A minor change to Chain Lightning.

[Own]

CL is supposed to be the ultimate crowd control spell in any game, but in SoG it doesn't do enough damage to anything to really matter. You're spreading diminishing damage across a group of enemies, which doesn't do much in the end.

I suggest:

Did the lightning jump from an enemy to another enemy? Damage goes up, not down.
Did the lightning jump from the caster to an enemy? Damage stays the same or goes down.

 

[DeftFunk]

Creating a greater disparity between it's single-target and multi-target use, eh? Hm, I'm feeling pretty ambivalent about that.

When I think about it though, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't matter whether the damage went up, down, or stayed the same as it jumped from enemies. With a bit of number tweaking, they would all do the same damage overall. But consider this: if all but one enemy dies mid arc, the chain gets cut off and you lose damage. Because this lost damage is at the end of the chain, more would be lost if damage increased as it jumps. Also, the chain starts with the enemy that's closest. I think it best that it does more damage to that (usually the most imminent threat) than enemies it jumped to half a screen away.

To solve all these problems, perhaps the lightning shouldn't jump at all, but instead form one solid chain that damages all enemies on it equally.

Regardless of what happens, there's no question that it needs a damage buff.

 

[The G-Meister]

I'll quote my own post from the support skills thread:

"When most skills hit a group of enemies, they do equal damage to anything that gets caught in their AOE. I think this is a good thing as it allows you to kill a group of mobs (which is harder to control) more effectively. Chain lightning is one of the few skills without an AOE.

It's supposed to be good at dealing with multiple mobs who are spread apart at a long range. Is it? Yeah, for the EP cost. However, this often aggros them and pulls them towards you. They're now bunched together. Due to it's lack of AOE, it now gets no extra benefit from this situation. While it might now be a great opportunity to use an Ice Nova/Whirlslash, it seems like a waste of skill points and EP for an aggro-puller, especially when Frosty Friend does the same thing, but with a lot more damage. It also doesn't help that it seems to sell itself as a damage dealing skill. And is it's damage dealing part useful in a boss fight? Well it charges slowly, consumes a lot of EP and it's certainly not worth it for how little damage it does when the lightning jumps back to you.

Could this be balanced? Heck yeah. Make each lightning strike have a (roughly) Meteor sized AOE around it that does the same damage to each enemy. Then it makes it viable when dealing with crowds, but we still have the issue with the bosses. How could it work with bosses? Bosses often have large hitboxes. Why not just allow lightning to arc between different parts of the boss if there's nothing else to arc to? They feel like they're big enough for that."