Or you still can't go passed the 15 second max? Meaning you only cast it to kill an elite pack, and it will pretty much wear off 15 seconds after the pack is dead.
This.
The idea with Heroic Archon is to make it useful in boss & uber fights etc, as the actual in-game Archon form is pretty rubbish at them unless they've a lot of adds or you killed god only knows how many mobs just prior to the boss fight.
As for Heroic Archon vs Eternal Archon, the former also gets Diamond Skin, making it quite tanky (esp. if you have Heroic Archon + Critical Mass for short CDs on Diamond Skin).
I am against 100% archon uptime personally. I want to play the wizard class, not the archon class. It's just not fun when any other build I try to experiment with is so vastly inferior.
Yeah, this is definitely a problem (and I speak as someone who likes 100% Archon uptime, unlike you). I wouldn't mind seeing a couple of popular different builds beyond CM/WW + Archon builds. However, that's a hell of a lot of work - I'm just trying to do something with Archon here.
+ + +
Finally, let's not forget that Archon is always going to be difficult to balance when you have so few ability slots. 15 secs + 120sec CD is... well rubbish for a game like D3 frankly, which is why I've tried to leave some of the vanilla "extended duration" stuff in the new Archon runes above. I suppose another option would be to do it along the lines of "Eternal Archon + OMGWTFBBQ-DPS-for-15-secs" runes, but that seems a poor way of "fixing" it IMHO (and open to abuse given the burst involved).
IMO the blast attack should be higher damage. There is not reason to use it when you can beam everything.
I do find it useful for its mini-knockback / interrupt, and when surrounded by lots of enemies sometimes. It's by no means useless, and I don't see any real issue with Archon being defined by its strawberry beam of doom TBH.
i don't see archon as op at all. we're not immune to cc like wotb, go bug them, devs
I tend to agree, but unfortunately I don't work on the D3 dev team . That being the case, I'd rather try & find a way to please both sides of the issue.
As the thread title suggests, this thread is for suggestions on fixing Archon wizards. As several of the D3 devs have indicated, they're not really happy with Archon having 100% up-time. Now I tend to disagree with them (if I want a walking - well, floating - personification of the Death Star, why can't I have one ?), but seeing as they're the actual devs, their opinion tends to carry the greater weight .
That said, maybe there's a way we can please both sides of this issue; accordingly I've identified 3 key issues that need addressing:
100% uptime not being desirable from the devs' POV.
100% uptime being desirable from many players' POV.
Lack of options as an Archon.
Part of the problem of course is that merely having a 15sec uptime (12.5%) on Archon is frankly pretty rubbish when it takes up a whole skill slot. Why have an ability that is so rarely used after all?
Well, I hope I've got some solutions here for your consideration. They can be summed up in just 3 lines:
Give players the choice of going 100% uptime: I know I'm not alone in wanting to keep my wizard in Archon form day and night, so giving players the option of continuing to do this means Blizzard angers fewer people & simultaneously fixes the issues here.
Make non-100% uptime choices desirable: I'm not going to pretend I can make all the Archon rune choices equally attractive, but if the non-100% uptime ones are attractive enough, then we should see players using them, which will be a huge plus. I mean, how many players actually use Archon: Pure Power?
Nerf Critical Mass: I know, we all love this passive, but when you're rocking 40%+ crit chance and have abilities with decent proc rates, Archon form comes off cooldown ridiculously fast. This particular nerf is just targeted at the CM + Archon interaction though, and technically affects Archon form, not CM (so all you SNS wizards etc would be unaffected).
So, here we go. Note by the way that every rune builds on the baseline archon form unless it says otherwise (ie, they all have Arcane Blast on Key 1, 40% bonus armour / resistances, etc).
+ + +
Baseline Archon (L30)
Cost: 25 Arcane Power
Duration: 15 seconds
Cooldown: 120 seconds
Every kill by your character, your follower or a party member whilst you are in Archon form grants you an additional second in Archon form. This bonus cannot extend beyond the duration of Archon beyond 15 seconds (like Wrath of the Berserker).
