Elemental Hit

I search the game files, the forum, the wiki and reddit, but I could not found any specification regarding the radius of Elemental Hit.

The skill gem specifies an "80% more Area Radius against Enemies affected by an Ailment of the chosen Element" but what is the base radius ?

We do not have to play with muddy fire dmg effects so want to something like this,

(might be 'fire to cold ..'support gem or something else...)

Having gone through Incursion relying on this, and theorycrafting the HELL out of it (if I had more time, I'd have run multiple different EH builds) I can say that while the gem does NOT trivialize content (and hence doesn't necessitate a wide-range nerf) it DOES still have some balance issues.

Namely, of the 1,181 characters on the ladder that currently use it, 1,170 (99%!) use at least one "Combat Focus" jewel.

To further break it down, 1,144 have "Avatar of Fire" be it through Xoph's Blood, (598) the Avatar of Fire node (545) or, for some reason, both. (1)

That means:

• 1,144 of 1,181 (96.9%) of Elemental Hit builds are explicitly fire-only.
  
  
• 1,142* of 1,170 Combat Focus users (97.6%) of Combat Focus users just go right for fire.
  
  
• This leaves 28 users of Combat Focus who aren't AoF; only 2 of which use EE. (they both block fire)
  
  
• Of the 28 who DON'T have some form of AoF (but use CF) 13 of them are still fire-only, (often with CotB and Pyre/FF/CtF) just without the AoF part, often because their build couldn't fit it in, so these can be lumped with the otehr 1,142.

*(For some reason, two characters, BoomMuffins and Eggxalted_temple_robber, have Avatar of Fire (the latter even using a CotB) while NOT restricting their Ele hit in any way; I have no clue what they're doing)



So in the end, our build breakdown of 1,181 users is, with zero overlap:

• 1,157 explicitly are pure fire damage (2 have builds I don't understand)
  
• 11 are Windripper users; 8 block fire+lightning, 2 block nothing, and 1 blocks just fire.
  
• 6 use elemental equilibrium: 4 tri-element, 2 blocking fire.
  
• 3 are using The Tempest, and blocking fire+cold.
  
• 4 are uncharacterized; 2 are direct-using tri-element, and 1 is a Shimmeron miner.

So, this establishes that while Elemental hit has some POTENTIAL for build diversity, right now it definitely leans too much towards the "go all fire" route. Balance changes shouldn't be towards comparing Elemental Hit with OTHER skills, so much as making alternate choices regarding AoF/Combat Focus more attractive.

My current suggestion is to change the properly "10% more damage for each ailment on the enemy" to something akin to "20% more damage for each ailment on the enemy that does not match the element chosen."

This would yield a slight nerf (loss of a "10% more") to ~98% of pure-fire users, but could yield a significant buff to those that allow rotation of elements. If the objective is to favor some other single-element builds besides fire (e.g, like, those cold Windripper and lightning Tempest builds) then perhaps simply change it to specify "20% more damage per non-damaging (elemental) ailment on the enemy."

Overall, while a lot of items are particularly popular with it, I don't see them as problematic. This skill is fun, and a nice playground for theorycrafters as it's not straightforward and rewards playing with mechanics.

"

ancientmind wrote:

We do not have to play with muddy fire dmg effects so want to something like this,

As I explained in another thread where that was mentioned, this cannot work, since damage conversion can be applied multiple times. (e.g, you can convert physical to cold, then cold to fire)

In order to allow multi-step conversion, it MUST be only permitted in a single direction otherwise you leave it open to contradictory conversions; e.g, a "cold to fire" combined with a hypothetical "fire to cold" gem would yield an infinite loop, locking up the entire server.

"

Abdiel_Kavash wrote:

How to fix conversion-based Elemental Hit in one simple step, without nerfing multi-element based builds into the ground:

So "fix" in that case is the euphemism for "castrate?"

Also, it'd utterly destroy non-conversion single-element builds; you DID notice I mentioned how some folks were using it with Windripper and also with The Tempest? Such a change would annihilate those builds as well.

At that point you may as well toss the gem back into the dumpster it was in pre-3.3.0.

"

Abdiel_Kavash wrote:

I am sorry, but a skill that has a threshold jewel that says "100% more damage", that you can have two of, absolutely deserves to be castrated.

