How is Wither allowed?

If I understand correctly, each stack of Wither makes the enemy take 7% increased chaos damage. Following the wording, this is a more multiplier after all your damage calculations are done. Stacks up to 20 times? For real now? For reference, Inquisitor's Augury of penitence makes nearby enemies take 16% increased elemental damage. Thats a bit more than two stacks of Wither, and its an ascendancy passive. Part of the current double dipping poison problem is simply the fact you just drop a wither totem and watch the damage skyrocket. It is way too good to be in the game, IMHO.

I would suggest to change the wording and mechanics to "You deal 7% increased chaos damage to an enemy per stack of wither applied to him". Works the same way as Celestial punishment node on the passive tree.

No one would use it then.

If they really wanted to they could make it enemies take increased chaos damage over time. That would prevent it from double dipping and it would still be strong if they get the post double dipping balance right for dots.

Or just fiddle with the numbers. Increase the multiplier, increase duration. I think 140% increased chaos damage over time taken is still too good. It blows all the other increased damage taken modifiers out way too much.

In practice the Wither totem needs to survive though. And due to the mechanics its hard to consistently have max stacks on a boss.

And if you are unaware: Burning/Ignite has similar mechancis to double dip damage taken by enemies (Scorching Ray + EE + curses). Plus penetration - but no double dip there.

PoE player damage progression is kinda exponential. This is probably at least partially intentional.

3.0 supposedly removes 'double dipping'. But my guess is that it (3.0) will not have better game balance.

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Zrevnur wrote:

In practice the Wither totem needs to survive though. And due to the mechanics its hard to consistently have max stacks on a boss.

And if you are unaware: Burning/Ignite has similar mechancis to double dip damage taken by enemies (Scorching Ray + EE + curses). Plus penetration - but no double dip there.

PoE player damage progression is kinda exponential. This is probably at least partially intentional.

3.0 supposedly removes 'double dipping'. But my guess is that it (3.0) will not have better game balance.

The totem usually survives long enough for atleast 5 stacks, which is plenty. Also it takes some aggro away from you.

Scorching ray is less than half as effective as wither totem for purposes of amplifying damage. EE is a conditional thing you have to setup, and it has downsides. Sure, there is the orb of storms thingy, but you cant use EE on every single fire skill, because they are not all one hard hit into ignite. It also somewhat limits your gear (no added fire damage on wands/elsewhere) unlike wither, which is universally applicable to everything chaos damage. Curses can be used for both ignite and poison, so they dont really count for this argument.

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Vesuvius079 wrote:

No one would use it then.

would anyone use (ie, invest in) poison if it wouldn't double dip ?

having every build that builds on chaos damage using wither or wither totem, is arguably much worse than 'no one' using it.

The value is high, true, but I like it how we get debuff-over-time mechanics here. You only get 2.4x multiplier if you manage to apply 20 stacks on enemy and that's not as trivial as cursing once. The debuff only apply to chaos damage which is low without it (but can build over time), double dipping (soon to be removed, hopefully) exluded. So it fits for chaos damage theme (builds up over time), require investement and feels unique. Good stuff imo.

Need to nerf channeling spells on a spell totem imho.

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13s_D4rK wrote:

The totem usually survives long enough for atleast 5 stacks, which is plenty. Also it takes some aggro away from you.

If you have a single hit Ignite build/setup you can use Decoy totem. Which is tougher and takes far more aggro.

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13s_D4rK wrote:

Scorching ray is less than half as effective as wither totem for purposes of amplifying damage. EE is a conditional thing you have to setup, and it has downsides.
Sure, there is the orb of storms thingy, but you cant use EE on every single fire skill, because they are not all one hard hit into ignite.

I am talking about single hit ignite scaling - or using Malachai ring.

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13s_D4rK wrote:

Curses can be used for both ignite and poison, so they dont really count for this argument.

I used them in the argument because they matter more for for Ignite. For chaos/wither there is no curse which double dips chaos damage. And there are 2 which double dip fire/ignite damage.

Furthermore Vulnerability (and Shock) can be used to multiplicatively boost Ignite damage.

Ignite scaling can get really ridiculous. VRF builds supposedly get 50M or sth DPS. Though I havent tried to math it.

Chaos/poison damage also suffers from "the resist problem" - it cant be overcome with curse or anything. The resist (boss base resist + map mod) double dips negatively. Ignite suffers less from this problem.

They both scale in somewhat similar manner with Ignite being more powerful but harder to setup.

Note that I am not trying to say the game/poison/Wither is properly balanced. Just pointing out that there are other "offenders" with similar power. And that the current game is intentionally(?) "balanced" around these "offenders". See GGG statement about HoWA introduction.

at the current rate, let just change all supports to reduce player damage, this way nothing will be OP and the game will be hard for you guys