Clarifying Puncture
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THANK YOU! Now I can start a serious evaluation as to whether there is something out there that would be a better use of my sockets and a skill bar button than Puncture, with the knowledge that Puncture isn't about to receive some big buff.
Last edited by tatarjj on Dec 17, 2014, 7:01:19 PM
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I do like the option of specing Puncture so it's a debuff that increases damage taken, because spamming one skill over and over again gets boring, IMO. More varied gameplay using a wider variety of skills situationally is more fun for me. I'm still a noob though, only been playing for a few months, but I've noticed that the skill gem linking system leads to characters that predominantly use just one or maybe two skills. So anything that enriches gameplay by making it less of a single skill spamming system is good news for me.
Last edited by tatarjj on Dec 17, 2014, 7:14:06 PM
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Adding more effects that move enemies or disorient/distract enemies (causing them to move themselves) would be the real kicker for Puncture.
--- Chance to Flee in theory is the best partner for Puncture since it forces enemies to run around, but it works at reduced effectiveness against blues, even less against rares, and not at all against unique bosses. So, in order, it works least against the things that need it the most. Knockback in theory is a great partner for Puncture since it forces enemies to walk more to reach you, but without the Fending cluster, Projectile Weakness, and possibly a Knockback gem, it's unreliable. And once you invest that much into knockback, your damage isn't as good as if you'd just dropped that all into crit in the first place. Imagine if puncture was changed to "enemy distance traveled" instead of "while moving", for starters. Now knockback is the sex for Puncture since you can massively increase your damage by forcing enemies back manually. Food for thought. Glad GGG showed up. :) | |
" Please, please, buff the skill back up. More than anything we need to see some damage back on stationary targets; as it stands it takes 10 seconds for the enemy to take the damage equivalent of one hit. It needs to feel like the skill is doing something. As for moving damage, it was still nerfed way too much. In my opinion, the bulk of enemies dying should come from the bleed. As it stands now, they are dying due to me critting them repeatedly, and not from the bleed. The skill needs to feel satifying due to the mechanic it's based on. Also, I'm not sure if many people but me do this, but I run a full Puncture build (both single and aoe), and the damage done with LMP in groups is pretty miserable (solo 75+ maps as well). I believe the skill should be viable to use this way too. And I have a pretty good bow, which most other players will not, especially after the changes to master crafting. I hope you guys are doing balancing based on average weapons, and not the best out there. However! Puncture is a very dangerous skill to use in PvP. It's cheap and honestly not fun to be on the receiving end. I think mostly everyone will agree that we need to have it do more damage in PvE, but not PvP. You guys should separate its mechanics. |
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" Just to be clear, in PvP, puncture acts very differently. They can already vary its damage over time standing/moving and its duration without touching the PvE version, and they do. | |
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Last edited by pneuma on Dec 17, 2014, 8:19:20 PM
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Good to know. Thanks for chiming in.
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" Exactly. The bleed seems irrelevant after the patch. The monsters either die from the initial hit or it does almost nothing. The nerf to crit damage hurts puncture too. I tested it with 330 dps, 8.5% crit harbinger and had 27k tooltip dps in a 4l. | |
" Well, this bow performs powerful critical hits at ~90% crit. chance & ~400% crit multi:
Puncturte setup is (was) on chest 6L
Since the nerf to Puncture it's more sensible for me to use Burning Arrow for single target, which at zero quality & level 15 already outperforms (=kills mobs faster, even fast moving ones), than a 20/20 puncture gem. Kills with puncture now come from crits instead from bleeding, so it's essentially the same thing as using burning arrow, just does less damage. Puncture needed a nerf, definitely agree on that, but it was nerfed way too hard. First frenzy, now another archer/DEX gem got destroyed. Note that most of PoE players don't have a 6L GG weapon and for them puncture is even more worthless. Also note that not all characters have the luxury to invest another 6 - 10 skill points, just to fix puncture nerf with tree specialisation. There's way too much specialisation in PoE already, making combat into a 1-skill spam. E: imo, bleeding on movement should scale from 50% increase at lvl 1, back to ~90% increase at lvl 20 (before it was 125%). Leave non-moving bleed at 10% E2: And make that Physical DOT cluster work only for melee, so archers get back (a nerfed, but viable) puncture without the need for specialisation and melee get a special buff - which melee playstyle badly needs. When night falls She cloaks the world In impenetrable darkness Last edited by morbo on Dec 18, 2014, 4:09:33 AM
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As long as puncture is DoT (thus allowing kiting and safe ranged gameplay) it cannot do the same damage like burning arrow or other skills that require something more than one click.
Puncture was the safest and strongest skill in the game. It probably still is given that there are just few immobile bosses so the nerf is more a theoretical one than practical one. Burning arrow cannot do 'click once and run in circles while sad dude dies without any chance of retaliation'. Now people need to click twice and the sky is falling?.. It seems that entitlement and love for cheap mechanics is strong.. |
