Clarifying Puncture

No only purpose of puncture atm is for blood lettering other then that you're better off doing another skill.

Range wise

Or making ghost kill themselves

That's it

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morbo wrote:

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Malzaherion wrote:

I see everyone comparing puncture to burning arrow for single target. Now in a situation where you are standing still and autoing the enemy over and over burning arrow can out dps puncture because it has a slightly higher base damage at level 20 (187% base damage at level 20) over puncture (176% base damage at level 20)...

This numbers doesnt seem to be true. On this setup (note Burning arrow is lvl 18, non quality):

I have 63.423 tooltip DPS with non-Q lvl 18 Burning Arrow and 48.943 DPS with a 20/20 Puncture. That's 30% more damage with BA.

But the point is that in both cases mobs die from crits, not from dot effects, so even in cases where kiting & bleeding would come in handy (eg. Atziri trio), burning arrow outperforms puncture. At least in case of crit builds.

Imo, the stationary bleed should remain 10%, but movement bleed should go from 50% at lvl 1 to 100% at lvl 20 (was 126% before). And fix that trap-pointblank thing specifically, instead of ruining a broader scope of builds.

I redid my math and your right, I messed up a little on the math but it still comes out close. here are my sites for the numbers as well.

http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Burning_Arrow
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Burn

burning arrow at 20/20 is 130% plus 57% = 187%. It also adds 29% increased burn damage (only effecting the ignite part since its burn and not fire). An ignite deals 80% of the base damage (which at this point is 187%) over 4 sec, which means it would deal 187% multiplied by 80% which is equal to 149.6%. Then we would need to account for the increased burn damage which is 149.6% times 29% which is a 43.384% increase, add that into the 149.6% and we get 192.984% burn over 4 sec. Then we divide that by 4 and we get 48.246% burn damage per sec for 4 sec. Take into account that a 20% quality gives an added 60% increased duration and the burn will last for 6.4 sec totaling 48.246% times 6.4 sec which is 308.7744% base damage over the course of the 6.4sec.

now showing more detailed math for puncture and my sites.
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Puncture

punctures base damage is 100% but at level 20 gets an added 76% phys damage on the base, making the base 176%. The puncture bleed time is over 5 sec and with 20 quality would increase this time by 30%. you multiply 5 sec by 30% and you get an added 1.5 sec, making the total a 6.5 sec bleed. Now bleed has 2 different numbers for damage which is why you can never look at the tool tip for puncture damage, since its just an average of both, but your going to primarily be attempting to make the target move more then 50% of the time your hitting him with a puncture. so with this in mind and calculating for a moving target 100% of the time we get 176% times 50% which is 88% base damage while the target is moving. of course you might not be able to get the target to move 100% of the time so reducing this number by 30% to account for the fact you might only be able to get the target to move 70% of the fight we get 61.6% moving damage and 5.28% stationary damage added together for 66.88% damage per sec over 6.5 sec if you can get the target to move 70% of the time.

So if the target is moving 70% of the time with puncture you can deal 18.634% more dot damage with puncture. then you consider that burning arrow has a higher base damage for its inital hit (187% compared to punctures (176%) so we subtract 11% damage from the total dot damage ad we get 7.634% more damage from puncture overall on a per 6.5 sec bases. But if you consider your contently auto attacking more then per 6.5 sec to just refresh the dot then burning arrow deals more damage. so basicly if your just sitting there attacking the enemy then burning arrow can deal more damage since it has 11% more base damage for each burning arrow hit but a lower dot. if you can get the target to move for 70% of the time while having the target punctured and then use a different skill like tornado shot for your main single target then puncture can deal more damage.

Like I said, puncture is for kiting the target around and only getting the occasional extra hit in, burning arrow is if you can contently auto the target. I also want to remind you again that burning arrow is mostly fire damage which mobs tend to have more resists compared to armor (especially rares and unique which is what you will use it for) and burning arrow also only has a 20% chance to ignite, multiply that by your crit chance (so if its 50% crit chance then you have a 60% chace to ignite the target, you dont add these numbers because you can crit and ignite on the same hit making the numbers overlap and not stack).

@Malzaherion, well I haven't done any extensive math research, like yourself, but I've tested Puncture & BA on Atziri runs. I've done about 20 runs and really tried to find a place for Puncture, but it underperforms compared to BA in every aspect.

While previously Puncture was great (yes, it was overpowered a bit) to fight the trio, providing the functionality it's supposed to provide: kiting mobs into a bleeding death, now it takes way too long for them to die (and that's with a GG crit bow!). To the point that facetanking them with BA is a more viable option than kiting with Puncture (ie. a gameplay style got rekt)

For all I care Puncture lost it's functionality. Aint got no time waiting for bleed, if I can kill mobs with crit strikes faster. Maybe it's still viable on non-crit melee weapons, if you spec into tree nodes, but that wasn't the most widespread use of this gem. Puncture has been frenzied into the garbage bin for most of us.

