New Vulnerability

"Vulnerability

No longer causes attack hits to have a chance to Maim cursed enemies.
No longer causes cursed enemies to take increased physical damage from damage over time.
Curses applied by casting this spell now gain 10 Doom per second.
Now causes ailments inflicted on cursed enemies to deal damage 20% faster."

Traditionally, vulnerability was related with physical hits and ailments.

I just need clarification if this "ailments deal damage faster" also apply to burning and/or other non-physical related ailments.

burning is not an ailment, the only other damaging ailments are ignite, poison, and bleeding and from the wording of it it looks like it but i dont think its worth using over flammability/despair but its better with +1 curse

explosivecurry is alright.

To be actually fair, Vulnerability at its very first iteration was "increased physical damage taken, +x% damage from Damage over Time". Witchfire Brew gave a lv21 Vulnerability Aura back then, and it was actually reasonable to use it as a third curse for boosting ignite/RF builds (since it was generic DoT) after Flammability and Elemental Weakness. It was also used for the then-rising chaos builds (back then Poison was a lot niche), but overall most of those builds found the "physical damage taken" thing off.

And so GGG came up with Despair. Vulnerability was primed more for physical damage, while generic DoT and Chaos would use Despair. Witchfire Brew was adjusted so that it has a lv21 Despair.

I guess at a certain point all of the complaint about "Bleeding kills me so quickly I cannot staunch it" needed the "Player are Cursed with Vulnerability" map modifier addressed. Bleeding is already bad enough when going against monsters that procs it (Kitava's Heralds), it was a real nightmare when potentially all monsters could proc it because now Vulnerability gives physical damage a chance to inflict both maim and bleeding.

Instead, however, to bring Vulnerability back at its 2.x status, GGG chose to give the "ailment deal damage faster". So Vulnerability still helps most DoT builds like before, except the ones that only deals DoT by ailment.
This is meant to:

> Not give a ED/Contagion/Toxic Rain/Soulrend build even more bonus on their natural DoTs - In order to do that either work on your Spell Damage/Projectile Damage or add Poison/Decay to those skill

> Not give Wintertide Brand, Vortex, Creeping Frost and Scorching Ray an unforeseen (but surely not unwelcome) boost

> Not give Righeous Fire builds other ways to boost the damage. Fusing this with the "Instead of raising flat life regen we bring life percent regen on their level, in the name of love -erm, balance", I feel like they are somewhat hitting with the nerf banner that skill. Had Righteous Fire done anything relevant the previous league anyway?

EDIT: note, however, that Vulnerability would not actually boost the DoT Damage. "Dealing damage faster" means it will deal the same damage, but in shorter time and at higher intensity. In other words, you increase the ailment's DPS but reduce its duration. You will still deal that 1000 ignition damage... but faster.

Made a mistake, that explosivecurry pointed quite well, I'm not really talking about Burning, but Ignite.

Really like the all the history from Maxtrux, I was there when we didn't even had despair, but definitely couldn't explain all those fact that well.

Here is another one: Vulnerability is also a strength based gem, same as many other fire-related gems.

This discussion isn't going anywhere, I'm sorry to not take another player word n this, but as players, best we can do before the update is guessing if this curse applies or not.

I don't usually ask for staff posts, but I think we kinda need one on this.

If you need clarification about

"

VashSan wrote:

I just need clarification if this "ailments deal damage faster" also apply to burning and/or other non-physical related ailments.

then you can just look at what "dealing damage faster" does by looking at other examples in wikia (like Dyadian's Dawn or The Goddess Scorned). Allow me to quote Wikia on "Ignites you inflict with Attacks deal Damage 35% faster" from Dyadian:

"

Ignites you inflict with Attacks deal Damage 35% faster – Enemies ignited by an attack burn 35% faster with Dyadian Dawn equipped. This means ignites deal 35% more fire damage per second and have ~26% less duration. Expressed arithmetically, fire damage over time from ignites is multiplied by

(100 + 35)/100

while ignite duration is multiplied by

100/(100 + 35)

The total fire damage inflicted by one instance of ignite remains the same after these adjustments, but the duration is shortened.

And if you really wish for a Staff Post (which is somewhat unlikely here on the official forum, and chances are you can find it in the Game mechanics megathread), Here is a clarification from Mark_GGG on Reddit about Emberwake, which gives the opposite of "faster"

"

The values cannot be simply added, as they are doing different things.

"burn x% faster" means x% more damage - effectively multiplying by (100 + x)/100, and the duration is multiplied by 100/(100 + x) - this results in the total damage dealt being the same.

"burn y% slower" is the inverse - y% more duration - effectively multiplying duration by (100 + y)/100, and a dps multiplier of 100/(100 + y). Again, this keeps the total damage dealt the same, while extending the duration.

