Prolif nerf thoughts

that jewel definitely has uses for builds that lack damage nodes on tree, such as RF or poison arrow

but it will have to be a big min/max. dont know about PA but for RF you go from not needing much gear besides life strength and res to having perfect gear in non-magic item spots.

and the gain will end up somewhat minimal

I dont like the nerf at all, because in my opinion its not elemental proliferation that was OP, but certain skills and mechanics.

A nerf is probably because of the burn, but if this is the case, you have to know, how burn works:

1, it scales 2 fold (10% more fire damage = 21% more burn damage)

2, but also enemy fire resist scales 2 fold (50% fire resit = 25% burn damage)

In terms of resist, burn damage has a sever disadvantage. Though fire penetration helps a lot, its advantage is quite limited, because of the way the math works. a 75%/75% resist enemy, will still take only 1/8 of damage after -25% resist (75%/75% -> 50%/75%)


What makes burn OP is

-crit
-stacking skills (flame blast, explosive arrow etc)


The proliferation nerf will just reduce build diversity.

I for instance had a fireball proliferation build. No crit, only maximized fire damage and penetration for maximized burn. The burn is strong enough to kill white mobs in low level maps almost instantly, but when you fight against mobs with resist + curse immunity, you will do almost no damage.

If fire penetration would work for the initial hit AND the burn, i would be totally fine with a -30% reduction.
But currently you can only make a viable burn build by "abusing" OP game mechanics and not chosing to play obvious synergies.

Well that fuckin' blows...

My single-arrow Ice Shot build that was featured in S3's Build of the Week is now dead in the water. Proliferation actually offered some variety for bow builds. Now people will flock to Tornado Shot even more so than before.

The heavy reduction in radius (12) was more than enough of a nerf. Then they tacked on the 30% LESS damage. The fuck.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

By defences I meant AR/EV.

Every (non-Acro) character has at least 6000 Armour. At least, when they need it.

Thus, the difference between 0 Armour and 2000 Armour is pretty much irrelevant.

As covered earlier in thread, new Prolif penalty is 30% less damage at gemlevel 1 and 20% less at glvl 21.

Oh ok, yeah agreed in that case. Do we know exactly how armor scales in beta?

I've read and heard many places that prolif's nerf is long overdue. Tbh there's no way to disagree with that if people are honest with themselves (prolif from crits and burns was really overpowering the meta in almost every build I came across). Question is, does this nerf address it without overdoing it...almost I think. Imo the AOE penalty (now flat 12 radius iirc) is utterly not needed, just keeping the less damage overall would've been sufficient.

If a flat 12 AOE is true, this would be a HUUUUGE nerf.

As area scales twofold, this means, that a change from 32 to 12 radius reduces the area by -86%!

Adding the damage reduction, the effectiveness of elemental proliferation is reduced by ~90%!

Haha, too funny to be true! I guess this change is not true, or there are other changes which complement this nerf, but if there are no other changes, elemental proliferation is dead. Literally. A 90% nerf...

Balancing always means comparison. And how can ele prof compete with other support gems like "melee damage" (indirectly)?
The quantity of power gain is so much higher from other support gems. Even culling strike is pretty powerful in terms of DPS increase. Spreading a little bit of fire will mean nothing, when you can also go for AOE skills with crit.

People will go for AOE elemental crit and forget elemental proliferation.

Maybe I am wrong with my assumption, but I will not be wrong if the information I have is correct.

"

Peripherally wrote:

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

By defences I meant AR/EV.

Every (non-Acro) character has at least 6000 Armour. At least, when they need it.

Thus, the difference between 0 Armour and 2000 Armour is pretty much irrelevant.

As covered earlier in thread, new Prolif penalty is 30% less damage at gemlevel 1 and 20% less at glvl 21.

Oh ok, yeah agreed in that case. Do we know exactly how armor scales in beta?

I've read and heard many places that prolif's nerf is long overdue. Tbh there's no way to disagree with that if people are honest with themselves (prolif from crits and burns was really overpowering the meta in almost every build I came across). Question is, does this nerf address it without overdoing it...almost I think. Imo the AOE penalty (now flat 12 radius iirc) is utterly not needed, just keeping the less damage overall would've been sufficient.

the question is, was it ALL prolif or just burn prolif ? shock prolif for example no one even tries to argue was already weak, ever since they changed the shock stack mechanic

nerfed into the ground by the looks of it and I agree with OP also unfair for other much less used prolif builds

Great, just when I was planning a freeze prolif chaarcter for 2.0... Well, forget about it, gonna stick with the most simple melee shit as usual..

I wonder if anyone in CB explored how new Proliferation gem interacts with Herald of Ash. The radius is clear but I'm interested in that 30% less damage.

In my view, HoA does not deal damage explicitly but only as a overkill. Is this the amount of damage that would be reduced by 30%?

Even if above is true, HoA might be one of the few skills that might be still usable with Proliferation.