Mage should be able to cast multiple Ice Snakes, just like Meteor.

[sterile shuttle]

If you cast Meteor spell four times in quick succession they do not overwrite each other, but for some reason Ice Snake does. I noticed however that when you play Arcanist Chaos explosion lets you cast multiple Ice Snakes and none of them disappear until they reach maximum range. But if you have 4 ice snakes simultaneously going out from you, casting an ice snake spell yourself gets rid of all of them at the same time.

We already have the groundwork for being able to cast multiple snakes with Chaos Explosion, I feel like that should just be the vanilla mechanic instead of something specific to Arcanist

[civic leaf]

flashfree

[silent fern]

if people weren't complaining about ice snake lag before

[opal dagger]

why not all classes?

(especially archer where it makes sense (yeah hitting an enemy twice with attacks using a sword makes no sense))

also shaman aura

[turbid bronze]

snake nest aspect crashing the server:

[left saffron]

me on my way to crash a server

[sterile shuttle]

Tbh yeah im in favor of having every class spell stacking, but that might be overpowered for some classes. I'm not an expert at balancing, but Mage sets a precedent so I think that's the most reasonable one out of the bunch

[sterile shuttle]

Valid point, but class balancing should not be dependent on server stability

[turbid bronze]

i remember talking to Terminated about stuff like that when it came to Thunderstorm, he said it was an intentional design choice rather than an oversight or limitation

which i can agree on with a large number of spells. having spell recasts not get rid of the previous cast would shift the meta on its head entirely

[turbid bronze]

it should also be noted that this isn't just a thing for server stability, but it would also be abhorrently laggy and impossible to see anything with an arcanist spamming ice snake

not to mention it'd do like 2 dps

laggy fps wise*, rather

[sterile shuttle]

Thunderstorm yeah, but since ice snake stacks with chaos explosion why is it a mechanic unique to explosion? It's just inconsistent

[turbid bronze]

i'd be all for this if Ice Snake wasnt so visually obscuring

until then i dont wanna see this happen cuz i already know it's gonna be a giant lagfest

[vestal crow]

Ice snake should just get replaced

[magic portal]

alot of spells cancel intentioinally for one reason or another, spell stacking forces a dps meta where you have to be cycling at the highest cps on every class to get optimal damage and thats not necessarily a good thing

off the top of my head bolt would be made strictly worse by allowing spells to overlap on it since it already hits good numbers if you can bomb bounce and being albe to stack them would be a horrible balance conundrum

[magic portal]

real as fuck this spell has not been useful since 2018

[turbid bronze]

stacking arrow storm would be ludicrously broken

[magic portal]

didnt even consider this one either yeah like some spells need to be gated for a reason

[turbid bronze]

literally removing the fact that spells dont stack would just make a meta that promotes using spells that do the highest amount of damage in a singular cast, no matter the duration

funny enough Acrobat would actually be pretty good lol

[spark smelt]

flashfreeze always my goat

(Server does not like this)

[magic portal]

i also think its worth mentioning that this isnt some great injustice to mage as a class, the AT team is will aware ice snake is a dogshit spell and as temporary compensation mage as a class has basically none of its power budget in it

its just like a bit odd and thats the most i can say for it

[fiery valley]

just imagine ice snake stacking plus snake nest plus aspect

[magic portal]

nirvana 1333331 cycle

[magic portal]

immediate server crasb lmfao

[fiery valley]

everyone down to 1fps

[turbid bronze]

lol

[fiery valley]

tcc boss when you can overlap air shouts, 3 million dps

tempest actually does something now

[paper palm]

Gaia sentinental snake spam sorcery

[tough valley]

tbh ice snake doesnt feel great to use; it doesnt have the same feel as meteor, but idk if it could get replaced, it has so many issues like server stability lol

[tough valley]

referring to this

[fiery valley]

if it gets replaced it should be by something that fills a similar roll otherwise lament dps dead

[tough valley]

true, also based pfp eos and rw

[sterile shuttle]

Yeah I think ice snake is just an exception here

[sterile shuttle]

Gaia my beloved

[sterile shuttle]

It's just a utility spell that doesn't have a lot of utility

[magic portal]

yeah it kinda jsut has no reason to exist, cci introduction made it worthless frame 1 but at least they knew this when making the new abilities for 2.0 and it doesnt effect mages viability at all that it sucks

[sterile shuttle]

Atm it's pointless spell, but for Arcanist it means you don't have a range limit when using ice snake in your spell cycle. Hence the post. At the very least it should have usefulness for that I think. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[steady pollen]

yes.

