Blight

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R4tt3xx wrote:

How would blight interact with the Cast when Channeling trigger gem ?
It could be good when used to trigger Contagion and ED ..... Heres hoping....

It's an interesting idea, thou it doesn't fix Blights problems. The skill would still suck.

If such a thing were to exist, it would be the first time a spell could cast another spell.
Something I would very much look forward to. I'm not sure under what conditions it would trigger. Perhaps if the trigger gem had it's own build up mechanic that once it peaks casts whatever spell is attached, before resetting and building up again.

So i'm curious, does anyone think 35% more damage on blight will have fixed any of its problems? I really don't infact I still think its likely to be borderline worst skill in the game. Not as bad as elemental hit but really not far off.

However i'd love to be convinced by somebodys arguments if someone has a great usage scenario or some maths to show its strength :p

Does blight stack by source output? In other words, if I have a spell totem channeling blight, and I cast blight myself, does the monster receive a total of 40 stacks? Or more creatively, if i had 5 totems, would each totem be able to stack 20, making for 100 possible stacks?

ty

I haven't read all the posts but I just want to state an opinion.

I have no problem with the power level. I even think it should not have revived a damage increase. The problem with this skill is that is occupies the same space as essence drain. There is a sense of pointlessness, even considering the utility hinder vs. leech. You can have both.

It's great chaos single target, but for this skill to have a place, essence drain damage would have to be reduced and blight AoE reduced. Or something other in this spirit.

Aka. They overlap too much and differentiating them more could be good in respect of having a "Chaos Caster" arsenal.

Why is it purple? I don't like the move from the green EK feel of chaos.

I am space


Edit: I just realized my suggestion would only kill Essence Drain. Still, it shows my dilemma with this skill.

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Draegnarrr wrote:

So i'm curious, does anyone think 35% more damage on blight will have fixed any of its problems? I really don't infact I still think its likely to be borderline worst skill in the game. Not as bad as elemental hit but really not far off.

However i'd love to be convinced by somebodys arguments if someone has a great usage scenario or some maths to show its strength :p

Maybe the damage boost makes the skill playable - not sure how you'd clear packs though unless corpse explosion damage proliferation is consistent enough and strong enough. If you're forced into using Essence Drain and Contagion for pack clearing then I see little point in using Blight.

Creating a good build which features this skill would take a bit of experimentation and it might well not pan out.

I may try out Blight at some point next league but definitely not as my first character.

Some more thoughts on Blight...

Based on the comments in this thread and my own preferences too, I think that the majority of POE players want Blight to be a viable end-game skill. If, as some of the posts in this thread and elsewhere on the Internet suggest, Blight was designed as a leveling skill, designed to be dropped once Essence Drain becomes available... well, I think that this sort of design is unwelcome. We can already level with no problems using existing skills until level 12. So, that Blight was designed to be some sort of leveling skill only, and then to be dropped at level 12... makes little sense to me, and really, I hope that this isn't GGG's intent.

Raw DPS numbers suggest that Blight *could* be really strong - really, really strong given the DPS boost in the latest patch notes.

But what about AOE? - if Blight alone or Blight plus another skill cannot clear packs quickly - then what's the point? An end-game competitive skill needs to have some ability - either on its own or when coupled with another single skill - to quickly clear mobs. This is the meta - clear mobs fast, kill bosses with high DPS and then on to another map so that we can level/or grind wealth.

Blight now seems to be well-placed for DPS (maybe overmuch so) in a build stacking cast speed and skill duration - but it seems to be completely unsuitable for clearing packs. Are we to stack cast speed, skill duration, and AOE and corpse explosion to get this skill to be end-game competitive? Though I may be wrong, it doesn't look like there's enough skill points on the tree to do this.

Yea, it could use *some* tweaking. Not necessarily damage, though. I'd rework the slow effect, tbh, as it doesn't seem to be very useful; especially against bosses since you try to always have blight stacks on them, therefore can't benefit from the slow effect. Also it's range is rather silly.

One thing I notice, people don't seem to realize yet just how important Skill Effect Duration is for blight.

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hankinsohl wrote:

it seems to be completely unsuitable for clearing packs.

This is a huge problem. I enjoyed leveling with Blight. It was by far my slowest leveling experience in many thousands of hours, but the skill functions in a novel way, so I didn't mind it being slow and clunky. Those were actually the selling points, since the general wonkiness of Blight forced me to focus heavily on positioning (and repositioning, and repositioning, and repositioning due to the godawful AOE and incredible slowness).

Enjoying Blight lasted until my first map. The damage is great, but over time, so it's the least safe skill in existence due to everything beating the hell out of you constantly until they finally fall over. There's also always a question of whether you actually kill things or just throw a few stacks and hope it's enough to kill them. Once you start running into big packs in maps, though, you don't have that option anymore. You kill them or you can't get to the mobs behind them.

The AOE is absolute garbage, so it takes ages to kill the absolutely massive packs POE has been cluttered with lately. The fifth time you have to reposition while attacking one pack feels awful. You get to experience that awful feeling almost every pack.

I'd call this the worst skill in POE. The other garbage skills are at least obviously garbage. Anyone trying out Elemental Hit can see its limitations immediately. Blight sneaks up on you and smashes you in the dick when you're not looking. It's close to being good in multiple ways. It feels great to cast due to the low cast speed (and is my favorite barrel breaker ever). The damage is solid once it finally gets set in. The whole is much, much worse than the sum of the parts, though.

This skill needs a hell of a lot of work. I can't see it working unless paired with godly gear, and even then it would still be terrible for everything except single target, and even then why the hell aren't you just playing a better skill that can actually utilize your nutty gear?

My suggestions: Double or nearly double the AOE. Double the damage. Halve the duration. Maybe go even higher on the damage and lower on the duration. I don't know if those changed would make Blight good, but they would at least make it playable.

I was running it with 40% increased AOE. When I picked up a massive shrine, the AOE still didn't feel good enough. Damage-wise, it felt good when I was running content about 15-20 levels below me. That's the point where I was killing enemies almost as fast as I would have been other skills. To reiterate, I was still slower 15 levels above content than I would have been on level with a better skill.

Currently running a low-life blight occultist with every Chaos+DoT and AoE node at the top of the tree and for me the only thing making this skill a nightmare to play is the range and slow tick rate, otherwise the damage seems okay at best.

Increase the range, reasonably increase the damage because that 5% buff was laughable, speed up the DoT tick rate and increase the duration of the DoT and there, Blight fixed.

And for the love of god let us leech with channeled abilities. I understand leeching with SR and Blight would be potentially overpowered but a simple fix for that would be to half the leech rate for these two specific skills.

I am running a blight cast while channeling with essence drain and contagion, the damage seems good so far (merciless act 3) but the range is terrible, it has roughly the same range that frost blades has. worst of all the range scaling is really bad, making almos useless to use increased area.
currently to make it work I have to flame dash trough packs of monsters to be able to get them in range, esxposing my very squishy charater to huge ammounts of damage