Penance Brand of Dissipation and Runebinder has weird interation

Here is the action I've done :
1- Link Penance Brand of Dissipation with Physical to Lighning and Brutality to make it zero damage. I also have the keystone Runebiner
2- place a brand on an enemy, and watch the area of effect when it stop growing.
3- when the brand exiped, now, place 2 brands back to back on the same enemy.
4- I see that the AoE is much smaller (and I suppose the damage is too, but it is harder to test)


https://youtu.be/trweqVCik50


For start Penance Brand of Dissipation has a description that does not match exactly what it does. It does not mention any cap on the energy on the enemy. We assumed the cap was 20, like on the normal gem, but it is just speculation.

When taking the keystone Runebinder, if two brands are applied on the same enemy, the final AoE of each brand is smaler, suggesting that each brand only look at the the energy itself added, but the enemy is caped at 20 energy.

I do not know if it is the intended behaviour, since the description on the gem does not mention any cap.

I did some extensive testing on this. My findings are as follows:

Energy is almost certainly being tracked by individual brands rather than by the monster.

Base Gem: Applying 2 brands to the same target builds energy from both simultaneously and triggers the first brand when the sum of the two is equal to 20, but only counts the energy on the first brand. This results in a tiny explosion (a new mechanic added possibly accidentally because of the trans gems) and the removal of the first brand. Normally when any penance brand triggers, all of the brands on the creature disappear, but because the energy is now tracked locally on the brand, the 2nd brand doesn't disappear. This brand continues counting up to 20 and triggers at this point, unless you apply a 3rd brand after the 1st expires, in which case it triggers when the 2nd and 3rd brand sum to 20, continuing ad infinitum.

Also, because the energy is stored on the brand, it is possible to have a brand drop off of a creature with energy retained on it. If this 1st brand hops on another monster that has a 2nd brand that has already got energy on it and the sum is greater than 20 it triggers. This means that you can potentially have 2 19 brands on the same target and a 38 energy explosion occurs. In this scenario, the 1st and 2nd brand are both removed.

Penance of Dissipation: This follows the same rules as above but because the mechanics of the gem are different the effect is also different. This brand has an attached duration. Over its duration it builds up energy and triggers it on the creature with increasing radius. If you apply a 2nd brand it also builds up energy and triggers at the higher brand's energy value instead of its own. When the sum of the two brands' energy is greater than or equal to 20, BOTH STOP ADDING ENERGY TO THE MONSTER. This means that for the remainder of the duration the two brands will trigger at some value like 9 and 11 energy rather than what ever your current maximum energy might be with your cast speed, activation time, and duration. This only occurs with the runebinder rune and applying 2 brands. Applying a single brand allows the energy to continue stacking, in my case all the way up to 28.

Please note that as a direct result penance brand of dissipation doesn't seem to be acting the way described and you are not able to continue stacking damage on a monster.

After doing some of my own testing based on the contents of this thread, I'm finding Yazuka and Enki's findings are 100% reproducible. Additionally, I can confirm that after the 21st tick even without runebinder, the skill stops gaining energy altogether and continues pulsing at the 20 energy threshold for each remaining pulse.

It would be most preferable for us if GGG could either 1) adjust the description of the penance brand of dissipation gem wording to confirm that a cap of 20 energy is indeed intended or 2) provide an update to us that the skill is in a bugged state and is intended to exceed that cap of 20 energy(since no cap has ever been specified on the new gem).

All skill gems' wording involving stacking buffs, stages, or charges always provide clear indication that a cap exists. In 10k hours I've played, nearly every hidden cap I've seen or read about in a skill gem has been either clarified or reworked to provide said clarity. Especially given the recent simplification of penance brand mechanics, QA/dev commentary would be excellent :).

hoping im understanding the issue correctly, but it seems to still be the case.

using regular penance brand, if you cast multiple the explosions are tiny. they appear to do full damage, but are clearly exploding at very low stacks.

I already posted it in another thread about penance brand, so ill just coppy my findings. I have a peanance brand char myself, but stopped playing, becasue you can abuse the current state of the gem pretty massiv, resulting in almost invinite damage. Its just no fun playing like this, and it feels like cheating.

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IsodorRodosi wrote:

I already posted it in another thread about penance brand, so ill just coppy my findings. I have a peanance brand char myself, but stopped playing, becasue you can abuse the current state of the gem pretty massiv, resulting in almost invinite damage. Its just no fun playing like this, and it feels like cheating.

Spoiler

At the moment, Penance brand of dissipation is bugged, but also its not.

The problem is, they took the regular penance brand, and converted it kinda sloppy. The Regular penance brand applies charges ON THE ENEMY, until it reaches 20 and if you deattach it by any means, THE CHARGES ON THE ENEMY explode.

Penenace brand of dissipation still does the same, but instead of EXPLODING THE CHARGES ON THE ENEMY, it counts all charges it has applied ON ENEMYS, and explodes itself dealing damage.

That means, any enemy can only have 20 charges on them, buuuuuuuuuut any penance brand counts their charges they have applied individualy.

So if you skill Rune binder keystone, and attach two penance brands of dissipation to one enemy, they both can only apply charges ON THE ENEMY until they combined reaching 20 charges ON THAT ENEMY, therefore, both end up with around 10 charges.

Some more "bugs" with penance brand of dissipation:

-If the enemy leaves no corpse, or the corpes gets destroyed, all charges ON THAT ENEMY are lost

-If you recall penance brand of dissipation, any charge on any enemy gets "Exploded" but due to it dooing nothing when charges explode, it just looses all charges. So do not recall them. ever.

-If you scale duration, castspeed, and use temporaly chains, and you have multible enemys,and jumping brands, a single brand can have basicly infinite charges, resulting in therotacial infinite damage and AOE, only limmited by duration, and the enemys actualy staing alive. I tested it with 100% conversion and brutalitly, the result is quite hillarious, when it litteraly gets as big as half of the map xD


All this is easy to fix, if they let the brand charges itself until it holds 20 charges, instead of having them apply the charges to the enemy.

Hard disagree, the single and only problem with Penance Brand (iterations included) and Runebinder is that there is calculation on the brand itself AT ALL, which is in straight discorrelation with how the Penance Brand is worded and was supposed to be reworked. Its a relict of how it used to be and was probably used for easy implementation of the new rules, but with now a clear oversight.

While the solution might be clear as day, from programming perspective it might take some time as the on brand counting just doesnt work and has to be connected to energy stacks from mobs, thus creating a bridge between those two environments.

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With this change the further behaviour would be expected:

Runebinder: Normal Penance Brand - both brands stay together adding energy into a single pool until 20 stacks and 1 explosion occurs (could be 2 total for each brand , but from wiki description they dont want that), brand gets removed (both could get removed, but probably a counter tradeoff for only 1 explosion), there shouldnt be any scale from the stacks, only a condition

Penance Brand of Dissolution - brands stay there until duration, putting energy stacks into a single pool and pulsating using calculation from it with no cap (current wording), if cast again after duration on the same target it continues where left off


Jumping brand: Normal Penance Brand - brand is moving between targets putting energy stacks on the monster its currently on, repeating this process on all monsters until one monster reaches 20 stacks and brand finnaly explodes, there shouldnt be any scale from the stacks, only a condition, if cast again it can use remaining stacks as a heads up on mobs that have them on them and thus explode earlier

Penance Brand of Dissolution - brand is moving between targets putting energy stacks on the monster its currently on, while on each monster it pulses with the strength of the stacks the current monster has, if it jumps on a new one it has to start over, repeating this process until duration, if cast again it can start off on the monsters from the stacks they have on them