What can Scion do that stands out from the other classes?

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JeremiahLoh wrote:

I'm kinda hoping its more or less jewel related as it means you can make her into any build usually. Certain ascendant paths already limit the builds for classes. (Duelist are limited to melee builds)

Surely you are joking on the Duelist part.

If nothing else, there is fortify from the Champion. - a defensive option that is currently out of the reach of any build that does not use melee weapons unless they are willing to swap weapon sets in combat every few seconds, which is generally not advisable. Taking 20% reduced damage after all other sources of mitigation have been applies is huge.

Take as an example the popular dual Siege Ballista builds introduced in 2.1; Currently Scion, Marauder, Templar, Duelist, and Ranger can all make decent builds, some focusing on highest damage, some with a greater focus on good damage and high survivability, some physical/poison based, some elemental.

Based on the ascendancy classes revealed until now:

* Champion Duelist (Fortitude/First to Strike, Last to Fall) would make any SB build much tougher by adding permanent fortify, fortify not being in any way available under normal circumstances.

* Deadeye Ranger (any number of combinations) would be an obvious choice for a max damage build, but Raider Ranger might also work (possibly using the Poison/Southbound combo to ensure the user is credited with kills).

* Inquisitor Templar (Inevitable Judgements, Instruments of Virtue) would be excellent for elemental SB builds.

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CaptainWARLORD wrote:

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raics wrote:

However, using just 'melee damage' wouldn't be entirely correct as a player could assume a DoT effect resulting from a melee attack could benefit from such bonuses, which doesn't happen but it would be logical to assume so if you compare it to 'projectile damage' interactions.

Incorrect.

Damage over Time is a separate instance of Damage and thus does not benefit from anything but Damage over Time modifiers.

The only instance where Melee Damage is applied to the resulting Damage over Time effect is the initial Hit that caused it.

Yeah, that's what I said, it doesn't happen but a player may assume so based on projectile damage interaction.

Let's say he used poison with a bow char
projectile damage affects initial attack - poison inherits projectile property - proj damage affects poison

So, he'd happily take that templar Retribution notable and expect it to work on poison caused by his viper strike because it would be logical to expect that poison would inherit the melee property from his initial attack. That, sadly, isn't the case, there is no melee damage in the game that isn't attack damage.

That's why I said it was a similar situation, using 'two handed ranged weapon' would be a needlessly broad description because there aren't any besides bows.

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CaptainWARLORD wrote:

I'm pretty certain Poison doesn't benefit from Projectile Damage just because a Projectile Attack is linked to Poison.

It's a general rule with DoTs, they inherit the delivery property of the effect that caused them (with a few intentional exceptions). If you caused ignite with fireball projectile damage and AoE damage will indirectly double dip on it.

That's the chief cause of current sorry state of melee puncture builds, which were never terribly strong to begin with. With the way trap damage, generic physical damage and projectile damage double dipped on puncture traps they had to nerf puncture way too much.

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CaptainWARLORD wrote:

Well, this is GGG's fuck-up. But a damage system isn't that easy if you have so much to consider in a complex game. So, I can forgive a slip here and there.

But they have to fix this. This is broken. Now I know why this one guy had more Damage over Time on his Caustic Arrow than I had on mine. Even though I had more modifiers and higher gems than he did.

Dunno if we should get too attached to it anyway. In that recent interview with Rory he mentioned they're considering to rework the DoT system one more time after Ascendancy, with special focus on this property inheriting thingy which might end up defenestrated, as complicated and harmful to overall balance.

The idea has a solid following in playerbase so they may really go through with it.

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CaptainWARLORD wrote:

One exception to this would be specific Skills that have a Damage over Time effect already incorporated, such as Caustic Arrow or Fire Trap.

Yes, that's what supporters of the rework tend to agree on, just eliminating double-dipping for DoT that has a hit damage dependency should be enough. Opinions start to diverge on element damage bonuses, some say it should be allowed as there aren't any fire or physical damage multipliers.

Before the introduction of Void manipulation I'd have agreed but not anymore, a damage bonus should apply once and only once, resulting DoTs being separate damage instance or no. It would also make poison damage, burning damage and physical damage over time bonuses very impactful, which isn't the case now, they had to give poison damage passives some ridiculous amounts to make them attractive.

It's fine, there are many ways to skin a cat and it's not up to us to hammer out the details anyway. The important thing is to remove multiplier double-dipping, I'll leave the rest to their imagination :)

While I love double-dipping, I agree that it is detrimental to build diversity because it limits what you can use if you want to min/max.. So in that regard, removing it would be beneficial to the overall health of the meta.

My only fear is that when/if they remove double-dipping or change how damage over time works/is scaled, that they don't make it un-viable.

-not get a moment's respite.