Arcanist needs its own damage ramp-up ability

[vivid marlin]

Arcanist relies heavily on Winded to reach peak damage numbers. Most Arcanist trees take Winded and at 10 winded around half your damage comes from Breathless. With t2 rift aspect this becomes closer to 70%. While the most recent patch notes reduce this buff, I feel that this merely reduces the damage potential of Arcanist without addressing the root of the issue--Arcanist should not be relying on winded for damage.

Reliance on winded limits arcanist's damage potential since you can only increase your damage through self-buffs by about 50%. Compare this to Fallen, which gains up to 150 raw and 115% damage from corrupted, 30% from armor breaker, and 20% from bpact; or even Riftwalker that can quadruple the meteor multiplier with 60 timelock. You could say that Arcanist makes up for this lack of self-scaling by being convenient and not bursty, but I think even if you ignore the dps numbers the lack of scaling potential in 10 winded makes the class less fun to play as well. (I mean, it's called DPS for a reason...)

Also, since winded is a riftwalker ability, it fits rather awkwardly into Arcanist's kit--since you don't have gust you need to rely on a winded slave or take time away from spellspamming to melee. This is especially annoying if you're playing a build with slower attack speed like echoes quetz. Not to mention that it's rather illogical for a DPS archetype to have its main form of damage self-buff be from the other side of the ability tree.

I think Arcanist needs to have its own damage self-buff ability as an alternative to winded. My suggestion would be to have a resource (let's call it Arcana) that is gained every time you use arcane restoration relative to the amount of mana restored, and to have that increase all personal damage. 100 mana bank worth of Arcana could provide the equivalent to 1 winded of damage scaling. This fits more naturally into Arcanist's kit, since you build up Arcana by doing what Arcanist's kit revolves around--mana bank. There'd also be more room to make Arcanist self-buffs more interesting than just a flat damage increase (maybe Arcana can provide other buffs at higher thresholds, or you could detonate it into a burst like Corrupted). But I'm sure there are even better ways to accomplish this and I would love to hear other ideas.

An alternative damage-scaling ability would also be good for the mage tree as a whole. Lightbender would have options with decent damage that aren't forced to take half the Riftwalker tree, and a buff that isn't reliant on Breathless would make dps mage builds that don't use Meteor viable (maybe even melee Arcanist with Pyrokinesis!). Arcanist wouldn't need winded slaves and there wouldn't be issues with Timelock users stealing DPS from Arcanists on the same team. Whenever the AT gets time to look at Mage abilities I hope you will consider this idea.

[urban bramble]

this just seems like you're making a rebranded winded that plays the same as riftwalker without heal

a better suggestion for fixing arcanist would be to give ice snake a practical use in the tree. Currently good arcanist players literally teleport to the ground as to not make their chaos explosions do less damage. Maybe a better solution would be to change ice snake in the tree entirely or to add a node to actualyl give it practical use in the tree

[vivid marlin]

yeah like i said i don't really know what a good self-buff ability would be for arcanist but we need something that isn't winded

[woeful glen]

no it doesn't, it just needs more damage

[urban bramble]

https://tenor.com/view/blob-blank-stare-blob-laugh-blob-movie-gif-14934755731286774204

[vivid marlin]

back when we had 35 winded breathless arcanist still had all of the other problems i mention

[urban bramble]

I mean this can be done by just making ice snake actually do something for arcanist becuase as it stands rift uses it to stack winded while arcanist uses it for literally nothing

[vivid marlin]

thats also a fair point

arcanist just has a bunch of nodes that dont really seem to do anything instead of meaningfully increasing its damage (pyro, burning sigil, snake nest)

well i guess snake nest helps you fill mana bank faster but imo with cone of cold gone its not really even good at that

[urban bramble]

only good in lrs

[vivid marlin]

yeah

[urban bramble]

anyways if ice snake complimented meteors or chaos explosions and had a use case (becuase it quite literally does not have one in arcanist right now) arcanist would feel better and have a better identiy

damage is not the problem as there could just be additional nodes added to increase damage but the lack of a damage identity and ice snake being utterly useless with literally 0 use cases outside of mobbing doesn't really help arcanist

[wild saddle]

imagine a beginner arcanist trying to make an ability tree and they deal 0 damage because no winded

[urban bramble]

fatal arcanist without winded literally does as much as like idol bmonk

[wild saddle]

as they do not know the optimal tree

[vivid marlin]

my issue isn't really with the number being low as it is with the fact that the only real damage buff you get is 10 winded which is really fucking boring

[urban bramble]

crashing comet is a pretty real damage buff

[wild saddle]

this also has the weird effect that arcanist is super weak at first until the enemy has 10 winded

[mortal swift]

Hi as an experienced mage with no reading comprehension i think this is a cool post

[urban bramble]

@mortal swift hi

[vivid marlin]

well i mean like ways to increase your damage during combat

[wild saddle]

then its strong

[mortal swift]

Lemme read post

[vivid marlin]

not nodes that just give you a flat bump

[urban bramble]

it doesn't really need ramping damage, the ramping damage should be the increasing number of chaos explosion spells

[wild saddle]

[urban bramble]

in fact i would argue that flat damage buffs would be more beneficial since riftwalker is already designed to have an identity of ramping damage through winded

arcanist should isntead try and veer off that path and focus on raw damage with the drawback of no healing

[vivid marlin]

hmm maybe

[mortal swift]

Interesting I think the main issue is arcanist’s independent damage; I think ramping up damage rather than spellcount would be cool