[deft mica]

Arrow bombs deleting arrow bombs is so sad

[manic sequoia]

salted if you give me spammable aura my life is yours

[fiery valley]

ophanim stack please

[deft mica]

Multihit stack

[fiery valley]

wheres my 100 orb ophanim

[opal dagger]

things like multi and ophanim can’t stack from a logic perspective

[fiery valley]

i prefer to think outside of the box, logic is but a mere after thought

[balmy shell]

HELL no

[main rapids]

we should not be pushing macro usage more than we already are

[ember quest]

It's time to return to entropy being peak mage major id

[true escarp]

shaman aura spellstack would be amazing

[fiery valley]

makes rebound kinda insane tho, would have to rework/remove rebound if that happened

[true escarp]

they can throw rebound into a ditch for all i care

[fiery valley]

besides idk if thats balanced

[true escarp]

garbage ability

[fiery valley]

a spammable aoe that big is kinda nuts but idk

[civic leaf]

@true escarp panic zealot found dead in a ditch near the gate

[true escarp]

shut up loserkhu

[civic leaf]

wtf

[pure mango]

time to go back to branchmasters, grandpa

[spare harness]

it could be balanced by making it weaker the second aura casted, like divide the power of aura, this can also be achieved with ice snake (and could potentially make ice snake better by making each snake do dmg individually)

[main rapids]

needlessly complicated

[dusty whale]

Pure purist

[manic sequoia]

This is the correct answer but muh devtime wont allow it

[inland jungle]

I don't see the inconsistency? CE is an ability that literally embodies chaos. Surely that just makes sense?

I'm not necessarily against the concept of ice snake stacking but I don't think the motivation being "ice snake is bad/boring" is a good one for that

[sterile shuttle]

I thought the choas was "spell spam" not "the literal spell mechanics function differently"

It would be more thematic if meteor had some sort of special effect with chaos explosion but it doesn't

Like there isn't any unique interactions I'm missing right? it's literally just "stacking spells" + mana as far as I know

[inland jungle]

spell spam wouldn't be possible if they didn't overlap though

and im sure you're well aware of the arcanist work yet to be done

it wouldn't be very explosive or chaotic if ice snake recast every time..

[fiery valley]

if they didnt overlap literally what would be the point of arcanist abilities, since you would have to cast slower anyway

[sterile shuttle]

Meteor overlaps, but it already overlaps as a regular mechanic without Arcanist tree being a requirement. You can stack meteors at level 1. Ice Snake overlapping exclusively with Chaos Explosion genuinely feels like an oversight in coding ahahah.

My understanding is that chaos explosion is "spell spam + mana bank return" and I don't understand why (if it's intentional) ice snake should suddenly change that particular mechanic when lightning storm doesn't. Just feels.. odd you know?

[balmy shell]

It's really not that deep

[silent fern]

doesn't sorcery cause some spells to overlap

[main rapids]

just saying this is more justification to make meteor cancel itself in instead of being the outlier rather than the other way around

and make chaos explosion only be able to have multiple things exist at once

[manic sequoia]

making meteor cancel itself would ruin arcanist

[main rapids]

yeah it was just a theoretical

[magic portal]

i think this just proves that spells canceling themselves has to be a decision made on a case by case basis more than anything

overall i think spells canceling eachother is a good thing because it prevents macros from being too oppressive but i di think that in some cases it hurts the fantasy of the class

[manic sequoia]

[opal dagger]

ruin all of mage

entropy would be required

[balmy shell]

1.20 mage in question

[inland jungle]

Meteor has an incredibly long wind up time especially when you unlock it, I would guess that's the way it's like this

Ice snake is instant by contrast

[main rapids]

nerd emoji well technically

can we change cone of cold aspect to increase snake travel speed or something

[dusty whale]

The cold wave in question

[opal dagger]

this would halve arcanist damage wtf

hmm yeah more consistency is cool though

it would also be cool (side note) if time rift and pandemonium casts were not overwritten

when you cast again

[magic portal]

they alr arent to. my knowledge

[opal dagger]

