Impale Support

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Last bumped on Feb 15, 2024, 2:26:30 PM
Im writing this feedback since here and there I heard people saying that impale is a no-brainer and not well blanced.

Well, I think its not GGGs fault If people fail to break down the numbers to a per-gem basis as well as a per-skilltree-node basis.



The gem is spot on balanced with i think something around <60% more damage (depending on nodes) per gem slot (lvl20), which seems to be just the design point for pure phys.
Brutality also has 60% but removes chaos/ele while impale needs to build up and doesnt relate to bleed.
So, perfect numbering imo.

same holds for the impale skill-tree nodes (something like typically 2.5 to 5 percent equivalent more damage (phys build) per small node, depending on other nodes, gem, which node, etc.)

Last edited by Khastro on Jun 17, 2019, 6:03:46 PM
Impale makes the monster take 10% of base (unmitigated) damage per hit for the next 5 hits so basically it's 50% more damage when you impale.

A 21/20 impale support will give you the following:
-40% chance to impale on hit
-16% more physical damage
-61% increased impale effect.
With the 61% increased impale effect you have 80.5% more damage when you impale. Since the gem only give you 40% chance to impale it factors to 32.2% more damage. Besides, the 16% more damage scales multiplicatively for a total of 53.352% more damage from support. We are very, very VERY far from the alleged "100%+ more damage".

If you are champion, we will consider that you only have the master of steel ascendancy to simplify. You get +2 impale stack, 20% chance to impale and 8% increased impale effect which means 75.6% more damage when you impale and therefore 15% more damage from the ascendancy. When linking an impale support, you get a total of 60% chance to impale on hit and 69% increased impale effect which factors to a total of 98.34% more damage. Since you already had 15% more damage without the support it means that you have 72.47% more damage from impale support. However, this is more as if the ascendancy were giving you 29.6% more damage or something, which is perfectly reasonable.

Of course, this scales with impale bonuses from the passive skill tree. For instance, if you take the two clusters (assuming you take chance to impale over impale effect), you have 50% chance to impale and 10% increased impale effect which means 27.5% more physical damage from those 7-8 passive skill points. If, in addition, if you chose to use the impale support, you get the following:
-90% chance to impale
-71% increased impale effect
-16% more physical damage.
71% increased impale effect means that you deal 85.5% more damage when you impale but since you only have 90% chance to impale it factors to 76.95% more damage. Since the 16% more damage scales multiplicatively, you have a total of 105.262% more physical damage as the meta states. However since you already had 27.5% from tree it means a little less than 61% more damage from impale support.

If you are a champion, your ascendancy already give you 20% chance to impale so you most likely will chose the impale effect over the chance to impale. You tree+ascendancy will give you 60% chance to impale along with 38% increased impale effect and +2 impale stack, which means 57.96% more damage (!). If you chose to link the impale support, you will get the following:
-100% chance to impale on hit
-99% increased impale effect
-16% more physical damage.
In total, you have 177.588% more physical damage thanks to impale. But since you already had 57.96% without the support, you have only 75.73% more physical damage from impale support.

Overall, impale grants you 105% more physical damage to the cost of one support skill and 7-8 passive skill points and 177.59% more damage to the cost of one support, one ascendancy and 8-9 passive skill points for champions. However, impale only scales with physical damage so it does not allow power creep through added elemental damage, damage conversion, eternity shroud, shaped amulet, atziri's promise, hatred, herald of ash and so on. It's not just a global increase, it just fits brutality builds pretty well and rewards purely physical builds just as intended.

Finally, you have to hit you enemy 5-7 times before getting the damage buff which means that most of the time impale gives you nothing since your enemy is dead. Also you need to hit your enemy again to make the additional damage to happen, so once again most of you stacked theoretical damage are useless since even legion rare monsters or map bosses would die before 14 hits or so. I personally believe that impale is not as overpowered as people think, they are just allured by the 105% or 177% more theoretical damage and do not think any further.
Holy jesus this gem is way to op, a friend of mine is playin rain of arrows with impale and crit and lioneyes and hes just literly killing everything. JUST NERF IT.
"
iZen76i wrote:

With the 61% increased impale effect you have 80.5% more damage when you impale.


