Scorching Ray adjustment

[VanillaPudding]

School: Evocation [Fire]
Level: Sor/Wiz 2
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels) - Touch attack (existing, not documented)
Effect: Two or more rays
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: Yes
Empower spell - Yes - Increases damage and ray count

You blast your enemies with fiery rays. You may fire one ray, plus one additional ray for every four levels beyond 3rd (to a maximum of three rays at 11th level). Each ray deals 4d6 points of fire damage.

You blast your enemies fiery rays. You may fire two rays, plus one additional ray for every second level beyond 3rd. Each ray deals 2d6 points of damage. Hostile targets are chosen randomly within a medium area. Targets may only be hit by four rays at most.

Rays:
3 - Two
5 - Three
7 - Four
9 - Five
11 - Six


Why?
This gives the spell a little more flavor in terms of AOE.
Allows it to maintain it's presence as a strong single target spell if the situation is present, but provides a defensive measure with allies nearby
Allows elemental resist to better mitigate the total damage due to an increase in individual damaging rays at reduced output. (Very similar to how Evards is balanced for EFU for the same reason)

[Egon the Monkey]

Yeah, making it actually fire multiple shots would balance out how strong it currently is, as then resistance would soak it up more. It's so much better than Burning Bolt in that way. It seems to be a huge PVP favourite as it's in the sweet spot of L2 (You can cast it a lot but it ignores Blur), ranged, spammable, no save and precise.

Medium AoE sounds like a good balance between single target and the general uselessness of Missile Storm unless you're only attacking one enemy. It means you can snipe with the edge of the AoE to try and only catch a single enemy in it.  And that someone who knows you span this has an additional counter of sacrificial summons.

[Richørd]

This sounds like a valid and totally reasonable way to further balance that spell, yes.

[Secutor]

No opinions on balance here, but I'd like to add that making it clear on all documentation (IG description and wiki) that a ranged touch attack is involved would be very valuable to players not familiar with this spell already. Thank you!

[Paha]

I will try to get consensus on this at some point and then I'll either make changes or not, and will then update tlk a bit to update the stuff. For now it'll be what it is until we have concluded our discussions.