the implicit, and subtract x, to account for the fact that fire skills may buff themselves.
I assume that flat elemental damage is not problematic for attacks, since there are uniques that do that, and they do not seem to be used that much.
Besides, adding flat phys sounded a bit lame.
This way the best way of using the item is to always do three orbs.
Really hoping for Rat City, seems so much more open to cool ideas to me.
My thought is something similar to this:
At All Costs
Unique Deicide Lance
+85 Adaptive Spell Damage
50% increased cost of skills
Skills have increased damage equal to their cost
Skills that cost 100 or more mana spend life before mana (you can’t spend your last point of life)
(Flavor text: something about paying a high cost and sacrifices to try to hold out)
Thematically it is the idea of using every resource (your own life) to try and hold out against the corruption/void. It also plays into the existing mage theme of big mana. It also is not limited to sorc or spell blade as the mods apply to both spells and attacks.
The Last Light of the Lost Refuge
flat fire damage
adaptive spell dmg
1 ward per second per over-capped void res.
+10% less void damage taken.
25% chance on fire spell cast to “find” “cook” and “consume” a rat for 50 hp recovery.
250 armor
Every character in the game now refers to you as ‘Rat’ on account of misrepresenting your proper name.
LE works differently than POE, max res is a lot less powerful here.
All enemies have 75% penetration baseline, so +2 max res roughly translates to 2% less void damage taken.
You can probably increase this number by a lot.
Note that these kind of effects are ususally expressed as y% less void damage taken rather than as +x void max res.
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If it is Rat City/ the Last Refuge themed i would like the effect to be something related to having an overcapped void resistance stat. Like extra adaptive or attack/cast speed per X% overcapped void res.
Fits the theme of holding out as the last group of humans against the void and could be an actually useable unique effect. The few items that have these stats are fun to build around.
That being said I still want a generic void themed conversion to mage class, (voted for void) I posted before of a fire aura converted to void with this unique spear and have it give flat adaptive and attack speed would be cool. Remake the dark shroud of cinders at the same time to give more useable stats, like fire aura chance on melee hit without a cd, and we have something interesting. Unfortunately this idea would be just for spellblade mostly but there may be a way to give a mage skill a void conversion or dmg added while still being on theme.
The various fire aura idols didn’t used to have a cooldown, but one had to be added due to the Dark Shroud of Cinders chest as it provided way too much of a buff, and that was before you could dual wield the Forgotten Knight sword for up to 100 spell void damage.
Okay, I have a few ideas. Rat City and Tri-Elemental seem like the only two horses in this race so I’ll focus on that even though I voted for Osprix(RIP 
).
The Lost Refuge. My interpretation of the theme is this. Defending against a neverending foe. Although, they did get overrun eventually and the place is a ruin when we get there. So whatever item that is linked to that place did not save them and is likely to have been corrupted since. It would be cool if, like others have mentioned, the item was linked to void resistance.
Last Hope
- Being hit grants 5% Void resistance for 4 seconds.
- Adds 1 Void damage to spells and attacks per 5% uncapped void resistance.
- Every fourth use of Flame Reave is converted to Void damage.
- Each stack of Fire Aura increases the width of Flame reave by 10% (up to 200%)
While I don’t think its exactly a new effect (It would look cool with a void effect to flame reave though), I would very much enjoy more synergy with items like Dark Shroud of Cinders, aswell as spread the void love around a bit as Void Knight is hogging too much of it for itself. And I feel it hits the theme quite well. Stats on this should be attack speed and all attributes. The base I think should be the Sun Spear.
Okay, now for Tri-Elemental. It’s a spear, there are 3 elements in the game. Seems criminal to not make that into a sweet looking Trident.
Trinity of Elements
- Using 3 fire skills within 6 seconds grants Force of Fire. Force of fire increases elemental damage by 33%.
- Using 3 cold skills within 6 seconds grants Force of Ice. Force of Ice increases elemental damage by 33%.
