Elemental Equilibrium

TL;DR: Spells need to be remade or designed with EE in mind in order for it to be worth it. EE's effectiveness is almost COMPLETELY governed by skill combinations.

Here is a list of spell combinations that I tried to use with EE and how they compared. Note, all comparison are using exact same skill build and equipment. Bolded skill combo is the more effective one. If both are bolded, they are equal in killing speed.

My equipment/build:

Comparisons:

Do you see the problem here? The pain it takes to alternate spells basically completely negates the benefit of EE, making it feel like it has no effect.

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Here are a couple of things that I think should be kept in mind when designing spells for EE

1. You need two skills that hit the same enemies or have similar AOE.

2. You are kind of limited to cold/fire and light/fire

One really cool thing to help with EE would be to create a couple "hybrid spells" that have two kinds of elmental damage. A cold/fire or light/fire spell would do wonders for EE and is also long overdue in my opinion.

There's the cold to fire support gem, remember.

Hi,
I've posted the following on the witch forum before and will just paste it here. Hope it's understandable.

As I see it there are two ways to play with EE
a) 2 element style:
You have 2 primary attacks/spells, one has plenty of fire and little cold, the other has plenty of lightning and little cold. Alternating will make the monsters resists flip between 0FR,-50%LR,0%CR and -50%FR,0%LR,0CR, thus, boosting fire and lightning alternating.
b) 1 element style:
You have 1 primary atack/spell with lots of fire, little lightning and little cold. Additionally you have an extra attack/spell that does a bit of lightning and cold. Because the EE-effect isn't removed by hitting with 3 elements, you can hit the monster with you secondary to give -50%FR,0%LR,0%CR and then you have 5 seconds (by default) to spam your primary skill that does a lot extra fire damage. Every 5 sec you have to refresh the EE debuff (or let a totem do that for you)

And here's my burn-EE build that is designed to make creeps burn super fast by giving them negative resis.
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/38070

Unfortunately, I haven't found the time to test it really. I have a lvl 28 templar with suboptimal passives and terrible gear (I stacked all dex gear, so that I can use my bow). However, it seem's to work.

"

TinyAngryCrab wrote:

There's the cold to fire support gem, remember.

There's still no light/fire skill =/. And then trying to do a light/cold skill will result in the fire portion of the the cold to fire support being the amplified damage which is... less than satisfactory.

You really need to be comparing the reduced resistances from EE to Elemental Weakness. Elemental Weakness grants 35% (40% max) reduced resistances to ALL elements and also increases the chances to ignite, freeze and shock.

Not only that, but Elemental Weakness is more reliable, easier to land, and doesn't require recasting as often.

Sure, there are curse immune enemies, but the convenience and consistency offered by EW on the 95% of all mobs makes it honestly much more effective. I think EE needs a buff: just in general: go as high as 50% increased resistances if it would make it feel more weighty.

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

Elemental equilibrium does not trigger on hits dealing all three elements of damage.

lame >.>

so lets say i hit a mob with cold snap + cold to fire = mob gets -50% light res.
then i start hitting with whatever ligthning attack/spelll i may have.. my question is:
am i dealing more light dmg for the 5seconds duration or just with the first hit of lightning and after that its -25/-25/+25?

so does every hit apply a new buff neglecting the ee duration?

Curious if there are plans to make a visual effect on the target(s) that are affected by E.E.?

The fact that this works with 2 elements and not 3 is somewhat goofy to me. The developers had to go in to the engine and make an exception to what was working perfectly fine with 1 and 2 element attacks. 3 elements should just apply +25% then -50% to all elements for a net -25%. Other builds that rotate 3 different elements will still have an advantage with -50% on their next attack.