I think this is only in one direction

ID cast doesn’t cancel normal cast but normal cast cancels ID cast

hmm I might be misremembering id have to look jnto it agaub

[main rapids]

erm entropy and shooting star have overlap

[dusty whale]

What’s faster than instant tho

[main rapids]

I'm just saying it's fine for there to be overlap

or like mangle and acro aspect

overreach bmonk etc

[dusty whale]

It’s just cw bc u can’t get faster than instant

[opal dagger]

wdf is shooting star

[main rapids]

2nd mage node lol

or like 3rd

[main rapids]

kinda poopy that ur required to spec into int for a usable snake spam build

[sterile shuttle]

Meteor stacks as a regular function with or without chaos explosion. In what way does this encourage that at all?

[main rapids]

it would be more consistent to have "chaos explosion allows spells to coexist" as it is more consistent with every other class normally not being able to stack spells as opposed to allowing mage to be the sole exception

[sterile shuttle]

It's instant to cast but the travel time is so slow. If you actually cast it at the same speed as chaos explosion does, it's only like 5 block range when mage Arcanist is not meant to be a face-tank class. You're never going to be (or at least want to be) that close to the enemy

[main rapids]

(but this sucks gameplay wise because meteor is way better to be spammable)

[sterile shuttle]

If you really want to go that route, it would make more sense to remove ice snake stacking functionality as opposed to adding it as a universal mechanic

[fiery valley]

due to how long meteor needs to get anything out of it its fine being repeat no? kinda needed for it to feel fun yeah.

[sterile shuttle]

Yeah, terminated said that too

[sterile shuttle]

Also, Mage's entire identity is spell spam (1.20 mage had the cheapest spell costs to reflect this too) and I feel like stackable spells with mage would be thematically consistent with the class

[main rapids]

id probably disagree since assassin and warrior had more instant casting spells & archer generally had faster travel times but i wasnt too well versed with endgame in pre 2.0 so i cant say with certainty

[inland jungle]

I think arcanist whole gimmick just lends itself to this so I think it's fine how it is honestly

Ice snake definitely needs more love in general lol which is some of the idea with the planned work on rift/arcanist

[sterile shuttle]

Fair enough. I still don't like the mechanical inconsistency, but I guess the criticism is basically on hold until mage gets a tune-up ¯_(ツ)_/¯

@inland jungle is it feasible for Chaos snakes to retain their stacking functionality, but when YOU the player cast ice snake, it doesn't make them disappear? It only makes the ice snakes that you manually cast disappear?

[inland jungle]

Not sure what you mean

[opal dagger]

same with trift @sterile shuttle !!

[sterile shuttle]

Right now if you cast 5 ice snakes consecutively, only the last one reaches full range.

If you then use Chaos Explosion, all 5 ice snakes you cast will reach full range.

As of right now, after casting Chaos Explosion, even though all those ice snakes are fully capable of reaching maximum range before ending, if YOU cast ice snake again, all 5 ice snakes at various ranges that were created using Chaos Explosion simultaneously disappear.
I'm asking if it's possible to separate the two, so that casting ice snake multiple times only deletes the ice snakes you manually cast, and not the ones created by Chaos Explosion

[sterile shuttle]

I think stacking thunderstorms might be too much honestly. They do a lot of damage

[inland jungle]

AHH yeah I understand you now

Not sure tbh all of these are most likely bugs with the way that CE casts spells rather than deliberate decisions

It's a very deliberate decision whether a spell or ability can have duplicates or not by us devs

So this inconsistency is most likely a bug even if it does make sense that chaos explosion casts like this

I'm guessing because it's a somewhat artificial spell cast (not through click combinations or costing mana etc)

[sterile shuttle]

Ahhhhhh I see. Tbh you should try using ice snake only and doing Chaos. The visual effect of it is unironically gorgeous

Like seeing all the snakes in tandem

If you do you'll see the motivation behind me making this post lol

[magic portal]

yeah remember to get snake nest and max out cone of cold too 😄

[sterile shuttle]

I know it'll be laggy as balls if you don't have a good PC but it's unironically beautiful seeing waves and waves of ice just blanket the battlefield. You genuinely feel like Theorick

[magic portal]

oh gg i was kidding cause its lag machine LMAO yeah gg pfinder players in TNA beat u to it on that one tho