Tempest Strike is an intriguing skill, it’s a melee skill but one meant to trigger powerful spell procs. A true hybrid melee/spell skill with a few caveats, such as no attack speed scaling and these spells are procced base by RNG. A lot of the tree revolves around improving these proc chances as well as unlocking powerful hybrid spells from multiple procs on a single swing. It’s truly one of the most unique skills in the game.
It also has its fair share of problems, and as unique and cool of a concept it is, it’s got some problems that make it used sparingly. I’ve spent a fair bit of time recently doing a deep dive on the skill and I’d just offer some feedback on the skill and how it feels overall and where I think its biggest shortcomings are at. There’s really only two areas that I think Tempest Strike suffers from: Leech and RNG.
Leech
The more time I have spent with Tempest Strike, the more convinced I become that this is Tempest Strike’s biggest Achilles heel. At the end of the day, this skill is a melee skill. Your build is going to revolve around you getting in the thick of it and hitting enemies at close range. However, TS does not have attack speed scaling, which it trades off for penetration. It also has no melee more damage modifiers (multiplicative %,) in its skill tree. That severely stunts survivability from health leech via affixes such as leech from melee damage, this is even more pronounced with the lack of attack speed scaling. As most of the skill tree is increasing/decreasing proc chances for these spells and the damage modifiers affect only the spells.
The very nature of the skill also means that popular unique choices for melee builds, such as bleeding heart, are not available to them as it is a spell skill. There are some other uniques possible options (Storm Breaker and Morditas Reach) but outside of LP, you trade off power for survivability compared to with a weapon type such as sceptres or staffs; two weapon classes that are the most natural choices for a build that would leverage Tempest Strike. Tome of Elements is also a choice, but again, it is 2% leech which isn’t incredibly powerful outside of multiple procs.
By and far, if only one change were to occur with Tempest Strike, I think having built in leech support into the tree would have the most immediate and biggest impact as it allows players to be able to survive the dangers of close combat with effective leech that other melee builds have access to but Tempest Strike does not.
RNG
I don’t mind RNG in skills, I just mind it when the entire skill is at the mercy of RNG procs. When the main driver of a skill is RNG it becomes inconsistent and it does not feel good at all. This is especially true when your damage modifiers in the skill tree are heavily invested in the spells that need to proc.
Since the tree is is RNG-based, this comes into a secondary issue that is skill point investment, a large chunk of your skill points are going to be investing in trying to get consistent procs of your preferred damage/proc type. Now, to be fair, this isn’t as bad as it could be as the devs have done a good job of rolling those damage modifiers issue into those incresed proc chance nodes, but in-game it still doesn’t feel great investing as much as 9 skill points to increase your chances to proc Northern Winds.
I’d love to see this inverted, I’d love to see consistent procs for a single damage type/spell with minimal investment, then either have decreased proc chances in exchange of powerful modifiers, or decrease procs as you unlock the other spell procs. For example, if you unlock be Northern Winds and Lightning Bolt, each would have say a 50% proc rate.
I think the RNG aspects of the skill should be shifted to other aspects of the skill. I would love to see this in the form of those “combo” skills like Tempest and Charged Stones and have those spells damage/effects expanded upon. I love those aspects of this skill and something I think can be expanded upon and should be. This way, the RNG and the psychology of using Tempest Strike goes from “Well, I hope the spell I just invested a bunch of skill points to proc, procs” which doesn’t feel great to “Oh, I hope I can get both Lightning Bolt and Northern Winds proc for Tempest” which feels dramatically different.
Damage wise? TS is absolutely fine, in fact, it’s very strong with the penetration in exchange for attack speed. It’s really just the user experience of the RNG aspects of the skill and the lack of access to leech compared to other melee builds that bring this skill down the most in my opinion.