About the support skill system for PoE...

I feel like now, support gems often are just to add DPS. They don't really change the skill to make new variations. If you don't understand what I'm saying, think about it this way: the 'Trap' support gem changes the skill to act a bit differently than it normally does, having you place a trap down changing your normal playstyle of that skill, however a support gem like added lightning just adds lightning damage, that's it.

Unfortunately, now many of the support gems being created often just modify the damage of skill rather than changing the skill itself with the only recent exception being blasphemy. I feel like GGG should make support gems that actually change the way a skill plays and not just its damage.

Some examples would be:
"Instead of shooting arrows straight from your bow, they rain from the sky for a duration"
"You can summon 4x the amount of the supported minion, your minions deal 75% less damage"
"Supported melee attack attacks with both weapons, 50% less attack speed"
"Your projectiles instead swirl around your character"

Some existing support gems would be:
GMP, as it turns a skill into an AoE trash clearing skill instead of single target
Totem, Makes you play differently if invested into totems rather than self cast
Curse on Hit, it turns a skill into a support like skill rather than damage
Etc., etc.

What's your thoughts?

"

Enzari wrote:

I feel like now, support gems often are just to add DPS.

[snip]

I feel like GGG should make support gems that actually change the way a skill plays and not just its damage.

Some examples would be:
"Instead of shooting arrows straight from your bow, they rain from the sky for a duration"
"You can summon 4x the amount of the supported minion, your minions deal 75% less damage"
"Supported melee attack attacks with both weapons, 50% less attack speed"
"Your projectiles instead swirl around your character"

Some existing support gems would be:
GMP, as it turns a skill into an AoE trash clearing skill instead of single target
Totem, Makes you play differently if invested into totems rather than self cast
Curse on Hit, it turns a skill into a support like skill rather than damage
Etc., etc.

What's your thoughts?

Basically, every single support gem increases your offense or your defense in some way or ways, so every support gem is just to add DPS, or remove DPS from your enemies. Your suggestions are no exception to this. (And if you think anyone would actually run a support that hit with both weapons at once, but gave 50% less attack speed... um, no. No one would use that.)

What your suggestions do, is obscure how useful they are. You have to do more math and/or experimentation to figure out how much more DPS you get from having projectiles swirl around your character, or using GMP. Of course, tooltip DPS is irrelevant, I just mean how fast you actually kill stuff.

I don't think it's bad for the game to have a very small handful of support gems which are very upfront about the fact that they are simple damage multipliers. However, I think that those gems are only fun if you've got the complicated kind of DPS gems, where the amount of their benefit isn't easy to calculate, also in the mix, so you still have to run scenarios while comparing the two. The more builds where the skill remains virtually unmodified and 6L is just 5x "% more damage" supports, the worse things are. I feel the current amount of "% more damage" support gems in the game is slightly overdone, but not crazy bad. We could definitely use some more of the kind you're talking about.

The ideas you proposed are much harder to balance.

I agree the game needs more support gems like those. I'm just pointing out the difficulty of implementing them.

"

[...]however a support gem like added lightning just adds lightning damage, that's it.

It adds a lightning elemental part to your attack, which means you suddenly care about lightning resistances on mobs, you could enable shock with it, you can scale elemental/lightning damage etc. on your attack and many more aspects.
It is not as blunt as you put, but I agree basically with you. It would of course be great to see more playstyle changing gems. But a lot of those different playstyles seem to be put into uniques and new active skills.

I agree with your main point. It gets a bit boring after a while to just grab damage boosting supp. gems, and they are almost pretty much the same. However, there are also more support gems than you give credit for. As caliginosus said, added lightning damage is a little bit more different than just extra dps. It is actually a variable you need to take into account.

We also have cold converted into fire type of gems, gems like hypothermia and increased burning chance, faster casting, bloodlust etc. etc. The current pool can always benefit from more. But at the moment, there is still a lot of material too.

Like others, I agree with your main point. We need more variance support gems.

However, the current amount of "only damage" gems is fine in my opinion. That's what makes more linked sockets more valuable. If every gem was like you described, why would we need more than 2-3 sockets? How would I combinate them, why would I combinate them?

I think GGG is on track with this one, like with the blasphemy you mentioned. I wouldn't be too worried.

Not saying you are wrong, just saying things aren't as bad as you described :)

I would like to see more choices that impacted how your skills worked with supports. There are some great combinations now that require lots of thinking and planning but I do feel forced to use the damaging supports as opposed to finding a way to make knockback or chance to flee to work.

Some ideas that would be cool is making mobility melee supports. Imagine if skills like cyclone, leap slam, or flicker strike were supports instead of skills.

Vaal Glacial Hammer + leap slam
Frenzy + flicker strike
Ground slam + cyclone

I'm sure others would come up with even more creative/deadly combos. I would love to see more supports like this.

I'm agree with you and the others, recently I discover the true power of support gems, check this out:

+


As you can see with those gems and the gloves I change drastically the behavior of the Skill, making a huge mobs magnet Increased Area of Effect & Knockback doesen't give any damage, but are a skill changer; Actually i'm tinking in switch Fire damage for stun gem Was testing this last night and works really smooth.

I think there is a lot to do with actual support gems. New ones are welcome too.

Would be nice to see more defensive stuff like Fortify so we could be a bit more adaptable.