I posted this in beta forums, but since the spell has seen no changes, im copy/pasting it here since this thread has been revived and beta forums are soon to be gone. Problems with acid storm: 1) it cannot be modified by miracles, crit, base, spell mod, or crit bonus. In addition it can die easily from damage shields on mobs. 2) I looked up a few zone wides, which may illustrate better how each spell performs in a raid setting as it currently works on live. In Miraguls planar shard, Acid storm did a total of 20.4 DPS zonewide for my warlock. Rays of Disintegration, did 587 DPS. You might say "well acid storm is meant to do more damage on an AE encounter and MPS is mostly single target." So, i looked up a few more zone wides and parses. On an Avatar of War pull, which does have adds: Rays of Disintegration: 627 DPS Acid Storm: 39 DPS Tomb of the Mad Crusader Zone wide (which is almost completely AE): Rays of Disintegration: 624 DPS Acid Storm: 62 DPS In Tomb, rays was TEN times the DPS that acid storm was, which seems completely unbalanced to me in damage, not to mention that rays takes less time for a wizard to cast than acid storm for a warlock. What i suggest is that the spell be completely redone. if you wish to keep it a dumbfire, fine, but change the way it works. Make it's damage modified by the warlocks base, crit, crit bonus and spell mod. Increase the damage output per tick and perhaps decrease the time between ticks to allow it a more similar damage output on AE fights (doing up to 600 dps on a fight with multiple mobs) and at least 1/2 to 2/3 the damage of rays on a single target. Also, decrease the base cast speed of acid storm to mirror that of Rays.
What if it was changed to be a sort of AoE version of Aura of Void? You cast the spell on the mob, and when the mob takes damage it has X number of triggers. Damage would be a blue aoe centered from the mob you put the spell on.
After 80 levels of hard levelling the warlock is rewarded with a "fluff" skill, which they should have given us at level 50. Not too complain but it's totally useless, only the very rare time shall I use it...It might aswell get removed and replaced, it's a cool looking spell but that's all it's got going for it & it's so broken and useless I don't think it's worth fixing it.
rudy2 wrote: My thinking exactly,when i got the spell a few days it felt like a spell a warlock would of gotten when the wizard got their furnace of ro or something, becuase its basically the same thing. when it all boils down. the conj, necro and warlock 80 spells are quite useless, they have long casting times that are only really viable if casted before a fight even starts, while wizards are getting a nuke that is a good amount of dps for them.
Dev. still have not any plan for this spell?? I want hear from gm. Even though this spell first got at 80lvl, worst spell for warlock. =dissolve, netherlord class imo lol.
i'm ALL for Acid storm being effected by our primary stats such as Int, base, mod, and bonus along with having an aoe avoid added to it. (most of this credited to korrupt for explaining it to me this way) Dumbfire pets are NOTHING more than Dots/dmg spells with an illusion/graphic attached aswell as unfortunatly an HP bar. but why? and if that's all they really are then why ARN'T they effected by the casters personal stats? just let them use OUR stats and either take away them having HP and leave them with a set durration so they really are just annother Dot with an illusion/graphic, or making them AOE immune unless they're the primary target. In theory, our dumbfire pets should be nothing more than exactly what, for example Blast of Devastation is atm in the way that Bod/a, spells have a set unique casting appearence and set of motions. Even though its specific casting appearence isnt linked to the spells cast time. For exaple the specific casting appearence is there since most of us finish casting the spell. BoD at a capped casting speed takes 1.5 seconds, when the appearence motion of casting the spell itself lasts for 6 seconds. why not make our dumbfires the same way? Simply a dot or a DD spell, with a very specific/unique casting appearence that is effected by out stats, not at all effected by aoes, and is finally USEFULL! plz btw again, credit for explaining alot of this to korrupt. but hey the more voices then hopefully we might get noiticed !
This spell is long overdue for a fix along with Netherlord (aka the Spacelobster) and Dark Infestation. I thought the devs were revamping all dumbfire pets, is that still true? My suggestion falls in line with previous comments, turn the dumbfire pet spells into dots which would be affected by the caster's stats. Also, lower the duration and/or up the damage to make them worth casting. Nothing should be worse to cast than Soul Blister IMO which should probably just be consolidated with Dark Pyre anyways.
I made a topic regarding dumbfire pets in the General Mage Discussion section. Please post some replies there so we can draw as much dev attention to this issue since it effects most if not all mage classes, and since dumbfires have been garbage since I started playing this game. If they fix dumbfire pets, like they said, then they will hopefully fix Acid Storm.
It's been a long while since I have been to these boards and commented on some of the inbalances in the warlock class. For the most part, I feel the changes in SF helped rebalance things that were previously unbalanced, adding fuctionality to many of our spells that had been unused for many expansions. However, Acid Storm remains a glaring inbalance. This spell was orginally introduced to be the warlock defining spell at lvl 80 and it appeared to be an alright spell. Along the lines, however, the damage of this spell dropped significantly, as well as its usefulness. While this was happening, the wizard endline saw boosts, including a reduced casting timer. At this point, I have resigned to Acid Storm perhaps trying to mirror Furnace of Ro instead of Rays of Disintegration. But even in a comparision to this spell, the warlock version falls short. Furnace of Ro has a base casting speed of 2 seconds, and a reuse of 1 minute, while Acid Storm is literally doubles that, at 4 seconds casting speed (still) and a 2 minute reuse. In addition Furnace of Ro has a duration that is 20% longer than Acid Storm. While i have come to realize that perhaps Acid Storm was never supposed to equal Rays of Disintegration, it should have been created to. I posted my comparison from last expansion, and this expansion im sure the differences are even more staggering. In my humble opinion this spell still needs to be looked at and fixed in some way to make it useful. Regardless of how it lines up with any wizard spell, Acid Storm needs a good look from from the developers. With the damage Acid Storm does (or doesnt do as the case may be) it is hardly worth hotbaring and not worth casting. It is incredibly frusterating that such a huge imbalance has been ignored so long. Any response from developers would be greatly appreciated. Hina
From broken spells in general Warlocks seem to be ignored quite often. This is just one example and as isis23 pointed out was a class defining skill so you would think would get looked at and balanced. Then there are the issues with the Warlock class defining AA endline also being broken and unbalanced (how many other endline AA's have to rely on a proc chance before they can cast their spell so cant be timed with debuffs and buffs) and also being ignored after posted a few pages long. It would be nice for devs to give us some feedback into whats being done about the class to rebalance or it it only obviously favoured classes that get looked at?
