What did Elemental Hit do to deserve this upcoming nerf?

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Vipermagi wrote:

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鬼殺し wrote:

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Vipermagi wrote:

There is no such thing as an "Elemental Hit build".

*one...arched...eyebrow* Is that so?

There are characters that use Elemental Hit. They are generic IAS/flat scaling builds, intentionally using worse delivery mechanisms. They could exchange Elemental Hit with almost anything else, and be the same character still (but stronger). If Default Attack could be supported, it'd be an adequate replacement. Nothing ties them to using Elemental Hit - the character shown on pg. 3 even casually switches between melee, wand and bow because it's such an utterly generic setup.

There are builds that can utilize Elemental Hit. There are no builds that do not function without Elemental Hit.

This is it. It looks and feels like default attack with some elemental damage added to the base damage.

Default Attack < Elemental Hit < Literally Anything Else

The new skill does increase the flat damage significantly and does add some splash damage to it. I believe the melee version of this will still be bad, but for ranged it's something.

It should be noted that there was a small following when the quality of Elemental Hit gave critical strike chance, making it an *EXPENSIVE* Cast on Crit main attack.

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Midoriisonehotlittlegirl wrote:

I giggle here,because no one mentioned the most broken item to use with new elemental hit.
It will be so fun and so strong...
Hint: It will take over 100mana per second and cost under 15chaos for end game dps.

I think most of the obvious ones have been mentioned.

Brightbeak
Piscator's
Quill Rain
Tempest/Storm Cloud


What else?

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Arrowneous wrote:

But most of the time GGG when makes skill changes/nerfs they don't explain adequately at all why this is being done. Normally I should think GGG would only need to nerf a skill if it has been shown that it can be used in a way that trivializes the hardest content (and not just with perfect T1 gear). Has that been shown to be true for Elemental Hit? If so then please post how (with video examples if possible). From the OP's post it doesn't sound like EH is anywhere near as good as the speed running meta skills. So I agree with the OP in questioning GGG's decisions to change skills without clear evidence that the skill is too op. Someone from GGG or a player in the know needs to explain the reason for the changes to EH (and other questionable skill changes). If EH is broken then please explain.

Winner!!!! If Elemental Hit were overpowered it'd have been a wildfire of builds using it! Stats, gears, etc aside for a second; If GGG honestly wanted to buff it to be on par with other endgame skills being used then they would have simply done what they did to this new one (buff flat damage, increase ailment chance %) WITHOUT adding "Deals no damage of other damage types" to it! So element + chaos damage is out the picture. To add insult to injury, now I have to level up at least another 4 to 6 levels JUST to use those new jewels they made for it, just to make up for the loss of other damage including other elements! Like wtf!


To those thinking it's a buff, GGG knows damn well it's not; hence why they said "Elemental Hit is receiving large mechanical changes as well as some damage adjustments" "It's also important to note, Elemental Hit cannot deal the same type of damage sequentially unless it can only deal one type of damage" Current build at lv 87 without the jewel slots and it'd take another 4 to 6 just to get to the slots! Thereby wasting what could be points going towards...…...idk maybe more LIFE or perhaps ES just to survive.

This is just wrong: Limiting elements to 1 instead of 3 on a multi elemental gem, Restricting damage types to one specific element, while continuing to NOT give % based on weapon damage; is basically penalizing you for even using Elemental Hit instead of any other specific elemental skill. Issue isn't with the new jewels themselves but the rewording of the gem, changing the mechanic and nerfing it. Now you have to work twice as hard as you do now to try making it endgame viable.

GGG is making elemental hit damn near pigeonholed into having to focus on fire via Avatar of Fire or Xoph's Heart amulet. If you use that then you wont have to worry about having to use the new jewels to focus your damage. For ranged I may as well chalk it up as a loss and go melee using Oro's with Elemental Hit. Using this logic, I see why they refuse to make Wild Strike an all weapon gem; with + to chains they'd be outcry towards ranged users and have Elemental Hit not add any damage % based off weapons.

Once again here's the gear previously linked, you guys try it and you'll see exactly what i'm talking about. Add in whatever flasks you guys use and you'll be surprised at your results.