The cooldown can never be reduced below 60 seconds (eg Critical Mass, Evocation).
Key 1: Arcane Blast (115% weapon damage AOE, does not interrupt actions)
The only new thing here is that the bonus duration works just like WotB's bonus duration.
Rune: Arcane Destruction (L36, same name as previously)
Designed for massive AOE damage.
Deals 1600% weapon damage to all enemies within 15 yards when you enter Archon form.
RMB: Chaos Wave (250% weapon damage beam, also deals 60% weapon damage to nearby enemies).
Key 2: Wave of Force: Impactful Wave
Key 3: Arcane Torrent: Death Blossom (channelled)
Basically you get the Chaos Nexus rune from Disintegrate, along with some nice utility with Wave of Force and of course the random AOE murder that is Arcane Torrent: Death Blossom. Whilst another Archon form will do 20% more single-target damage (250% vs 300% beam damage), none of the other Archon forms can win when it comes to exterminating huge numbers of enemies at once.
Rune: Fast Archon (L40, previously Archon: Teleport)
Designed for mobility & escape mechanisms.
Passive: Increases your movement speed by 25% whilst in Archon form.
Passive: Doubles the effectiveness of any pickup radius stats, including shrines.
Key 2: Teleport: Wormhole
For people who like to maximise their efficiency on lower MP levels (or escape from death in high MP levels!), this is for you. 24% movement speed from gear, Storm Armour: Scramble AND Fast Archon lets you race between packs. Not much more to say here really, so let's move on.
Rune: Heroic Archon (L46, previously Archon: Pure Power)
Designed for elites, ubers & bosses.
Cooldown: 90 secs
Duration: 30 secs
You gain an additional 2 seconds in Archon form whenever you reduce the health of an elite pack or boss by 1% of their maximum combined health. However, you no longer gain additional time in Archon form for killing enemies (for solo MP0 Uber Maghda, 1% = 32k health, for MP10 Maghda 1% = 1.1M health, and she's the uber boss with the lowest health).
Key 2: Diamond Skin: Crystal Shell.
As you can see, this version should scale very nicely with your DPS & MP - you need over 500k DPS to keep Archon up against Maghda full time on MP10 - and that's without considering any time she spends immune to your attacks. It works easiest if you can hit both ubers at once of course, whilst the reduced cooldown & increased duration means that if you choose to go Archon form for ubers etc, you'll actually spend a lot of time in Archon form rather than out of it. This should help make Archon a more competitive DPS choice when uber farming, and of course it should be trivially easy to adjust the "time per % HP damage done" to buff/nerf this rune.
Rune: Temporal Archon (L52, previously Archon: Slow Time)
Designed for CC, support & group play.
Passive: 10% increased attack speed for party members & followers on screen.
Key 2: Frost Nova: Bone Chill
Key 3: Slow Time: Time Warp
Whilst Archon is a great DPS choice, it rarely brings much in the way of utility to the table for groups. Temporal Archon is for those who want to bring more to their group play than simply melting faces. Your IAS aura plus Frost Nova & Slow Time will both provide some powerful utility, especially if you can stack both on the same pack of enemies.
Rune: Eternal Archon (L60, previously Archon: Improved Archon)
Designed for people who love permanent Archon form.
Duration: Until death or cancelled.
Cooldown: 180 seconds.
Passive: All damage increased by 25% in Archon form.
Passive: Remaining duration on all Armour, Familiar & Magic Weapon skills frozen whilst in Archon form (ie they never wear off).
+50% Armour (vs 40% baseline).
+50% Resistances (vs 40% baseline).
Who needs more than 3 buttons to push anyway? For those who love the classic always-up Archon, this is for you. Just don't die - because the cooldown is 3 minutes rather than 2.