For your specific example, with "burn 35% faster" and "burn 65% slower", duration is multiplied by 1.65/1.35, and damage per second is multiplied by 1.35/1.65. These are ~ 1.22 and 0.81 respectively, meaning the total result is roughly equivalent to "burn 22% slower".

Wording is important in Path of Exile. Since (I hope) the meaning of "dealing damage x% faster" has been clarified by the above posts, then we need to give a meaning on "ailments".
Wikia says

"

An ailment is a detrimental effect associated with one or more damage types.

Ignite, chill, freeze, shock, scorch, brittle, and sap are collectively referred to as elemental ailments.

Chill, freeze, shock, scorch, brittle, and sap are collectively referred to as non-damaging ailments.

Bleed, poison, and ignite are damaging ailments.

The last phrase is the one you are looking for, since "dealing damage x% faster" (reasonably) applies only to damaging ailments

In conclusion, Bleed, Poison and Burnings from Ignite will deal damage faster on an enemy affected by the new Vulnerability. Any other DoT will not get a bonus on "being faster" since it does not come from an ailment.

Your argument "Vulnerability is a STR gem, like many other fire-related gem" is valid, but as I hope my previous post shown, Vulnerability was once able to boost even poison damage, which is an ailment more DEX or DEX-borderline oriented - it still scales with physical damage (STR), and it has sinergy with certain spells (INT).
I do agree, by the way, on the counter-intuitive support Vulnerability gives to Poison.

Maxtrux, I really appreciate your explanation and dedication, but I already have all the information you're telling me in this post.

I know how wording works and how important it is.

My problem is that wording has been wrong and corrected many times before, and forgeting about ignite in a gem that is currently used for physical purposes seems like a resonable mistake and a possibility.

I'll tell a little bit more. I plan to play Burning Arrow, with Dyadan Dawn and Assailum for ignites. Already played the build and (I hope) I know the build enough.


One of the things that bother me the most is how Sirus (and a few other bosses, like Eradicator) could jump to invulnerable phases and mess with DoT builds, having faster ignites in this context seems like a good option to pair with Flammability if I ever get a way to have additional curses (I also know that Despair's "enemies take 15%-25% increased damage from DoT" could be even better, but I really like having Vulnerability as another possibility; I'm also considering 3 curses; 2 rings and a Curse on Hit setup, since my builds is only 3 points away from Whispers of Doom).

Thanks for answers in this thread.

But also, problem isn't really solved and this close to lauch is almost pointless to keep this discussion, I guess we'll just have to hope they got the wording right and make some test after launch.

While I would stand my ground on the wording and reiterate the gem did boost ignition at a certain point of its life (albeit with a different and way more common wording), I have to concede that, so far, we never had a generic "Ailments deal damage x% faster/slower". I understand your doubt and I find reasonable to keep it - let's hope they did not made a very big "oopsie".

I was bothered a lot too about the "phasing bosses will cancel any DoT they have on when they phase". There was a time when one could burn Sirus with a pair of Explosive Ballistas totems, but that build died in Delirium with the "max 20 fuses" limit. Indeed, having an ailment that deals damage faster would help deal that sweet 20M DoT damage PoB tells you in less that the 10-20 seconds it actually takes.

That said, how Assailum's Snipe works for Burning Arrow's DoT Debuffs? They get 1 stack for each stage, or will just deal 1 stack that scales with the 1 hit you give the opponent? Sounds a very more reliable choice than Explosive Arrow burning to say the least (though keep in mind that BA's burning debuff would not be considered as "ailment" for the purpose of the new Vulnerability - only the ignite, or ignites if you are using a certain standard-only threshold, would deal damage faster)

"

Maxtrux wrote:

That said, how Assailum's Snipe works for Burning Arrow's DoT Debuffs? They get 1 stack for each stage, or will just deal 1 stack that scales with the 1 hit you give the opponent? Sounds a very more reliable choice than Explosive Arrow burning to say the least (though keep in mind that BA's burning debuff would not be considered as "ailment" for the purpose of the new Vulnerability - only the ignite, or ignites if you are using a certain standard-only threshold, would deal damage faster)

Main damage from Assailum isn't the Burning Arrow's debuff, but the ignite. I don't think the debuff scale well.

I'll link my PoB, if you want to take a look.
https://pastebin.com/41PwBjAq

EDIT: Oh sorry, you already examined my char. As you said, wording on Snipe is only about Ailments, I don't think it scales the debuff. Although I can see a DPS increase after stacking some snipes on bosses (this could be because of Elemental Overload proc, and/or stacking the debuff).