Elemental Expression - The Elephant in the Room

Elemental Expression is cool - everyone loves triggers. The value it adds is lackluster, but for a reasonably low cost, it can add some exposure and a little bit of damage against large groups.

The crit node for Invoker is fun. Piercing elemental resistance with crits is actually super strong when you reliably generate crits and deal almost entirely elemental damage.

The problem with EE is when you’re using it, you’re most likely playing as a cast on crit Invoker. Cast on crit can get pricy, especially with the goto CoC spell being cascade/echo Comet, which, with enough crit and the right gear, will cause Comet to chain endlessly until you are out of mana (especially with Tempest Bell).

A terrible situation arises when you’re using the Wyrn Staff unique. Most people will scoff at its lowish damage, but it’s doubling of elemental damage, the fact that it can roll a TEN crit bonus, and +4 to all elemental skills make it the ideal weapon for Invokers. You can argue with me about how useful it is but I have personal experience in seeing how devastating the combo is.

This brings me to the problem. EE is great with this weapon, as it gets +3 levels per +1 suffix on the staff, meaning at gem level 20, if you are critting reliably (my crit rate is 100%), it takes nearly 400 mana to attack between Ice Strike and EE (which triggers always off of crit). Not only unsustainable, down right impossible, especially with Cast on Crit.

I recommend changing EE to function on an energy resource like CoC. This can lower its trigger rate some but make it a sustainable and viable option for Invoker Monk.

Devs please please please switch EE to energy resource.

PS: I did not play POE1 ever. Got this game based on hype and am absolutely in love. TY for the masterpiece.