Physical Armor Penetration Nodes and Support Gem

Well, in PoE's current state, it's clear that all forms of elemental damage are much, much superior than forms of physical damage for mid-to-late game scaling. (EK and Bear Trap aside). We have several gems that support elemental penetration, yet none that support -phsyical damage- armor penetration. On the same track, it would be nice to have new nodes in the skill tree that give %armor penetration for PHYSICAL damage only, to simply give the few FULL physical builds an edge, rather than having to rely on cheap shock stacks, or permafreeze to have great success at higher levels.

Also, adding an effect to physical damage at high numbers. For lightning, we have shock stacks (So very balanced), for freeze we have the chill and freeze status (Quite "fair" once again) and finally for fire, we have good ol' ignite (I like the new effects!). Yet for pure physical, we have no special effect. Now, I do not want to sound entitled, I just think it would be fair to balance the playing ground (As if). I know that there is already the stun value which can be applied on enemies, but that can happen regardless of the type of damage dealt (To my knowledge).

Why not give physical a buff, to keep up the flood of elemental builds? Like, say, if you deal a large amount of physical damage, it also deals a % amount if the mobs current (or maximum) HP as more physical damage, with the final value reduced by armor, and the amount of HP. Or, if you hit an enemy many, many times in a short duration, it inflicts a minor puncture-like status effect on the mob, depending on the amount of damage dealt divided by the number of hits you inflicted in a short window of time. Or, better yet (As this would help physical melee builds quite a lot), large amounts of physical damage dealt in a short amount of time could inflict a stacking debuff (Ex. Staggered, dizzy, confused) which reduces the mobs armor and damage by a percent amount (A la Shock stacks).





Well, that's all I have to say at the moment, other than the fact that physical is largely under powered, with elemental being much too strong as it is. I doubt this thread will garner any interest, but eh, why not try?

Only read part of this: Big thing to note is to make sure it doesn't push EK and Bear trap to be more powerful. Bear trap is already used almost exclusively by high level people for bosses, to the point of running multiple traps to be able to put out a ton of high physical

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Real_Wolf wrote:

Only read part of this: Big thing to note is to make sure it doesn't push EK and Bear trap to be more powerful. Bear trap is already used almost exclusively by high level people for bosses, to the point of running multiple traps to be able to put out a ton of high physical

This is very true. Maybe the devs could separate the damage dealt by bear traps as another form of damage (Physical, but not physical?) Like, it wouldn't be able to proc the physical debuff, just like physicall cant proc Shock stacks.

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Jilvane wrote:

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Real_Wolf wrote:

Only read part of this: Big thing to note is to make sure it doesn't push EK and Bear trap to be more powerful. Bear trap is already used almost exclusively by high level people for bosses, to the point of running multiple traps to be able to put out a ton of high physical

This is very true. Maybe the devs could separate the damage dealt by bear traps as another form of damage (Physical, but not physical?) Like, it wouldn't be able to proc the physical debuff, just like physicall cant proc Shock stacks.

I was thinking perhaps if it was attack only, not spell? That way it would work for Physical pwoer siphon, physical bow, and physical melee, but not bear trap or EK, which ARE already powerful

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Real_Wolf wrote:

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Jilvane wrote:

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Real_Wolf wrote:

Only read part of this: Big thing to note is to make sure it doesn't push EK and Bear trap to be more powerful. Bear trap is already used almost exclusively by high level people for bosses, to the point of running multiple traps to be able to put out a ton of high physical

This is very true. Maybe the devs could separate the damage dealt by bear traps as another form of damage (Physical, but not physical?) Like, it wouldn't be able to proc the physical debuff, just like physicall cant proc Shock stacks.

I was thinking perhaps if it was attack only, not spell? That way it would work for Physical pwoer siphon, physical bow, and physical melee, but not bear trap or EK, which ARE already powerful

That's actually a very interesting perspective. It would actually give physical melee attacks (as well as wander shots and bow attacks) purpose. But then again, would people sacrifice heavy strike vs melee with a debuff? Perhaps the devs (once again, lol), could separate EK and Bear Trap into "magic damage influenced by physical damage nodes". This would prevent them from spiraling out of control, whilst letting them maintain their lofty power in PoE.

Considering a large phys hit already 'penetrates' armour, why not a support gem that deals -X armour on hit for X seconds? Damage effectiveness effects the duration so cyclone would reduce armour by a lot for a short amount of time, heavy strike would have a longer duration, etc. Would apply the same way LGOH does.

