Right now, it seems that the chain elemental damage perks are very underwhelming damage wise compared to other perks you can get. The damage in the chain is around 215-230 and it has a two second cooldown, which comparatively to keenly jagged it hits for around 130-150 every SECOND for 10 seconds. Keep in mind as well keenly jagged is applied to everything in aoe, while chain hits a set number of targets and no more.
Suggestion towards the buff?
Get rid of the ICD on the chain, let it chain every swing. Or lower the damage, get rid of ICD, and make the chains do an explosion instead.
It’s a good start to look at it that way; though I wouldn’t always just look at raw output but different situations where one can succeed over another.
But ok, raw numbers.
Chain does 11% weapon damage, 2CD.
Keenly Jagged does 7% weapon damage per sec for 10s, 10CD
Equalise Damage over 10s
Single Target:
.11 * 5 = .55 < .07 * 10 = .70
I personally haven’t checked if there is a limit to Keenly Jagged, I can check tomorrow; but keep in mind not every weapon can trigger an AoE ability that would even set that condition true, where as chain will as long as they’re close to each other.
Chain’s limit is 3 targets.
So it’ll be tough to equalize.
If Jagged triggers only one person.
.55 * 3 = 1.65 > .7
If it does trigger off three people than
1.65 < .7 * 3 = 2.1
And then obviously if you have Jagged trigger more than 3 it’ll just keep getting better. But again you might not be able to repeat that, or even activated Jagged when you need to since it has a longer CD.
Good topic, but I don’t think Chain is weak at all though. Especially Chain Ice on a Target with Ultimate Chill.