+ + +
Probably the runes I'm least satisfied with are the Arcane Destruction & Fast Archon runes - the former because it's probably largely superfluous at high level, and the latter because it could be another always-up Archon form but with additional abilities available. Still, I'd be interested to see what people have to say about the principle behind changing Archon in this way.
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More seriously, why pick a skill that you can't control properly like that?
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The idea with Heroic Archon is to make it useful in boss & uber fights etc, as the actual in-game Archon form is pretty rubbish at them unless they've a lot of adds or you killed god only knows how many mobs just prior to the boss fight.
As for Heroic Archon vs Eternal Archon, the former also gets Diamond Skin, making it quite tanky (esp. if you have Heroic Archon + Critical Mass for short CDs on Diamond Skin).
Yeah, this is definitely a problem (and I speak as someone who likes 100% Archon uptime, unlike you). I wouldn't mind seeing a couple of popular different builds beyond CM/WW + Archon builds. However, that's a hell of a lot of work - I'm just trying to do something with Archon here.
+ + +
Finally, let's not forget that Archon is always going to be difficult to balance when you have so few ability slots. 15 secs + 120sec CD is... well rubbish for a game like D3 frankly, which is why I've tried to leave some of the vanilla "extended duration" stuff in the new Archon runes above. I suppose another option would be to do it along the lines of "Eternal Archon + OMGWTFBBQ-DPS-for-15-secs" runes, but that seems a poor way of "fixing" it IMHO (and open to abuse given the burst involved).
+ + +
Edit:
I do find it useful for its mini-knockback / interrupt, and when surrounded by lots of enemies sometimes. It's by no means useless, and I don't see any real issue with Archon being defined by its strawberry beam of doom TBH.
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0
That said, maybe there's a way we can please both sides of this issue; accordingly I've identified 3 key issues that need addressing:
- 100% uptime not being desirable from the devs' POV.
- 100% uptime being desirable from many players' POV.
- Lack of options as an Archon.
Part of the problem of course is that merely having a 15sec uptime (12.5%) on Archon is frankly pretty rubbish when it takes up a whole skill slot. Why have an ability that is so rarely used after all?Well, I hope I've got some solutions here for your consideration. They can be summed up in just 3 lines:
- Give players the choice of going 100% uptime: I know I'm not alone in wanting to keep my wizard in Archon form day and night, so giving players the option of continuing to do this means Blizzard angers fewer people & simultaneously fixes the issues here.
- Make non-100% uptime choices desirable: I'm not going to pretend I can make all the Archon rune choices equally attractive, but if the non-100% uptime ones are attractive enough, then we should see players using them, which will be a huge plus. I mean, how many players actually use Archon: Pure Power?
- Nerf Critical Mass: I know, we all love this passive, but when you're rocking 40%+ crit chance and have abilities with decent proc rates, Archon form comes off cooldown ridiculously fast. This particular nerf is just targeted at the CM + Archon interaction though, and technically affects Archon form, not CM (so all you SNS wizards etc would be unaffected).
So, here we go. Note by the way that every rune builds on the baseline archon form unless it says otherwise (ie, they all have Arcane Blast on Key 1, 40% bonus armour / resistances, etc).+ + +
Baseline Archon (L30)
- Cost: 25 Arcane Power
- Duration: 15 seconds
- Cooldown: 120 seconds
- Every kill by your character, your follower or a party member whilst you are in Archon form grants you an additional second in Archon form. This bonus cannot extend beyond the duration of Archon beyond 15 seconds (like Wrath of the Berserker).
- The cooldown can never be reduced below 60 seconds (eg Critical Mass, Evocation).
- +40% Armour.
- +40% Resistances.
- LMB: Arcane Strike (250% weapon damage melee AOE)
- RMB: Disintegration Wave (300% weapon damage beam)
- Key 1: Arcane Blast (115% weapon damage AOE, does not interrupt actions)
The only new thing here is that the bonus duration works just like WotB's bonus duration.Rune: Arcane Destruction (L36, same name as previously)
Designed for massive AOE damage.
