[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.
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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.