Elemental damage completely dominates this game, physical remains useless

"

Moosifer a écrit :

"

RogueMage a écrit :

True, but physical damage is the power generator that drives most elemental damage conversion mechanisms. LA, for example, is useless without a strong source of physical damage from your bow.

That's not true. While a LA build using a physical bow is good, I'm pretty sure the most popular version still involves a high ele damage + high APS thicket.

Well, here's an example, a level-97 LA Ranger that looks pretty successful:

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/178442

This build uses a Lioneye's Glare with 72-269 physical damage and level-20 LA with 50% conversion of physical to lightning and 57% Increased Projectile Damage. Added to that is about 340 Iron Grip strength plus 100% Increased Elemental Damage. There's also 8-125 added lightning damage from jewelry, so it looks like average lightning damage is about 2/3 converted bow physical damage and 1/3 item lightning damage.

don't know why EK is an exemple of physical build..., all the damage is already on the gem then you increase it by strength nodes and iron will, then some projectile increase damage, and finally spell damage. A lvl 20 EK is 528–791 dmg, you increase this with one gem (iron will) and strength (+high survivability), and then spell dmg from wand (100%+) and shield/amy/...
Compare this to mahori equi (unique maul) 357–553 dmg, less damage and slower and where do you get all the increase damage? Strength like EK but then where are the 150%+ from gear? Nope, take nodes instead. Also you can miss, not with EK... and EK hits lots of targets without reduce effectiveness, plus the projectile weakness curse allows to hit more targets.

As said, the flat damage is mandatory on the weapon but with elemental build you can find the flat damage on every piece of gear.
I also hate that dmg conversion is all or nothing, why would you convert 50% of your physical damage and keep the other half physical knowing how armour works? Just for the life/mana leech??? And if you convert the damage, isn't it better to take increase elemental so you increase all conversions at once.

yep there is a problem with pure physical builds, you can't rely on quick small hits due to armour formula and it's hard to reach big fat hits.


ps: to the post above, this build is purely elemental, 99% conversion. And lioneyes.... never misses...

EK cant really be used as an example for Physical build, its on off case of a skill that does retardedly high base damage without any items, hence most EK builds just focus on pure defense

"

RogueMage a écrit :

"

Moosifer a écrit :

That's not true. While a LA build using a physical bow is good, I'm pretty sure the most popular version still involves a high ele damage + high APS thicket.

Well, here's an example, a level-97 LA Ranger that looks pretty successful:

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/178442

This build uses a Lioneye's Glare with 72-269 physical damage and level-20 LA with 50% conversion of physical to lightning and 57% Increased Projectile Damage. Added to that is about 340 Iron Grip strength plus 100% Increased Elemental Damage. There's also 8-125 added lightning damage from jewelry, so it looks like average lightning damage is about 2/3 converted bow physical damage and 1/3 item lightning damage.

Comon dude, I've seen you post before don't act dumb, you know this fact as well as I do. It's lioneyes builds or ele thickets, very few in between. You also don't need to explain how it works as I was the first person on the server with a lioneyes, the one in the unique thread is mine (found by aeth but given to me).

A long term plan is needed as there are some fundamental flaws, but it requires a big overhaul of several mechanics and the time and resources spend on that will only delay the launch and make more people unhappy as less content patches and less frequent update patches would be the result. On the other hand you can also slowly bleed to death, but the luck factor here is that PoE is a great game to come back to, which is the better strategy?

In the mean time the tree is littered with dual wield block, duel wield damage, one handed, tow handed, melee phys, crit for one handed etc. etc. nodes. Nodes that have absolute no value for ranged classes. Adding to these nodes something like 1% chaos resistance, 1% increased max live, 1% to all resist, maybe up some to 2%. Elemental damage nodes don't need this, since their inherent strength. It would make melee builds more tanky and gives melee phys a boost that makes it differ from elemental builds.

