Item Development - Threshold Jewels

10% of the time, it works every time.

Hoping for something to make Ice Spear a bit more interesting!

more jewels that only are useful in very specific situations? hey, that's already what nearly ALL UNIQUE JEWELS DO

With the high incoming damage spikes in the current meta, path of life/ES nodes does not have room for such weak jewels. Until you do something about the death penalty scaling at high level, a PoE player is almost always better off spending a passive on increasing effective life total. Rare jewels fit with this because they can roll effective life along with 1-3 passives worth of other bonuses, so spending 2-3 passive points for the jewel + path to it is efficient, especially if the next closest additional life/ES cluster requires a long travel distance.

If a single threshold jewel can't directly beat a rare jewel with:
7% life or 7% ES
+
10-20% damage (spell damage, physical, projectile, fire, flat, whatever your build needs)
+
some other utility (% block, reduced cost, resist, ias, cast speed, mana/es on hit, crit)

Then it will just be another unique that's not worth the stash space to trade/hold on to/use.

A threshold jewel has to beat a good rare jewel in a 1:1 comparison, not only due to the additional passive cost required to meet the threshold, but also because the bonuses provided are skill specific, whereas a good rare jewel will buff everything the player uses while maintaining complete skill flexibility.

Recommendation:
Add 7-10% life or 7-10% ES to each threshold jewel (or both life and ES)

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Perq wrote:

I sure hope Army of Bones is changed too

To Army of Boners hurrr

Updating my feedback based on the feedback other people have given:

Perhaps the fireball jewel could be a general spell AoE projectile jewel? Then it would also work Arctic Breath and possibly Magma Orb and Ball Lightning, although the latter two are quite weird projectiles leaving room for implementing a solution that works with balance. Likewise, the dexterity jewel could be broadened to affect Freezing Pulse, Ball Lightning and other skills with "immortal" projectiles. Another solution would be to instead of grouping by mechanics, list a few gems that could work with each specific jewel.

Personally, I just want to make a new fireball character. But perhaps other people would appreciate unique jewels with an array of different skills affected.

Also, would there be any threshold jewels with multiple thresholds or scaling effects? Kind of like Spire Of Stone. That could be really cool, at least imo.

This is why Path Of Exile is the best game in the world. There are no games that change in these small ways that have such a giant impact on gameplay. Its so much fun and you always keep me interested to keep playing. Thanks GGG.

As Much as I want to love a new ST or GMP Fireball AOverlaping I've seen countless times in games that items made to affect a specific skill/build/attack Always become either Mandatory or Unused.

Let's look at ST: On a good Pack it can get 40% damage, not bad. But ST already handle packs well with L/GMP. And trying to extract further hits out of each projectile requires Slower Projectile speeds(or extreme movespeed and Ledge layouts) Which runs counter to increasing proj. speed Which has been a hallmark of ST builds increasing range(and thus effective AoE)

It'll never compare to even 3 mod Rare Jewels with 2 damage 1 defense mod On rares/bosses And the increase in Pack Clearing is not only superfluous in most cases but Ask any player "Hey you want 10% more damage on trash, or 6% More life?" And the life wins every time.

Heavystrike is Interesting in that The opportunity cost of "Passive points spent on damage" For all non RT builds investing in Crit instead of 3-4 jewels+threshold reqs Will almost certainly be not only more damage, but it'll be more consistent on top of that. The IDEA of a 'super' Crit, a Double Damage HS that Crits is Interesting, but unless Monster damage takes a hit and the Wolven King hits like a puppy Investing in both Crit AND enough Jewels to reach some kind of consistent result (3 minimum) And still have enough Life/Armor/Block?/Dodge/whatever To Actually use a single target Melee skill Safely is a Herculean Feat.

I Gotta ask, Why not just add some anything to the Base skills that are CLEARLY suffering? What if Fireball's tiny AoE compared to Artic Breath(better AoE, more damage, chilled ground... what's fireball even doing?) Was offset by Fireball being allowed to Fork/Chain and Explode on multiple hits?

What if Spark had an Implicit, level and quality scaling, chance to Chain?

Wouldn't it be neat if Frostblades Forked upon hitting Frozen enemies?(whoa neat Hypothermia Synergy bro)

If a skill is just plain Dysfunctional the solution *Should* be fixing the skill, Not introducing band-aid Items that'll end up Mandatory if they succeed in 'fixing' the skill or useless if the skill remain uncompetitive.

Diablo 3 has been doing this "Fix skills with items" Via Legendary and set items with mods that affect a single skill. (The Boots that give Meteor spell echo, The Pair of Swords that have a set bonus improving whirlwind, the gloves that give minions/pets attack speed.) And it's terrible! The Items either becomes 110% required for builds Or if they don't make the cut are immediate fodder.

I Cannot stress enough how Dangerous using items to patch up underwhelming skills is.

obvious scheme to encourage mtx stash tabs sales is obvious

congratz on div cards scheme

If they somehow get these jewels caught in the web of items, I think it should be at least worth picking them up at some time for most players. The ST one looks somewhat lackluster to me, but if it's not worth something in itself it should hopefully still be worth vaaling at the beginning of new leagues - depending on how Vaal gems are changed in the next patch. If mana multi went on souls maybe not. If just Vaal spark got higher souls cost probably still.