Part of that is because it’s a 2-handed weapon, so it needs to have higher numbers than a 1-handed weapon. Plague Bearer gives 100-250% chance to poison, Torch of the Pontifex gives 130-170% chance to ignite, so yeah, I guess they could tone the staff down by 50%-100% chance, but Torche of the Pontifex also gives 130-170% increased ignite damage as well (while the staff gives increased plague effect, I’m not sure that plague stacks).
IMO incrementing every X stacks (where X >> 1) would feel kinda/mildly annoying if you know you’re not hitting those thresholds, just reducing the effect by the same amount would feel less annoying/whatever.
several skills/passives already let you do this. Armor shred is a pretty weak mechanic so that this ends up still being worse than poison in almost all cases afaik. Havent done the exaact math, but just estimating it.
For example, you might need 10 stacks of Armor Shred to reduce a 1k HP/Prot enemy in order to double the damage of bleed. Same as 10 stacks of poison doubles poison damage. Except when that enemy is now 10k HP/Prot in endgame high end arena and such, you still only decrease the EHP of that enemy by 1k, which now only translates to around a 11% bleed damage increase. Compared to poison, which is still doing its full 100% bonus damage.
Which is why I’ve said all along that the other ailments need some form of mechanical differentiator to give them their own role as compared to poison.
My concern with bleed also applying a stack of armour shred is that that would increase the damage that bleed does purely by having higher bleed stacks, just like poison does now, though with the added benefit of also allowing any other sources of physical damage to do more.
Edit: Maybe bleed making the target take x% more damage from physical sources if the target is bleeding (ie, the benefit is capped at 1 stack) would be more effective as you could then increase the % without having to worry about someone figuring out how to apply 50 trillion stacks per second & break the server.
yeah plague doesnt stack. its just a spreading poison damage dot (hard to tell if it actually does anything) But with how poison works, losing 150% damage is essentially nothing compared to torch of pontifex. even if the staff were like 100-150% chance to poison, i think it would still be one of the best weapons in the game just due to how poison works
Which shows that the problem is poison, not the staff. Keep the staff how it is, give poison’s increased damage taken per stack diminishing returns, give bleed/ignite their own identities/functions, job done.
The staff isnt insane power level on its own. The problem is that very few other slots have ways to get poison chance at all, let alone a decently significant amount. Poison is VERY limited availability on Sentinel for example, the staff is one of your only sources of it, outside of Idols, which usually could be used for much more important/unique effects.
If “Chance to Poison” were available at 25% ish on several gear slots, Plague Staff would be seen much less commonly.
you can use viper tail and the staff with any build and get over 300%, the problem is poison and honestly it should probably be 1% increased damage per stack and still that may be too much.
Its just too much on one item to be considered balanced in how poison works right now. i cant think of a single build that isnt minions that wouldnt be straight up better with the staff and introducing poison compared to without it.
heck i play a poison sentinal and the only sources i have are the staff and belt and i dont really scale anything else and it does like arena 200+ without a hiccup. Id like to see poison brought down and bleed and ignite given identities.
I really don’t think it would, since the staff provides such a big chance to poison by itself.
All of that said, I have an on-going project, an ignite Shield Throw Paladin & it can/will be able to get a pretty high ignite chance (with Shield Throw converted to fire to make it a fire skill):
Helm - Calamity150% Body - no ignite chance but Prism Wraps for +% fire damage & reduced elemental damage taken Gloves - Maehlin’s Hubris, no native ignite chance, but they convert all bleed chance to ignite chance, plus a fire DoT damage increase Belt - Nothing her per se, but you can use a Flame Spitter’s prefix for up to 300% chance to ignite for 4s on potion use Boots - Nothing here per se, but you can use Firey Dragon Shoes for increased ignite effect Rings - Invoker’s set ring for 75% x2 Amulet - Nothing per se Relic - Soulfire for up to 210% plus up to 30% as an implicit Weapon - while I went sceptre/shield for defence, you could go Torch of the Pontifex for up to 170% chance to ignite + up to 170% damage
In addition to this Shield Throw can get up to 100% on it’s skill tree, Smite can get up to 125% (but currently doesn’t benefit from any ignite chance outside of it’s skill tree), Holy Aura can give up to 12% (big whoop! /sarcasm) which is doubled for 4s on active cast of Holy Aura.
Passives:
Forge Guard’s Smelter’s Might gives +7% ignite chance & +7% bleed chance per point for up to 70% of each (bleed converted to igntie via the gloves) for a total of +140%
Paladin’s Pennance node can give up to 200% bleed chance (converted to ignite via the gloves)
This will give you a total of 1,162% chance to ignite permanently (with Shield Throw), going up to 1,474% chance for 4s on potion use & Holy Aura cast. That’s nearly 12/15 stacks per hit (Shield Throw hits twice with Eruption). I’m getting a bit over 2 throws per second (without Smite’s attack speed buff, probably up to a bit under 3 with the attack speed buff) for somewhere between 24 - 72 ignites per second on a single target. For multiple targets within the AoE of Eruption multiply that by 1 + the number of ricochets plus the number of mobs Shield Throw passes through 'cause they proc Eruption as well.
As for protection reduction well when it goes negative it should becomes a damage multiplier that stacks on top of all other damage. That means some should be good no matter what the problem is the protection/(max hp+protection) formula which means it only really better than increase damage. Since most of these protection reductions are in skills and will be taking the place of the multiplicative more damage mods they are bad IMO.
In terms of why, protection reduction is not very good, i agree with some of your points. Although, i will try not to explain why i conclude most of the things, since i am afraid of the post being to long, and maybe get out of hand. Although people can freely ask, how i came to the conclusion.
Haha thats true. But i have come to the conclusion, that people don’t end up reading my post, due to the shear volume of rambling - same for my build guide on shield throw that was over a hour long. I honestly don’t think, anyone watched the full video On top of that, this post is meant for beginners that have just hit end game, and now trying to minmax their character - and i believe, deep explainings/disccusion on why i state most of these things, will confuse more, than help.
Is there any post like this one but for defenses? I’m not 100% sure how should I scale / focus then on builds, like resists, block, attributes, life, etc.
While it seems logical that a percentage increase in armor/protections would be more valuable if you stacked armor/protections to begin with, what about passive points that increase armor/protections by a flat amount? Do those nodes still make stacking armor/protection a better investment than life?
On a side note, it also seems that armor/protection has more benefits if you have ways of healing. So having a smaller real life pool and lots of mitigation makes healing more efficient.
This guide is awesome. Very nice. Many mechanics you mention I had to learn the hard way by trial and error. And even after getting some impressions I could not be sure if it truly works like i imagined. So i spent a lot of time on this forums (what wasn’t a bad thing ) to search for tips.
This will help many people that start with LE to get into the mechanics. I’d suggest to spread the link via reddit and perhaps somebody could sticky it.
There’s only on thing where I don’t really understand the meaning"
So do you mean for warpath it doesn’t matter what damage type I am scaling?
On top of that, this post is meant for beginners that have just hit end game, and now trying to minmax their character - and i believe, deep explainings/disccusion on why i state most of these things, will confuse more, than help.
) to search for tips.