Those exact mechanics are already what I use on my elementalist for both bow and wand. Originally made this build last year and for the past 2 months I've been mixing it up since my tree isn't bound to specific weapons; therefore with ele hit being interchangeable with whatever I choose to use. All of those are what she'd normally use …..at least for cold / chaos bow...……….now if I want speed then I simply switch to which of course the speed from quill makes up for the lack of an additional arrow but also is NOT affected by damage due to ele hit not doing physical in the first place. She's at 100% chance to freeze and with call of the brotherhood 100% shock too. I focused on chance to freeze on the tree since as you said, crit is now a huge pain in the ass.



The last usage that I made using ele hit involves Though rippling thoughts is obviously a melee weapon, for this particular char it works as good as a wand because she's focused on AoE and elemental damage and heavy with herald of ice; when you attack there is a giant discharge-like effect! As for piscator it was that or a poet pen ( which I haven't managed to get hold of or find just yet, been focused on SSF beastiary :=\ ) With using the wand or sword instead of voltaxic I switched out from Malachai helm (since I wouldn't be using chaos) to for obvious reasons.



Here's another guy that realizes it and is hit by this nerf

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Oramin wrote:

Wow, thanks for what looks like a complete nerf to my L90 Elemental Hit Triple Herald Elementalist dual wand user.

1. Elemental Hit does plenty of damage - if you build your character right.

2. In addition to the Elemental Hit damage, this character does a bunch of base Physical (750 avg), Lightning (1500 avg), and Cold (500 avg) tooltip damage. In comparison, the base Lightning damage for L20 Elemental Hit is 27 to 516 (272 avg). I'm pretty sure most of my damage does *not* come from the added damage of Elemental Hit.

Now, when I use Elemental Hit, *all* of the Physical damage will be eliminated as will *all* of the Lightning damage unless I get the 1/3 chance of hitting Lightning. Ditto for Cold

3. I don't need an increase in the chance to inflict status ailments because I happen to have a high critical strike chance due to wand use. Oh, right, you made it so that instead of *every* hit having a chance to Shock with my massive Lightning damage, only 1/3 of the hits, those which randomly deal Lightning, have a chance to Shock. So, you are really just increasing it from 10% to 16 1/3% along with eliminating the chance of status ailments on crit for those elements which aren't the single selected damage type.

4. Even with that 10% More per status ailment and the slightly more than doubling of Elemental Hit's base damage at L20, I'm guessing that the damage output is still going to be nerfed.




I suggest you developers take TheBlasterBabe out for a spin (I assume that you can make copies of interesting characters for in-house play-testing purposes) both with the current version of Elemental Hit and with your "improvements" before you implement this change.


Now that I've chewed you out, I will give you some credit - the Jewels are cool. But you can implement the changes in Elemental Hit by tweaking the Jewels instead of screwing with pre-existing characters.

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Kragwunga wrote:

What does this rework accomplish?
In an endgame setup you need to waste 2 jewelslots simply to not miss out on damage and even then you need really specific gear.
Without the jewels the skill has gone from being slightly better than autoattack to worse than autoattack in a lot of scenarios...

The jewels should give a rather high value of damage conversion to the element that has been chosen instead.

All the change does is making it viable to level your charakter while using wands (if you really really want to) which is nice, but it isnt enough i think.

See, now if the jewels were to convert damage it wouldn't make the rewording of Elemental Hit so bad.

PROS
1) E.H. now has AoE tagged on it making a synergy with Herald of Ice and Concentrated Effect, utilizing AoE mods with other gears you choose to use.

2) Chance to shock,ignite and freeze is increased from 20% to 49% (level 20) thereby saving the need for stacking those same mods on the tree, also having to use specific gears.






This "revamp" / overhaul of elemental hit is GGG's way of putting the carrot on the stick, telling us the carrot is bigger and juicier and but now the stick 2 or 3 times as long as it used to be.

To GGG: If you truly want Elemental Hit to be on par with other endgame skills, remove the new wording added and keep the AoE and chance to % increases and leave the new damage. Simple. I honestly want to know your opinion on this and why it was changed please.









