... and other random AoE spells.
To be more explicit, I'm speaking about spells from this list :
- Storm of Holy Fire
- Minoletta's Missile Salvo
- Meteor Shower
- Magran's Might (not technically an AoE, but follow the same obscure rule for its Pulses)
- Great Maestorm*
* Maelstorm is a kind of double spell. It has a classic Crush/Frost pulsating AoE (such as the Symbols) and a random Fire/Shock AoE.
The 2 effects have no connection.
I will be speaking about the random Fire/Shock AoE part below.
1) Pulse :
These spells do have pulses, as for classic pulsating spells but it does not appear in their description, or sometimes a 3s pulse appear in the description but is wrong.
(From the gamedata file, they have a pulse attribute of 3s but this attribute isn't used)
What they do not say is that they have a "number of random hit" attribute that appears in their gamedata file. You can therefore deduce the pulse interval by dividing their duration by this "number of random hit" as the "number of random hit" stands for the TOTAL number of pulse for the base duration.
Here are the actual numbers :
- Storm of Holy Fire : 12 pulses, happening every 0.75s for 9s
- Minoletta's Missile Salvo 12 pulses, happening every 0.125s for 1.5s
- Meteor Shower 16 pulses, happening every 0.5s for 8s
- Magran's Might 8 pulses, happening every 1s for 8s
- Great Maestorm 6 pulses, happening every 1s for 6s (for Shock/Fire part)
The pulses do happen periodically for the duration.
Now what's interesting is that you can extend the duration as for other Pulsating spells.
As for Pulsating spells, Intellect does matter, but Power Level has not effect on duration.
So with INT 20, you'll get 50% more random pulses.
However, there seem to be something that causes having about 1 less pulse that what you could expect.
For example :
- with 10 INT Magran's Might has 7 pulses.
- with 20 INT Magran's Might has 11 pulses.
I can't say if it's always minus 1 or if it could be more or less in certain case. Let's say it's 1 less pulse as an approximation.
(This is the contrary of normal pulstating spells that gets 1 more pulse than you could expect : a pulse happens at 0s)
2) AoE
These spells have 2 AoE sizes :
- The first one is rather big but isn't extended by INT (what you see extended by INT when aiming Maestorm is the extension of the normal Ice/Crush pulstating component.)
- The second one is smaller and happens at a random position in the original AoE. It is extended by INT.
What can be surprising the position of the secondary AoE is the position of the CENTER of the smaller AoE.
So, if it happens on the border of the initial AoE, due to its own radius, you can hit something OUTSIDE of the initial AoE (friendly or not, depending if you are in the friendly zone or not of the secondary radius.
Basically, you have more chance of hitting :
- A bigger target
- A target closer to the center of the AoE
- When you have high INT
- When the secondary radius is bigger in comparison of the first.
See below the comparison of Initial (not modifiable by INT) /Secondary radius (modifiable by INT) :
- Storm of Holy Fire Initial 5m, Secondary 1.5m
- Minoletta's Missile Salvo Initial 2.5m, Secondary 1.5m
- Meteor Shower Initial 5m, Secondary 1.5m
- Great Maestorm (random part) Initial 5m, Secondary 2.5m (not displayed by the ability)
Therefore Missile Salvo and to a lesser extant Great Maelstorm have higher chance of hitting.
Missile Salvo usually hit the "main center target" with all its projectiles.
3) What is special about Maelstorm
Maelstorm is doubled by a classic pulsating effect which AoE is 5m extendable by INT. However, only the "red" part of the UI display matters for the random component.
I said random secondary AoE can happen at any position within the initial random AoE.
That isn't true for Maelstorm though. Maelstrom pick up a random valid target within its initial AoE and applies its 2.5m AoE to hit.
This means :
- Maelstorm random pulses will ALWAYS hit something (as long as there is at least one valdi target in the RED AoE)
- If there is a single valid target within Maelstorm RED AoE, it will get all the pulses (with 20 INT : 4 Frost/Crush pulses and 8 Shock/Fire random pulses. Goodbye !)
- If your foes are clumped within the RED AoE, they will get all the Pulse (originating from one of them)
That is one of the reason why Maelstorm feels so powerful 🙂
But also unique. Now that you know the rules, you are free to use them in a smart way !