Multiple Impale stacks from diferent skills?

Hi guys,
i have a question. Does every skill have its own set of impale stacks?
I.e. if i have impale linked to a attack skill and have impale also linked to my ancestral warchief, can the enemy have 5 stacks from my attack, calculated from my own attack damage, and a separate stack of 5 from the warchief? Or does both attacks contribute to the same stack?

If your concern is whether you're losing damage by having Impale on both - you are not.

You might be confused by some kind of oversimplified explanation in a build guide. Impale doesn't have any inherent stack limits; it only has a limit on how many times it can apply 10% reflected damage. Going off the Impale tooltip: Each hit deals its own Impale that is separate from other Impale effects. However, any hit triggers the 10% reflected damage, that is able to occur up to 5 times. So you're not going to get 5 stacks from your hits and 5 stacks from your warchief, because they won't last that long. You'd probably get 2-3 stacks from you and 2-3 stacks from your warchief at any given moment in time. However, this doesn't mean that you're losing out on 50% reflected damage; it just means that each individual stack is consumed faster than if you had only-warchief or only-you.

Suppose ui1 represents inflicting You-Impale-1, while wi1 represents inflicting Warchief Impale 1. ui1x10% represents one stack of Impale being consumed. Then, suppose you and Warchief alternate hits:

you hit: base + ui1
WC hit: base + ui1x10% + wi1
you hit: base + ui1x10% + wi1x10% + ui2
WC hit: base + ui1x10% + wi1x10% + ui2c10% + wi2
you hit: base + ui1x10% + wi1x10% + ui2c10% + wi2x10% +ui3
WC hit: base + ui1x10% + wi1x10% + ui2c10% + wi2x10% +ui3x10% + wi3
you hit: base + (used) + wi1x10% + ui2c10% + wi2x10% + ui3x10% + wi3x10% + ui4
WC hit: base + (used) + (used) + ui2c10% + wi2x10% + ui3x10% + wi3x10% + ui4x10% + wi4
etc.

As you can see, even though you "only" have 2-3 stacks per entity at any given time, each stack is still dealing 5 stacks' worth of damage, so you're not losing out on anything.

Wow, thanks for the quick and detailed answer!

If i understand this correct, it doesent matter if my damage is way higher than the warchief damage. Lets say i have hit 3 times and the warchief 2 times, its 3 x 10% of high damage and 2 x 10% low damage for the next hit instead of 5 x 10% high damage if only i have impale. But since there are more attacks in the same time, the stack are consumed at a faster rate.

I assume increased imaple chance and effectiveness from the tree and dread banner affects also the totem?

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TheDoomsdayDevice wrote:

If i understand this correct, it doesent matter if my damage is way higher than the warchief damage.

Right. You get 5 full effects of high-damage for each Impale inflicted by you, as long as you are constantly hitting; this is kind of irrelevant to the number of stacks on an enemy at any given time because for each entity, they are consumed faster than they are generated.

"

I assume increased imaple chance and effectiveness from the tree and dread banner affects also the totem?

This one I am not 100% sure, but it should be the case, yes. The official statement is that Totems use your Skills as if they are your character. This usually means they gain your offensive stats, unless somehow that offensive stat is not attached to a skill. But I believe Impale Chance and Impale Effectiveness, both from tree and banner, attach to skills, so your Totem should get the full benefits of both.

This was very helpful, thank you very much and have a nice weekend!