Why are viper, elemental hit and puncture still skills?

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Raudram wrote:

Even single target Puncture with raw physical damage support gems like slower projectiles and physical projectile damage supporting it, is extremely underwhelming. The gem definitely needs some love.

I was reading a redit thread about puncture and it sounds like it was nerfed. People were able to one shot bosses and stuff. I'm not sure what love they would do.

Right now it does close to nothing on most of mobs, exception would be low HP and fast stuff if you kite it. The only reason I even have it is to finish off unique bosses because I'm wearing Southbound

Puncture traps are still powerful, and the only real way of using puncture at all (funny, given that they are the reason puncture got nerfed).

I really don't expect anything from GGG in balance terms, they have shown again and again that they have absolutely no idea how to do targeted nerfs and overall balance.

Also, in response to thread title / original topic:

Viper Strike provides 300% more poison duration, and Elemental Hit adds flat elemental damage probabilistically, so they both provide a unique mechanic you can't get anywhere else, giving them a spot in design space if not balance space.

Puncture is a bit odd though. A bit like Heavy Strike, except Heavy Strike does have guaranteed knock back and a threshold jewel to differentiate it.

I would personally make puncture add flat damage.

There is a poison support, however viperstrike is considerably stronger than it. In fact, viperstrike, when built around, is pretty much the strongest single-target skill in the game. That's reason enough for it to exist. Thank god it's not ranged...


A bleed support gem would be ludicrously overpowered for ranged because of how abusable double-dipping is for ranged AND the fact that it's much easier for ranged builds to get enemies to move for the massive bonus damage. Bow puncture is already abusable enough, the last thing we need is to be able to have Tshot or Split arrow have that level of abuse.




As for elemental hit? Well... yeah that needs some work, but it still should exist. It just needs to be... better. Not necessarily 'more damaging', more like 'more usable' or 'more build-enabling'. I'm of the opinion that elemental hit should convert ALL the damage from the hit (including physical damage or chaos damage) into the element chosen, in addition to adding the flat amount of the chosen element. This conversion would be a unique stage AFTER all other conversions/additions and be final.

(so for example, if you had Pyre and cold-to-fire equipped and e-hit rolled cold damage, the final damage would still be cold and no fire damage would be added base on damage that only became cold as a result of the final conversion, as the e-hit conversion would happen after all other conversion/additions have already done their thing)


Idk if that would really make e-hit usable enough, but it'd at least give it more of a use... being able to get a single (albeit random) elemental damage out of your weapon no matter what kinda damage it innately does.

Skills that are 'basically just a support gem' are fine. If viper strike is just poison, and ele hit is just added ele dmg, then Flame totem is pretty much just incinerate + spell totem, siege ballista is just ranged attack totem + pierce + phys projectile dmg, fire nova trap is just ice nova + trap + cold-to-fire, etc...

If the skills aren't strong enough, they should be buffed, not gotten rid of.

I like these skills. They make for some quality different theory crafting.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1645611

Puncture as main skill build - hardcore perandus #11.

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Frankenberry wrote:

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1645611

Puncture as main skill build - hardcore perandus #11.

And if puncture was a support gem you could have gone Split Arrow and you would have way better damage and number of projectiles.


Edit: Actually, you could have dropped Puncture and GMP for Split Arrow for an overall improve in DPS, you already poison, which outperforms bleed hard on high APS builds, and GMP less damage multiplier double dips on your main attack, lowering both your puncture and poison damage by a lot.

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Raudram wrote:

Even single target Puncture with raw physical damage support gems like slower projectiles and physical projectile damage supporting it, is extremely underwhelming. The gem definitely needs some love.

really? I was 1 shotting yellow tier map bosses with puncture traps, and when I say 1 shotting I mean sometimes killing the boss outright with the up front damage of the trap, shattering them on activation, no bleed involved. This was with a 1 chaos bow and a 5L puncture trap.


My feeling on puncture is that its insane, I use it on most of my bow builds. When that thing crits its devastating.