I’ve just tried Oppressive Gaze/Lingering Pain and while the initial cast of Bone Curse may last indefinitely, it drops off after 1 hit. 
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Bone Curse damage is actually the most broken thing in the tree aside from the taunt on bone prison. If you take Illusion of Pain (more damage, auto crit, only lasts for one hit) and Cursed Limbs (apply Bone Curse on hit) you can literally destroy everything. Take rip blood with splatters. Transplant detonations and transplant casts rip blood. Everything outside of arenas gets destroyed instantly. It’s WAY WAY WAY too strong right now using that combination.
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Ehh… Yup…
That’s the direction I’m heading in & it feels a bit disappointing that the other options are … lacking.
For example, if Crimson Enlightenment proc’d after Illusion of Pain’s single hit was consumed but before Cursed Limbs/Cursed Ground reapplied Bone Curse, that might make for an interesting mechanic with Rip blood.
Signet of Agony could probably do with some tweaking to make it more appealing, especially for a Harvest Reaper.
It’s possible that the auto crit node just has too much damage put onto it in addition to the crit. This interaction is very strong. Might be good to tone the crit node down a bit and bring the base damage up.
Your suggested combination might be very good, but i doubt that every build could make full use of that, you generally need high attack speed for that.
My initial feedback was more related to the base damage itself. The dmg value is tripled if you do the damage yourself, but that makes the damage still underwhelming for my particular buidls i tried it on.
All of the nodes you suggested require heavy investment, basically almost all skill spec points, which is fair if that is strong.
But for me everything without either “acute infliction” (last 4 hits) or “illusion of pain” (last 1 hit but crits) in combination with either “cursed limbs” (curse on hit) or “signet of agony” (aura) seems underwhelming still.
All summoner builds or builds with insane attack speed could probably make use of it.
But for builds thathave medicore attack speed/hits it doesn’t pay of.
Also my biggest critque is the “Oppresive Gaze”, which is an insanely cool node, but pretty much worthless, because the mana cost/cast time is so low, the unlimited duration is negligible and the “only” 30% more damage is way to low for the big downside
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Probably, but the other “big” nodes could do with some love as well. And Oppressive Gaze.
Edit: Maybe Oppressive Gaze should automatically re-apply Bone Curse to the 1 target 0.1-0.5s after it was hit. Thereby allowing you to take some other nodes (like Illusion of Pain or Crimson Enlightenment but without making the DPS go through the roof for minion builds.
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That would be a bit more creative mechanically, but i would be statisfied with anything that just increases it’s % damage by a much much more meaningful amount, like 100% or 150% more damage probably.
EDIT: Maybe they could also add something to Oppresive Gaze like “self triggered bone curse damage is quintupled” or something like that, to make at least one big node very attractrive for self triggering builds.
I’m not sure about that, since it would give the player massive damage, especially if you have a high attack/cast speed & Illusion of Pain, several big “more” multipliers would make it do too much damage.
They could also tweak Signet of Agony so it doesn’t reapply Bone Curse as frequently which would effectively allow it to interact with Crimson Enlightenment if you take Swift Release.
To be fair, the the fewer hits but deal more damage node are the nodes you take if you want to make it do damage. They’re very strong. If you want to use the other utility stuff the damage won’t be as high. Imo it’s okay for the damage on it to not be super strong if you’re using it for utility or not taking the strongest damage nodes.
I’m not against the base damage being increased to make it feel more impactful for a variety of builds, but if that does happen the Illusion of Pain node needs to be nerfed to compensate. It should be nerfed even in the current state of bone curse.
Here’s a quick level 100 monolith example with using just bone curse and transplant (which casts rip blood). You can do this with no gear outside a level relevant wand/sceptre/staff and some dodge. Easily clear all timelines and 150+ waves.