By the same logic, we ought to delete stuff like Cospri's and Poet's Pen, since it's an easy 10-link. (or 13-link if you're dual-wielding Mjölners!)

Funny thing is... Cospri's is pretty weak, and while popular, Poet's Pen isn't exactly overwhelmingly superior to everything else in the game in spite of its advantages.

Why's that? Because there's something known as a "investment cost." Contrary to what you'd like to believe, it's NOT a one-node-investment for a big de facto "more" multiplier. Y'know what nodes ARE like that, though? There's three. All of which could potentially be used with the skill:

• Elemental Equilibrium
  
• Elemental Overload
  
• Pain Attunement

All of the above may be keystones, but for a lot of build routes, those are taken with basically zero downside. PA is literally just a reward for going low-life; there's no downside to it, just a question of whether it applies or not, and some builds will naturally achieve the condition 100% of the time anyway.

Yet here's the thing: all of the above, in spite of being 1-node investments for large swaths of "more damage," certainly aren't "deserving to be castrated," because the way you have to bend a build to make use of them requires sinking so much investment that it's not strictly better than sinking the same investment elsewise.

The same goes for using a fire conversion build. To get that supposed "1-node more," we gotta go:

• First off, we need Avatar of Fire. While the downside (no non-fire damage) imposes no further restrictions, (e.g, ele hit couldn't us chaos damage beforehand anyway) it IS a node pretty far from the passives normally taken for ranged builds. In fact, for a ranger, it's outright at the opposite end of the tree. (officially it's 24 nodes, but that requires wasting nodes on Foresight's cluster; going around makes it 28)
  
  
• This is so onerous that a huge portion of these builds (600 of 1,146 AoF users) just use Xoph's Blood to achieve the same effect; it's decidedly NOT a BIS item, (Yoke of Suffering appears to take that role, given it lets your fire damage shock, which besides the shock's effect, means they'll take 10% increased damage AND you get TWO "10% more" from the gem) but still commands the price of a high-tier "chase unique."
  
  
• Now, for the above, (a lotta nodes or some sacrificing your amulet slot for something that's TBH only semi-alright) you have... Half of your lightning and half of your cold converted. The rest still requires more investment.
  
  
• For the cold, there's really just two routes: use a Pyre ring (which still leaves 10% out, and eats a ring slot when you might ALREADY have used up your amulet slot) or a cold-to-fire gem. The latter is rather mediocre for damage outside of the socket (19% of cold damage as extra fire) and only a bit better if you're using FrostFerno... Which limits you to a 4L anyhow.
  
  
• Lastly, there's that remaining lightning damage. Since no lightning-to-fire conversion exists outside of Avatar of Fire, your ONLY option is to go for Call of the Brotherhood. This very well means you might've just sunk all 3 of your jewelry slots for uniques: no mega-resist, mega-life jewelry with plenty of WED or added damage mods for you, and certainly no MF!
  
  
• Now that you have the investment for converting the damage, you must suddenly remember that attack elemental damage that DIDN'T scale off of physical is a LOT harder to scale: after all, no weapon approaches Oro's 833 DPS, but it's clearly NOT the most powerful for good reason!
  
  
• Lastly, of course, you gotta allocate the proper positions for TWO DIFFERENT threshold jewels. I suppose for a scion it's pretty doable, but in this day and age, remember that's also eating a slot that might otherwise be needed for the (nigh-mandatory) Watcher's Eye.

All told, you have to sink a LOT to just get that single tantalizing bit. I mean, you didn't think GGG just threw that in, INTENDING for players to go for it, without making sure it had some drawback to it, did you?

In practice, Elemental Hit is very much NOT the most powerful ranged attack. It's decidedly inferior in pack clear to Tornado Shot and Kinetic Battery, and slower at single-target than Barrage. Balance-wise, it fits right in with existing popular skills. And it's not overwhelming the meta; that would be Blade Vortex, and also Arc.

P.S.: Also showing in your saltiness is that you ENTIRELY failed to address what I mentioned about non-conversion builds; playing this with The Tempest (which is a damn cool idea; I'd personally also scoped the prospect of using Hyaon's Fury) would also be implausible.

We are alive. We are still alive!

The nerf ws one of the most poorly thought-out things in the game. I guess that's what happens when GGG just listens to whiny redditors who've never touched something in question and just make a mob mentality over what sounds good.

