Channeling Mods Underpowered In General

[MJ12]

Okay, channeling mods are a great idea. They give you a totally different build concept that you can make, and that's awesome.

 

They're reasonably easy to acquire, too, which is nice as well. Now, what's the problem? This is a great system. Oh, right, the fact that most of them suck.

 

Take Quickening. 3 ranks, +5% attack speed while channeling per rank, at the cost of +0.5 energy per channeled hit per rank. That's actually quite a lot, since channeled attacks with a lot of weapons can easily hit three or four enemies per swing. Meanwhile, I could use Fury, which costs about as many mod points, gives me +5% attack speed per rank while channeled or not, and is also easily acquired.

 

The current system of channeling mods actually creates the irony that the optimal channeling builds... don't actually use any of the channeling-only mods, and the only one that's really worthwhile is Life Strike, owing to its ability to actually make up for its increased cost (you build a weapon to do unchanneled damage, then you use Life Strike to regain health).

 

Most of the channeling mods probably need to have their bonuses doubled and their efficiency drains halved (so Quickening would give +10% attack speed/-5% efficiency). In fact, many of them probably don't need efficiency drains at all. Why does 15% or so status chance while channeling need an efficiency drain? It's not Life Strike. Channeling Efficiency reductions should be saved for mods which legitimately would be ridiculously overpowered without it, like a hypothetical "Elemental Burst" channeling mod which caused channeled attacks to create AoE explosions on strike (with, say, -50% or so efficiency per rank), or the aformentioned Life Strike, which are mods you build a weapon around because they drastically change the behavior of the weapon, not mods you use to enhance an already extant weapon function.

[AureusVulpes]

Another thing: Channeling only works if you have stamina after the swing begins. If you have 0 stamina, you lose the energy, but gain no benefit.

 

I checked out how many swings you get out of this with no stamina mods...... Three. you can get the first three melee attacks to be channeled. That's it. That's ALSO assuming you didn't RUN to the enemy.

 

That makes channeling even.... uh.... more useless?

[MJ12]

Seriously? That's even more hilarious. Well, I guess it wouldn't be a big update without something being broken and underpowered.

[Kasseopea]

Did some calculation. Lets say you are totally hyped and will put all the new channeling mods in (Quickening, Second Wind, True Punishment, Warrior's Grip, Enduring Strike and Life Strike) - you will consume +460% energy, which means each strike will cost you 28 energy.

[raikien]

Ya I'm pretty disapointed nearly every channeling mod was -minus channeling effeciency like really.. I just wanna waste all my wf power on hitting things.. Needs to have something different maybe -channeling damage or non channeled damage but like 4 mods making it more expensive is dumb. If your going to channel you want 100% efficiency period.

[Varzy]

yeah, I agree. Most of the channeling mods need a real buff to their benefits - Quickening should get 10%-12.5% per rank. True Punishment critical chance mods could be something like 15% per rank, since melee weapons really need some good crit options.

 

I'm less sure about  Warrior's Grip and Enduring Strike, but the efficiency probably doesn't deserve to be that bad.

 

(Whereas Life Strike, whew, that needs to be cut down to 5% at max rank, hahaha. Especially if you roll Killing Blow with it. I love it though.)

Edited April 14, 2014 by Varzy