Yeah was just a quick not thought through idea. Maybe they could add something like "Bone-Curse can only be triggered every X seconds, but deals MASSIVE amounts more damage. I talking maybe in a 200-500% margin here, not sure how good my number suggestions are though >.<
I just really wish that this node becomes remotely interesting, since it is not interesting at all for none of my builds.
Especially for my best build atm, i barely use Bone Curse for trash anyway, because i kill that so fast anyway, with an considerable buff to that Node Bone Curse as a “Single Target Tool” would be soooo cool and impactful.
Maybe my build is just bad for Bone Curse, dunno, but i feel like the scaling is off anyway.
I have like 1000-1500% global damage increase with my main build and do like 40-300 damage with bone curse, depending on the MoF level and area. Self-Triggered Damage.
Not sure how low the base damage is, but it is insanely low.
But i can understand this skill CAN be good and usefull for some builds, but from my experience the only scaling that works for endgame is with the AMOUNT of hits you can trigger, not the base damage at all.
Yes, currently Bone Curse acts like a DoT, you want as many hits per second to proc it as much as possible.
They could tweak a node, possibly Oppressive Gaze to do significantly more base damage, but then they’d need to put in a cooldown on the maximum frequency that it hits. I think Oppressive Gaze would probably be a good place to do that since it’s single target only so it won’t nuke the entire screen. Then you could either change Oppressive Gaze to reapply Bone Curse by itself every 0.x - 1 second to limit the damage from fast hitting skills or minion builds.
Or, allow Signet of Agony to re-apply Bone Curse to the single target if Oppressive Gaze is taken but at a reduced rate.
Base damage, attack speed, and cast speed are always the best ways to scale a build’s overall damage. Are you using a high level staff?
For reference, here is my build against the dummy. You can see the damage increases in the stats are not that high (outside the intelligence). Rip blood does almost no damage. Bone curse does 10-15x the damage of rip blood.
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As i already mentioned, currently my build is using Bone Curse more for utility/applying different things like MfD, Bone Armor and 18% Kill Threshold, so i don’t expect it to do very much damage at all, but still it’s underwhelming.
My build is a Melee Low Life Lich, but all of the low life stuff is global anyway, so i have almost the same amount of damage for all different damage types(likespell damage).
I don’t have any adaptive spell damage, in case that was your question for the staff.
But hitting for 10-30k with Harvest while Bone Curse is doing like a few hundred damage at it’s maximum just seems senseless to scale much more.
I can arrange with it, that my build is not “the best build” to fully abuse Bone Curse, but it’s just senseless for scale any damage for my build. For my particular example buffing bone curse would not even make it remotely too strong or OP, but as i said i can understand that tweaking or changing certai nstuff can make other stuff interacting with it broken AF.
Are you using a melee weapon or a staff? Bone curse is a spell and will scale with adaptive damage. If you use a melee weapon it won’t do any damage.
Just saw your note about adaptive damage. Yes. That’s why it does no damage for you.
That’s your problem. Bone Curse is a spell with 20% added damage effectiveness, if you chose to go the melee route & have no flat spell damage, that’s why it hits like a wet noodle.
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Well that might be the problem ok, i don’t have much experience with spell casters tbh, i know that adaptive spell damage is really important but i still assumed with over 1k global damage that the “spell” will deal at least some damage.
With that new thought in mind maybe they could add a node that woudl allow bone curse to scale of melee weapon a little bit? I really enjoy the Melee Lich playstyle and bone curse is a nice addition to the kit.
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It’s the same as melee though mate. If you’re still using a wand with no added melee damage, your Harvest isn’t going to do as anywhere near much damage as it would with Deicide Sword (53 melee phys damage) & a t7 melee phys prefix (30-35 damage).
Yeah i mean, i understand that, it’s totally valid and a big balancing thing. I maybe just misjudgded the effect of adaptive spell damage, but for example Death Wave from Death Seal is doing murderous amounts of damage.
Maybe i should try the build with a staff, sacrificing a bit of harvest damage, but gaining tons more for bone curse and Death Wave.