I'm not sure "increased impale effect" works like this. Isn't it just common "increased" effect that applies to impale damage, and stacks with all other increased effects additively?
"
jason6 wrote:
Holy jesus this gem is way to op, a friend of mine is playin rain of arrows with impale and crit and lioneyes and hes just literly killing everything. JUST NERF IT.



Why exactly?

Does it grant more bang for the buck than other supports?
If you think yes, could you elaborate on it?

Otherwise I refer to the post DIRECTLY ABOVE YOURS as well as this one:

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2543624/page/1#p22091766
"
iZen76i wrote:
Impale makes the monster take 10% of base (unmitigated) damage per hit for the next 5 hits so basically it's 50% more damage when you impale.

A 21/20 impale support will give you the following:
-40% chance to impale on hit
-16% more physical damage
-61% increased impale effect.
With the 61% increased impale effect you have 80.5% more damage when you impale. Since the gem only give you 40% chance to impale it factors to 32.2% more damage. Besides, the 16% more damage scales multiplicatively for a total of 53.352% more damage from support. We are very, very VERY far from the alleged "100%+ more damage".

If you are champion, we will consider that you only have the master of steel ascendancy to simplify. You get +2 impale stack, 20% chance to impale and 8% increased impale effect which means 75.6% more damage when you impale and therefore 15% more damage from the ascendancy. When linking an impale support, you get a total of 60% chance to impale on hit and 69% increased impale effect which factors to a total of 98.34% more damage. Since you already had 15% more damage without the support it means that you have 72.47% more damage from impale support. However, this is more as if the ascendancy were giving you 29.6% more damage or something, which is perfectly reasonable.

Of course, this scales with impale bonuses from the passive skill tree. For instance, if you take the two clusters (assuming you take chance to impale over impale effect), you have 50% chance to impale and 10% increased impale effect which means 27.5% more physical damage from those 7-8 passive skill points. If, in addition, if you chose to use the impale support, you get the following:
-90% chance to impale
-71% increased impale effect
-16% more physical damage.
71% increased impale effect means that you deal 85.5% more damage when you impale but since you only have 90% chance to impale it factors to 76.95% more damage. Since the 16% more damage scales multiplicatively, you have a total of 105.262% more physical damage as the meta states. However since you already had 27.5% from tree it means a little less than 61% more damage from impale support.

If you are a champion, your ascendancy already give you 20% chance to impale so you most likely will chose the impale effect over the chance to impale. You tree+ascendancy will give you 60% chance to impale along with 38% increased impale effect and +2 impale stack, which means 57.96% more damage (!). If you chose to link the impale support, you will get the following:
-100% chance to impale on hit
-99% increased impale effect
-16% more physical damage.
In total, you have 177.588% more physical damage thanks to impale. But since you already had 57.96% without the support, you have only 75.73% more physical damage from impale support.

Overall, impale grants you 105% more physical damage to the cost of one support skill and 7-8 passive skill points and 177.59% more damage to the cost of one support, one ascendancy and 8-9 passive skill points for champions. However, impale only scales with physical damage so it does not allow power creep through added elemental damage, damage conversion, eternity shroud, shaped amulet, atziri's promise, hatred, herald of ash and so on. It's not just a global increase, it just fits brutality builds pretty well and rewards purely physical builds just as intended.

Finally, you have to hit you enemy 5-7 times before getting the damage buff which means that most of the time impale gives you nothing since your enemy is dead. Also you need to hit your enemy again to make the additional damage to happen, so once again most of you stacked theoretical damage are useless since even legion rare monsters or map bosses would die before 14 hits or so. I personally believe that impale is not as overpowered as people think, they are just allured by the 105% or 177% more theoretical damage and do not think any further.


Good post. That sums everything up nicely. Decent support that can be quite powerful with investment but only works for physical damage and not spells to keep it in check.

