Path of Exile - New Wand Skills In 3.10 - Unpacking Spellslinger and Kinetic Bolt
123Attack wands have felt like clones of bows in the past. Wands were better for a long time, then Kinetic Blast was nerfed and at a similar time Mirage Archer was added. Now, attack wands are niche.
Spell wands have felt like clones of caster daggers. You desire the same stats on each (usually), and get similar benefits.
This is changing. Bigtime.
The biggest change is the addition of Spellslinger Support, a 'build your own Herald' effect that reserves mana and triggers spells for you. WARNING: We don't have hard numbers on this skill gem yet.
K-Bolt first
Hard to explain what is going on. Clearest way is to watch the footage of the skill in action at 25% playback speed. I'll show that in a sec. WARNING: I've muted it, 25% speed Youtube playback sounds awful.
It provides strong coverage in front of your character (like Scorching Ray) but also provides meaningful but lesser coverage in a 90 degree cone.
Spellslinger
Think of Herald of Ice. It has two effects - flat cold damage, and a trigger. The trigger condition - you kill a frozen enemy (or shatter an enemy via rare other means). The payload - cold damage AoE explosion.
Spellslinger creates a similar skill, but a 'build your own herald' version. Or it can be thought of as a 'build your own Poet's Pen'.
It is a support linked to a payload skill. The first one I thought of was Glacial Cascade, and that is showcased in GGG's video, but feel free to experiment with other options.
The payload is triggered simply by performing a wand attack, and is on a 500ms cooldown to begin with. This will decrease as you level the gem.
In addition to the payload being cast, the payload's base damage is increased by the base damage of your wand. This includes mods like Merciless or Annealed (that increase physical damage) or Entombing (which adds cold damage) or Malicious (for chaos).
This creates a whole new dynamic in wand gear desireability. Combinations of mods that were too unfocused to find a use in the past can now shine.
It costs 15% reservation. This is cheap for utility skills like Wave of Conviction that you don't want to support much, and is brutally expensive for 6 linked skills with Greater Multiple Projectiles.
VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: We do not yet have numbers of Spellslinger. It might have bad numbers and suck, like Lancing Steel did on launch.
I think there's three main ways to use this.
- Autocast debuffs while focusing on attacks. Let Spellslinger handle cursing enemies, or inflicting elemental exposure via Wave of Conviction. Let your attacks do the damage. Hypothetical setup: Conductivity and Wave of Conviction -Phys to Lightning linked to Spelllinger. Attack with a wand skill that deals lightning damage. Reserves 32% mana (16.5% round up for Wave, 15% for Conductivity
- Autocast moveskills. BUILD YOUR OWN FLICKERSTRIKE. Enough said.
- Heavy payload. Here you put effort into really scaling the Spellslinger payload. Your wand is used to make utility attacks - Power Siphon or Frenzy for charges, maybe also to proc Curse on Hit. Your 5-6 linked Spellslinger does the heavy damage. (Or maybe 4 linked in an Essence of Horror or Essence of Insanity helmet, or gloves with Essence of Hysteria, Delirium or Horror - these options help a lot with mana reservation reduction)
My initial thoughts are to go with a heavy payload if the numbers on Spellslinger are favorable, we will know late next week.
The revamped Wandslinger support helps here. Note that 25% increased damage is universal, so amps up hard to boost things like Herald of Ice.
Here's an aspirational goal (warning, high budget but should work at a low one):
- Eternity Shroud full conversion build
- Shaper wand that has good chunks of cold and phys damage (maybe lightning?)
- Spellslinger with payload Glacial Cascade in either helm or gloves. Essence crafted on a Shaper base. Lots of good options here. Linked to Cold to Fire and another support, maybe Awakened Added Cold although this needs the numbers checked.
- Shaped Call of the Brotherhood (if adding lightning from somewhere) else any good shaper ring.
- Shaped Pyre
- Shaper life/resist items
- Trickster, because Harness the Void is absolutely bonkers.
- Atziri flask.
Lastly there's some minor numerical changes to some familiar wand skills. Power Siphon and Kinetic Blast are already good but at low level they absolutely suck. This is changing.
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