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burning arrow at 20/20 is 130% plus 57% = 187%.

You can't just do 130% + 57% like that. 130% is the base. The 57% is increased Physical Damage. It is additive with all other Increased Physical Damage.

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punctures base damage is 100% but at level 20 gets an added 76% phys damage on the base, making the base 176%.

Same as what I just said, you cannot do 100% + 76% to get a new base. It is 100% base. Then, the 76% is your increased Physical Damage. This damage gets calculated along with all other increases you already have, like on tree and from equipment.

I believe the only attack skill that changes its base is Spectral Throw. And you can see that it is written completely different. Redo your calculations with the new numbers in mind.

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Starxsword wrote:

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burning arrow at 20/20 is 130% plus 57% = 187%.

You can't just do 130% + 57% like that. 130% is the base. The 57% is increased Physical Damage. It is additive with all other Increased Physical Damage.

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punctures base damage is 100% but at level 20 gets an added 76% phys damage on the base, making the base 176%.

Same as what I just said, you cannot do 100% + 76% to get a new base. It is 100% base. Then, the 76% is your increased Physical Damage. This damage gets calculated along with all other increases you already have, like on tree and from equipment.

I believe the only attack skill that changes its base is Spectral Throw. And you can see that it is written completely different. Redo your calculations with the new numbers in mind.

Correct math here for BA: 130% * 1,57 = 204,1% , Puncture 100% + 0,76 = 176%

Thing is 130% base applies not only for 57% you get for the skill itself, but for the tree also. Let's say we have 200% increased dmg from our tree. BA then is 130% * 3,57 = 464%. Puncture would be 100% * 3,76 = 376%. You can see the scaling.

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Starxsword wrote:

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burning arrow at 20/20 is 130% plus 57% = 187%.

You can't just do 130% + 57% like that. 130% is the base. The 57% is increased Physical Damage. It is additive with all other Increased Physical Damage.

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punctures base damage is 100% but at level 20 gets an added 76% phys damage on the base, making the base 176%.

Same as what I just said, you cannot do 100% + 76% to get a new base. It is 100% base. Then, the 76% is your increased Physical Damage. This damage gets calculated along with all other increases you already have, like on tree and from equipment.

I believe the only attack skill that changes its base is Spectral Throw. And you can see that it is written completely different. Redo your calculations with the new numbers in mind.

Really? I was under the assumption that that the phys damage would scale the base since its leveled with the gem but after looking at spectral throw I see that it would specify if the base of the gem scaled, the wording in this game is tricky sometimes. If that's true then burning arrow would have significant scaling over puncture in the late game, in fact if they wanted to fix puncture to be more where it should be then giving it a scaling base like spectral throw and removing the added phys damage wouldn't be a bad idea.

Yes, Puncture has been nerfed a bit too much. Puncture used to scale like a spell, where it gets so much better as it levels. But now, it scales like any other attack, where it gets slightly better as it levels.
I would suggest something like 20% stationary and 60% while moving at all levels and it should be good again. So something like 80% per second for 5 seconds while target is moving. I am suggesting a higher base on stationary mainly for the benefit of melee builds.

How is puncture working compared to pre-nerf if I spec into both the Entropy nodes and Bloodletting?
That adds like a total 102% more damage over time...

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Malzaherion wrote:

maths

I could be wrong but I don't think your math is right on how that all works out.

Basically, my understanding is all increases add together on one side and all more modifiers add together on the other side. Then you multiply the final numbers.

Most people using puncture are doing so with a fair amount of increased modifiers - from tree, gear, etc etc. So "increased damage" on a gem doesn't account for much - even with a 75%ish increase, you're really only increasing your damage by something like 1/4th of the total damage, depending on how much increased damage you have from tree and gear. I'll assume 200% in this case and 75% from gem, for a little more than 1/3rd of the total damage added (75/200).

Burning arrow, on the other hand, has less "increase" and, from my understanding, the "deals 130% of base damage" acts as a "more" modifier, multiplying all the increases by 1.3 for a lot more than what was lost with the lower increase.

Correct me if I'm wrong though, deals 130% of base damage is not very specific as to its interaction with damage and where it comes in the formula.



EDIT: lootiel already confirmed my belief above

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Starxsword wrote:

Yes, Puncture has been nerfed a bit too much. Puncture used to scale like a spell, where it gets so much better as it levels. But now, it scales like any other attack, where it gets slightly better as it levels.
I would suggest something like 20% stationary and 60% while moving at all levels and it should be good again. So something like 80% per second for 5 seconds while target is moving. I am suggesting a higher base on stationary mainly for the benefit of melee builds.

Melee builds need lots of help but I don't think this will do much. To begin with I am already one shotting many bosses with puncture as a melee character with crit n run tactics, even post nerf with junky blue daggers. (But that isn't keeping me alive against anything with a multiplicative damage mod)