- Using 3 lightning skills within 6 seconds grants Force of Lightning. Force of Lightning increases elemental damage by 33%.
- Once all elemental forces have been collected, they are unleashed. Elemental storm follows you. Hail, lightning and cinders fall from the sky for 3 seconds.
I think this could have insanely cool visuals with each force affecting the tridents appearence when gathered. And the Elemental storm could be “sucked in” back into the trident when it ends. Stats could be something like 33 adaptive spell damage, 333% increased elemental damage, 33% cast and attackspeed, and 333% increased added damage effectiveness to elemental storm.
Just because it was my vote I’ll include some very brief Osprix ideas for the fun of it. I thought Opsrix was really fitting for mage because of them using Meteors and Volcanic orb when we fight them.
Osprix Lance of Embers
Using Volcanic orb grants “Wings of the Osprix” and refreshes all current stacks. Stacks up to 5 times. Each stack grants 10 spell fire damage, 20% mana regeneration and 5% movement speed. Using a movement skill removes all stacks.
Illumination
Meteors base mana cost is set to 10. Meteor deals x% less damage.
This also gives Meteor a lighter hue, like the ones the Opsrix mages cast. Goal is just to make meteor into a more spammable ability because that would be awesome.
If you read all this, thanks 
Would be happy to hear someone elses thoughts on my ideas.
2 Likes
Rat City Unique
‘Focus’ becomes a toggle skill. While toggled on, you are inflicted with Time Rot every second. This self-inflicted Time Rot increases in frequency (+10%) every second.
Could also have some other basic standard stuff.
I feel like this goes to show the holding out as much as possible, but still falling to the Void over time. It also specifies this item to Mages and doesn’t just make this another item that Void Knights abuse.
I don’t want a unique designed for mages to not get used by mages but another class that is better at the damage type.
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Although the ideas of “Last Refuge” being nice and giving more Void resist, shouldn’t it be the other way around? The refuge fell to the void, so probably it could mean we have lower void resistance but in turn we gain another boost (skills, stats, whatever) as a “desperate attempt to survive”?
And of course maybe some elemental damage conversion to void damage, representing mankind failure to survive and being converted to void-like creatures like some were during the campaing?
Kinda wanna change my vote now that I see it’s between Ele and Rat, cuz a Mage with an Ele spear feels too on the nose…
I’d personally like to see something akin to a clock hand that’s been tainted by void tendrils, maybe something that corrupts damaging elemental ailments into time rot and plays with that.
Come on people, tri-ele spear would be so good with all the weird tri element stuff in both base tree and ele nova tree
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Have it synergize with Scurry helm, since squirrels are just cute(r) rats.
For the love of Eterra, pls don’t.
I also want an interesting and powerful item, but let it be normal and without perversions and memes.
So, PLEASE, no rats (or pets in general), nor void spell damage cancer, nor bleeds, nor poison.
Just a normal Mage item. I mean we didn’t have a good playable item in ages. While Necros/Liches literally get 2-3 items each patch. This feels really unfair.
4 Likes
People still play mages? Weren’t they all tossed in the dustbin when static orb got beat to shit with the Nerf Bat™?
Wasn’t there a dev update a while back about Mages just being removed, so they could focus all resources on making Sentinel and Primalist more OP?
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Well, I still play my version of Static Orb, although it never involved orbit nodes and other stuff that was nerfed.
There are other quite strong builds for Static Orb too, and then there’s the old-good NovaBoy by FoE.
So it’s not like Mage is not viable – it’s just SUPER STALE at this point. Aside from (nerfed) S.Orb and Snowdrifts frostbite the Mage meta didn’t change in years. Which is sad and which is why I personally don’t play the game that often nowdays.
Have you tried Scales of Eterra or Focal Blast Lightning Blast. Those are 2 that i just started playing around with and they are actual the furthest ive taken any character (partly due to the corruption changes).
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