24 réponses à ce sujet

[AlphaMagnum]

Uh...looking at the scripts, it seems that Chain Lightning's damage is completely static.

I'd like to hear your thoughts before choosing to forget about the spell or to spec toward it though, as I don't really like AoE spells that deal damage to my party, so ordinarily I'd stop at Lightning or not spec into the line at all.

How much damage does it tend to do per enemy, and how many targets does it tend to reach?

Also...did you find it useful/more effective than other direct-damage Primal spells?

[Zenthar Aseth]

Interested about this as well

[Euthoniel]

I know the description says it deals friendly fire damage, but I've never actually seen it damage my party even though I cast it in their midst quite often. Maybe it targets enemies first and only goes to ally targets as a last option? Or perhaps the description is an error and it doesn't damage the party? Or maybe I've just gotten extremely lucky, somebody else will have to confirm.

I've noticed it usually hits about three or four targets.

Modifié par Euthoniel, 13 novembre 2009 - 09:27 .

[Taleroth]

I find it quite useful. When enemies use it against us. It's pretty terrible when it was used by my Mage. :'(

[Wolff Laarcen]

Taleroth wrote...

I find it quite useful. When enemies use it against us. It's pretty terrible when it was used by my Mage. :'(

This.  Particularly since it has the gall to have a casting time.

[AlphaMagnum]

What's bad about it?



What I'm gathering from your posts is that the total damage dealt is crap compared to the mana cost, cooldown, and cast time, particularly seeing as it's a 4th tier spell.



Does the damage scale at all? (or have neither of you specc'd into it for an extended period of time?)

[Taleroth]

I have picked it up and played through much of the game with it. It definitely doesn't seem to scale. From the moment I got it around level 14, it never did anything worthwhile. Any enemies hit by it looked like they took the damage equivalent of two staff shots.



I did find good use for it much later in the game near the end where enemies are intended to be one-shot, though. Then it could really clear out without the nasty lasting AoE effect for my meleers to run into. That's not a scaling effect, however, they simply up the enemy count, but lower health.

[AlphaMagnum]

Ah...that really sucks. I guess I'll either have to forget about it or mod the spell script so it scales (at least marginally) better.

[Mysinera]

Ive never been on the casting end, but on the receiving end, this spell hurts!

[Taleroth]

AlphaMagnum wrote...

Ah...that really sucks. I guess I'll either have to forget about it or mod the spell script so it scales (at least marginally) better.

The thing about the spell is that it seems to actually be a limited number of lightning balls that spread out to various enemies.  The more enemies you have, the less it does to each of them.  I haven't tested this explicitly, but that's the impression I'm coming up with.  I always used it against groups of like 8 or so.

The reason it's so efficient against players is that enemies don't deal with friendly fire, so they only ever have to deal with 4 targets.

[hOnOr]

I got hit with it a couple of times and I was like "I can't wait to get that!" It turns out to not be so good and not be worth it's casting time. I would not pick it up again. Of course, tempest is very good for *spoiler* reasons.

[AlphaMagnum]

AH, that makes a lot of sense, Taleroth.



I just modified the spell script to both scale the damage with spellpower and add additional damage based on caster level and spellpower, if my player character is casting the spell.



Where the initial damage appears to be 20 as is, my new version would have an initial hit of 120.



When it was used against me most recently, without mods, I had two melee characters charging toward the caster. The damage dealt looked to be:



3 hits on my charging PC, starting with 20 damage and going down to 5, I think.

2-3 hits on Shale, the other charging character, for ?? damage.

4 or so hits between my two casters at the back, for ?? damage.



Hmm...I wonder how it'll scale now.

[rmp]

hOnOr wrote...

I got hit with it a couple of times and I was like "I can't wait to get that!" It turns out to not be so good and not be worth it's casting time. I would not pick it up again...

This was exactly my thought. When it was used against me to such devastating effect, I couldn't wait to get it, just to find out when I actually got it, it's nearly useless.  What gives? Doesn't seem to matter how many enemies I use it against, I don't notice any significant damage being done.

I'm not clear, does it just suck, or is it bugged? And if it's bugged, I'd like to ask a Bioware employee to respond to this. Why isn't there a hotfix?

Modifié par rmp, 01 décembre 2009 - 06:10 .

[EwokAssassin]

Same here, with the damage its currently doing, its always more effective to use Arcane Bolt or Lightning over this move. Even a few staff shots could do as much damage as it is doing currently.

[thegreateski]

It's a very nice spell against large groups.



It's about the equivalent of shooting every enemy in range with arcane bolt once or twice.



As for the difference between the PC's spell and NPC spell . . . I'm going to say that the enemy has their attribute points spread around in a min/max kind of way (to make up for their lack of intelligence).

