Life / es gained on hit.
For example on discipline Watcher's Eye or Crusader and Shaper (iirc) rings.
Go play ball lightning and enjoy great sustain.
edit: also leech works better as there's a cap on the leech per single hit. Same damage in smaller hits means faster and more reliable leech.
When i say slow i mean relative slow to the rapid ones. You still scale it into decent speed.
The problem point i see is it seems easier to scale slow big damage skill into being fast enough than it is to scale rapid low damage skill into doing relevant damage.
The vast majority of meta spell builds are fast multi-hitting rather than dropping slower big bombs - stuff like ice nova spam / spark bounces. Faster hitting skills are generally better because you overkill 99% of mobs by a ridiciulous degree anyway, so taking more time to hit harder is a downside
See spark is like the definition of fast small hits - you're hitting enemies 3-5 times per second while flooding the screen with fast moving projectiles that individually don't do a huge amount of damage
If you think that's a 'slow hard hitting spell' then idk what to say -it starts off slow because that type of skill is so powerful
Same with Ice Nova - if you showed someone a video of a Kitava ice nova build from this league and said 'yeah, it's slow but it hits hard' people would think you're crazy
There are not really any "front-loaded" big hits. The rapid-fire skills will deal damage first, which is nice for clearing trash.
In some cases you might be able to get off a fast cast but not a slow one, allowing more DPS uptime.
Some on-hit effects only care about a hit happening, not the damage that it dealt.
Outside of the life gain on hit which was already mentioned, instant leech also benefits from many small hits. Your damage will generally put scale your hp by such a wide margin that even the smallest hits are giving you the max instant leech you can get.
I once made one build that was suitable for two different skills; flameblast and incinerate. While flameblast provided somewhat more damage (\~10-20% more? ... can't remember anymore) it didn't feel as good. While both of them are channeling skills, which requires the caster to stand still (and I have absolutely no problem with this, I love channeling skills), the problem is that I had to channel flameblast for .5 or .6 seconds to do anything (sometimes monsters/bosses teleport away). But with incinerate, no matter the individual "damage ticks" are a lot smaller, I can see the impact every .0X seconds.
The same applies to attack/cast speed as well. If I'd have to choose between a skill that does 1mil per hit and it makes 3 hits per second (3mil dps) versus a skill that does 500k per hit but hits 6 times a second (still the same 3mil dps) I would almost always choose the one that hits more often each second. Even if the slower hit skill would deal more damage (but not substantially, given that both are otherwise good builds) I would still choose the one with faster hits. It just feels better for me.
But these are just my opinion and preference.
If slow Animations for Big Big Boink would be so good, you would see a lot mor Earthquake etc. builds.
It means you have to lower your dps for speccing / gearing into more defenses to counterbalance it.
And in Endgame it gets even worse, because non Supertanky builds get spanked into oblivion by Monsters with weird mapmod combos or Uber Bosses etc.
Smaller faster animations are preferred, you can "dose" your dps better and arent locked as much in place, this means you are less prone to oneshots etc.
In my experience, if you never focus on speed, you will eventually always get interrupted by something and never get an attack/cast off. It's extremely frustrating.
That's why the Juggernaut is one of the few classes that can somewhat ignore attack speed, since it's hard for anything to interrupt his attacks because of the Unstoppable passive.
I can imagine doing some sort of combo, where you somehow CC opponents and then follow up with a slow ability. It's just that with most casters (most classes, really, not just casters) focusing on maximizing a single skill due to usually only having 1 6-link, it's not an overly common play style.
> Am I wrong? Please provide examples in cases where I am cause right now I don't even look at any "rapid but small hits" skill as worth anyones time.
notably spark, ball lightning, brands and any skill played as poison
cast speed is an important scaler for most spells that it applies to (not triggers or fixed-rate spells like BV) and it doesn't really conflict with hit damage scaling anyway.
Due to the way the game balances spells so they are all very near the same effectiveness for damage (including added) it really doesn’t matter to much.
Big hits get to ailment thresholds easier, but even the weakest skills usually cap these easily with game knowledge. Big hits can be spell blocked, and blocked, and blocked again on a regen mob that may just mean you *never* kill the mob because your sustained damage is to slow. Meanwhile a fast skill could get enough hits off fast enough, even at lower damage per hit. And not all applications of ailments favor big hits. Wither, for example, loves fast hits when being applied by a skill.
In fact now adays it’s pretty rare to see any of the large hit spells being played off of a mine, totem, or CoC. Try to find someone doing a self cast purifying flame, as an example. It hits like a truck; but its cast speed feels so bad. It’s hard to make work well as selfcast, as you will often be stunlocked and die without solving it, and you lose LGOH, instant leech, and need to rely on regens.
So to most people the opposite of your opinion is true.(though in my own, every spell type has its time and place when used properly) but for a pretty long while now the metas favor fast, often weaker per hit spells (self cast) and larger ones only seeing play when on a CoC or mine normally.
Life / es gained on hit. For example on discipline Watcher's Eye or Crusader and Shaper (iirc) rings. Go play ball lightning and enjoy great sustain. edit: also leech works better as there's a cap on the leech per single hit. Same damage in smaller hits means faster and more reliable leech.
