Elemental Equilibrium

Is it just me or does EE not seem to be working with spark. Not sure if this is intended or a new bug. I switched to EE Spork towers today I use EE as a support to drop fire resistance so my Spectres hit harder. It worked with ice lance towers but my spark spiders dont seem to be making minions vulnerable to fire.

I think the problem people are having is that mobs can resist damage down to zero, causing EE to fail to activate.

When I first entered Merciless, my explosive arrow build debuffed enemies via split arrow +fork/chain and a single ring with 1-2 lightning damage. After taking all the damage modifiers into consideration (including Quill Rain's 50% less damage), I often found myself having difficulty applying EE, especially against enemies with resists. After buying a 10-22 cold damage ring and switching to ice shot, I am no longer having issues, even against enemies with a base cold resist + ele resist aura.


Oh, it should also be worth noting that enemies will only show 'vulnerable to x damage' if their resists go negative. If I hit a fire resist enemy with cold damage, the description will change to "resists elemental damage; vulnerable to lightning", and enemies with more than 50 of all resists might not show any change unless you curse them.

Tell me if I understand EE corectly.

Hypothetical: Monster target dummy with a bazillion HP and exactly 0/0/0 to all elemental resistances.

I lay an ice spear totem with .5 cast speed, and proceed to spam fireballs at .5 cast speed.

Ice spear hits and does the damage it should on a 0 cold rez monster, EE buff applied +25 cold -50 fire/light.

Fireball hits next and does the damage it should for a -50 fire rez monster, EE buff applied +25 fire -50 cold/light.

Let's assume I never overlap and get two ice/fire hits in a row. With this skill I will always be casting fire into -50 fire, and ice into -50 ice. In this hypothetical situation of course.


P.S. Lvl 1 Wrath pointless for my 4zombies? Does not work for minions correct?

You understand it correct GameOfThrones, if you never overlap every fireball/icespear will hit the mob when he has -50% to the respective element. Only restriction is that you don't have any added fire/ice damage (for example through an aura).

This is currently my only concern with EE its quite "useless" if you play in party. Could we probably get something that damage auras from other players don't have an effect on EE users?

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Dalnoi wrote:

Is it just me or does EE not seem to be working with spark. Not sure if this is intended or a new bug. I switched to EE Spork towers today I use EE as a support to drop fire resistance so my Spectres hit harder. It worked with ice lance towers but my spark spiders dont seem to be making minions vulnerable to fire.

EE works on the damage _you_ deal as far as I know, doesn't affect totems, traps or minions.

I can confirm that it atleast works for Traps and Totems not sure about minions though.

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Trelares wrote:

I can confirm that it atleast works for Traps and Totems not sure about minions though.

Minions are not *you* and therefore don;t have EE.

That was clarified in closed beta like last year IIRC.

However if you do an elemental damage type (say cold) everyone can benefit from the debuff you place. SO you could have Anger+Wrath while casting Freezing Pulse w/ minions an your minions would benefit from the debuff without changing it.

Thus:

Cast Freezing Pulse : Debuff increases target Cold Resists by 25%, reduces Fire and Lightning by 50%
Minions/Totems/Allies benefit from reduced resistance, you continue to cast Freezing Pulse (doing variably reduced damage depending on target original cold resist) to maintain debuff.

Theoretically a build using one element spell w/ two elemental damage auras and minions would be relatively good with EE as your "primary" damage source would be your minions.

Hmm there is a thing that makes me very suspicious about this keystone..

Scenario 1.) Lets say I am using a skill that does lightning damage as my main skill. So what I do is to use a skill that does fire damage which triggers EE and thus the critter gets a -50% penalty against his lightning anc cold resist. Sofar all good...

Scenario 2.) However...what if I join a group of players and now suddenly their anger, wrath and hatred auras are affecting all my attacks which basically makes all my attacks do all 3 elements and this not triggering EE at all.

Scenario 3.) Also even worse.. lets say I have character that makes my main damage with fire (Infernal Blow) and I use a skill that deals lightning/cold (any other skill with my wrath and hatred auras active). This would result in that the monsters get -50% fire resist (perfect for my Infernal Blow) but they also get +25% lightning and cold resistance. All good if it wasn't for my Lightning Arrow/Lightning Strike buddy that gets pretty pissed off because they don't want to have +25% lightning resists to the monsters we are facing.

So the only useful scenario for this capstone are Scenario 1 where you basically are on your own and nothing interferes with your careful rotation of skills.

This makes it quite a sad keystone imo. However there are two things that could improve it:

1. Once you take the keystone but it up as a choosable skill that you can toggle on and off just like an aura. This will make the skill useful in solo play since you keep it active, but in group play you can deactivate it and thus avoiding the irritation of those lightning arrow/Lightning Strike users.

2. Now to the best option in my opinion. Again once you take the keystone we get it as a choosable skill that we can assign to a key and then toggle on and off. If you have it toggled on then ONLY your own damage buffs will affect you (ie Wrath, Anger and Hatred) so you are unaffected by the other auras they other players have active. Also the benefits and downsides (-50%/+25%) should only apply to your own damage skills. This would solve both scenario 2 (my EE still works for me as I have planned) and scenario 3 (I won't ruin the gameplay for my teammates since EE will only use my auras and the bonus/disadvantage will only apply to my own skills. Also since you can toggle it on and off then you can always have the option to choose when to use it or not and this become a "normal user" as anyone else and a EE user.

Best Regards!

/T

Your Scenario 2 is the reason why EE is "bad" in group play for people who use EE with attack skills.

For Scenario 3 if you manage to to have a balanced uptime (50% of time + and - resist for all 3 elements) from EE, EE will still result in a group damage buff for everyone.

E.G:

Your Friend does 100 damage Fire
The mob has 0 resist to all
50% of the time the mob has +25% Fire, 50% of time -50% Fire

so your friend does either 75 damage or 150 which means an average of 112,5 still an damage increase of 12,5% not that bad.

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Trelares wrote:

You understand it correct GameOfThrones, if you never overlap every fireball/icespear will hit the mob when he has -50% to the respective element. Only restriction is that you don't have any added fire/ice damage (for example through an aura).

This is currently my only concern with EE its quite "useless" if you play in party. Could we probably get something that damage auras from other players don't have an effect on EE users?

The elemental damage auras should only be a concern if you are an attack based character. They have no effect on spellcasters.

The keystone itself is not aimed at Weapon Elemental damage users because in order to be an effective Elemental Attacker you have to get Adds Fire/Lightning/Cold Damage mods on gloves/rings/amulets as well as employ the elemental damage auras.

If you dual wield and use different elements on your two weapons and use a weapon that alternates between the two weapons to attack, then all your attacks are still getting the elements from gloves/rings/amulet as well as auras.