[0mar]

The spell is garbage. Stop at Tempest for Storm of the Century and forget about Chain Lightning.

[Question2]

Ive noticed that when enemeies use chain lightning against my party it does massive damage.



Kind of hard to see the damage numbers with no combat log but the damage is pretty damn high and it drops all my party member's hp by a very noticeable amount.



When i use it it does like 20 damage to a single enemy adn doesnt even bounce -.-

[StarMars]

Lightning-type spells drain stamina(not mana) equal to the amount of damage dealt.



That would be very helpful vs enemies that use talents.



You can confirm this in one fight in the Brecilian forest wherein you fight 4 maleficars that use lightning type spells.

[Silensfurtim]

they better fix this

[Question2]

StarMars wrote...

Lightning-type spells drain stamina(not mana) equal to the amount of damage dealt.

That would be very helpful vs enemies that use talents.

You can confirm this in one fight in the Brecilian forest wherein you fight 4 maleficars that use lightning type spells.

You contradicted your own post, seeing as how said maleficars dont use stamina.

[CptPatch]

I find it interesting that in the acquisition of the spell, it comes _after_ Tempest. For Fire-based spells, the third tier is Fireball (a burst effect), followed by Inferno (AoE). For Cold-based you have Cone of Cone (burst), followed by Blizzard (AoE). Yet for Electricity-based spells, the burst/AoE is reversed.



Additionally, if you can have Fire-charged and Cold-charged weapons, why can't you have a Electricity-charged weapon?

[FlintlockJazz]

Question2 wrote...

StarMars wrote...

Lightning-type spells drain stamina(not mana) equal to the amount of damage dealt.

That would be very helpful vs enemies that use talents.

You can confirm this in one fight in the Brecilian forest wherein you fight 4 maleficars that use lightning type spells.

You contradicted your own post, seeing as how said maleficars dont use stamina.

I think he means when they cast it on you.

[EJon]

It sucks when the pc uses it. But when enemies use it, its the best. just like the flame blast - no matter how high my magic is it still sucks.

[JaegerBane]

I actually quite like it when it's used for it's intended purpose - i.e. zapping lots of weak enemies at once. As someone said, it's really meant to be a wide area double-staff-shot that hits most enemies. It's not meant to be an uber lightning bolt. It works great when used in conjunction with stuff like Blood Wound and Grease.

The only thing I don't like is the casting time. I don't mind casting delays on big guns like Inferno and Death Cloud, but Chain Lightning? lolwut?

Modifié par JaegerBane, 03 janvier 2010 - 11:42 .

[Bibdy]

The damage does not scale with spellpower. This is a unique case and most likely a bug.

But, what's interesting is there's a line of code

int nCap = Min(5 + FloatToInt(GetCreatureSpellPower(stEvent.oCaster)/10.0f), 10);

But, this value is not used. It looks like they tried a mechanism to increase the cap based on spellpower (5 + 1 extra target per 10 spellpower, maximum of 10), but stuck with a static cap of 10.

Where they get every HOSTILE target within 10 yards of the primary target

object[] secondaryTargets = GetHostileObjectsInRadius(stEvent.oTarget, stEvent.oCaster, OBJECT_TYPE_CREATURE,10.0f);

Set some variable nObstructed to 0.

int nObstructed = 0;

And then go through the first 10 secondary targets it grabbed

int nSize = GetArraySize(secondaryTargets);
for (i = 0; i < nSize && i < (10 + nObstructed); i++)

and start applying the '90210' event, which causes all the forks.


Edit: Reading a little more, it looks like the nObstructed value is incremented when a secondary target isn't in line of sight, or isn't valid (dead or dying), so if a target isn't valid, and there's more than 10 possible targets, you don't lose those extra chains.

The real 'mistake' is that the for loop only goes up to (10 + nObstructed), not (nCap + nObstructed). Of course, fixing that would be a nerf for Chain Lightning used by Mages with less than 50 spellpower (60 Magic), but at least it would make it scale.


Anyway, from what I can gather the basic idea is the original target is hit for 20 damage. 10 nearby targets who are HOSTILE to the caster are hit for 10 damage. THREE of them, will then launch another set of 10 bolts, each dealing 6.67 damage to nearby hostile targets. TWO of them, will then launch a final set of 10 bolts, each dealing 5 damage.

I'm not entirely sure what causes a group of 4 or 5 players to take an absolute ton of damage, compared to a group of 10. It seems like they should all take similar damage, because the smaller group will have lots of potential chains that get dropped. Only when you get over 10 targets, should you see a big drop in total damage done.

Modifié par Bibdy, 04 janvier 2010 - 12:52 .