Adjustment for Elementalist's Heart of Destruction Ascendancy Passive

Hello everyone!

It's been a long while since I last posted here, but in that time I was able to gain more experience and understanding of the game, so today I'm here to suggest what I understand is an important Quality of Life adjustment for the Elementalist.

As it is today, the Heart of Destruction Ascendancy Passive Skill states as follows:

Gain Convergence when you Hit a Unique Enemy. no more than once every 8 seconds.
60% increased Area of Effect while you don't have Convergence.

(Convergence grants 30% more Elemental Damage and lasts 4 seconds.)

These are the reasons why it's a good Passive:

A) Convergence allows for extra damage against Bosses.
B) Convergence improves mapping experience via increased Area of Effect.

These are the reasons why it's a bad Passive:

A) Convergence has an unscalable limited duration.
B) Convergence has an unscalable internal cooldown.
C) Convergence only grants increased damage against a number-limited monster type.
D) Convergence relies on Hit-based Elemental damage.

Allow me to elaborate on the bad aspects of it:

A) Convergence has limited duration.
B) Convergence has an unscalable internal cooldown.

Convergence exists to give players a damage boost against Unique enemies. However, Unique enemies all share of higher defenses, up to 50% Elemental Resistances for non-Uber Pinnacle Bosses, without considering added mechanics and skills these enemies may have or call upon, which further add to their defenses (e.g.: Drox, The Warlord's Banner Call).

As such, Convergence, for the most part, serves only to counteract these increased defenses. I understand that damage alone isn't enough to face the tougher fights the game has to offer; mechanics which debilitate the enemy are also important to pierce their hides. However, Unique enemies (minus Rogue Exiles) are often tied to an extended combat experience, especially Pinnacle Bosses, which is where Convergence's unscalable duration and cooldown prove to undermine it.

In endgame encounters, players must take whatever window of opportunity to engage the enemy they can get, and limiting how much progress they can make as a result of these timers is one of the main reasons, in my experience, why Bastion of Elements is often chosen instead of Heart of Destruction, as it allows for better survivability (i.e.: more opportunities to screw up and take damage but not die) which, in turn, allow the player to chip away at the enemy, and slowly, but (more) successfully, attain victory.

C) Convergence only grants increased damage against a number-limited monster type.

Though having more damage is always nice to have, oftentimes players find themselves struggling against Rare enemies moreso than against Unique ones. These first are far more numerous and have a wide range of randomised, stacking abilities and mechanics, whereas Unique enemies, in turn, have fixed capabilities. Not to mention Rare enemies can empower each other, limitlessly, via Aura modifiers, which proves deadly in packed maps, especially when constrained by a League Mechanic, such as Ritual or Ultimatum.

D) Convergence relies on Hit-based Elemental damage.

Constraining Convergence to Hit-based Elemental damage greatly restrains the buildcrafting possibilites around Elemental damage. Many sources of Damage over Time are rooted in the Elemental spectrum, such as Burn, Ignite and Chill, which don't always have a focussed, single-target, Hit-based application (e.g.: Cold Snap, Flame Wall).

With all that, here is my suggestion for an adjusted Heart of Destruction:

You have Convergence if you damaged a Rare or Unique Enemy recently.
50% increased Area of Effect while you don't have Convergence.

(Convergence grants 25% more Elemental Damage).
(Recently refers to the past 4 seconds).

With these changes, Heart of Destruction allows players to sustain Convergence throughout the encounter against an Unique enemy, regardless of what form their Elemental damage takes, whilst also further improving the mapping experience by allowing it to be activated and sustained against Rare enemies and maintaing the Area of Effect increaese when neither enemy is engaged.

However, for balance reasons, I concur that, since players have theoretically infinite uptime on Convergence, the damage buff it grants must be lowered, as its extended duration allows for players to deal more total damage overall. The same goes for the Area of Effect increase, reduced in order to accomodate Convergence's activation during mapping against Normal and Magic enemies.

And finally, Heart of Destruction saw its last update on version 3.13, which took place 2 years ago (already!), and based on its update history and the changes made therein, I'm confident that what I've suggested and elaborated upon in here is fairly minor.

I'm looking forward to further discussing this, if anyone is interested.

Hmmm...i have never really had a problem with it as it is, and it is UBER powerful as it is already. 30% MORE vs bosses is huge, huge, huge. The increased AoE is also huge.

The entire ascendancy, not just HoD, is based on HITS. For DoT, you roll an occultist or another class. It is actually one of the ascendancies with the BEST overall synergy with itself. Every shaper node is HIT based, and so the biggest node is also hit based. The ascendancy literally screams at you from all sides: use a hit-based spell!!! Not to mention that the previous node which deals with Exposure, is ALSO hit-based. You can't cause exposure without a hit.

As far as the rare vs unique thing...perhaps. In current PoE, this might be deserving of a rework BUT removing the cooldown is way too much. If you were actually mapping at a decent speed, you would NEVER have the AoE up at all. Rares are just too plentiful. So the node just becomes 25% (your number) more elemental damage which is....boring. We have EA for that already.