[Fern]

To keep my thoughts concise, I believe one of the biggest contributing factors is that nearly no lightning-resist itemization exists, and Splash exists.

Every other element usually has some combination of boots, gloves, accessory, or torso pieces to get (up to) 30% resistance.  Lightning has Raijin and a shield, both of which cannot be used by most setups, and a half-effectiveness torso in Cloak of Many Colors.  Splash mitigates the latter entirely, as does Indignant Idol.

Indignant Idol is its own can of worms with regard to effectiveness, but I would recommend first adding a pair of 10-30% lightning resist boots, and a 10-30% lightning resist accessory.  If this proves insufficient, I would limit Splash or Idol's ability to throw people into negatives in some manner before biting at the heels of an invocation.

This pretty much sums up my main thoughts on the matter. The setup is strong, yes, but it's not absolutely strong to the point it's standard arena PVP fare (at least from what I've seen lurking there.) This combination has existed for a few years already, but back in the day it wasn't as feasible as it is now thanks to Silence being more common (though, now Silence is pretty much a rarity, specially when the few accessible sources tend to be shut down by most mages packing a Heron Feather.)
 
It's only stronger now because of Silence being a rarity and Indignant Idol's existence as a meta mage hand slot with little to no drawback. If there were more resistance items dedicated to giving lightning resistance, then there wouldn't be any need to nerf hammer a bunch of things that while fearsome when combined- are still used individually by other setups that aren't trying to maximize lightning cheese.
 
It's better to add lightning resistance items, so that not only there's more equipment to play with, but future lightning stuff gets future-proofed by it existing as a sort of collateral effect, instead of killing a set of skills and throwing several setups unrelated to the Mist+Splash+Idol+Custom Spell build into the gutter.

[FatherCrixius]

Lightning mage builds are forced into a tight stat-spread due to the nature of lightning crits, with luminary not being a viable option.

Mages run eva builds all the time, but due to the nature of autohits, they don't need all that much skill unless they want super high inflict. Due to the way lightning crits use your unmodded-crit however, you REALLY need to stack skill to high levels to reach reasonable crit since weapons are a non-factor. Lowering the lightning crit rate is not the way imo as it's already hard to build without seriously gutting stats. The rng nature of basic-hit crits/hit are already a problem discussed in the past, so I feel like lowering the odds will just cause people to use lightning without the crit skills at all.

Lightning crits, maybe, seeing as neither DH nor ST has natural crit roids. Lightning as a whole, no. Mages have a natural stat efficiency from scaling off of solely one stat, and outclass most other builds. Even if their damage did not get completely blown out of the water by dynamic tomes, cough, they're still in a setup heavy position that can't really be killed before they kill you. This setup on a tankier class, such as the initial reference, offers very little in the ways of counterplaying; Simply because you're being asked to trade hits against a bruiser with a very clear damage amp advantage, leading to other mages  even having issues fighting this gimmick.

Evasion / Crit focused builds like this also have an innate advantage against their counterplay, gaining 50 - 60 evade along with team wide regen, which is a kind of evadestacking you don't really have much to counter- All hitbuffs paling in comparison. Critical hits at this stage are just icing, the bulk of damage still coming from the tome, but a good off-tome flurry with bonus damage on each crit. 

2. Idol is one of the largest factors I feel that tip the scales juuuuust a bit over the top, 

and I feel that this goes for all mages and not just lightning. Even with mist and splash up, my dh/soldier impact skills fail to hit weakness procs on a lot of people since having 21+ lightning res will stop you from hitting -25% (Which is very easy on most builds even without dedicated res items).  Idol makes this benchmark 31+ however, which is much harder without the dedicated res items. I've discussed idol being an issue in-game a lot as being one of the biggest reasons for the current mage meta. Idol turns the resist threshold to 35%, which makes it hard to hard-counter more than 1-2 mage elements, while not having any real drawback (Light res penalty is pretty much ignored and irrelevant most of the time).

It's more that, and this is not the point of the thread mind you, mages are in a better spot than melee. Indignant idol is an item a good 50%~ or so of mages utilise at this point for both the damage amplification and hotswapping of gear. If a lightning mage completely outclasses another mage, which it is prone to doing, then the relative strength of Idol when both parties are likely to use it won't  really change the state of the matchup. Yes, it is oppressive, but I don't see players being too keen on losing theirs because another gimmick does it better, as to why it isn't likely to be nerfed. It is not the only reason for mage meta, and I prefer fighting it over alternative BIS equipment.

3. The setup is not completely free, or un-counterable.

This is correct. It is a monstrous amount of setup akin to death knighting builds that will leave you prone to good rushdown builds. The issue in that is the current meta does not favour diving into enemy teams or players dying quickly. Everybody is a tank, and tanks do not die to a turn 0 jump. Your specific build running cobra (Iirc?) while not making you inherently tanky, does function as a front facing DR that most players will not have the ability to trade meaningfully with during your setup. 

