Hey there, just wanted to dump some thoughts about the class and give feedback towards my playstyle. To first establish that, I had decided to go with Fire element only Runemaster using Runic Invocation as the primary damage dealer through Hit.
Skill Choices
- Runic Invocation - Figured I should operate with the primary skill of the class. I do really like the concept of it. Reminds me of Invoker from DotA except far more skill combinations. I do have a few problems with the skill tree though.
- For starters, I don’t agree with forcing Stride to Safety in the top right of the skill tree. The leap feels bad, but if it must remain, I’d rather see it dropped to one point and turned into a diamond choice with Warmage’s Initiative on the other line and the damage taken/direct casting damage split between the two, Prologue, and Interlude. Also maybe it’s unintentional, but Stride to Safety will literally move you just far enough away from enemies that you’re no longer considered close. Which makes it feel like it’s built for DoT builds so they don’t have to deal with shielded enemies.
- I also don’t really see the need for Enigma to exist. It’s basically Warmage’s Initiative with a heavy negative of its own. I know part of the point is turning it into a Traversal skill, but maybe we can go about that in another way?
- As a spammer of Runic Invocation, Transcriber of Power is a node that will never see more than 1 point. For any build where Runic Invocation actually has a cooldown, there’s no way they have the points to dump in here to extend the duration.
- Author of Arcana is ridiculous in terms of how much cooldown it gives you while needing another at least 4 if not 5 skill points to bring it back down.
- Elementalist’s Call feels unusable. I think that ideally this is used with Glyph of Dominion, but you can’t if you need to build Runes for it first. Maybe instead of “next non-channelled elemental spell you cast” it should be a duration instead. It’s also far too many skill points.
- Building off that final point, that seems to be a theme. That everything needs too many skill points. I know there are a lot of uniques that can give skill points, but these skill points don’t really feel impactful.
- Continuing that point, 18% chance for a skill to cast your invocations through Mastery of the Invoker for 3 skill points after you’ve already spent 3 skill points in the node prior to it; Glyphcarver’s Dominance, area for area invocations…nothing else?
- Finally the runic energy nodes just don’t take into consideration that this could be a primary skill and think of it as some kind of boss only skill.
- Glyph of Dominion - Chosen because I was looking for something to pair it with and saw that amazing Charged Reflections node. Power boost and survival all in one button? Sounds awesome. Reality, it feels almost good.
- Clearly designed as a Damage over Time skill including its synergy, it could be better for a Hit user.
- Power of Devastation kinda feels awful to utilize. Not only does it not use the rune it generates, but you have to build back up afterwards. This would feel so much better to utilize if it either didn’t consume the runes or casted Runic Invocation based on your runes. Which going back to Mastery of the Invoker in Runic Invocation, maybe that node shouldn’t exist there and all skills that consume runes should just automatically cast the Invocation instead.
- Teleport - This skill was taken for mobility and as a buff maintenance skill.
- Buff maintenance always feels bad. Doesn’t matter how long the buff lasts or how short the cooldown is. But this one feels especially rough because you need a certain amount of cooldown reduction before you can even maintain your buffs.
- Possibly the most troll part of this is that the skill can refresh haste but you can’t extend that duration beyond 4 seconds while you can increase all your other buffs to 8 seconds.
- Runebolt - The filler skill. Originally using fireball which has its own problems, this skill has its own slew as well.
- 3 points just to make this only do fire damage and all it does is make it do 6% more damage? Each of these nodes should be much more impactful.
- Oh the top right. I don’t comprehend why these nodes exist. Arcane Overcharge, Runic Evocation, and Supercharged Bolt. They grant you additional projectiles but the projectiles can not hit the same target and the projectile shoots through targets by default. Just why? You can’t even take the Devastator node to turn it into a shotgun blast of damage when jumping into a crowd. What are these waste of skillpoints?
- Runestone doesn’t obey the rules of the top left nodes and as such can mess with your runes. Not cool.
- Bottom left nodes are not something I plan to spec into but don’t seem to grant a good enough benefit for the amount of skillpoints.
- Flame Ward - Chosen because oh my god why is there no good 5th skill!? This is basically just another buff maintenance skill but you can’t actually maintain it!?
- Astonish is a node that would be far better if it would cast regardless of whether or not the skill is on cooldown. It’s not so powerful that you become unkillable, it’s literally just a tiny buffer in comparison to real ward options.
- Concentrated Shielding and the nodes around it are so many skill points for such a small amount of ward honestly. Together they raise this skill up to 950 ward, which is nothing in the endgame. Especially not for a skill with this long of a cooldown. My Glyph of Dominion is giving me 227 per second and has 100% uptime.
- Turning this into mana recovery is the primary reason I took this. I could invest in almost nothing else when I did so. That feels awful. If it wasn’t for the fact that Focus prevents me from doing anything else while I’m channeling it, I’d be using that over this for it. I wish I could have grabbed the damage increasers to go with it since I’m basically just using it as a booster when I can.
- Fireball - Dropped this skill for Runebolt. This skill feels mediocre without the unique Cinder Song which also has low spellpower so you’ll feel tempted to go into a DoT build. Otherwise it’s very much a decent debuffing tool, but the bottom right needs a few too many skill points.