The way they nerfed it has two huge problems:

• The meta route (Deadeye+Chin Sol+Xoph's Blood+Point Blank, FrostFerno optional) is only slightly dinged, and still a relatively low-skill route to multi-million shaper DPS.
  
  
• The nerf has more or less sterilized build diversity on this skill. The meta route is now basically the ONLY viable route, while building WITHOUT the jewels never got any help. (and building cold-only was gutted)

I've gone over it repeatedly before, but it's really simple: come 3.5.0, they -need- to redo the jewels. Again. One big problem with their current iteration: we now have double-dipping back in the game. Most notably, if you block both lightning and cold damage, you have 50% less damage of EACH lightning and cold... Meaning that both can be applied to the same damage. Yes, this actually does apply if you convert lightning, to cold, then to fire. It meant that before, using a particular ring was a high-investment way to squeeze out a bit more damage, but now it's worthless:



Pre-nerf, that extra 40% could justify eating up a ring slot because the lightning slice of damage was a bit bigger than the others. Now, that slice gets hit by "50% less" TWICE, which means you're basically only getting 10% of your lightning damage converted to fire with that ring. (9% if you were using Pyre instead of cold-to-fire or Frostferno) You could alt a better opal ring.

The real solution would be multi-fold, to address all issues:

• Change the penalty on Combat Focus to "50% reduced bonus damage from each ailment on the enemy." Currently that's a 10% "more" that is basically free for fire damage. That should be your main damage penalty. Remember, we need to foremost balance this version of elemental hit against tri-elemental, not other skills. (half of where this went wrong is because people are comparing Ele Hit to non-ranged skills, singling EH out for something other skills do)
  
  
• Buff the bonus "damage per elemental ailment on the enemy," perhaps to 20%. This would dramatically help tri-element builds be competitive, especially since Avatar of Fire builds would miss out on this entirely. Again, remember that non-AoF Ele Hit builds are REALLY weak; abusing Elemental Equilibrium doesn't help at all!
  
  
• Chin Sol has a very unique interaction with Elemental Hit and Elemental hit more or less alone. Bows can't reach the "crits per second" to justify the "all added damage" builds some elemental wanders used, but the Ele Hit skill can definitely abuse the bow's unique mechanic. I don't think the "100% more damage with arrow hits" was EVER meant to scale anything other than the bow's own DPS. A quick fix would be to change it to "100% more bow PHYSICAL DAMAGE," which would still allow it to benefit from some outside added flat damage, but make it useless for Elemental Hit. As it stands, there's no other weapon that can compete; Chin Sol has decent APS, and is the only one to grant a "100% more damage."
  
  
• Ele Hit on its own isn't overpowered, it's that the ranged meta is pretty broken right now, between Point Blank having no downside, (trash mobs die instantly anyway) and Deadeye granting Tailwind, stackable "more" damage with Ricochet, and instantly negating the need to invest in accuracy. All of these should see some curtailing:
  
  
  • Point Blank is BY FAR the strongest "free more damage" node on the board: 50% vs. 40% for Elemental Overload and 30% for Pain Attunement, which BOTH are less "free" picks than Point Blank. There might be some better reason to reconsider a deeper rework, but for the more immediate sense, nerfing it to only grant up to 30% more damage is quite fair.
    
    
  • Deadeye was massively over-buffed, and is the highest-offense ascendancy class, exceeding even Berserker, (in spite of having no crippling downsides like Berserker does) let alone everyone else from Champion to Inquisitor. As mentioned above, all three of Ricochet, Fast and Deadly, and especially Gathering Winds offer WAY too much. (when "fire an additional arrow" is somehow NOT at top popularity, you know something's broken!) In short, I feel that they could halve ricochet's damage bonus, (it already adds a TON to pack clear just from the chain alone) and maybe prevent the ability to scale up tailwind, might be enough to at least dampen this a LITTLE.

All told, the current nerf was a flat 33-38% nerf across the board for all AoF builds; those that abused the above mechanics to get millions only had to say bye-bye to a million or two DPS, while others were STILL far worse off. The above mechanics would leave the meta build viable, but allow for other routes to actually have any use... And more importantly, start to break the stranglehold of the "ranged meta." This existed well before Elemental Hit stopped being a garbage skill, and no amount of nerfs focused on a single skill will fix it.

Now if they could do that AND find a way to reign in Arc and Blade Vortex, the game would actually have some semblance of skill balance.