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Volcanic Enchantment
#1
"When you land a critical hit, 50% chance to erupt fireballs at all enemies within 5 Range of you, dealing unresistable Fire damage equal to this weapon's Power." 

This is the current weapon effect for the Volcanic enchantment.  I have a few things to say about it, since it's not really all that good.

It's an on-crit effect; so it's something that's meant for a basic attacker to use.  The effect, however, scales off base power, which a basic attacker can't effectively build for, due to needing to select high crit or accuracy weapon parts and materials in order to have any sort of reliability.  This means the damage usually ends up pretty lackluster.  The fact it's an AoE is the only saving grave about that.

But, like.  It's not even an on crit effect.  It's a fifty percent chance on crit.  So it's not even reliable.  For damage so weak, having it only come 'sometimes' isn't really acceptable.

But it is still an AoE effect, right?  So ranged characters can use it as a little bit of extra bonus damage....

...Except, the fire damage radiates out from the attacker.  NOT from the target.  So it's really kinda inconvenient to hit things with this unless you're a melee oriented basic attacker.  Which, I can kinda like the theme of that, but let's compare it to two other popular basic hit enchantments.

Vorpal:  Gives +10 crit chance, which makes crit combos much more reliable.  Gives a 10% chance on crit to completely ignore physical defense.
^So, this is really nice.  It just gives a good constant battle flow with that passive crit chance boost, and while the chance to apply a vorpal strike is a lot lower, the damage you can get out of a vorpal strike tends to be way more impactful than the fire damage you get out of volcanic- it can turn around fights in an instant.  Doesn't always prove the best, but still a very nice pick.

Rampaging:  A change in the other direction, this one is really easily compared to Volcanic.  They both scale off weapon power, not SWA or anything else, and they both proc on hit- except volcanic also requires a crit, while rampaging only requires you to hit the opponent.  Rampaging shreds a quarter of the weapon's power in phys def off of an opponent as a debuff, and stacks with itself once for half the weapon's power.  This is, gotta be real, way more impactful than volcanic most of the time.  A weapon with thirty base power occasionally doing 30 damage to 'some' foes, some of the time, if you crit is less consistent and effective than just 'on each hit, shred defense'.  The secondary effect even has utility in team fights, since it allows for prioritizing and deleting a target in record time with the Rampaging effect weakening everyone.  


That's pretty much all.  I think volcanic should do at least one of two things:

>Change the on-crit chance to be 100%.  Fire AoE ALWAYS procs.

>add some sort of passive effect stat.  Samples:
>>+1/2 UL Fire Attack.
>>1/2 UL Fire Damage on hit.
>>Frozen status immunity on bearer.

AND a clause should be changed.

>"...At all enemies within 5 range of the target."

To make it so that ranged weapons cooperate better with this.  Unless it's deliberately meant for melee weapons.

A more thorough rework of the effect'd be cool too.

That's my thoughts on Volcanic.  I'd like to see it change sooner rather than later.

As a postscript:
I do want to note one case in the past that Volcanic showed mettle.  Lead Storm with multishot weapons used to allow you to basic attack many enemies at once in PvE, and proc this AoE fire damage against all foes many, many times, making for fast grinding.  This has been patched out as of Lead Storm's gutting.  Multishot weapons might arguably still be effective with this, and if that's deemed to egregious, I'd be in support of simply making volcanic enchantment procs have a maximum of three from a given weapon in a turn.  This would nip that 'issue' in the bud, if these changes go through.
[-] The following 1 user Likes Maksimum_Fire's post:
  • Miller
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#2
If it is changed to be better I'd probably suggest the attack be made to only trigger once per unique attack instance (similar to Roaring Falcon), as multi-shot guns can abuse them further.
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#3
I'm fine with Volcanic being guaranteed on crit; it's a heavily underused enchant that rarely sees use outside of Volcanic Quickdraws which do an absurd amount of damage against any targets without a substantial amount of critical evade. That said, I don't think it's a good idea to give the average Quickdraw user around 96 ~ 112 unresistable damage per volley in an AoE around the target (assuming Dragon Remains and all crit + the change to the clause goes through); so having it proc a maximum of 3 times (48 damage on a DR quickdraw) per attack instance should be fine.

As for passives so this enchant can be more appealing to use outside of a gimmick, I don't think any of the current samples are a good idea. Fire ATK would just make the enchant more suited for mages that specifically want to ramp their Fire ATK up to a significant degree for Dynamic Tomes and fire magic in general. My personal suggestion is to give it a crit boost much like Vorpal but to a lesser degree to help the consistency of the enchant, +5 crit should be fine if this would be the case.

Volcanic is a neat enchant and I'd like to see it become more usable rather than something exclusive to multi-round weapons.
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#4
@spo, at the end of my commentary I mentioned a solution of only three procs per turn, max- which would curb any sort of nonsense with multishot weapons people might be worried about.  Multishot weapons also tend to have relatively low base power(notably quickdraw, especially) and as such wouldn't come out that overwhelming, I think.  Once per attack instance is also fine, it makes it not really a useful enchant for multshots due to aforementioned low base power...  But it would make it still flow nicely with melee and ranged weapons of other types.

In general, though, I'm more in favor of Miller's suggestion of a max of three procs per instance.  I think making that the case would allow for not only multishots to effectively use it without becoming excessive, but also allow stylish sidecut setups or a Crash Potion combo.

@Miller I was a little tentative to propose it, but I totally agree with just giving crit a small boost.  It leaves Vorpal as still the most consistent crit booster but it makes this an actually competing point with it, in combination with a cool AoE effect.  +5 crit seems just right.
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  • Miller
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#5
100% activation chance on Critical Hits and a luck-based chance to inflict Burn. Only once per basic attack so multi-hitting weapons don't do that several times.

Simple and agreeable imo.
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[-] The following 2 users Like Snake's post:
  • Akame, Miller
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#6
Restricting it to "Only happens to a max of 3 times per unique attack instance" is so specific towards guns, its like you're balancing the weapon around multi-shot guns and trying to make it viable on them only, why not just power up the enchantment and have it occur only once per attack so that it can be useful to non-gun weapons too.

Powering up the enchantment to be based on Fire ATK is probably a good way to go, something like "Deals 50% Fire ATK + WPN Power physical damage on a 50% chance on crit" is probably more than enough, and really hits home some feeling of being some sort of fiery warrior I imagine.

You could also give the weapon specific perks to melee weapons as well as some sort of bonus.
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#7
Max of 3 times per unique attack instance also affects Pierce Linker, a skill designed to hit multiple foes at once, Sidecut, Sillcut, Aliiagmato, Crash Potions, Twin Dance, and more. 3 times is something I think'd be fine because it would let all sorts of builds have fun crafting combos with it- even multishot guns, despite their low base power(3 base on handgun), and unique, intentional, attribute of guns not gaining power from upgrades, winding up with 6 less than any other kind of weapon.

If that's too considerate, then, it can be dropped. Once per attack instance is fine for most weapons.

I don't like the idea of it remaining a 50% chance for anything, even if it's powered up, though.
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#8
This enchantment will be changed a bit in the upcoming version;

Volcanic - Weapon: When you land a critical hit with a Volcanic enchanted weapon for the first time in a round, deals unresistable Fire magic bonus damage to all enemies within 5 Range of the target, equal to this weapon's Power + your Fire ATK. (Ignores damage immunity and absorb of non-Boss enemies.) (No change to Armor effect.)
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