Damage Over Time Changes

Larnox #1 Abr '17 Spark MV User

For the last several leagues, abilities that use damage over time mechanics such as Poison and Ignite have been present in a large majority of end game builds. These mechanics proved to be some of the most efficient sources of damage.

This is because the base damage for Ignite, Poison and Bleeding is the damage that was taken by an enemy from the hit. So if a hit dealt Fire Damage and caused an Ignite, any modifiers to Fire Damage would apply to the damage of the hit, as well as to the Ignite. Because the hit dealing more damage meant the Ignite had more base damage to scale, this meant such modifiers applying to the hit had a cumulative effect on the Ignite's base damage, in addition to applying normally to the Ignite's Fire Damage value. Similarly, the enemy's Fire Resistance applying to the hit meant the Ignite would have lower base damage, and since the Ignite deals fire damage, it would also then lower the damage taken from the Ignite. This was commonly referred to as "double dipping". Builds that focused on the damage type of the Poison, Bleed or Ignite they caused were capable of receiving a significantly larger increase to their damage from certain passives and skills than builds that didn't use these mechanics.

We've decided to make some changes to this system for a few reasons. Firstly, builds that didn't use Poison or Ignite required significantly more investment to reach the same damage values, and we'd like to level the playing field to bring more builds to a closer power level and progression. Secondly, when balancing the power of items and modifiers, we always had to take the potential for double dipping into account. We had to reduce the power of core passives and common items that are effective for Ignite and Poison builds to the point where they're not worth the investment for other builds. Lastly, Ignite and Poison had to be reduced in power so they were at a desired damage level after heavy investment in effects that "double dipped", making them virtually worthless for builds that didn't take advantage of these systems, creating another trap for players to fall into if they weren't aware of the minutia of the game mechanics.

In the Beta for The Fall of Oriath, we're going to be trying out a new damage over time system. Skills will calculate their Ignite, Poison or Bleed values as a separate damage value, taken straight from the base and added damage of the skill. This will give skills that deal fire damage a minimum and maximum Ignite Damage per Second value that will be rolled on Ignites that the skill causes. Poison, Bleed and Ignite damage values will be based on the base damage of the skill, and then affected by appropriate damage modifiers. Some damage modifiers will affect both the hit and the Ignite, Poison or Bleed, while some may only affect one.

As an example, Ignite can be modified by modifiers to Burning Damage, Fire Damage, Damage Over Time, general damage modifiers, and resistances. This means that Increased Spell, Attack, or Weapon Damage will no longer influence your Ignite, Poison or Bleed damage at all. It also means that while modifiers to Fire Damage will still apply both to a hit and to the Ignite it causes, since the Ignite’s base damage is the same as the hit’s, rather than being the damage the enemy took from the hit, there is no cumulative effect - the modifier applying to the hit has no effect at all on the Ignite - the two are entirely separate.

To compensate for the loss of damage from the removal of "double dipping", the damage of player Ignites, Poisons, and Bleeding have been doubled. Increases to these effects on the passive tree have been boosted as well, and additional Poison and Bleeding bonuses have been added to some weapon clusters, on top of their existing stats.

Bleeding is also being changed for players so that it does more damage while the target is stationary, making it a more versatile source of damage. Previously it dealt only one sixth its damage while the target was stationary, but will now deal half damage instead. The ratio will remain unchanged for Bleeding caused by monsters, so will still be able to stand still to mitigate the majority of monster Bleeding damage, but monsters you inflict Bleeding on won't be so lucky.

We'll be testing this new system out in the Beta. The goal for Poison and Bleeding is to create an additional mechanic that can be invested in as an optional way to boost your damage with a damage over time component. We intend that if you take Poison or Bleed bonuses in the passive tree and equip items with powerful new ailment damage increases, it will be a reliable way to boost your damage on high health or mobile targets.

The goal for Ignite is to have it be a far more reliable ailment for Fire Damage characters without heavy investment resistance reduction and double dipping mechanics, while still allowing for a focussed Ignite damage build.

We're going to be changing a few existing support gems. An example of this is the Increased Burning Damage Support, which will now grant a multiplicative bonus. We'll be talking about others in future. We'll also be adding new support gems to further let characters improve damage, give new sources of chances to cause Bleeding, Poison and Ignite, and adding new ways to interact with these effects.