It is a quick workaround that could make people happy, while better and more fundamental plans are worked out on. The reason why it is not a valid change is because you want build variety to also exist within melee. I got one with high mana and mana regen, with high crit and high attack speed. I take relative few actual phys nodes, but I am still plagued with the same handicap. Since mana and attack speed are nodes also for ranged classes, they are left out, hence the changes suggested should be temporary and a more fundamental solution should be found.

Unless someone else has short term plans that could work for melee?



This bow is best with elemental hit.

Elemental damage has so many modifiers on gear, strong but sparse passives and even stronger uniques and supports cause unless your damage is converted, all the actual damage passives available are physical.

Why this is broken? Because absolutely no one takes those phys passives even if they plan to make a phys build. Life and defenses are more important when you can much easier improve your damage through other means, such as shock stacks. There's no phys damage auras or even an accuracy aura, while theres a ton for elemental damage.

If you actually do take passives for ele damage then you can spend less nodes for as much of a bonus, or more, with clusters like catalyse and static blows. Meanwhile it's possible to lower enemy resists for more damage while it's impossible to lower enemy armour. High attack speed low damage builds aren't shat on while using an elemental build due to armour mechanics, which is why cyclone is pretty much useless if you aren't using a tri element weapon. The incoming phys crit effect may help but it won't fix the discrenecy between attack speed for phys damage.

GGG recently changed the cleave description to specify that it's only phys damage that's reduced, so it's obvious it's intended and not just an oversight. Why? This really feels like some kind of intended obsolescence of phys damage, which I don't quite get, unless they're afraid ele conversion will be overpowered if phys is strong. Cleave is just confusing though with no conversion on the skill itself.

If GGG are afraid of ruining phys damage balance due to conversion then they need to adjust conversion. If they think that the ease of getting phys damage leech makes things fair then... I dunno. Sure ain't stopping people saying melee has survivability issues.

If I could, I would change the title from:

"Elemental damage completely dominates this game, physical remains useless"

to

"Elemental damage builds completely dominate this game, because people remain useless at building physical damage-based builds"

although useless is probably being a little harsh (i couldn't resist re-using the same words to make a point), it basically sums up what I think about this whole issue.

The only reason why physical damage-based builds are the minority in this game is because the majority of the player base is either unable to come up with an effective physical damage based build or does not have the perseverance or the patience to build and gear up a physical damage character and hence experience the true strength of a physical damage based char in end game.

Elemental damage always scales better in normal-mid game, but come end-game with the right gear, physical damage-based chars will always out-perform elemental damage chars. It's just that few have the patience to stick with a physical damage char till the end, and most judge the entire physical damage system to be inferior when they haven't even played it long enough yet to appreciate it's true potential.

"

Invalesco a écrit :

If I could, I would change the title from:

"Elemental damage completely dominates this game, physical remains useless"

to

"Elemental damage builds completely dominate this game, because people remain useless at building physical damage-based builds"

although useless is probably being a little harsh (i couldn't resist re-using the same words to make a point), it basically sums up what I think about this whole issue.

The only reason why physical damage-based builds are the minority in this game is because the majority of the player base is either unable to come up with an effective physical damage based build or does not have the perseverance or the patience to build and gear up a physical damage character and hence experience the true strength of a physical damage based char in end game.

Elemental damage always scales better in normal-mid game, but come end-game with the right gear, physical damage-based chars will always out-perform elemental damage chars. It's just that few have the patience to stick with a physical damage char till the end, and most judge the entire physical damage system to be inferior when they haven't even played it long enough yet to appreciate it's true potential.

It reaches its potential ONLY with godlike gear, and even then, it doesn't get that much better than elemental. Even though it might work with godlike gear at lvl 90, the mechanics are simply retarded.

