As an old skill, I feel that Disintegrate suffers from “old skill syndrome” more than almost any other skill in the game. Here are a few reasons why:
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The most popular/effective way to play Disintegrate involves the Ignivar’s Head + Gambler’s Fallacy combo, a silly combination that feels more like an exploit than an intended mechanic. The fact that this is the only reliable/sustainable way to deal damage with Disintegrate is a serious problem. I’d rather not have to raise critical chance to play a damage over time skill.
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A lot of the nodes on Disintegrate and old chanelling skills are based on “seconds”, which really mean “hours” in arpg terms. If you want to apply ignite, your chance to apply ignite on hit is converted to chance to apply ignite in a second, which is several times worse. You can reliably apply hundreds of ignite stacks with fireball, but you’re lucky if you hit 10 stacks with Disintegrate.
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Another node contingent on seconds of channeling are the level 2 and 3 Disintegrate nodes. The problem is that you can’t afford to channel for seconds to build damage in many of the boss fights where this damage actually matters, so these nodes are just worthless. They also make the channel cost prohibitively high. Warpath has a similar node that increases damage and channel cost every second, and that is a terrible node that makes the skill unsustainable and unfun, but the key difference is that Warpath is actually good.
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The tooltip dps is hilariously wrong.
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It doesn’t “feel” like a proper dot skill, because you can clearly see and feel the ticks, which are just malformed hits without any of the actual benefits from hits.
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Finally, I want to compare it to another skill: Healing Hands. Specifically the channeled version with the sky beam. It is just better in every way: heals you for massive amounts, has literally unlimited range, fairly cheap, actually hits enemies on top of doing damage over time (so it can apply ailments more effectively). The Healing Hands skill tree is much newer, which makes sense considering the massive power creep that this game has suffered from over the years.
I know that the priority should be on fixing bugs in the next patches, but I hope that the devs take a serious look at this skill and many of the older/underpowered skills and classes.