In a subsequent post early next week, we're going to go into some more specifics, like how this change will affect monsters, changes to make Poison and Bleed count as "Ailments", and how these ailments will interact with critical strike damage bonuses, and a new keystone.

Reply to this forum post with any questions you have about damage over time mechanics or design, and we'll be answering them in a third post in this series.
Balance & Design

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1891944

Algo obvio que se veia venir desde hacía bastante.

"And then we doubled it!"

Qué opináis? Parece que va a quedar muy interesante anyways.

Deberían quitar inmunidad de poison/burn/bleed a los bosses T16?

TL: DR Adiós double dip.

Damage Over Time Changes - Part 2

Poison and Bleed as Ailments

Until now, Path of Exile has had four Status Ailments: Ignite, Chill, Freeze and Shock. These were usually referred to as Elemental Status Ailments. In The Fall of Oriath, Poison and Bleed will now be considered Ailments, just like Freeze, Shock, Ignite and Chill. This means that like the other Ailments, they aren't considered Skill Effects, and are unaffected by modifiers to Skill Effect Duration, such as the Increased Duration Support. There are now specific modifiers to Bleeding Duration and Poison Duration in the passive tree. In addition, the skills Puncture and Viper Strike will now have a special property of treating Bleeding and Poison respectively as Skill Effects, allowing more bonuses to their duration on top of modifiers to Ailment Duration. We're also shortening the phrase "Status Ailments" to just "Ailments".

Existing effects that stated that they interacted with ailments have been renamed to clarify that they only apply to elemental ailments, but we'll be introducing new effects that apply to all ailments in future. Some features like Ascendancy Class mechanics may be changed to apply to all ailments during the beta or after.

Damage Ailments and Critical Strikes

Your Critical Damage Multiplier will now not influence Poison, Bleeding and Ignite damage, as a result of these ailments no longer being based on the final damage of your hit. Instead, players and monsters now have a property called Damage Multiplier for Ailments from Critical Strikes, which boosts the damage of Ignite, Poison and Bleed caused by critical strikes.

This means that investing in Critical Strike Multiplier will have no direct effect on damage ailments. However, we will be introducing a new keystone that lets a large portion of a hit's modifiers to Critical Strike Multiplier also apply to the skill's ailment damage, at the cost of hit damage. The goal is to create an avenue for investment for characters that want to rely on their critical ailments for damage, without it being the default and most efficient method of boosting damage for poison, bleed and ignite ailments.

Ailment Immunities

Some of Path of Exile's most challenging bosses have always had inbuilt immunities to ailments. These were both to prevent certain ailments trivialising certain content, and for thematic reasons. We're going to be removing the majority of these immunities, so they don't punish ailment-focussed builds.

We intend to make changes to Chill and Shock that we'll be trying out during the beta to further help this situation, making ailments more useful against very high-health enemies without them making the content too easy. We'll be revealing more information about this later.

Some bosses that had Freeze Immunity will instead have a slow protection effect, so they won't be immobilized by Freeze. Instead, they'll be slowed significantly.

Weapon Elemental Damage

The "Elemental Damage with Weapons" stats that were found on the passive tree, items, and the Weapon Elemental Damage support have now been replaced with "Elemental Damage with Attack Skills". This has two notable effects:

These new stats now modify all of the damage dealt by Attack Skills, not just the attack damage. This means that Damage Over Time dealt by an attack skill, such as Ignite and Secondary Damage (including the explosion from Infernal Blow), will be affected as well. We've made this change to create a natural increase in Ignite damage for characters investing in Elemental Attacks, as a benefit for fire characters.
These stats now apply to Unarmed attacks. This was a necessary result of the change. It opens up new avenues for elemental unarmed attack builds, so we'll be monitoring exactly how this affects Facebreaker and Doryani's Fist balance.

We've slightly reduced the damage bonus of the Weapon Elemental Damage support gem, as it was too ubiquitous for attack builds, even those that didn't convert all of their attack damage to Elemental Damage. It has been changed to More Elemental Damage with Attacks, and will be renamed appropriately.