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Wooser69 wrote:

Considering a large phys hit already 'penetrates' armour, why not a support gem that deals -X armour on hit for X seconds? Damage effectiveness effects the duration so cyclone would reduce armour by a lot for a short amount of time, heavy strike would have a longer duration, etc. Would apply the same way LGOH does.

That's actually quite clever and it brings some other ideas to the table. With certain skills like cyclone having low damage effectiveness, but very high attack speed, maybe a skill gem that "shreds" armor with many fast hits. This armor shred would only be applicable with pure physical damage, and would work with damage effectiveness and attack speed. Faster attacks, more armor shred stacks, larger hits, longer armor shred duration.

Oh boy, I'm getting inspsired!

Physical damage is already far less mitigated than elemental. Part of the reason you see larger tooltip DPS numbers on elemental skills/attacks is because elemental damage is much more easily mitigated. That said, the ability to double (or more) curse with elemental weakness + single element curse mostly counteracts that. By comparison, vulnerability is not as impressive of a curse. Maybe the solution is just to buff vulnerability (perhaps with armor penetration as you say). I wouldn't be opposed to an armor penetration support gem either, but I doubt a lot of people would use it. Single large hits aren't well mitigated by armor, and players deal very large hits generally.

As for a physical status effect, I'm not sure that's necessary. Physical attacks already have something that elemental attacks and spells don't: life leech. Elemental attacks and spells can get life leech only from the support gem. Physical attacks can easily get 6%+ leech without needing to sacrifice a gem slot to get it.

I think the real solution is to add more interesting physical damage attack skills. Lightning arrow isn't overpowered as heck because it is lightning damage (though the shock stacking certainly helps). It is overpowered as heck because of the skill mechanics. Namely the ability to hit every target with the splash damage from several projectiles at once.

So the real problem isn't with physical damage, it is just that skill design has made the good AoE skills elemental.

I'd like to see them double the range on cyclone, remove the physical damage penalty on cleave, speed up the leap slam animation, increase the damage bonus on the melee damage support, increase the radius on the new melee splash gem, etc. And of course nerf lightning arrow (again).

Rain of arrows is a completely decent physical attack, but never gets any play because lightning arrow is so absurdly OP. If you fixed lightning arrow so that each time you attack with it, any given target could only be damaged by it one time, then bam, rain of arrows is on par. Freezing pulse could do with the same fix.

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magicrectangle wrote:

Physical damage is already far less mitigated than elemental. Part of the reason you see larger tooltip DPS numbers on elemental skills/attacks is because elemental damage is much more easily mitigated. That said, the ability to double (or more) curse with elemental weakness + single element curse mostly counteracts that. By comparison, vulnerability is not as impressive of a curse. Maybe the solution is just to buff vulnerability (perhaps with armor penetration as you say). I wouldn't be opposed to an armor penetration support gem either, but I doubt a lot of people would use it. Single large hits aren't well mitigated by armor, and players deal very large hits generally.

As for a physical status effect, I'm not sure that's necessary. Physical attacks already have something that elemental attacks and spells don't: life leech. Elemental attacks and spells can get life leech only from the support gem. Physical attacks can easily get 6%+ leech without needing to sacrifice a gem slot to get it.

I think the real solution is to add more interesting physical damage attack skills. Lightning arrow isn't overpowered as heck because it is lightning damage (though the shock stacking certainly helps). It is overpowered as heck because of the skill mechanics. Namely the ability to hit every target with the splash damage from several projectiles at once.

So the real problem isn't with physical damage, it is just that skill design has made the good AoE skills elemental.

I'd like to see them double the range on cyclone, remove the physical damage penalty on cleave, speed up the leap slam animation, increase the damage bonus on the melee damage support, increase the radius on the new melee splash gem, etc. And of course nerf lightning arrow (again).

Rain of arrows is a completely decent physical attack, but never gets any play because lightning arrow is so absurdly OP. If you fixed lightning arrow so that each time you attack with it, any given target could only be damaged by it one time, then bam, rain of arrows is on par. Freezing pulse could do with the same fix.

I very much agree with your post as well. The thing most players seem to ignore is, that its not "ranged" that is overpowered, its AoEs. I, for example, am currently playing with my level 77 Cyclone duelist. The tooltip indicates I do 1600 dps, but in detail, each cyclone hit inflicts around 250-500 damage. With 3.7 aps, I'm hitting enemies a LOT of times, but for very little damage. Thus, most of my damage is negated by armor. Also, when you compare a physical cycloner vs a shock stack cycloner, the damage difference is insane. Right now, I fimly believe that shock stacks shouldn't stack; you get one debuff, and that's it. And yeah, if GGG improved the damage effectiveness on certain melee skills, physical builds would become more viable.

The way damage works is currently under construction: Click