wicked raven
(more below; bot marked it as spam due to being too long)
To preface, since noticing the changes to the Frozen Tornado and Blitz nodes I have tried out the changes on a housing dummy and in some raids before writing this.
Frozen Tornado - base multiplier reduced from 100% -> 80%
Frozen Tornado - damage per distortion reduced from 1.6% -> 1.2%
Blitz - damage bonus reduced from 5% -> 2% and lost its +15% base
Frozen Vortex feels much weaker, and feels much less important to Riftwalker's identity compared to Meteor Shower. Branching into arcanist's Crashing Comet feels like the far better option over Frozen Vortex now, where I'm even considering giving up Frigid Grasp/Blitz and treating Time Vortex as a purely distortion generating ability.
Prior to these changes, the consistency of Frozen Vortex's damage meant that it could provide a solid damage floor with Meteor Swarm being treated as a significant reward for maintaining distortion and actively playing instead of relying on the consistent damage. Now, with Vortex being less consistent against flying enemies and just doing less damage overall, it feels more of an accessory, a timer that you just have to wait through until you can do damage with meteor. (since you can't sustain constant meteors at low distortion but also can't do anything with excess mana at high distortion, so mana usage becomes inconsistent as you build distortion)
From a general perspective, the nerf was justified. Riftwalker was doing far too much damage for the amount of utility and QoL included, and the current amount of damage actually feels reasonable (though others will disagree). However, focusing everything on Frozen Vortex seems misplaced.
Cutting Frozen Vortex this much while leaving Meteor Swarm untouched results in a large leaning towards meteors instead of tornado, which starts overlapping with Arcanist's identity both in being meteor spam as well in the actual tree.
Where the crashing comet node might have been a ~5-8% boost to total damage before, its closer to ~12-15% now due to meteor being the majority of your damage. This results in a somewhat more stifling class tree as Lightbender is significantly less incentivized to branch into Frozen Vortex while Riftwalker is more incentivized to rely on meteor/manastorm nodes to sustain constant meteor damage instead of relying on consistent moderate tornado damage and focusing more utility instead.
With the current ability nodes, Riftwalker feels forced to use Crashing Comet for damage and then choosing between slightly better consistent Tornado damage or the utility of Paradox/Devitalize.
It's generally best practice when brainstorming to come up with ideas before considering whether they are any good, so I've spoiled the following suggestions in case you want to consider your options without any external influence first:
||- The straightforward solution to this would be to move some of the damage back from meteor to tornado; likely from Meteor Shower to Blitz, also changing Blitz to blue, so as to justify the amount you get from Blitz.
wicked raven
as an aside:
riftwalker has a strange relationship with mobility; teleport and time dilation allow you to be highly mobile when a situation requires, but you also lose a lot of effectiveness due to your spells being largely committal, albeit with wide aoe. you end up in situations where you either manage to stay within a generous aoe, and continue ramping just fine, or are forced out of it and have distortion fall off a cliff until cooldowns reset as time vortex and riftspawn are both out of range; riftbound can mitigate this somewhat but not entirely due to a lengthy cooldown and inability to reposition time vortex
i also greatly enjoy the ability to split focus with time vortex, riftspawn, and meteor each covering different flanks and being combined/separated as needed, for more aoe or better focused single target, but only when managing cooldowns well.
fringe cape
god they nerfed the ice tornado what the hell😭
it was stationary and not even that good at its job too
🤪
i liked the idea of rift having all other spells that isn’t meteor being better
cunning fractal
Nerf them meteors man…
calm gale
from what i can tell that is around a 25% dps nerf in total for spell rw
pretty huge but fair enough
weary gazelle
it was stationary and not even that good at its job too
at around 400 distortion it has a 20 block size, definitely too much
as for the meteor to tornado damage split, tornado surpasses meteor shower around 325 distortion or so still
both with max upgrades
so void accel, crashing, astral frag - nest, sentient, frigid, blitz
even with one being better than the other (which isn't the intention), rw has the special position of no-spam which means all spells stay valuable
weary gazelle
as for the meteor to tornado damage split, tornado surpasses meteor shower aroun...
this can change depending on the build ofc (more dps on tornado with water dmg focus for example) but its the case in most situations
topaz jewel
any chance we could remove distortion req on tornado 🥺
this is more lb feedback but rw is so bad at blocking any crosspathing lb could have, since every connecting node requires either distorion or anti-ophanim nodes.
tornado needs distortion, which is connected directly above. It almost feels like the connection is only to allow rw to get purification
meteor shower completely cuts off lb from the middle, once again only in place to allow rw to hit fluid healing because you cant even take incandesence when you have meteor shower...
lb cant even take rift rupture or riftbound because they are also blocked by meteor shower.
I get they aren't too synergistic but theres literally no way for lb to get through any part of the tree without getting distorion, and I feel like allowing lb to take tornado as a base would at least give SOME options.
fringe cape
at around 400 distortion it has a 20 block size, definitely too much
wait really lol