Decay

Hello,

i have been testing and playing occultist with decay support on various spells but mostly arc supported by decay, efficacy, vile affliction and void manipulation.

I have stumbled weird behavior about decay and ES leech support described in my post here https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2862521/page/1#p23217549

As decay is chaos dot it potentially falls into two categories (poison dot and chaos dot) but since Poison builds mostly scale of phys damage and not direct chaos damage, Decay generally would feel great if it falls in the chaos archetype support gem.

That being said all chaos gems currently benefit from flat spell damage ("Modifiers to Spell Damage apply to this Skill's Damage Over Time effect") So in every build that uses blight/ED/Soulrend and Bane generally stack some spell damage also.

Decay support would feel great if it could benefit off spell damage allowing it to have viable support gems(like controlled destruction) and up to date modern POE scaling.

Decay should have "Modifiers to Spell Damage and poison damage apply to this Skill's Damage Over Time effect"

First, a few answers to questions out there:

"

Katzenkeller wrote:

That thing is really puzzling to me....

So from what i could gather, Decay does inherit some of the skills gem tags it is linked with but not all.

Why? How?
I could not find a pattern or logic behind that, for instance, why does it inherit the Trap tag but not the projectile tag? How are you supposed to find out about this?

My main question though: Does the Skills damage effectiveness matter in anyway?

1.Will a Decay applied via Rain of Arrows (dmg 50%) only do half of its damage?

2. Will a Decay applied via charge up skills like Scourge Arrow or Blade Flurry a a different dmg value according to the charge up skills currant stage?

A: Not entirely sure what aspects you're trying to inherit, but if it's more/less projectiles, or chains, it follows the skill. If it's projectile damage, that will not inherit because projectile damage is inherently hits-only. No damaging ailments, and no damage over time.

1. No, Rain of Arrows does full decay with all enemies hit, as do most skills.

2. Most charge skills (and some other notables) now display "More Damage Per Stage on Hits and Ailments". This is to directly stop interacting with Decay, and maybe like 2 other effects. Decay is not a hit nor an ailment.

There were times that skills interacted with Decay differently, such as Fire Nova Mine and some channels. Arc still interacts strongly with Decay (More Damage Per Chain, not More Damage with Hits and Ailments Per Chain). I also saw a video that appeared to have a strong interaction with Storm Burst and its duration-based steroid.

@Shadenaut: I would think it does. DoFL says it does more damage on Attack Skills, not on Hits and Ailments. Decay usually counts as part of the skill in these cases. I also don't see where the wiki says it doesn't interact, could be one I don't use. Could be outdated.

@fofar I don't guess this test was done correctly. In order to benefit from damage while leeching, you have to be leeching when the hit takes place. That means a second strike is generally necessary. You also need to not be at full energy shield. The damage is decided at the time of the hit, not after, to the best of my knowledge.

As for my personal input on the skill, I'd first like to see more instances of "Skill does more damage per X" changed to hits and ailments only. If this isn't done, Decay might as well be removed from the game, as it can only be viable in these best case scenarios.

However, I'd rather see it start scaling in a more logical fashion. The linear DoT makes the ability dull and invites stagnant builds to utilize it, or simply cast-on-death. In a game where it is generally far better to build up one skill than string along a second, Decay really needs to get some bite to it. My suggestion is to make Decay have a "decaying" lifetime. Have the damage decay to the point that about half the damage is done in the first 1/4 of the duration, and tail the rest on the end. This gives some incentive to reapply the debuff. Also, increase the damage to the point that it rivals Essence Drain DoT for the first instant it's applied. ED will still be better, as it will have an extra support slot to function happily in, and is generally applied to all enemies with a non-linked skill. You add the hit in and the regen effect, and Decay is simply outclassed before you begin. Finally, 8 seconds is a long Decay period, but maybe with the falling power over the duration, you can actually allow it 10 or 15 seconds of duration to really stretch the duration possibilities with it.

I wouldn't hate to see a "Cripple" support, either, that latches onto DoTs you deal and causes said enemy to do something like 10% less damage or something, and Decay would utilize it best with the duration at the cost of using up an active and a support to apply it.

Could this support gem get a work over?

It really needs to scale with other things (such as Essence Drain's "modifiers to spell damage apply to this skills damage over time" effect)

it's a fun support to build around, but it's incredibly painful to actually do so.

I've been building a full focus on Decay and I will reiterate what everyone is saying.

This support needs a Buff, not a big one, but still something to help.

Right now, what ever you can try/build with Decay, you are better off doing it with Poison instead, it will scale as much and will stack


One easy option, "modifiers to spell damage apply to this skills damage over time" it would help with gear options.

Another option, "Different source of Decay stacks" I would help multiple button builds and would change from to plain Poison build.

A thrid option could be, "Each stacks of Decay reduce its duration and deal Damage (XX)% faster", it would open some build option while being different from Poison.

"

Funinyourgame wrote:

I've been building a full focus on Decay and I will reiterate what everyone is saying.

This support needs a Buff, not a big one, but still something to help.

Right now, what ever you can try/build with Decay, you are better off doing it with Poison instead, it will scale as much and will stack


One easy option, "modifiers to spell damage apply to this skills damage over time" it would help with gear options.

Another option, "Different source of Decay stacks" I would help multiple button builds and would change from to plain Poison build.

A thrid option could be, "Each stacks of Decay reduce its duration and deal Damage (XX)% faster", it would open some build option while being different from Poison.

I really like all the ideas mentioned here.

In a world where we're measuring out damage per second in the hundreds of thousands (if not millions), it feels pretty bad to see lines like "Weapon: Your Hits inflict Decay, dealing 500 Chaos Damage per second for 8 seconds" in an essence craft. Are we simply adding 500 chaos damage per second to our build? Yes, it does scale with generic % Increased Chaos Damage and Increased Chaos Damage Over Time, but these multipliers feel like they'll only add a couple thousand DPS to Decay (instead of 500, what can we get? 1000? 2000?)

Also, the gem text should be clarified. Looking at the Wiki https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Decay_Support, we understand it can inherit a lot of tags, but it's not obvious. Knowing that it can inherit tags and that those tags will contribute to damage is cool to try and make some builds around it, but it ends up being dull and incomprehensible in the current state.

With the support gem nerfs it feels that decay could have deserved a small damage increase as it already was very hard to scale decay and now most sources to scale it are nerfed.

Here is a example build of a high end decay build before the nerfs. This build uses the very strong storm burst duration scaling for decay which is the best way to scale decay for now. https://pastebin.com/vBMN9LCW

Thanks for the hard work <3 Nerfs over all are looking good!

What about a buff?