Solution for Channeled Spells - based on history, status quo, statistics and observation.

We have a situation right now where less than 1% of the top 1000 ranked Wizard players are using the following Channeled spells - Ray of Frost, Arcane Torrent and Disintegrate.

There is a reason why most Wizards don't run with channeled spells at higher level Greater Rifts. There's no time to stand still, and even if you could, you get knocked all over the place anyway by mobs charging through CC and all kinds of stuff.

Historically, these spells were all good, viable options to a much larger degree than what we see right now. You could swap between skills in a much more casual fashion than what you can currently afford to do. And that was a cool thing.

Now, I realize that this current patch is a "first take" on things. Blizzard wanted to provide each class with 1-2 good combinations of gear/skills just to get things going, and they'll take it from there.

Yeah, make no mistake, things aren't going to stay this way. There's a lot of work going on behind the scenes when it comes to balancing things out for higher level Greater Rifts - as we speak. Expect a great patch soon. Just wanted to provide some feedback on how exactly one small piece of the puzzle as far as Wizards go could be solved.

Here is one example of a change that really made sense;
An adjustment to the way the passive Illusionist works was made at some point:

Old tooltip:
"When you take more than 15% of your maximum Life in damage *in a single hit*, the cooldowns on Mirror Image, Slow Time, and Teleport are reset."

New tooltip:
"When you take more than 15% of your maximum Life in damage *within 1 second*, the cooldowns on Mirror Image, Slow Time, and Teleport are reset."

That was changed because the first version of it just didn't make sense, basically. The game environment can overpower you with tons of small hits, or a few large hits. This change was a very good one, and the end result is now that this passive just works much more smoothly. Better.

Perhaps something similar could be done for those channeling spells? - Don't drop the increased damage immediately - but give it a 1-2 second "grace time" - that way one could do one quick Teleport, get out of harms way, and still keep the effect, still having to keep an eye out for what's going on and still having to be vigilant about choices in the heat of the moment.

Wouldn't necessarily have to be like that of course. Don't shoot the messenger here please, just some ideas; something thrown into the mix to get the train of thought going. Moving towards solutions like these might also make sense for other classes, though I dare not say much about that as I play Wizard mostly. Point is, there could be elegant solutions.

Posted in: Wizard