- Deals 1600% weapon damage to all enemies within 15 yards when you enter Archon form.
- RMB: Chaos Wave (250% weapon damage beam, also deals 60% weapon damage to nearby enemies).
- Key 2: Wave of Force: Impactful Wave
- Key 3: Arcane Torrent: Death Blossom (channelled)
Basically you get the Chaos Nexus rune from Disintegrate, along with some nice utility with Wave of Force and of course the random AOE murder that is Arcane Torrent: Death Blossom. Whilst another Archon form will do 20% more single-target damage (250% vs 300% beam damage), none of the other Archon forms can win when it comes to exterminating huge numbers of enemies at once.Rune: Fast Archon (L40, previously Archon: Teleport)
Designed for mobility & escape mechanisms.
- Passive: Increases your movement speed by 25% whilst in Archon form.
- Passive: Doubles the effectiveness of any pickup radius stats, including shrines.
- Key 2: Teleport: Wormhole
For people who like to maximise their efficiency on lower MP levels (or escape from death in high MP levels!), this is for you. 24% movement speed from gear, Storm Armour: Scramble AND Fast Archon lets you race between packs. Not much more to say here really, so let's move on.Rune: Heroic Archon (L46, previously Archon: Pure Power)
Designed for elites, ubers & bosses.
- Cooldown: 90 secs
- Duration: 30 secs
- You gain an additional 2 seconds in Archon form whenever you reduce the health of an elite pack or boss by 1% of their maximum combined health. However, you no longer gain additional time in Archon form for killing enemies (for solo MP0 Uber Maghda, 1% = 32k health, for MP10 Maghda 1% = 1.1M health, and she's the uber boss with the lowest health).
- Key 2: Diamond Skin: Crystal Shell.
As you can see, this version should scale very nicely with your DPS & MP - you need over 500k DPS to keep Archon up against Maghda full time on MP10 - and that's without considering any time she spends immune to your attacks. It works easiest if you can hit both ubers at once of course, whilst the reduced cooldown & increased duration means that if you choose to go Archon form for ubers etc, you'll actually spend a lot of time in Archon form rather than out of it. This should help make Archon a more competitive DPS choice when uber farming, and of course it should be trivially easy to adjust the "time per % HP damage done" to buff/nerf this rune.Rune: Temporal Archon (L52, previously Archon: Slow Time)
Designed for CC, support & group play.
- Passive: 10% increased attack speed for party members & followers on screen.
- Key 2: Frost Nova: Bone Chill
- Key 3: Slow Time: Time Warp
Whilst Archon is a great DPS choice, it rarely brings much in the way of utility to the table for groups. Temporal Archon is for those who want to bring more to their group play than simply melting faces. Your IAS aura plus Frost Nova & Slow Time will both provide some powerful utility, especially if you can stack both on the same pack of enemies.Rune: Eternal Archon (L60, previously Archon: Improved Archon)
Designed for people who love permanent Archon form.
- Duration: Until death or cancelled.
- Cooldown: 180 seconds.
- Passive: All damage increased by 25% in Archon form.
- Passive: Remaining duration on all Armour, Familiar & Magic Weapon skills frozen whilst in Archon form (ie they never wear off).
- +50% Armour (vs 40% baseline).
- +50% Resistances (vs 40% baseline).
Who needs more than 3 buttons to push anyway? For those who love the classic always-up Archon, this is for you. Just don't die - because the cooldown is 3 minutes rather than 2.+ + +
Probably the runes I'm least satisfied with are the Arcane Destruction & Fast Archon runes - the former because it's probably largely superfluous at high level, and the latter because it could be another always-up Archon form but with additional abilities available. Still, I'd be interested to see what people have to say about the principle behind changing Archon in this way.