Melee elemental spells

[phlinn]

What exactly are these supposed to do? I thought it would convert my melee damage to elemental, but now i'm not sure.

I made a power 1 spell at cost 40, and used with prayer casting. It seemed to do good damage with one weapon, but with the blue steel claymore that is my pride and joy, it did practically nothing. The boss I used it on was set to 50% reduction in all damage, but dropping damage down to ~2000 seems excessive.

[Variaz]

A melee attack spell deals damages equal to your regular melee damages, multiplied by the spell's power. However, it only gives one blow.

Now, as for why it did damages too low, hopefully it didn't try to use the second slot... did you ever try it out again?

To tell you the truth though, I'm not too fond of these melee attack spells. A melee character is much better off using the melee abilities of the various classes, and combine with combat feats and the like. They might go away in a future release...

[phlinn]

I disagree about the utility. A power 2 melee attack spell is as good as 10 points in the elemental lord ability damage wise, according to the formula described, although it's not useable as a combat feat and I don't know if the spell can miss. If you are a wisdom caster (like me) and can do this over and over, it can be convenient for physical returning bosses. I can see quite a bit of utility in boosting elemental skill as well. So you get base weapon * 1.5 * sword skill * (1 + elemental/5). With 20 skill points, that's a multiplier of 30 if all in sword, or 45 if you put 10 in each skill. 90 if you have a power 2 spell. If you want to really get abusive, high mage elemental mastery 14 ranks with these spells, compared to 14 ranks in the elmental lord's elemental strike ability. That puts the cost at 0 for power 1. So stack it 5 times, and you have effectively 5 melee strikes, with whatever skill multipliers are involved. A lot of it depends on how you distribute points between fighting (or swords), spellcraft (elemental), and combat feats. I could see an opportunity for the elemental lord ability to be better useing combat feats, especially with the pricier elements.

I'm not seeing a definite pattern. I may have failed to notice a resistance or something. I'll play around a bit more.

[Variaz]

Indeed, with a lot of points, the melee spells can become quite strong(now I just remembered the Power Attacks....OUCH!!! )

They're too weak at low powers, but then at high powers, they may be too strong. They may need to be rebalanced somehow. Perhaps each points gives an extra 10% power or something like that. And then allow them to be ranged too. Now that would be fun.

[phlinn]

ok, it's something to do with elites. I'm fighting an elite with immunity to physical at the moment. I do miniscule damage with the spell. Bosses seem to take full, but elites, possibly depending on their boss ability, are reduced.

Edit: hmm, well, the last boss was resisting as well, so back to no definite pattern.

[phlinn]

Here we go. I found the trick, sort of. If I use regular attacks on something that's physical immune, something gets set, but not unset. If I save and load OR go attack something that isn't resistant, then come back and use the melee elemental spell it works correctly. It may be something with my branded weapon actually. So, looking at the combat.lua, either the call to fire_jump_ball or mon_take_hit.