Some Thoughts on Spells

Having spent a fair amount of time trying to make interesting builds I find there are a number of walls built up for spell casters specifically. Most of them seem like they are well intentioned but don't make sense in practice.

Weapon Based Spell Skills

I get turning Martial Attacks into weapon based Skills, after all you can't do spear jab with a club. The same can't be said for spells. On a physical damage spell caster the current skill gem options are limited, and why would someone who can shape bone into objects need a specific tool for the most basic attack? This is also highly limiting in gearing options for casters. If you want to do a firebolt spec you are required to only ever run the one staff model that allows for that spell.

Having inherent spells with locked spell levels is all fine and good for tutorializing, but without the option of learning the skill through a gem you lose the ability to truly build that skill uniquely. It feels too limiting to only pick that one type of gear. Passing up way better upgrades just because the piece doesn't happen to include the correct skill for your build.

This also ends up limiting potential affects of meta gems, what if I wanted to make a Cast On Crit that launched Soulrend, or wanted to add sustain to a minion build with Mana Drain On Minion Death?

Attack Spells That Don't Hit

Another wall that I understand the intention behind but again in practice feels incredibly limiting are spells that cause damaging effects without hits. There are quite a few spells that gain no benefit from flat damage and extra damage of different types, limiting their scalability. Making it so these types of spells can get benefit from flat damage and extra damage would open up the skill selection available for end game. It also limits what support gems can be used, many effects and interactions depend on hitting enemies. To get value out of none hitting damage spells you have to build a completely different spell to synergize with it.

These spells makes sense for combo oriented play styles but the benefit of doing a combo is only as great as it's least fun step. Casting different spells to stack relevant buffs and debuffs takes much away from the fun of moment to moment gameplay and encourages trying to one shot the screen. In this case when people make one button builds it says more about the mechanics they don't want to engage with than the ones they are.

Spell Specific Nitpicks

Ember Fusillade in its current state doesn't feel very good to play. It's a non-channeled channel spell. It claims it will only gather a specific amount of embers. And reads like once it's gathered the max embers or sat in the air for it's hover duration it will launch all current embers. But in practice it will continue to refresh the hover duration well after you've hit the ember cap similar to channeled spells like Bonestorm.

Essence Drain can feel very hit or miss, literally. Since spells don't have an accuracy penalty it feels bad to watch the projectile occasionally go through a target without actually applying the dot or any hit affect. Could be server lag but my gut tells me it's more due to the wiggly nature of the projectile instead causing it to look like it hits but swerved slightly.

Contagion having a targeting selection that's so random at times it breaks my brain. Contagion also feels very hit or miss. If I want to open up a dot combo I can click a monster to cast it on and it will instead target something completely different. It also plays like the initial cast is limited to enemies inside your presence but doesn't have that in it's description at all.

Flame Wall not counting as a ground effect, or creating a ground effect. I was trying to co-op with a friend who was playing huntress and Flame Wall wasn't lighting any of the wind based skills on fire. This feels like more of an oversight than an intentional decision.

Spirit/Meta Gems Minion and Companions not included, many of the Auras and meta effects call out Attacks specifically making them useless to a spell caster. The current selection is limited and have been nerfed repeatedly. Not being able to run any of the Herald skills makes looking for those effects challenging for no reason.

Conclusion

I'm not the type to go out of my way to build one button builds, I'm more of a fan of just making something fun and interesting. In the games current state the part I like engaging with feels like it's unilaterally impeded for no real reason. It's my hope that writing my thoughts here actually get the spell side of the skill system looked at.