125% upfront and 75% delayed damage is pretty decent for an instant-hit AoE, I don't know why people think that is low. It's only low damage when you compare to Meteor or Arcane Orb, but a Wizard can only cast 3 Orbs or 2 Meteors before she is OOM, and it is quite possible to miss fast moving enemies entirely (with either Orb or Meteor). At 120 mana in the current version of Blizzard's skill calcluator, a level 60 WD should be able to cast 8-10 acid clouds (at least) before OOM.
Yes, the WD could be able to cast, let's say 9 acid clouds. But when? Do you wait for the DoT to tick? You don't? If you don't, the DoT damage will be lower. In the meanwhile, the wizard has recovered arcane power and starts to cast 250% weapon damage arcane orbs.
We have no idea whether the DoT will stack or not, but judging by spells like Meteor in Diablo 2, the acid rain DoT is likely to stack.
125% upfront and 75% delayed damage is pretty decent for an instant-hit AoE, I don't know why people think that is low. It's only low damage when you compare to Meteor or Arcane Orb, but a Wizard can only cast 3 Orbs or 2 Meteors before she is OOM, and it is quite possible to miss fast moving enemies entirely (with either Orb or Meteor). At 120 mana in the current version of Blizzard's skill calcluator, a level 60 WD should be able to cast 8-10 acid clouds (at least) before OOM.
None of the WD AoEs do as much total damage per cast as Grasp of the Dead + Groping Eels, but Grasp has a 8 sec cooldown so you can't spam them all over the place, and if enemies move out of the area they are no longer being hit. The advantage of spammable ground-targeted AoEs (Firebomb, Acid Cloud) is that if enemies move you can keep casting AoEs at them.
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We have no idea whether the DoT will stack or not, but judging by spells like Meteor in Diablo 2, the acid rain DoT is likely to stack.
None of the WD AoEs do as much total damage per cast as Grasp of the Dead + Groping Eels, but Grasp has a 8 sec cooldown so you can't spam them all over the place, and if enemies move out of the area they are no longer being hit. The advantage of spammable ground-targeted AoEs (Firebomb, Acid Cloud) is that if enemies move you can keep casting AoEs at them.