1) no actual aura
2) nodes not affecting bonuses from jewellery WHILE physical rolls on gear are really low
3) no good physical uniques
4) the way armor works will only make difference with godlike gear/crit, with crit comes the issue of physical reflect tearing you to pieces
5) hatred is pretty much a must to do good dps. Along with added fire, this makes it worth it to take catalyst over phys nodes, along with anger/wrath/ele rolls from gear. Hatred also forces you to aura stack BM gem/mana if you want to get this extra DPS.
6) you need to invest a lot of nodes into it to make it deal good damage. How many do you need for elemental? 5 ele dmg nodes (if you count the ones at ranger) and catalyst? Auras, even shitty gear and WED does the rest for you
7) no universal phys damage support gem
8) Most AoE skills are conversion, I'm mainly talking about LA here, as it outperforms split arrow by a lot. If we got the same thing as LA, but with no conversion, then it would be a bit more versatile than RoA and fail with split arrow.
9) Higher mana costs on some skills (cleave)
edit: 10) the reduced phys damage on cleave. The fuck is this?
11) Compared to elemental, a REALLY low amount of attacks to choose from. Ele can use ALL of them.
10) Shock, freeze, burn. Hopefully we are getting an useful one for phys, not stun. It'd obviously also have to get its own static blows.

How can physical not be broken with so many, in my opinion pretty valid, tedious things about it. They make it tedious as hell to even try to make a physical build, even though they might not make physical useless.

You have played a physical build in closed beta, where my physical cleave shadow with 2k hp and negative fire res worked in maps. You had absolutely top gear, and even then, ele cleave was outdpsing you by a big amount with worse gear than you. (okay, i guess it was legacy, but even without diamonds flasks...)

That was closed beta though, where it was pretty okay. Right now, it's even worse, since you need to take A LOT of hp nodes, and since ele builds have to invest at most 9 nodes into damage, they obviously get more of it. You basically have as little of an idea as everyone else could have, since you played phys in closed beta. With 50% CI. With 10k Granites. With godly gear. edit: !!!!!!!!!!!!With conversion!!!!!!!!!!!!

"

Freeslana a écrit :

It reaches its potential ONLY with godlike gear, and even then, it doesn't get that much better than elemental. Even though it might work with godlike gear at lvl 90, the mechanics are simply retarded.

1. My gear back in CB was godlike yes, but I've already seen better gear circulating the market now than I had then, and it's only been 3 and a half months after OB hit.

2. I was level 73 then. And that was without the 9 extra skill points from act3. A level 73 now will be 9 points stronger than I was then. Also, none of the damage nodes got nerfed.

Mechanics are not retarded. People just don't understand how it works.

"

1) no actual aura
2) nodes not affecting bonuses from jewellery WHILE physical rolls on gear are really low
3) no good physical uniques
4) the way armor works will only make difference with godlike gear/crit, with crit comes the issue of physical reflect tearing you to pieces
5) hatred is pretty much a must to do good dps. Along with added fire, this makes it worth it to take catalyst over phys nodes, along with anger/wrath/ele rolls from gear. Hatred also forces you to aura stack BM gem/mana if you want to get this extra DPS.
6) you need to invest a lot of nodes into it to make it deal good damage. How many do you need for elemental? 5 ele dmg nodes (if you count the ones at ranger) and catalyst? Auras, even shitty gear and WED does the rest for you
7) no universal phys damage support gem
8) Most AoE skills are conversion, I'm mainly talking about LA here, as it outperforms split arrow by a lot. If we got the same thing as LA, but with no conversion, then it would be a bit more versatile than RoA and fail with split arrow.
9) Higher mana costs on some skills (cleave)
edit: 10) the reduced phys damage on cleave. The fuck is this?
11) Compared to elemental, a REALLY low amount of attacks to choose from. Ele can use ALL of them.
10) Shock, freeze, burn. Hopefully we are getting an useful one for phys, not stun. It'd obviously also have to get its own static blows.

1) Hatred scales well with physical damage. You don't see ele users using hatred do you. In that sense, I'd say that hatred is an aura for physical damage users.

2) I think I did see Mark saying somewhere that that would change.

3) Lionseye Bow, no?

4) you kidding me? Mobs have very little armour, with none of them having more than 930 armour, which provides minimal reduction against end-game physical hits, crit or no. Wait, now you're talking about reflect? Physical damage users have the option to use physical-elemental conversion attacks such as LS to deal with phys reflect. Ele users don't have an alternative attack to deal with Ele-reflect.

