Mechanics Question: Elemental Equilibrium and Remote Mines

Hi,

I'm interested in doing a build that uses elemental equilibrium, self-cast ice nova (for triggering EE), and flame surge mines.

(Three dragons + chance to ignite and flamability on hit on the ice nova for bonus points)

Ideally: I self cast ice nova to inflict EE's debuff, then trigger 5-7 flame surge mines

Since multiple mines can trigger instantly, and flame surge's AoE has no travel time, it's theoretically possible for the multiple hits to all benefit from EE's debuff.

However, this might not be the case depending on how the engine handles multiple hits dealt at the exact same time; if an arbitrary order is selected, and EE's debuff is flipped after the first hit, the following flame surges will suffer. On the other hand, it might still select an arbitrary order for the hits, but not distinguish between them chronologically, and not trigger EE until after all the hits have happened. On the other-other hand, mines might have an undetectable sequential delay, which would also fuck up EE, although what little info I could find about mines and EE indicates that this is unlikely. There may be other options I'm not aware of, since I don't work with game engines.

So, anyone have any idea how EE plays with multiple AoE mines?

I don't think anyone is able to confirm that outside devs. If they're all truly hitting simultaneously then your theory that they all benefit from EE should be correct.

No, it will register as multiple hits, there are no 'simultaneous hits' here, it's either one hit or it isn't. If you use multiple traps, mines or projectiles each of them will do a separate hit, no matter how simultaneous it might seem.

So, first projectile will trigger EE and following hits of same element will suffer. If you play EE stay away from multihit skills go for big payloads like flameblast or discharge.

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If you use multiple traps, mines or projectiles each of them will do a separate hit, no matter how simultaneous it might seem.

They have no projectile speed though since they're not a projectile. How does the game determine which hit first and why are you so confident it works like that?

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kasub wrote:

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If you use multiple traps, mines or projectiles each of them will do a separate hit, no matter how simultaneous it might seem.

They have no projectile speed though since they're not a projectile. How does the game determine which hit first and why are you so confident it works like that?

the hits are probably procesed by game code one by one no matter they hit simultaneously. They are not merged into one big hit

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kasub wrote:

I don't think anyone is able to confirm that outside devs.

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raics wrote:

No, it will register as multiple hits, there are no 'simultaneous hits' here, it's either one hit or it isn't.

There's very clearly multiple hits, and it'd be absolutely silly if the engine lumped them together (because of AA, if nothing else). But because flamesurge is an AoE (therefore having no travel time), the multiple hits may get in "under the wire", depending on where EE's 'flip' occurs in the process of calculating the final damage.

Even if the engine does apply EE after the first damage calculation, it may preserve/'snapshot' the damage calculations of the other flame surge hits, since EE was favorable when the hits were applied.

If you're visualizing it over time, the hits are occurring in prefect parallel, rather then sequentially (as far as we know), which may let the multiple hits pass through EE's gating mechanism. It really depends on where and how often EE is queried during damage calculation.

It is an absurdly specific mechanical question I'm not sure could be reliably tested by players. Might PM the thread to Mark and see if we can get a definite answer.

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ComradBlack wrote:

Even if the engine does apply EE after the first damage calculation, it may preserve/'snapshot' the damage calculations of the other flame surge hits, since EE was favorable when the hits were applied.

If you're visualizing it over time, the hits are occurring in prefect parallel, rather then sequentially (as far as we know), which may let the multiple hits pass through EE's gating mechanism. It really depends on where and how often EE is queried during damage calculation.

It is an absurdly specific mechanical question I'm not sure could be reliably tested by players. Might PM the thread to Mark and see if we can get a definite answer.

Absolutely not, each hit and all its relevant effects are fully processed before moving on to another, no matter how simultaneous they look.

Also, EE calculations aren't done per cast, they're done dynamically per hit. The game does calculate default damage output of your skill in advance as that part of calculation is done on character level. However, it doesn't know in advance how much resist the enemy has, is it affected by curses or shocked, those are done on enemy level so there's nothing to snapshot.

And it was asked before a number of times, it's fairly well-known EE works this way.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

Raics is correct. multiple hits are never and cannot be processed "together" in this way. Each hit is an independent event.

D'aw shucks. I don't know much coding, I just know enough to wonder about things like this some times (since a different hit parsing would make my insane thing possible). It's good to know (and have dev confirmation) that the hit processing is "ironclad", regarding weird multi-hits of that nature..

I figured it probably wasn't possible, but it's still a bit disappointing - combining mines and EE seemed really fun to me. Guess I might still try the basic idea, although it looses some punch when you can't stack all those sweet "more" multipliers and resistance subtractions at once.

You can still have fun with them, just pick the right spells, cold snap mine, arc mine and fire trap mine made to detonate instantly with sunblast could work decently as long as you drop one of each prior to detonation.

Your original idea wouldn't have been that hot even if EE worked for it, flamesurge covers less area than unsupported freeze pulse so bosses would be easy enough but clearing regular mobs would definitely be on the slow side.