TLDR (For those that like that): Not a buff, "Deals no damage of other damage types" + using / wasting stat points to get jewel slots instead of life or es = HUGE NERF. Newly added AoE and flat dmg makes it on par with current Elemental Hit due to the future loss of other damage types ( Chaos, other elements or physical) New E.H. jewels would not be absolutely needed if not for new wording. New jewels should include conversions.

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SunL4D2 wrote:

What? Have you misread everything about rework? It's bonkers. If things will work as they stand now it's actually gonna surpass Blade Flurry and Molten Strike for single target damage...

No, by a long shot. Elemental hit will be very good in leveling, while you don't have much items for scaling. It's worst and worst after that, because it doesn't scale well at all.

If you think elemental hit will beat molten strike or blade flurry, I think you should try to download a software called Path of Building and run some tests.

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Phrazz wrote:

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Question2 wrote:

Im predicting lots of "guys im trying to scale my EH damage but its so hard and using [insert some other skill here] with abyss jewels would be so much easier, is there any reason to use EH instead?" posts after the patch.

I don't think scaling it would be a problem at all. Abyss Jewels will work just fine, and the skill itself has a bonkers damage effectiveness.

The skill has average damage effectiveness. Blade flurry is around 300% for instance.

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Keyen wrote:

The skill has average damage effectiveness. Blade flurry is around 300% for instance.

Using Blade Flurry as an example isn't really the best way to go, because the skill is OP compared to many other options, at least for a lot of builds. That is never good for a game. Compared to BF and maybe MF, most skills are "average" in most ways, especially for single target.

When I hype EH, I'm not hyping compared to alternatives. I'm hyping as a comparison to what it was. Because the skill do offer something different, something new. And that is far more interesting than "OP".

But you're probably right. The effectiveness is probably average.

So, the tags on this are melee, attack, bow, + elements...
It does not have the 'projectile' tag, though has Bow.

So it would not be used with wands, I assume?

And if used with a range attack totem, the totem would not proc EE, I assume?

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BlaqWolf wrote:

So, the tags on this are melee, attack, bow, + elements...
It does not have the 'projectile' tag, though has Bow.

So it would not be used with wands, I assume?

And if used with a range attack totem, the totem would not proc EE, I assume?

The "Bow" tag means Projectile. There's no attacks with both the "Projectile" and "Bow" tag. Barrage works with wands and does not have a "projectile tag".

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Phrazz wrote:

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BlaqWolf wrote:

So, the tags on this are melee, attack, bow, + elements...
It does not have the 'projectile' tag, though has Bow.

So it would not be used with wands, I assume?

And if used with a range attack totem, the totem would not proc EE, I assume?

The "Bow" tag means Projectile. There's no attacks with both the "Projectile" and "Bow" tag. Barrage works with wands and does not have a "projectile tag".

Oh, lordy... Poets' Pen elemental hit builds incoming....

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BlaqWolf wrote:

So, the tags on this are melee, attack, bow, + elements...
It does not have the 'projectile' tag, though has Bow.

So it would not be used with wands, I assume?

And if used with a range attack totem, the totem would not proc EE, I assume?

1) it can be used with wands, the gem currently can be used with all weapons (and unarmed), and the description says nothing to suggest that has changed.

Restrictions like that are always stated to some degree ('strikes with a melee weapon' -> not bow/wand or unarmed, 'attacks enemy with a melee strike' -> not bow/wand, 'fires an arrow' -> only bow not wand, etc)


2) totems proc EE just like you do. Same with traps and mines. Only things that won't proc the keystone version of EE are your minions, damage over time, and reflect. (malachai's artifice can be used to allow socketed skills, including minions, to apply EE on hit too, without needing the keystone)

3) tags *can* be used to roughly guess what a skill can be used for, but they're not *meant* for that. They're meant for showing what skills/gems can be affected by things like '+1 to level of tag gems' gear affixes or 'tag skills have increased crit chance' on jewels or the like. Don't count on them for figuring out what weapons or supports work; read the description in teal just below the level/attribute requirements for things like that.

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Phrazz wrote:

But you're probably right. The effectiveness is probably average.

Yes it is^^

Heavy strike has 193% damage effectiveness, if you want a more reasonable example.