IMO, Blasphemy's Current Curse Effectiveness Penalty is too High to Be a Tempting Consideration

Hey GGG!

I'm a curse freak and have been playing around with them lots since EA's release.

In my opinion, Blashpemy's current penalty to Curse Effectiveness is too high to be considered a valid option for builds.

If my math is correct 🤓...here, I'll give my outcomes with both TC (that also has a Slow Penalty) and Flammability:

Flammability (this is with 20% gem quality, all curse effectiveness nodes on the tree, all aura effectiveness nodes on the tree, and Heightened Curses Support):
- Self Cast: -62 Fire Res.
- W/ Blasphemy: -32 Fire Res.

With the amount of nodes invested on the tree, and the 60 Spirit (+ Heightened Curses' spirit multiplier), cutting the effectiveness almost in half isn't tempting at all. It's too expensive. IF Blasphemy cut effectiveness in half BEFORE tree investment, that'd make way more sense to me. After full investment, it's currently not tempting at all.

Temporal Chains is even worse with the slow penalties (based on rarity).

Temporal Chains (this is with 20% gem quality, all curse effectiveness nodes on the tree, all aura effectiveness nodes on the tree, all slow magnitude nodes on the tree, and Heightened Curses Support):
Against Normals:
- Self Cast: 65% Slow
- W/ Blasphemy: 36% Slow

Against Rares:
- Self Cast: 45% Slow
- W/ Blasphemy: 16% Slow

Against Uniques:
- Self Cast: 32% Slow
- W/ Blasphemy: 3% Slow

Now, I understand the power of Enfeeble and TC. I get that they need the rarity penalty. But keep in mind, these values are with full tree investment :(. 16% Slow against Rares? 3% against uniques? Blasphemy isn't worth it at all. 3% shouldn't even be the value without investment.

Anyway, this post (if my math is correct) is to say that Blasphemy's numbers could use some tweaking to make it worth the investment. (Maybe even consider different/specific Blasphemy numbers for Enfeeble and Temporal Chains.)

Good luck! I know it's a tricky one but in my opinion, Blasphemy isn't worth the reservation currently (with or without curse investment).

Later!

Wrecker.

Yeah, I agree. How dare magic mobs aren't completely stopped?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYJmvcg8mJY

"

kamiknx#1162 wrote:

Spoiler

Yeah, I agree. How dare magic mobs aren't completely stopped?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYJmvcg8mJY

? Why care about Magic mobs? A skill needs to be worthwhile against Rares and Uniques as that's what the game revolves around.
Also, It's important to do the numbers without being a Chronomancer.
The video linked is a fully decked-out character. The numbers above are without gear.

The problem is that Blasphemy has two downsides.
Spirit cost, added spirit costs via support gems and then a curse effect penalty.

The problem with Blasphemy is that is has a LESS multiplier. If it was like Chayula's Hand (Monk's "Curse and Mark on hit" ability) wich has a REDUCE multipliers, it will be better.

It's also important to note that we don't yet have a "Curse Ascendency", so making a Curse bot, or just having a Curse Aura to easily use Hexblast (wich doesn't have the "more damage per curse affecting the target" that has in PoE1), is not as plausible or usefull.

Ya. Both Blasphemy and TC/Enfeeble are penalized with Less instead of Reduced (as you said). The numbers are pretty steep. I'm curious, if GGG agreed with this post, what a decent value of "less" would be.

I hope we don't get a curse (or minion) ascendancy. I like the idea of having something non-specific to the theme (curse/minion) to add to the build, you know?

+1 to Blasphemy having higher curse effect.

I would even be happy with a tradeoff buff honestly. Even if Blasphemy took 100 spirit per curse, but didn't have a Less Effect penalty I would like it more.

There are a lot of different ways to re-balance Blasphemy without it turning the linked curse into a wet noodle.

?? It's like a 40% penalty and the upside is that you can have a huge curse AoE with permanent uptime. It's completely fine and really strong. You can easily have a 50% slow aoe as a chronomancer just by getting a little bit of curse efficiency. The point of Blasphemy is to run enfeeble or temp chains defensively, or doing something like despair + hexblast spam. Any other curse you just cast on rares or bosses cause it's the only time you need it.

You also have the added benefit of not having to take any curse or skill duration at all which is a huge upside.

If the debuff penalty scaling remains, then they should lower the cost to 30 spirit per debuff socketed (up to 2 curse skills if you run Whispers of Doom). However, if they keep it at 60, then they should remove the nerfs to the socketed debuffs.

Regardless of which way they go, even if they don't change it, what does need to happen is that the socketed support skills should not cost 60 spirit. I would hope for a 0 spirit cost, but I'd be okay with having them cost 10 spirit.