I like that you can get passives to increase it's power. More of these gems please. It's quite clever design of a support gem.

"
LeadRaven wrote:
"
iZen76i wrote:

With the 61% increased impale effect you have 80.5% more damage when you impale.


I'm not sure "increased impale effect" works like this. Isn't it just common "increased" effect that applies to impale damage, and stacks with all other increased effects additively?


That's what he did there afaik. Added all the increases together and calculated with chance to impale to get the estimated damage.
Last edited by kompaniet on Aug 23, 2019, 3:19:52 PM
Ok I'm not sure if this is old news but in doing some research and some maths I found something interesting about impale.

If impale adds 10% of the BASE physical damage before mitigation, stacking up to 5 hits, and let's say you deal 10k dmg with the first hit, then the second hit would be 11k the third 12k the fourth 13k and the fifth 14k and the 6th 15k. (This is before mitigation mind you)

That's 10% added on each subsequent attack up to 5 attacks. So for the total damage of all 6 attacks you would have 75k damage.

If you add in the 30% increase (not more but increase) impale effect from the tree + 49% increase from the gem that's a whopping 79% increase of effect. So let's run those numbers again with the 79% increase.

10k base + 11790 for the second hit (1k for the base 10% and 790 from the additional 79%) + 13580 for the third +15370 for the fourth + 17160 for the fifth + 18950 for the 6th hit. Now your total damage for the 6 hits is 86850.

With just a standard 49% more from Damage on full life support you'd get 89400 total damage across 6 hits. 10k base +49% = 14900 x 6 = 89400.

Figure in the fact that it takes 8 passives + a gem to get impale up to that level (without ascendancy bonuses) I didn't think the extra 15% was worth the 8 passives + support gem without ascendancy bonuses so I decided to test it.

Here's the setup Deadeye ranger running a full phys resolute (no crit variable) SST build. No level change nor gear change, only impale swap after 15 runs of the same unique. I engaged Hector Titucius, a unique in the bath house area of the story 15 times running with impale. In 7 runs it took 7 hits to take him down in 8 attempts it only took 6.

I then swapped out the impale gem for a damage on full life (gems were the same quality and the same level) I removed the impale nodes on the passive tree and replaced them with increased physical damage nodes and ran the encounter 15 more time. In 8 attempts it took 6 hits to take him down with 7 attempts taking 7.

Conclusion: Not worth it in my opinion. I'm positive you could have dropped those increased physical damage nodes and it wouldn't have made a difference in the damage. The skill tool tip shows only a 45 dps difference without the nodes. With 8 passives you can do a lot more in a tree then you would get from having to invest in the impale. If the fight drug on for 25 to 50 hits MAYBE impale would pull out ahead of a flat 50% but even then it wouldn't be worth the loss of 8 passives.

Im curious to see if dropping brutality and taking elemental would net more damage then just the impale as well. I'm going to do more testing to see what I can do with the elemental damage for my build.

Your build maybe different but in my build it's not worth it in my opinion.
Last edited by Adreankael on Sep 28, 2019, 2:22:27 PM
Can anyone tell me if:
1. Impale support works with siege ballista?

2. Skill nodes/champion ascendancy that affect impale generally will affect impale used to support siege ballista?

Have read everything I can find on impale and this is still ambiguous.

Much appreciation if I can get an answer before league start.

Thanks,
Orion
Hi Exiles,

Here is my question about Impale and Minions interactions :

Champion I have 6 Minions (4 Purity +Golem +Holy Relic)
My minions hit a total of 7 small hit per sec
My minions have NO impale capacities (no banner etc).

Questions 1 : When they hit the target I have Impaled, I assume they will use 1 Impale charge out of the 7 I have applied

- They wont have my Impale bonus Damage
- They will decrease my flat phys bonus from "Master of Metal"

If this is correct having Minion is a great decrease in my DPS !?

Question 2 : When I use Double Strike-AncestralCall-Splash, I assume Impale is applied for every overlap. Is it only applied or also consumed since the first hit ?

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