While I do think that lightning resist debuffs can get overbearing at points, I believe this to be the fault of the three evils combined rather than anything else, I would much rather resistance shreds apply the highest one available rather than all of them.

This. Stacking them additively skews damages for lightning, even if other elements would suffer in the process, shapeshifter offers a more modest 15% on basic hit condition, 3 momentum upfront and a low duration. Lightning simply has an abundance of damage amp and minimal itemization against it. That's not to say changing this would make lightning mages by any means weak, but it would give other strong setups more of a fighting chance than they have now.

It's been a thing for a while now...A year or two (I know this because I abused it long before custom tomes and the lightning changes). It only got more notice due to lightning crit changes since people won't need to build GUI anymore and Idol being added. Soak itself, isn't exactly the problem since it's quite easy to lose that status and replace it with another, or even screw over your teammate if they use fire, it's single target, has a CD, (Longer if you're an ST). The problem is the idol and Mercalan Mist. Those two alone can push someone over -40% lightning resistance.
--

I can understand why it's seen as the best element now but completely murdering things over salt ain't a good thing, friend. What I would say is Mist should lose the 25/30% weakness against non-monsters (sure why not) or have the weakness tied to faith/light stats similar to its regeneration portion.

That's what's unusual. It's an older build, but I figured most people would simply let it be, as in order to get good use out of it you need to be breaking IC taboo. Splash is blatantly strong for just being a free damage amp to a one element gimmick, but yeah, the CD and interactions with other elements in team fights is what stops it from being bullshit tiers of worth.

the gist is, crit element makes my pp soft, make darkness great again

you spittin rn


that's all ig, its not a very important thread because i've only ever seen like three people run this shit.

[Snake]

Sooo... In the end you bunch are saying that debuffing someone of 50% of their Lightning resistance for 5 rounds is alright just because it takes an invocation round 0?

What kind of backwards logic is this? How is it the Idol's fault when it is basically the "Splash" example I've given? The only thing that helps other elements to do a little more, at the very least in PvE?

I'm honestly confused. And well if we're taking this approach can I get an invocation that decreases Blunt resistance by 25% then a 1M spell that "is single target and has cooldown" which reduces Blunt resistance by 15% and hand slots that reduce Blunt resistance for an extra 10% (20% in PvE) so I can also play a Boxer and live the power fantasy of always defeating you because all of what's listed above is fair and balanced?

Trust me, it's what I got from reading everything here.

And y'all don't even need to worry. We got items that give Blunt resistance, remember? Padded Cloak... Eltryas... Leather...

Sarcasm aside. Either shoot down Mercalan Mist to a PvE gimmick and make Splash a build up, or make Weakness not stack or at the very least stack multiplicatively/have some form of harsh diminishing returns tied to it for when it "unnaturally" (read: stacking) goes above 15%.

[Autumn]

To note mostly, the invocation is not the sole issue here, its available to two classes, one of which not even having good lightning synergy, lets not forget that Splash + Idol is already -25% resistance, its when you combine all 3 that you hit the mega spike.

The mega spike being -25% resistance, once you start hitting weakness procs your damage scales not only by more than 25% but also your actions scale by roughly 33%, this is a huge spike in damage and is the reason why people run so many shreds, its not like Intensify cold however where you can only select one target, Idol + Mist makes everyone your target, and splash has such an inconsequential cost to it that you may as well throw it on as well.

As mentioned before, a full turn of an invocation should not be the issue, if a spirited mercalan mist gives you -30% lightning resistance, but idol and splash stop shredding off resistance past that, all it takes is a meager 6% lightning resist, the equivalent of:
-Baseline APT + 1 Rubber/conduiz random 5% resist
-36 SAN
-Random CoMC or Sayakana

To make you immune to getting lightning combo'd

Addendum:
I believe that Idol does not need to be nerfed in any way other than giving it a much much larger drawback, 10% light resistance as a penalty doesn't do a whole lot, but a whole ass -30% light resistance penalty might make mages reconsider its massive boon vs its drawback.

[Snake]

I could rant on and on about this and that but I feel like I'd better just brush up my newfound opinions after reading everything and thinking a little bit, and then leave it for Dev's choice. Now that I've seen it's all because of the three big bads, I can probably tackle them instead of lightning itself.

Anyway:

- Mercalan Mist
>> Lightning weakness is changed to Light weakness. (This way it plays more in favor with Priest than a lightning Spellthief, and solves 1/3 of the problems listed in the op. And we kind of lack ways to inflict Light weakness anyway.)