5) I don't know what you're talking about. Hatred being a must for physical damage builds is like saying wrath/anger is a must for ele damage builds. duh? No. Neither Wrath nor Anger is a must for physical damage builds, so you either have no clue as to what you're talking about, or you don't mean what you just said. You serious? You need a bm gem to run hatred? Strange how my CI shadow can run Haste, Discipline, Wrath and Hatred all on mana with only a maximum of 2 increased mana nodes, none even with reduced mana reservation from Alpha's Howl.

6) It does the job for you until you reach end-game and reach the ceiling, then glhf watching phys damage builds catch up as their gear improves, then overtake you while you're still stuck at that ceiling.

7) Melee has melee physical and melee damage on full life. Ranged users who know how to build a proper physical ranger can stack up on frenzy nodes, use darkray vector and use frenzy for tremendous single target DPS. Also, Added Fire Damage is a good example of a physical damage based support gem.

8) RoA actually scales very well with physical damage. It's just that people like to use LA because they like to kill themselves from off screen reflect.

9) higher mana costs on some skills (cleave) as opposed to?

10) that is a result of balance, because physical outdpses ele in end-game. The fact that it is there should tell you that internal testing has been done and physical has been found to > ele.

11) Explain? as long as you have a weapon you can use any attack, so?

10 again?) geez, what's with everyone and status ailments. One is coming soon for phys tho so I won't complain.

"

How can physical not be broken with so many, in my opinion pretty valid, tedious things about it. They make it tedious as hell to even try to make a physical build, even though they might not make physical useless.

You have played a physical build in closed beta, where my physical cleave shadow with 2k hp and negative fire res worked in maps. You had absolutely top gear, and even then, ele cleave was outdpsing you by a big amount with worse gear than you. (okay, i guess it was legacy, but even without diamonds flasks...)

That was closed beta though, where it was pretty okay. Right now, it's even worse, since you need to take A LOT of hp nodes, and since ele builds have to invest at most 9 nodes into damage, they obviously get more of it. You basically have as little of an idea as everyone else could have, since you played phys in closed beta. With 50% CI. With 10k Granites. With godly gear. edit: !!!!!!!!!!!!With conversion!!!!!!!!!!!!

As you've kindly said, it's your opinion. Although players like you cba making a physical damage build, there are still players that will bother, and will reap the rewards of their patience.

You had 2k HP and negative fire res, enough said. I had 9.8k ES and max to all res. My DPS figures did not include the use of diamond flasks. I don't get what point you're trying to make here?

Builds now get a much higher level ceiling because of the higher area levels, as well as an extra 9 skill points from a3. Fine, they need to take more HP nodes, so? Just put more of those extra points into HP nodes. Problem?

Even though CI in closed beta provided a 50% bonus. CI in OB provides a relatively similar amount due to the inbuilt 20% bonus from CI as well as a "33% more bonus" from the buff of the ES nodes. 6% to 8%.

10k Granites to 5k Granites. Yep that is a nerf, but it's not that painful. Before when I was taking negligible damage, I am now no longer taking negligible damage, that's all. However, flasks now have dispel shock and debuff puncture mods on them which are a relative buff.

So godly gear existed in CB but not in OB?

lemme show you my ES gear from CB.


now let me show you what kind of ES gear I have now.


problem?

the main reason it's not really viable is that you can't scale up your physical damage and protect yourself against reflect damage at the same time

the armor system is just too punishing. elemental resists are very easy to get. getting 85% physical damage reduction? decidedly NOT easy.

sure, you can convert the majority of your physical damage to elemental damage....

and if most of the damage that actually hits the monster is not physical damage, does it really count as a physical build? not in my eyes.

There's only 1 or 2 physical builds in the game that don't suck. EK is one (oh wait, they convert their dmg to elemental..)

Honestly I cannot think of a single top tier build that deals the vast majority of dmg as physical. I do not think it exists.

Perhaps if we find some way of using a totem to deal the physical damage FOR us...

that seems to be the current metagame anyway, rofl.

GGG def. has a lot of work to do with general build balance. like a LOT of work.