Ignite, Fire Pen, Curses, and Elemental Equilibrium

So I've been enjoying myself playing an ignite build. So far, I'm using dual curse Elemental Weakness, Flammability, and intend to use EE with Shock Nova for proliferating shock, while reducing fire resistance. Maybe throw in a third curse by way of Temp Chains for longer burns and defense.

My question is:

1. After applying Elemental Equilibrium, followed by a fire damage hit - Would I have to apply EE with Shock Nova to increase the actual burn rate, becaue the monster would have the +25% to fire resistance from the original fire hit?

I ask this because I've noticed that flammability / Elemental weakness, when placed on a burning target, greatly increase the burn damage per second. Haven't been able to find an appropriate answer around.

Yes.

EE isn't worth it.

I am a burner with dual curses and shock nova proliferate.

EE is great with Explosive Arrow. For about every thing else I imagine it's too much work to be worth it.

EE is almost always worth it.

Here's two scenarios.

Monster has 0 fire res.

Say you hit for 100 fire damage. With dual curese (-100) and elemental equilibrium (-50) the target will take 250 fire damge and burn for 80% of that, 200. Then after the initial fire hit, the target will have -75 res. 200 burn will becomes 350 burn. (All other modfiers to burn can be ignored since resistance is multiplicative with any of them and the result will be the same overall).

Without EE. That 100 fire hit is only 200. So the burn is only 160, which will become 320 after resistances.

So at 0 monster resistance EE is better.

Ok let's try at 100 fire resist.

With dual curse we bring resistance to 0, with EE -50. So our 100 hit is now 150. After the initial the target will have 25 fire resist. The burn will be 120, and after resists will be 90.

Without EE the initial hit is 100, the burn is 80 and the resistances are 0 so they remain 80.

So math tells us even if you did absolutely nothing after the intital fire hit, EE is better. BUT WAIT! You can cast another non fire spell immediately after the burn begins, and with burn duration passives, this can make a HUGE impact on the total burn damage.


Long story short, if you are building around hitting everything with lightning for shock stacks anyway, EE is pure profit.

Thanks for the feedback, I know this response is terribly late.

Either way, found out that EE was absolutely superfluous when it came to solo mapping. Could see using a shockwave prolif stacking EE to be useful in group situations, but since I'm mainly solo/ with 2 people, it's no problem.

Just wanted to point out that EE is usually more of a hindrance in public (non-coordinated) parties. It's much worse when everyone also has EE such as in maps with the EE mod.

If you play with melee players then they'll very likely have the Added Fire Damage support or another favourite is the Hatred aura. Both of these and the fact that melee players hit relatively fast means that if you target the same monsters most of the time the monsters will have Fire+Cold resistance from EE.

It would make sense therefore that you try and make sure monsters receive only lightning damage from you (if you're the only one with EE) so that this triggers fire+cold weakness to help your melee friends. In most situations however Lightning based skills don't proc EE regularly enough. If you're the only one with EE and you're in a team with melee players you're better off just doing lightning skills and letting your allies do extra damage rather than trying to be the only one who does bonus elemental damage.

I know you said you mainly solo anyway but maybe someone else will find the above useful.

Edit:
Actually, not just melee but melee do more hits/second usually.

"

gilrad wrote:

EE is great with Explosive Arrow. For about every thing else I imagine it's too much work to be worth it.

RF :)