- Soaked
>> LV starts at 5 and scales from Water damage taken. (10% of Water damage taken or 5, whichever is higher. Max LV is 15)
>> Fire damage creates a Smokescreen (LV = Soaked's LV * 5) in a diamond shape in 1 range, and removes Soaked.
>> Lightning damage chains one more time if LV is 10 or more.
>> Earth damage makes the enemy slip (knocks down) immediately, if LV is 10 or more.
>> Ice damage inflicts Frozen (LV = Soaked LV * 5) instead of Immobilize, if LV is 15 or more.

- Indignant Idol
>> -15% Light, Slash, Pierce and Blunt resistance on the user.

[Miller]

I'm going to chime in here and say that I personally think Kam is right.

Right now our only sources of lightning resistance on items are
Raijin (10%) (Weapon)
Conduiz (5%) (Metal Material)
Sunderthread (5%) (Cloth Material)
Rubber(5%) (Cloth Material)
Insulated Hilt(5%) (Hilt Weapon Slot)
Beldam Aegis (30%) (Hand)
Cloak of Many Colors (8%-15%) (Torso)

There's a distinct lack of accessories and foot torso to build elemental resistance against said element, compared to other elements which have both a leg equipment and accessory that provides up to 30% in said resistance. (Looking at you Earth/Water/Dark)


I do also think that splash is partially the reason why lightning set ups are so powerful in a vacuum, it applies a debuff for 1m which can easily make up your momentum deficient the moment you hit a weakness.


Overall my thoughts are
1) Add an accessory and/or legging that provides up to 30% lightning resist. (Rubber Boots for leg or Lightning Rod for accessory)
2) Change Idol so it can't bring your base elemental resistance below 0% in PVP and lower the effectiveness of Soaked slightly in regards to Lightning Weakness.
3) Lightning Magic is meant to have powerful burst damage in my opinion, if there were to be any changes to Lightning Crits themselves; it should be a tax more so towards mages than builds utilizing swift elemental impacts. Mages have easy access to Redgull which is a powerful buff on its own for increasing L.Crit damage.

[K Peculier]

I'm going to chime in here and say that I personally think Kam is right.

Right now our only sources of lightning resistance on items are
Raijin (10%) (Weapon)
Conduiz (5%) (Metal Material)
Sunderthread (5%) (Cloth Material)
Rubber(5%) (Cloth Material)
Insulated Hilt(5%) (Hilt Weapon Slot)
Beldam Aegis (30%) (Hand)
Cloak of Many Colors (8%-15%) (Torso)

There's a distinct lack of accessories and foot torso to build elemental resistance against said element, compared to other elements which have both a leg equipment and accessory that provides up to 30% in said resistance. (Looking at you Earth/Water/Dark)


I do also think that splash is partially the reason why lightning set ups are so powerful in a vacuum, it applies a debuff for 1m which can easily make up your momentum deficient the moment you hit a weakness.


Overall my thoughts are
1) Add an accessory and/or legging that provides up to 30% lightning resist. (Rubber Boots for leg or Lightning Rod for accessory)
2) Change Idol so it can't bring your base elemental resistance below 0% in PVP and lower the effectiveness of Soaked slightly in regards to Lightning Weakness.
3) Lightning Magic is meant to have powerful burst damage in my opinion, if there were to be any changes to Lightning Crits themselves; it should be a tax more so towards mages than builds utilizing swift elemental impacts. Mages have easy access to Redgull which is a powerful buff on its own for increasing L.Crit damage.

I feel like since the dawn of time of all balance arguments in this forum involving an element the most common argument to go against nerfing something clearly overtuned was "jusT bUilD ReSisTancE". Big agree with Kam.

Unfortunately for lightning its very limited compared to other elements and we really do need items that can adhere to that argument. The idol is also a bit too good with barely any drawback. Since its primarily used by mages I wouldn't mind it giving you more weaknesses to physical damage.

I mean just look at the ring of thorns + with how much drawbacks it has compared to the INSANE value the idol gives in comparison.

[Neus]

I think that they could stand to be reduced a bit given the presence of more elemental resistance piercing effects, so I'll change Soaked to -10% Lightning Resistance, and Mist to -3% Lightning Resistance per Rank.

[Snake]

Bless!

[EenKogNeeto]

I am not nearly awake enough to read through every post here, but I will agree that stacking Soaked + Mist + Idol and so on is completely unhealthy to the game. I am the only person I have seen survive the Indignant Idol meta and win and that's only because I was already prepared for both 55% Water res and 60% Lightning res at the same time, meaning I counter the two most common ways to abuse the stacked elemental res reductions at the moment.

I will however say that Splash in and of itself isnt the issue, I would place the blame much more squarely on Mercalan Mist, It simply does what it was intended to do way better than people previously realized. - Ide suggest making it only apply to skills given by Curate and its promoted classes. People will still be able to make lightning gods, but not busing custom tomes or Mage stuff with it.

Indignant Idol probably could use a slightly larger drawback too, I'm seeing it get a LOT of mileage in the arena lately.