Elemental Damage - Support Gems

Apologies if this has already been posted elsewhere, but here's a suggestion for the elemental damage support gems.

At the moment, elemental damage gems, and to a lesser extent, some other support gems, like Stun, are categorised based on the three in-game attributes, and this only serves to hinder certain builds.

I think it'd make sense if these gems were turned to white gems, like the Town Portal skill. By all means give them level requirements, but I'd like to see them be effective across all characters and builds.

Anyone else agree?

I completely disagree. Removing stat requirements from support gems would just make people gravitate to one best build since you wouldn't have to give anything up.

I'm not saying do it for all support gems, I'm saying that there are some that could be considered as general utility gems that would make sense to not have specific stat requirements.

The elements are all associated with a stat, so that's why it is this way.

I could see making them have pretty low requirements, though. Say they have a level req of 10, require like 36 in the stat — a character putting all their points in something else can use that at 12. Then make the scaling like level 13, stat 44 for level 2, level 16, stat 52 for level 3, etc. — that's one +4 node and two +2 nodes per skill level.


I'd also like to see "Added Fire Damage" renamed to "Weapon Fire Damage", an actual "Added Fire Damage" gem added, along with "Weapon Lightning Damage" and "Weapon Cold Damage" gems. I'd keep all the fire as Str, all the Elec as Int, and all the Cold as Dex, just give both options for each element.

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DragoonWraith wrote:

The elements are all associated with a stat, so that's why it is this way.

I could see making them have pretty low requirements, though. Say they have a level req of 10, require like 36 in the stat — a character putting all their points in something else can use that at 12. Then make the scaling like level 13, stat 44 for level 2, level 16, stat 52 for level 3, etc. — that's one +4 node and two +2 nodes per skill level.


I'd also like to see "Added Fire Damage" renamed to "Weapon Fire Damage", an actual "Added Fire Damage" gem added, along with "Weapon Lightning Damage" and "Weapon Cold Damage" gems. I'd keep all the fire as Str, all the Elec as Int, and all the Cold as Dex, just give both options for each element.

I do not understand why the damage types are supposed to be tied to certain stats (especially since the passives for all are in int at the moment). This actually hampers build innovation and hybridization. Also, there are already some skills, many of which are AoE, that are "out of their element". To name a few: explosive arrow, detonate dead, and infernal blow. But if you want a cheaper skill for single target applications that matches the damage type of these skills, you're kinda out of luck unless you want to use elemental hit.

But elemental hit only hits with your preferred damage type only 1 in 3 times. I'd like to see more options.

Instead of, or possibly in addition to elemental hit, I would like to see 3 low-mana nonrandom skills. I thought a little about which I would like to see paired with which stat and this is what I came up with:

- Lightning hit for strength(red). This would allow a single-target option for lightning-based templar builds and an option for a shocked damage multiplier on crit-based melee builds.

- Fire hit for dexterity(green). This gives a single target option for explosive arrow, a corpse-maker for detonate dead, and a single-target option for intelligence fire AoE (which I think we're getting more of?) users from the unimplemented 6th class. Duelists would probably prefer infernal blow, but still have the option.

- Cold hit for intelligence(blue). This gives a nice option for wand-users (with cold very near the wand portion of the current tree) and more options for single target cold damage for the 6th class. Templars would probably prefer glacial hammer.

The names are terrible, and the new tree could make this seem silly, but it would work well under the current system, IMO. The damage output should be similar to or smaller than elemental hit, since these would be low-mana and probably require passives in either +%elemental damage or crit to make them more than just a throw-away early autoattack replacement.

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UristMcDwarfy wrote:

I do not understand why the damage types are supposed to be tied to certain stats (especially since the passives for all are in int at the moment). This actually hampers build innovation and hybridization.

Hey, don't argue with me; I completely agree. I think PoE currently has far too many things that are tied to certain stats, it makes build decisions really linear and obvious, IMO.

Ok, sorry. I thought you were defending the "all elements have a stat tied to them" way of thinking. I agree that it would be nice to have Added [elemental type] Weapon Damage for each type as well as integer types. But I wonder if the integer types will be needed at all anymore.

The main reason for these gems in 0.9.2 was to add a little more damage and possibly proc effects from their crits. But they were such low damage that these proc effects were usually either nonexistent or very short. With added supports supposedly radically modifying mana cost in 0.9.3, is anyone going to use these at all anymore? I would think it would be better to just have a skill that tacks on a specified elemental damage like I suggested and the Added [elemental type] Weapon Damage that DragoonWraith suggested. Having both would be useful and promote build diversity and hybridization.

just wait for the patch ... i think some supports will change colors - we get new ones and with str/int/dex on items or as a passives bonus you will be able to gear up for different colors up to some point.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

Added Weapon Damage would be misleading since it doesn't only affect weapons. It will work on spells dealing physical damage as well - there's only one so far in the beta which does, but there could easily be more later.

D'oh, right. Fair enough. (Detonate Dead, right?)

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Mark_GGG wrote:

I do agree it would be cool to have each element have both a straight "add a small amount of elemental" gem and an "add a % pf physical as element"

Cool.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

The elements are associated with attributes. Fire is associated with Strength, Lightning with Int, and Cold with Dex. This does not mean that skills associated with those attributes should only deal damage of those elements - it's just a loose association. Str is a little more aligned with Fire than the others, not exclusively using it.

Yeah, I'd noticed that (Glacial Hammer, Explosive Arrow), which is good, but can be awkward at least with the 0.9.2 passive tree.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

This is part of why these gems are associated with the elements. It's important that the attributes be better at different things, because this promotes build diversity and class identity. A maurader being more likely to augment attacks with fire than a melee ranger, who would be more likely to use cold provides a meaningful difference in how those characters will build and fight, rather than letting maruaders and rangers play in all the same ways.

Yeeees, sort of. There's really not enough skills I guess to really see it, though; you pretty much use the skills that are available. Plus, as mentioned, almost all of the elemental passives are Int anyway...