Arcane spell crit vs other types?

[Adrammalech]

Arcane spell crit vs other types?

Hey diii.net,

a thought occurred to me while browsing through the wiki. According to said wiki,

* Physical Damage: Deals double damage. Might also knockback, but not confirmed.
* Arcane Damage: Critical hits from arcane damage silence targets for 4 secs. (Silenced targets can not cast some spells, such as a Skeletal Summoner or Goatman Shaman resurrecting fallen minions.)
* Cold Damage: Critical hits from cold damage freeze targets for 2 seconds.
* Fire Damage: Critical hits from fire damage set targets ablaze, dealing additional damage per second.
* Lightning Damage: Critical hits from lightning damage stun targets for 2 seconds.
* Toxic Damage: Critical hits from toxic (poison) damage have an unknown bonus. Extra damage over time?

This lead me to wonder if arcane crits or arcane spells in general, will be less useful than other elements. As a player planning on playing a wizard (unless class 4 or 5 is amazing) and to go arcane.

Are my crits only going to be useful against casters?

Will spell crits of every element do *SOME* more damage, like physical doing double?

Will silence do something vs non-casters?

Will arcane spells do more damage than other elements in general to counter this situational bonus?

Even if there are plentiful casters in D3, the point remains that burning and freezing, etc can affect all enemies (barring immunities and whatnot) while silence only affects casters (as far as we know). Give me your thoughts or information on this subject and let the discussion begin! :jig:

 

[Farmrush]

Re: Arcane spell crit vs other types?

Something tells me not all the wizard's spells are Arcane damage...

if you spec your character to only do Arcane damage, well, that's your call. It won't necessarily be worse, but it obviously has its drawbacks.

 

[Telzen]

Re: Arcane spell crit vs other types?

Arcane does seem to be the least usefull, but the others seem to be balanced well. Like the cold spells have less damage and take more mana since they get to freeze.

 

[Kingu]

Re: Arcane spell crit vs other types?

Well if you look at wiz skill tree, as is now, then there is more updamage passives (like up damage and reduce enemy resist) than in storm tree for cold and lightning, so i thing it's more or less balanced, not to have arcange do critic damage.

 

[yalthar]

Re: Arcane spell crit vs other types?

Perhaps arcane resistance in monsters will also be rarer than the traditional element resistances?

Edit - just checking out the skill trees too... so no more fireball...

 

[LucianDK]

Re: Arcane spell crit vs other types?

If you look in the arcane tree, you will see that arcane spells can get a debuff to increase ALL magical damage taken, as well another to slow targets hit by any arcane spell.

With Slow Time that control aspect is further emphasized.

From initial glance it looks like the frost spells doesnt have the inbuilt slowing component any more, except for when they crit and freeze something. There arcane would be far more useful and reliable, as it is not RNG dependent in its control aspects. So I think an arcane mage in d3 might play a lot like a frost mage from wow, controlling foes through debuffs. Especially since the inbuilt silence effect will dramatically amputate the provess of many high end foes, imagine facing a group of highend Gloams from d2, and you neuter them with an arcane orb in their middle.

And not to forget, Teleport is a highend Arcane skill.

 

[sicilian]

Re: Arcane spell crit vs other types?

My guess is that arcane has three advantages over the others:

1) Longer duration. The freeze and stun crits only last 2 seconds, whereas silencing a mob that only uses magic makes them useless for 4 seconds.

2) Arcane damage might have a higher average damage rate, making it a more generic form of damage, but also causing more havoc.

3) Magic using mobs tend to be some of the highest damage dealers, and also some of the few that can hit a distance fighter like the Wizard. Silence them, and there's really nothing that can hit you if you play smart.

My big question is, what's the difference between freezing and stunning? They both last the same, it seems kind of boring to have two damage types have exactly the same crit effect...

 

[LucianDK]

Re: Arcane spell crit vs other types?

Freezes generally breaks on damage, whereas stuns does not.

 

[sicilian]

Re: Arcane spell crit vs other types?

Freezes generally breaks on damage, whereas stuns does not.

In D3 or are you talking RPGs in general?

 

[LucianDK]

Re: Arcane spell crit vs other types?

In D3 or are you talking RPGs in general?

Rpgs in general.

 

[Nihilas]

Re: Arcane spell crit vs other types?

You can see at skill tree that arcane will make loads more dmg - at lvl 1 arcans does 7-13 while storm bolt does 1-8

 

[Telzen]

Re: Arcane spell crit vs other types?

Hope they up the freeze to more than 2 seconds. Otherwise the passive that does damage to frozen opponets is kind of useless. Want to base a build around it.