- Focus - Dropped this skill for Flame Ward. This skill feels almost alright except for the fact that I can’t do anything else while I’m using it. It’s a very defensive skill in that regard I suppose, but I kinda feel like I should be using it if I don’t tune my gear/other skills to regen my mana. It gets annoying to use though. Would feel better if the buffs from it could continue after using it and turning it into another buff maintenance at the very least. It also feels terrible to use with Teleport, especially since then you can’t take the Conveyance node since it won’t use your Teleport skill tree.
- Frost Wall - I have considered this option, but I don’t have a good skill to replace for it. Which is unfortunate because it seems like it would be very helpful. Though it also sounds like a pain to utilize with the amount of moving through it that needs to happen for both myself and my enemies.
Passives
Boy does just about everything feel like not enough impact.
- Mage
- I feel like I can’t find 20 good points here. Like there are options to take, but they don’t feel good.
- Arcane Wind, how is this going to come off of a fire/cold mixture node into an exclusively cold based node?
- Elementalist, 7%s just feel bad. 5 points here feel worse than 5 points in Arcane Flames which also feel bad. Ignite to multiple enemies? All my skills are going to do aoe if I choose to go DoT based anyways. And a 5 second cooldown on the Arcane Flames effect? Why any cooldown? And all I’m doing is increasing the targets that get ignited? If there’s more than one enemy, it’s probably not going to survive the initial aoe in the first place.
- Reactive Ward…this is going to trigger like once…ever. And it’s such a tiny fraction of being helpful but is mandatory to get into the actual ward related node?
- Preparation is such a one point wonder node. 3 seconds in a game where I’m supposed to be spamming may as well be forever. I’m taking this node just for the slow ailment and that’s it.
- Sorcerer
- I see a few options here, but I do have a complaint that my penetration node is tied to a leech node. Not that I need much penetration as an invocation spammer. I can certainly see the problem for other ward based builds.
- Spellblade
- Well there is A node here that can be helpful. Would be nice if the early points here were more generic friendly.
- Runemaster
- Alright here we are at the meat of the build. Lots of options, but most feel like they require too much investment.
- Transcendence is going to be a 6 point investment for an low life build, feels kind of a rough investment to find points for.
- Never Late, this node and the nodes related to it seems to be designed for using Flame Rush and doesn’t feel good with our other forms of Traversal. Would be nice if this could also trigger off Movement. Would make the nodes in Runic Invocation feel better.
- Decree of the Eternal Tundra, why is this every 2 seconds? Why not just every second? It’s not even crazy amounts of ward. Bad investment this late in the tree.
- Decree of the Bountiful Ocean, so 3% even doubled to 6% isn’t great. Particular because the difference is literally non-existent going from 5 to 6 points on this. It is a literal wasted point due to how little mana regen we have in the first place.
- Jagged Veil, ONE ward per crit as an end of advanced skill tree node. Are you serious? I can have 2x2 idols that grant 38 ward per rune! And 20% more crit multiplier against boss/rares? That’s nice, there’s a 12% per skill point node halfway through the tree instead of this awful 4 point bonus that has double conditionals.
- Runewords, why are these multiple skillpoint nodes? Who is not casting enough spells to keep these triggered at all times with a single point? And they chain into a duration buff that turns them into party skills as a final tier in the advanced skill trees? Really? Logocracy needs to do something far more for me.
- Sanguine Runestones, is someone actually considering this? 15% of health regen becomes ward? Is that actually relevant to anyone? And for a 6 point investment? I don’t think I could consider it if it was 100% of health regen. Maybe if it was Health Leech becomes Ward Regeneration we could talk but not this.
- Quintessence of Triumph, the bonus on this is kind of meh. Not only does it have a conditional that’s not going to be relevant in endgame, but that bonus is the same as just investing a single additional point. Other classes have executes, this could do that.
- Celestial Doom, my primary problem here is that I don’t feel like I have much in the way of branding options as a fire hit user. It seems like it’s mostly a DoT thing.
Gearing
This is the final area I really want to touch on. I’m sure things will be expanded upon, but I don’t really feel like I have great options all around at the moment. I don’t feel like there’s anything in particular that screams my build coming from uniques beyond Wrongwarp. Everything else I’m planning to grab is kind of more generic or I’m not even using it for its original purpose (like Box of Hydrae). I know there are other Runic Invocation related uniques but they don’t feel great to me. Generics like Exsanguinous feels better than Fundamental Criterion. I’m sure there’s some Cold Runebolt based build that loves it though. Beyond that I just want to touch on the unique idols for Runic Invocation. I feel like instead of holding you to x runes, they should just autocast invocations as soon as you have x runes instead. They would feel far more fluid to utilize then. They’re also just really weak in comparison to normal idols the same size (11% all element unique 1x3 vs 54% single element + additional effect normal 3x1).
Final Word
I’m sure there’s still plenty for myself to learn and likely things I haven’t considered, but that’s how a lot of it feels at the moment. Too much feels like it requires too much investment or has too small of an effect for endgame or is just conflicting with other effects (lot of Hit vs DoT problems). I know I also didn’t touch on Disintegrate, Volcanic Orb, Frost Claw, or Elemental Nova, but I don’t really think they could work well what I’m trying to do either. Disintegrate seems the most useful on paper until you realize you have to stand still when you’re either trying to dodge every attack or are trying to clear the map out. Anything else I didn’t mention, I either don’t consider it pertinent to my build or it seems fine-ish. Thanks for reading if you made it this far o/