An elemental conversion build shouldn't be significantly more powerful than its regular counterpart

Spectral shield throw is a perfect example. A physical sst build is pretty mediocre, but converting it to ele/chaos makes it scale absolutely absurdly. I get it you should be rewarded for making a build work with conversion and using expensive/hard to work with uniques like eternity shroud, but when the discrepancy is orders of magnitude, something is wrong.

Converting to an elemental should reward you with a different/unique playstyle. Converting physical to cold to be able to freeze monsters for example should be almost enough, if not for using expensive items to scale it.

The base problem is probably physical damage being absolutely garbage as usual, but I think ggg should revisit elemental conversion and elements in general (cold is flat out better than fire, while lightning is a joke due to various cold passives / items simply outperforming the other two elements and cold providing one of the best defensive mechanics in the game) and balance them accordingly. Fix the problem, not the symptoms.

I'll go ahead and guess ggg is going to nerf the heck out of SST instead of addressing elemental conversion. You heard it here first.

In moat games cold damage is like 20% lower than alternatives due to cold being able to freeze. In POE.. nope. You get chill that is already good enough to invest into and then freezes aaand the same damage scaling.

Conversion is the last bastion of double- and multi- diping. Make it scale as it should and suddenly there is no problem. But 'non-ele as chaos' being added for EACH conversion step is just dumb. If you convert from phys to chaos via light/cold/fire you have that mod applied FOUR TIMES. This conversipon math trick is what makes it so strong. Thpis and few weird interactions of double damage with converted stuff.

Worst case are phys spells that have similar base to their pure ele counterparts BUT can use several sources of added as ele and yet can benefit from penetration. Weird stuff.

Yupp, elemental damage in PoE is in a very strange place, or at least compared to how physical vs elemental is normaly handled.

Add to that ailments....

Personally I'd like a total makeover of all of that BUT I don't think we'll see that anytime soon due to the "outcry" around 3.15



A numeral adjustment of SST? perhaps..

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Dharall wrote:

A numeral adjustment of SST? perhaps.

That would be the wrong way to go certainly. It would make physical SST pretty bad for no real reason. I think they should make 'ele as chaos' mod only work once, maybe only adding chaos damage based on the highest elemental damage value you have rather than each of them. It's broken at the moment.

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demonstorm wrote:

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Dharall wrote:

A numeral adjustment of SST? perhaps.

That would be the wrong way to go certainly. It would make physical SST pretty bad for no real reason. I think they should make 'ele as chaos' mod only work once, maybe only adding chaos damage based on the highest elemental damage value you have rather than each of them. It's broken at the moment.

Totaly agree, I just don't think that will happen sadly

Yo be frank. SST got a completely insane buff in 3.15. SST used to be an OK skill before. But 3.15 simply doubled the damage jusy like that. In a patch where almost everythinh else got cut in half. Reversing the 3.15 buff is not going to kill the skill. Seriously.

The mechanic change is INSANE. The new threshold jewel is godlike with proper shield and the built in flat value honestly doesnt make any sense at this time.

But.. it all applies to phys and cold versions while cold just scaling better 'just because'

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demonstorm wrote:

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Dharall wrote:

A numeral adjustment of SST? perhaps.

That would be the wrong way to go certainly. It would make physical SST pretty bad for no real reason. I think they should make 'ele as chaos' mod only work once, maybe only adding chaos damage based on the highest elemental damage value you have rather than each of them. It's broken at the moment.

agreed. it needs changed.

SST is also the only non spell skill that works with a stat stick.