[vivid marlin]

but i think in its current state, its main damage buff is a ramping ability but you can't really get the full use out of it since ur winded cap is 10 and you don't have gust or anything, it's just kinda unfun

[wild saddle]

the humble riftwalker setting the winded back to 0:

[vivid marlin]

imo arcanist being reliant on stacking a lot of chaos explosion would not be great cuz its super ping/cps dependent

[urban bramble]

the easy bandaid fix is to lock winded and arcane transfer and to replace sentient snake with a node that makes chaos explosion spells do significantly more damage

[mortal swift]

But tl D:

[urban bramble]

it already is reliant on stacking chaos explosion spells

[wild saddle]

we love timelock

[vivid marlin]

doesn't need to be more ping/cps reliant

[wild saddle]

the riftwalker better make up for the damage lost

[urban bramble]

this woudl not change arcanist is already cps reliant becuase it is the most spell spammy arcetype in the game

[gloomy lotus]

issue is this would have extremely big overlap with rift as is

[wild saddle]

oh yeah also lightbenders go from dealing bad damage to very bad damage

[vivid marlin]

yea arca should have some sort of self buff tied to mana bank/chaos explosion altho im like not great at coming up with abilities

[mortal swift]

True

[gloomy lotus]

but i'm pretty sure AT is well aware of mage's identity crisis already with a rift overhaul still being in consideration and having already said they'll compensate the other two archetypes for the loss of winded somehow

[vivid marlin]

lb is not really meant to deal damage and i think it makes sense that you have to crosspath to get any meaningful dps, i just don't like that ur only real options seem to be 20 or 35 winded rn

[mortal swift]

D: me lring with rift

I hope it doesnt get nerfed!

[vivid marlin]

i honestly feel like rift itself is in a pretty good place rn, besides the other classes' use of its abilities

only thing is i guess i wish there were better ways to build winded than snakespam

[gloomy lotus]

it's only in a good spot because timelocked makes the pretty strong debuff scale really hard, the fact remains winded is problematic and too bland to really do anything with

and i guess the gust buff as a whole

it's fully reliant on a snake offhand for any reasonable uptime

[vivid marlin]

id agree winded is kinda bland but i think arcanist really needs the rework before riftwalker does

[urban bramble]

no

all of mages problems circle back to winded

winded is possibly the biggest ability problem in the game right now

[vivid marlin]

i think its fine in rift or at least more fine than when other classes are relying on it

[urban bramble]

big red buzzer

[vivid marlin]

what do you not like about riftwalker winded

[urban bramble]

do you have half an hour

[vivid marlin]

im gen curious

[past lichen]

I agree snail111860

[vivid marlin]

why is riftwalker's use of winded worse than arcanist or lightbender

[urban bramble]

becuase it is a riftwalker node and not an arcanist or lightbender node?

[vivid marlin]

just lock it to riftwalker then

and give the other archetypes something to make up for it

[urban bramble]

https://tenor.com/view/squid-game-oh-my-god-bruh-saleswoman-oh-my-god-bruh-gif-2398788864743270124

[vivid marlin]

yea i never disagreed with this

[urban bramble]

this is not a good fix btw and i hope we can both realize that

[vivid marlin]

yeah idts either

[stuck hinge]

Winded is a good and interesting mechanic itself, but it's bad because devs made it one of the only few nodes that actually scale your damage on literally every archetype of the mage

[vivid marlin]

maybe whenever AT reworks mage tree in 2028 there will be something with more depth than winded but like

just making every other archetype not required to take it would make it good enough that i don't write up feedback posts about it

[stuck hinge]

I think locking each other unique stacking element from one another is a good idea, while buffing each archetype and adding something similar to winded (stacking element) for just the arcanist, just like the Arcana thing you've mentioned.

Light bender idk, the only use of it right now is some damage, some buffs that I'm not sure if they even work as they are intended (Like the Sunflare)

[undone sedge]

buff arcanist aspect +100% faster

and + 2 spell

best part wynncraft lie you

[woeful glen]

these bars haven't been updated since the day they have been created iirc? So yeah they're vastly outdated

[undone sedge]

after winded not share dmg amp they still not do anything on arcanist

[slim spire]

Uhh what

No

[undone sedge]

why no

[orchid glen]

yeah just straight-up Arcanist(if we don't want to scale player power down, anyway) just needs more power, but winded gets in the way of that

[quasi galleon]

I think a node buffing meteor down the tree that disables winded could work well enough maybe

[cerulean anvil]

make arcane transfer lock winded stuff and buff arcanist, I think I'm a genius

[thick elm]

guys whaat why ramp up

so silly it already had somewhat of this with chaos explosion and having to build up the memory

no need for it to be a resource just modeled after winded so u can have winded with another name

[foggy aspen]

I think arcanist needs way more burst dmg or burst setup further down the tree that happens in faster cycles than winded

Even something as simple as ice snake buffing your next meteor or something like that would go a long way to reduce reliance on winded

[strange wagon]

the humble "new ability X blocks winded":

[rare bronze]

Just spit balling here, but what if Arcanist started out strong but gets weaker over time, with some sort of mechanic to refresh and get back to full strength?

[mortal swift]

I think that would be very difficult to balance and nonunique to riftwalker; itll be the same av dps as riftwalker so rift would just be better due to heal

Since it’s just riftwalker reversed

Also refreshing mech would probably be procedural and boring after like 5 raids

[halcyon ore]

terraria mana sickness ahh ability

just list out few things 1st less visual clutter/particle fx that lags the game, 2nd better damage even without winded