Rare and Magic Item Mods

We will be introducing a new selection of suffix modifiers to certain weapons, including:

Increased Poison Damage on Daggers, Claws, Swords and Bows
Local Chance to Poison on Daggers, Claws, Swords and Bows
Increased Bleeding Damage on Maces, Axes, Swords and Bows
Local Chance to cause Bleeding on Maces, Axes, Swords and Bows
Increased Ignite Damage on Sceptres, Staves and Wands
Chance to Ignite on Sceptres, Staves and Wands
Chance to Freeze on Sceptres, Staves and Wands
Chance to Shock on Sceptres, Staves and Wands

We'll also be adding powerful new Prefix modifiers to weapons with values equivalent to Spell Damage bonuses. These are exclusive with the primary weapon spell damage modifiers, so you can't have both one of these and a dedicated Spell Damage prefix.
Increased Fire Damage on Sceptres, Staves and Wands
Increased Cold Damage on Sceptres, Staves and Wands
Increased Lightning Damage on Sceptres, Staves and Wands

These will create new items with benefits for different build styles. These are the first of a larger selection of new item modifiers for equipment items. We'll be revealing more of these in upcoming posts.

Projectile Damage, Area Damage and Skill Damage over Time

Some skills, such as Essence Drain, had a stat saying "Modifiers to Spell Damage apply to this Skill's Damage over Time". This affected all Damage over Time that was caused by that skill. In the Fall of Oriath Beta, this will be replaced by an equivalent modifier that will only affect the specific Damage over Time effect that a skill inherently applies, not any others it causes due to stats on gear or supports, such as Poison or Decay.

Previously, any Damage over Time applied by a hit was considered Projectile Damage if the hit that applied it was considered such. Damage over Time is now never considered Projectile Damage, and so is not naturally affected by modifiers to Projectile Damage. Some skills, such as Caustic Arrow, will gain a modifier which will allow modifiers to Projectile Damage to apply to that skill's inherent Damage over Time effect. Like the above modifier, this will not affect any other Damage over Time the skill might cause. Many other skills that were most penalized by this change, such as Essence Drain, have had their damage improved to compensate.

Similarly, any Damage over Time applied by a hit was previously considered Area Damage if the hit that applied it was considered such. In the Beta, Damage over Time is only considered Area Damage in cases where it's being applied in an area. If moving out of the area means you're not taking that damage any more, then it's Area Damage. If you can't get out of it by leaving its area of effect, it's not Area Damage. This means that effects like Vortex, or the Burning Ground placed by a Fire Trap, deal Area Damage over time. If something just applies separate Damage over Time debuffs to each thing in the area, such as the Blight skill, or a group of enemies being ignited by the hit of a Fire Trap, then that will not be considered Area Damage. In addition, Bleeding, Ignite and Poison are never considered Area Damage, so even in the case where an Ignite is proliferated around an ignited enemy, the Ignite's damage is not considered Area Damage.

Next time, we'll go over skill specific examples and other questions that you have about anything we've talked about in this post or Part 1 of the Damage over Time Changes manifesto. If you have any questions about how a mechanic or skill will now work, please post it below.

Krosita #2 Abr '17 Dark Confidant

Ojala zupieze inglez.

1 respuesta

Larnox #3 Abr '17 Spark MV User

#2 A estas horas voy a ponerme yo a traducir.

Y aprende inglés ya eh Krosa? Todo el día traduciendote todo.

TL: DR: adiós doubledip, hola buff poison/bleed/burn.

Jomones #4 Abr '17 Gafe

Ya falta menos para los sets que buffen skills

Artherius #5 Abr '17

Me cago en dios, vaya tocho. Si nerfean el veneno y el ignite, que quiten las inmunidades y pongan que resistan un 60% 50% a este tipo de daño o algo por el estilo

1 respuesta

ousean #6 Abr '17

#5 no nerfean el ignate, posion y bleed, es mas los bufan. Lo que hacen es separar terminos. El ignate ya no esta vinculado al fire dmg x ejemplo, ahora sera ignate dmg por decirlo de alguna manera.

HeXaN #7 Abr '17

Estas medidas deberían haber sido tomadas hace tiempo. RF para la próxima liga, lo veo claro.

Larnox #8 Abr '17 Spark MV User

Exacto, es un nerf al double dip en el sentido que se va a tomar por culo, pero los cambios pintan interesantes, el bleed tiene pinta de estar crema y como dice Hexan el RF va a estar graciosete.