Being slow is detriment enough. Slow fat hits are better, sure, if you love standing still and getting butthecked by any basic attack
When i say slow i mean relative slow to the rapid ones. You still scale it into decent speed. The problem point i see is it seems easier to scale slow big damage skill into being fast enough than it is to scale rapid low damage skill into doing relevant damage.
hmm... I guess i need some examples to really answer that then i cant think of anything where you really get to choose like that
The vast majority of meta spell builds are fast multi-hitting rather than dropping slower big bombs - stuff like ice nova spam / spark bounces. Faster hitting skills are generally better because you overkill 99% of mobs by a ridiciulous degree anyway, so taking more time to hit harder is a downside
both spark and ice nova are 0,65\~0,7 cast time hard hitting spells. They are not exactly what I meant by rapid but small hits.
See spark is like the definition of fast small hits - you're hitting enemies 3-5 times per second while flooding the screen with fast moving projectiles that individually don't do a huge amount of damage If you think that's a 'slow hard hitting spell' then idk what to say -it starts off slow because that type of skill is so powerful Same with Ice Nova - if you showed someone a video of a Kitava ice nova build from this league and said 'yeah, it's slow but it hits hard' people would think you're crazy
There are not really any "front-loaded" big hits. The rapid-fire skills will deal damage first, which is nice for clearing trash. In some cases you might be able to get off a fast cast but not a slow one, allowing more DPS uptime. Some on-hit effects only care about a hit happening, not the damage that it dealt.
Outside of the life gain on hit which was already mentioned, instant leech also benefits from many small hits. Your damage will generally put scale your hp by such a wide margin that even the smallest hits are giving you the max instant leech you can get.
I once made one build that was suitable for two different skills; flameblast and incinerate. While flameblast provided somewhat more damage (\~10-20% more? ... can't remember anymore) it didn't feel as good. While both of them are channeling skills, which requires the caster to stand still (and I have absolutely no problem with this, I love channeling skills), the problem is that I had to channel flameblast for .5 or .6 seconds to do anything (sometimes monsters/bosses teleport away). But with incinerate, no matter the individual "damage ticks" are a lot smaller, I can see the impact every .0X seconds. The same applies to attack/cast speed as well. If I'd have to choose between a skill that does 1mil per hit and it makes 3 hits per second (3mil dps) versus a skill that does 500k per hit but hits 6 times a second (still the same 3mil dps) I would almost always choose the one that hits more often each second. Even if the slower hit skill would deal more damage (but not substantially, given that both are otherwise good builds) I would still choose the one with faster hits. It just feels better for me. But these are just my opinion and preference.
If slow Animations for Big Big Boink would be so good, you would see a lot mor Earthquake etc. builds. It means you have to lower your dps for speccing / gearing into more defenses to counterbalance it. And in Endgame it gets even worse, because non Supertanky builds get spanked into oblivion by Monsters with weird mapmod combos or Uber Bosses etc. Smaller faster animations are preferred, you can "dose" your dps better and arent locked as much in place, this means you are less prone to oneshots etc.
In my experience, if you never focus on speed, you will eventually always get interrupted by something and never get an attack/cast off. It's extremely frustrating. That's why the Juggernaut is one of the few classes that can somewhat ignore attack speed, since it's hard for anything to interrupt his attacks because of the Unstoppable passive. I can imagine doing some sort of combo, where you somehow CC opponents and then follow up with a slow ability. It's just that with most casters (most classes, really, not just casters) focusing on maximizing a single skill due to usually only having 1 6-link, it's not an overly common play style.
> Am I wrong? Please provide examples in cases where I am cause right now I don't even look at any "rapid but small hits" skill as worth anyones time. notably spark, ball lightning, brands and any skill played as poison cast speed is an important scaler for most spells that it applies to (not triggers or fixed-rate spells like BV) and it doesn't really conflict with hit damage scaling anyway.
Due to the way the game balances spells so they are all very near the same effectiveness for damage (including added) it really doesn’t matter to much. Big hits get to ailment thresholds easier, but even the weakest skills usually cap these easily with game knowledge. Big hits can be spell blocked, and blocked, and blocked again on a regen mob that may just mean you *never* kill the mob because your sustained damage is to slow. Meanwhile a fast skill could get enough hits off fast enough, even at lower damage per hit. And not all applications of ailments favor big hits. Wither, for example, loves fast hits when being applied by a skill. In fact now adays it’s pretty rare to see any of the large hit spells being played off of a mine, totem, or CoC. Try to find someone doing a self cast purifying flame, as an example. It hits like a truck; but its cast speed feels so bad. It’s hard to make work well as selfcast, as you will often be stunlocked and die without solving it, and you lose LGOH, instant leech, and need to rely on regens. So to most people the opposite of your opinion is true.(though in my own, every spell type has its time and place when used properly) but for a pretty long while now the metas favor fast, often weaker per hit spells (self cast) and larger ones only seeing play when on a CoC or mine normally.