Wanted to inform the devs of a possible bug, but also might be an intended interaction (im assuming unintended).
In the surge tree for spellblade the “Discharge” node that says “You cast Static on arrival with Surge” is bypassing the mana cost of static when you surge. It’s bypassing the 15 mana cost as well (and more importantly for balancing concerns) bypassing the 115-215 mana cost of static when you take the “Power Surge” node in static. That node says “Discharge deals additional lightning damage per charge, but Discharge costs more mana per charge” This is giving Static a base damage of up to 200 lightning plus your character’s weapon and stats etc, obviously this wasn’t a balancing issue before static’s more damage per charge attribute was fixed but now that it is working properly it is doing very high damage (Yay!) but no mana cost on surge to get this damage feels unintended. I assume this just hasn’t been a balancing issue/bug before static was fixed cause it never was something people wanted to build around yet.
As a side note both flame reave and lightning blast when triggered by the surge tree say on the node that they cost the skill’s mana cost in addition to surge, but static’s node does not say it, so not sure which direction the devs want to go with this node.
If we could get some clarity whether it is an intended or unintended (bug?) interaction with these nodes, as well as wording on the node if it does cost mana.
More of a feedback/suggestion note here:
In my opinion, even if static’s cost is added to surge that doesnt outright kill the spellblade builds, there is a reasonable amount of adaptive spell damage a spellblade can get to make static hit hard even without the power surge node, specifically cause the more dmg per charges is fixed.
I think a possible fix/improvement for static and these builds that are soon gonna try running it more often, would be a change of values/position of the power surge node in static. It currently requires 2 points in empower that gives flat lightning damage and doubles at 80 charges, if you changed power surge so that it was connected directly to the center of static and not to empower, but then both of them connect to electrify the crit node, so there’s two ways to get to electrify. Then change static to give 1 flat lightning per 4 charges with 4 points possible which then reduces the per charge from 4-3-2-1. Also the mana cost would be 1 mana cost added per 4 charges (4-3-2-1 based on x/4 points in the node) So it would end up at the same current value for one point of 1 spell lightning per 1 charge up to 200 charges max (200 flat for 200 mana added) but for 1 or 2 or 3 points invested it would give 25 flat for 100 charges while making static only cost 25 extra mana. Same with 50 flat added for 100 charges costing 50 mana extra.
This might make static more manageable/customizable for different builds that can or cant handle the mana cost, such as spellblade (non mana strike) builds.
Hopefully there’s a different solution than just slapping the mana cost on surge without adjusting anything in the static tree.
Thanks for reading 