Chaos Penetration and Chaos Inoculation... And now Voltaxic Rift

I would be posting this in the Suggestions sub-forum but I'm also wondering a few things.

Chaos resistance penetration would be an awesome support gem for my build, as well as a curse in the style of the elemental damages', and I wonder why either of these don't exist and if they will or should. Added Chaos Damage doesn't help me because I'm focusing directly on Chaos degeneration (damage over time), so it only affects the initial hit of Poison Arrow and Viper Strike. Increased/more damage modifiers don't affect degeneration either.

The main reason I ponder is because Chaos Inoculation, when making you immune to Chaos damage, seems to just set your maximum and actual Chaos resistance to 100%. "Penetrates X% Y resistance" and "cursed enemies lose X% Y resistance" both subtract from enemies' actual resistance-- because this, they seem like they may override Chaos Inoculation's method of immunity. Is that preventing Chaos resistance alteration methods from being implemented, and should immunity mechanics be changed to allow for Chaos penetration?

Chaos damage is very scarce in this game, coming from players. Only recently have I started seeing people trying to use it as the main damage type in a build. I'd hate for a powerful mechanic to be unavailable for an entire damage type.

Chaos damage should either be something there's no res, player or enemies or it should just be like every other element. Makes no sense it's in this hybrid way right now. Deadly for players to deal with in most situations and useless for a player to use in most situations.

Increased Degeneration Damage should definitely be considered. Having something that boosts viper strike and poison arrow and their ilk would definitely be appreciated. Those skills aren't really viable at the moment.

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Moosifer a écrit :

Chaos damage should either be something there's no res, player or enemies or it should just be like every other element. Makes no sense it's in this hybrid way right now. Deadly for players to deal with in most situations and useless for a player to use in most situations.

Honestly I agree; I wish Chaos damage stayed the way it was before Open Beta. I liked the idea of it always being an unmitigable threat unless you have Geofri's Crest (not so unique now) or Chaos Inoculation. However the change is already made... So at this point GGG might as well make the full plunge and turn it into a true non-elemental elemental damage type.

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Increased Degeneration Damage should definitely be considered. Having something that boosts viper strike and poison arrow and their ilk would definitely be appreciated. Those skills aren't really viable at the moment.

It would've been nice to see the Increased Burning Damage gem actually be Increased Damage Over Time but it doesn't seem likely to happen. Fire Trap and Burn proliferation don't really need more help at this point. Perhaps Increased Burning Damage should just be changed for all forms of degeneration. It wouldn't negatively affect those already using it and would enable a few other currently niche builds.

By the way, Viper Strike and Poison Arrow are definitely viable at the moment, you just need to specialize in them heavily. I'm playing a character that maximizes Chaos degeneration with +3 to the level of each gem from equipment, long skill duration, Vulnerability, and proliferating Shock stacks and it's been pretty damn powerful.

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By the way, Viper Strike and Poison Arrow are definitely viable at the moment, you just need to specialize in them heavily. I'm playing a character that maximizes Chaos degeneration with +3 to the level of each gem from equipment, long skill duration, Vulnerability, and proliferating Shock stacks and it's been pretty damn powerful.

Hm, that's definitely interesting. So you use a bow that has +1 all gems and +2 bow gems? Then where does your damage come from? Purely the degeneration of the skills themselves? How does this scale with higher levels and into maps?

I'd be interested in seeing your build, if you wouldn't mind showing it. (:

All damage comes from the Chaos degeneration of the two skills, Shock Nova (when Shocking), and occasionally Bear Trap + Item Quantity + Item Rarity because why not? But yeah, mostly from the damage over time. I wrote about it here and there's a video (without Shock stacking) here by PhreEkGarden. I would make a video but my computer's pretty old.

Ideally your bow would have +1 to Gem level and +2 to Bow Gem level and sword/claw/dagger would have the same but +2 to Melee Gem level. I've been using Poison Arrow and Viper Strike increased to levels 21 and 19 respectively and they've been taking down pretty much everything with Vulnerability, though not too quickly without stacking Shock.

The hardest map I've completed was level 69 with my level 67 character, and it was easy but a little slower than usual because of my gem levels (including Shock Nova's). At the moment I'm just farming the Barracks, which is now a level 67 area, quite easily.

Anyways, backing into the topic of the thread, "Resists Chaos damage" enemies are seriously a hard thing to overcome. I assume now that everyone has decent Chaos resistances it also heavily weakens Viper Strike in PvP.

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Moosifer a écrit :

Chaos damage should either be something there's no res, player or enemies or it should just be like every other element. Makes no sense it's in this hybrid way right now. Deadly for players to deal with in most situations and useless for a player to use in most situations.

QFT

all set-duration damage-over-time effects (not just chaos) should be in the form of (numerical damage) * (damage effectiveness) / (time). this would allow for more complex interactions, such as arctic armour helping against ignite, added chaos damage working with searing bond... perhaps some viper strike application too

My concerns have been exacerbated by the coming of Voltaxic Rift. Because the main drawback of the bow is that enemy Chaos resistance cannot be overcome, I don't think we'll be seeing Chaos resistance penetration/reduction skills/supports any time soon.

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Iao a écrit :

My concerns have been exacerbated by the coming of Voltaxic Rift. Because the main drawback of the bow is that enemy Chaos resistance cannot be overcome, I don't think we'll be seeing Chaos resistance penetration/reduction skills/supports any time soon.

Aside from the issues posed by yet another broken Unique, I don't think it would be helpful to treat Chaos damage even more like elemental damage. It would be far more interesting to eliminate Chaos resistance entirely (as in Closed Beta), and make Chaos damage always work as a DoT, i.e. like poison damage in Diablo 2 (and how Poison Arrow and Viper Strike work atm). Existing Chaos Resist nodes and mods should then be changed to work as Chaos damage duration reduction.