GGG has indicated majority of spell skills will be reworked, part of which is involved in the reform of mechanism. The first skill rework is Storm Burst.

 

Let's take a look at the official explanation of this.

While you channel Storm Burst, orbs of lightning are created around your target. While you channel, they jump towards your target and release bursts of damage. By moving where you target while you channel, you can direct them to enemies to create a swarm of electric death.

They'll last for a few seconds, but if you stop channelling then the orbs will detonate immediately in a large area, dealing a portion of their remaining damage. This lets short casts deal damage quickly in a sizeable area, while long casts have higher overall damage as more orbs are created and deal their damage over their full duration. 

The skill is no longer projectile based, removing the requirement of additional projectiles supports. Instead the skill will focus on being an area and duration skill. It now deals Physical damage with half converted to Lightning, to fit with its new divine aesthetic. Because of these changes the skill now benefits from some changes to the Elemental passives near the Templar that now benefit spells that convert Physical to Fire or Lightning damage.

 

Pre League Review

In the previous league, we tried the build based on Storm Burst. The original idea was that the "ball" guided by this skill can be gathered by the projectile after decelerating, and then a large explosion occurred after the release, causing a large range of damage. However, this did not work. Storm Burst has been flying forward, then explode one by one in order after releasing. The damage of the "ball" in the earliest version is very small, causing 250more range damage when you release. Storm Burs'damage number in the panel is just over 1 thousand when the character reaches level 90, and the spell power is only 10%!

There is an update in version3.3, but only damage number is changed, causing more ball damage, reducing the explosion damage after releasing . And the spell efficiency has increased to 40%, but this one -by-one explosion mechanism still makes Storm Burst very stupid. The ball can only fly in the direction of its heading,which will fall in the embarrassment that the rapid ball has no enough damage on monsters, but the slow ball cannot chase the monsters. The speed of the projectile seriously affects the operational experience. The rapid "ball" makes the spacing too large, resulting in no overlap of damage in the releasing hand range. Moreover the electric spells need to use a large number of extra bombs (Herald of Ice, Inpulsa's Broken Heart, Occultist) to improve the speed of clearing the map. So its clearing ability is very low.

 

What we can find in Synthesis ?

The skill's overall mechanism is still to guide the casting, resulting in damage caused by the ball, and the ball will explode after releasing, causing ranged overlapping damage

But the content has completely changed:

  • The position of the ball when is guided now appears near the target to which your mouse is pointing, and jumps to the target position to cause damage. (Directly leading to the immediate change of Storm Burst's mechanism)
  • The ball will last for a while after jump, so long-term guidance will cause more balls to cause repeated damage to a target (multiple strikes)
  • When you release your hand, the remaining ball on the field is detonated, and result overlap damage in the range (range + multiple damage)
  • Now Storm Burst is a physical to electric spell
  • Its current special effects are no longer white lightning effects, but become a sacred style

Therefore, short-term guidance can make quick range damage to achieve fast killing, and can increase the extent of the explosion and speed of clearing maps by more range and larger boom. The long-term guidance can make more balls in the field repeatedly cause damage and form a larger range of overlap damage , making a strong strike on the single-target.

And now it's a physical based skill with a 50% conversion of the physical to flash. This point is very important.

In total Its speed and damage must be much stronger than the current version 3.5. First, its repeated hit and the very accurate overlap stack damage are deserve to praise, which result in that with a good mechanism, a physical to electric skill come into being. It’s well known as long as It is a physical transformation, you can gain, gain, gain, to superimpose a lot of chaos damage through gain.

 

Other Changes

Physical to fire and physical to electric talent has been added into the Guardian’s talent. (Same as the Ranger’s physical to ice talent initially).

So, the low blood Occultist will also be a very good character. High viability and natural bombing give this skill a great improvement.

Elementalist will still have a beautiful effect, and under the influence of the speed, the oversized range bombardment effect will be horrible.

The gentle power of the Ascendancy with combination of supernatural jewel is still a good character for professional players.

Of course, the above various speculations are only based on the current version, but also need to be combined with 3.6 new content to further consider. We need to wait for specific data and efficiency to analyze.

What do you think?