Balance Changes to Chill, Shock, and Charges

I know the changes being discussed now are the chance to apply, and duration of status effects, but in my examination, I went a little deeper into why the status exists, and possible other considerations. Implementing some of the deeper changes would be a more radical adjustment of the status effect system, so I'm not optimistic on their chances for wide-spread acceptance.

Cold Damage (weakest of the damage types)
* Chill - This one is the defensive/utility status. Slowing enemies down as they approach gives you a measure of safety for staying away from monsters and you can get in more attacks. Who needs to chill enemies? People who can't kill them fast. (if the problem with chill is making bosses too slow when combined with other sources of slow like temporal chains, put a cap on the maximum speed reduction a boss can receive. This cap could be different for each boss, and modified as needed)

* Freeze - This one is the powerful extreme of chill. (I like how it has these 2 stages) Stopping packs of monsters in their tracks as they close in on you and then killing a frozen enemy shatters them (also great against necromancers, to remove some corpses from the equation.) Freezing enemies fits against random enemies, but not bosses so much - Maybe a split-second stun that they break through nearly instantly, but may interrupt their attacks.


Electrical Damage (most random damage type)
* Shock - Shock always seemed awkward to me. Electrical damage is built around randomness of damage, from super low, to super high non-crit crits. I guess the status effect of shock increases the "low" damage hits, and amplifies the high damage, making it more reliable. I've always associated electrical damage with lightning bolt strikes, Very high, quick damage that homes in on a target (positive/negative electrons) and conducts to other targets (the Arc skill does a good job of conveying electrical damage in how it mechanically works, but the mana cost always annoyed me due to the randomness of electrical damage), and tazer gun stunning (and fork-in-electrical-socket frying).

With all that in mind, (static)shock could have an additional built-in intermittent stun type effect, over a longer period of time. When an enemy that is shocked tries to attack or occasionally as they're moving, it could "backfire", preventing the attack and they receive a static shock instead, AND/OR when a shocked enemy hits you, they receive a static shock as retaliatory damage (non-reflectable, technically self-inflicted). (I realize the retaliatory damage thing is a lot like lightning thorns, and would be quite dangerous to players that attack quickly, so I'm of the opinion that this part of the status would only afflict monsters, not players)

The current status effect causing a target to take more damage from all attacks doesn't feel like it fits the theme, maybe just to me
(it fits the idea of cold a lot more to me - flick someone's frozen ear in winter... and in general, cold makes things more brittle, but chill/freeze has enough as is).



Physical Damage
* Stun - I don't think stun is enough of a status for default physical damage. I'd add bleeding - no gems or uniques required, though they could augment the damage or length of bleed effect (be it internal for crushing damage, or external for slashing/piercing)

I'd also separate crushing, slashing, piercing to give innate bonus "chance to" effects:
Crushing: lower enemy attack power (basically: break enemy bones and bruise their muscles)
Slashing: maim (think hamstringing (too much like chill?))
Piercing: higher chance for status effects, and slightly higher damage done by Damage over time effects caused by all additional damage types done with the same attack, since lots of piercing attacks and builds focus on elemental or poison (this includes higher bleed - and ranged attacks benefit, since the enemies are usually moving toward you and are now bleeding more)

This would be a slight melee buff, making nearby enemies less dangerous as they fight toe-to-toe with them, (and it helps ranged builds a little too.)


Fire Damage
* Ignite - doesn't fit this pattern... it's in the damage over time category, like bleed and poison (are those much different now?) Fire spreads - I mean, that's one of the first things I think of when I think of bad things about fire, so having built-in proliferation seems like a way to make ignite unique on its own (even though the proliferation thing can be added to other things via other means) Maybe add a very short-range blinding aura to the afflicted target to blind nearby enemies, due to the smoke from the fire - there's the whole "fire burns bright" thing too.

Also, heat melts metal things, cooks flesh, scorches/chars organic things, makes metal expand, and evaporates liquids (among other things). I haven't given enough thought to how this could translate into PoE gameplay, but there's room for a more creative status effect here.



Chaos Damage
* Poison? I don't think they consider poison to be the status ailment of chaos, like ignite is to fire, although poison is chaos damage. I think a lot more could be done with "Chaos" damage, as the name implies... maybe causing random status ailments, bonus damage, reversing the effects of buffs on the enemy, could cause fear... I could go on.





PS: In a game so filled with "corruption", I'm surprised there isn't a Corruption/Incorruptible system of some sort in the game regarding the player character's body, perhaps providing tempting mutations with trade-offs... you could accept the mutations along with their downsides, or keep yourself pure and get none of the mutation benefits or drawbacks, and rather get a purity buff of some sort (like bonus resist chaos damage) for resisting the influence of whatever is causing the mutations. (This is sorta present in the older uniques, and even the vaal orb stuff, but this goes deeper, perhaps you already have something like this planned, but that's where my thoughts go with this game in particular.)