No, I just want to see a Rat City Spear for Mage 
Pffftttt…
Traitor!
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Lost refuge has the most lore, so it makes sense people would be drawn to the idea of a unique being based around one of the last bastion of hopes of humanity.
Which now makes perfect sense now what this unique item should be.
Bastion of hope
+5% crit chance per each nearby ally
50% chance when hit to receive a glancing blow
firebrand is now converted into Brand of the Void gaining 200% added damage effectiveness and deals 50% more void damage
when a hit leaves you below your endurance threshold, you gain 200% increased attack speed with firebrand for 10 seconds (20 second cooldown)
50% increased mana regen
Humanity for generations kept the void at bay with unparalleled bravery, until finally succumbing to the over whelming darkness of abyss
This takes a bunch of ideas from the community and combines them in one.
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In the hope that tri-elemental wins, here’s my concept for the item effect.
I did not even attempt to come up with realistic numbers, this is just to describe the mechanics and its ideas without getting fixated on its balance.
So the concept has just variables x,y…
In some cases I gave a tentative value, just to give an idea, all values are still subject to change.
Ucenui’s Planetarium
Unique Orrey Spear (An Orrey is a kind of mechanical planetarium)
- + x Melee physical damage to attacks
- + y Melee fire, cold, and lighting damage to attacks
- + z fire, cold, and lighting damage to spells
Unique effect
- When you directly use an elemental skill and hit at least one enemy, manifest an elemental orb of the corresponding element orbiting you for 4* seconds.
- Elemental Orbs have 100*% chance to shred elemental resistance on hit.
- + Z fire damange to spells and attacks while manifesting a fire orb.
- + Z cold damange to spells and attacks while manifesting an ice orb.
- + Z lightning damange to spells and attacks while manifesting a lighting orb.
- W% of added Increased Fire, Cold, and Lightning Damage is converted to Increased Elemental Damage while manifesting two or more orbs.
The art would be a spear with a mechanical planetarium in place of its tip.
The final effect I would expect looks a bit like a trident, with a heavy mechanical flavor to it and a lot of gears.
A couple of notes on the design.
I added elemental shred to the orbs to give access to resistance shred to multi-element builds without the need of investing three blessings. I was considering adding generic elemental penetration, but shred seemed to be more appropriate.
The orbs orbit around you and deal elemental damage on hit and shred their corresponding resistances, they always pierce.
The orbs are limited to one for each element, recasting the same element refreshes the duration.
The last affix is deceptively strong, that is because a lot of sources of increased elemental damage are actually multiple damage increases to each of the elements. Just as an example one mage passive [elementalist] says 7% increased fire, 7% increased cold, and 7% increased lighting damage.
If the conversion were to be 100% this would result in an absurd 21% increased elemental damage per passive invested. Realistically, the conversion should be a very value to prevent the scaling from going too much out of hand.
I set the requirement to 2 orbs so as to not limit other classes too much.
Doing a astral themed unique I wanted to integrate black hole.
Unfortunately, this would have meant that the spear would be unusable for spellblade so I decided against it.
5 Likes
I would like a tri-elemental weapon that makes Ignite, Frostbite, and Electrify all count together. Increases and decreases to any of them also apply to the others. So, for example, if you have 60% increased electrify chance, it also gives you 60% increased Ignite and Frostbite chance.
I would also like it to have some other thing that ties it more to a mage (spellblade). That way it is still a good usable item by other classes, but it is most effective for a mage. Maybe Enchant Weapon Active Duration +5. So with a little CDR and speccing more duration, you can have 100% uptime. Spellblade currently needs more help than Sorcerer.
I originally wanted the item to make elemental dot ticks to count as hits so they would cumulatively apply more dots over time. I don’t know that this would be possible to balance (although it doesn’t seem that different than the absurd scaling of poison).
I would make a new base type spear. A Ranseur or Spetum as they have 3 tips. Name the item after Tiamat to represent the chromatic damage. It would also allow the implicit to not be based on crits but instead elemental damage.
Damn, I so much hope that tri-element wins… This theme looks INFINITELY better and more practical than some weird meme which “Rat City” is…
And nice item idea by the way!
Strategic voting coming into play. I want Amalgamation the most, followed by Apophis, but looking at the scores both are far enough behind after the initial flood of votes that I changed my vote to Rat City because I want the wildcard to win more than Tri-Elemental and it actually has a chance.
I love your idea and i want it SO BAD!!!
One minor suggestion is to change these to adaptive spell /melee damage so that it forces you to use different elemental skills.
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Thanks for openly admitting it.
That makes perfect sense, and I believe this is what a lot of people do.
Which raises two questions:
Is it wise to immediately show the results?
Is it wise to allow people to change their vote after seeing the results?
(I probably would answer “no” to both).
2 Likes
Any reason why you chose to keep the same element?
If we are looking at a tri-element theme, wouldn’t it make more sense to alternate? Something like, use a fire skill, get 4s cold bonus damage… You know, an incentive to use different elements?
Looking at your item I feel people would just use it for all elemental builds, even specialised ones. That could make it 1. Too powerful, 2. Boring if overused.
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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.
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