Re-Thinking Fanaticism: Analysis and Suggestions for the Instruments of Zeal Ascendency Node

I really enjoy build diversity in Path of Exile, and I believe there's two problems we can knock out with one change: the relative uselessness of "Instruments of Zeal" and the lack of support for a true attack/movement/spell weaving playstyle. I believe my suggested changes here will solve both problems, as I think enabling that attack/movement/spell weaving playstyle was - at least partially - the design goal behind "Instruments of Zeal" to begin with. So let's get into it.

Right now, the "Instruments of Zeal" ascendency node is basically never chosen. A quick look at poe.ninja Builds reveals that it's only a handful of players who attempt to use it. Why is that? I'd argue that the ascendency node has only a few playstyles that it benefits, and each of them has a serious "Con" that prevents "Instruments of Zeal" with the associated "Fanaticism" buff from being strong/rewarding to use. Here, I'll review those playstyles, why Fanaticism falls short, and how to improve the node/buff to make it more playable and fun.

To start with a review of what Fanaticism is:

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+4 to Maximum Fanatic Charges
Gain 1 Fanatic Charge every second if you've Attacked in the past second
Gain Fanaticism for 4 seconds on reaching Maximum Fanatic Charges
Lose all Fanatic Charges on reaching Maximum Fanatic Charges

This leads to the Fanaticism buff:

"

For Spells you cast yourself:
75% more Cast Speed
75% Reduced Cost
75% increased Area of Effect

Now, there are several ways to make this work. I'll list them and then review their pros, cons, and how to improve them:

1. Just play normally, leap-slamming around, and enjoy the random bouts of high Cast Speed; maybe only pay attention to it for boss fights (leap for 4 seconds to dodge, then big spell window, then repeat).

This has the pro of not needing any additional changes to include Fanaticism in your spell-casting build, so long as you already use Leap Slam or Shield Charge (or Cyclone, but only if you stop/start often, since you only get a Fanaticism charge if you started Cycloning in the past second). The problem is that the buff simply isn't strong if it's this inconsistent; "75% reduced cost" is only something we can plan around if it's consistently there - otherwise you need to plan for the full cost of the spell. Likewise for increased AOE if you need that increased AOE to clear maps. And random bouts of Cast Speed are nice, but not particularly strong compared to just a straight up Elemental Damage taken buff like "Augury of Penance", which is why you see most Inquisitors just going for that instead of this when they could take either for their last ascendency points. Instead, if you want to utilize Fanaticism, you'd go for either of the next options.

2. Intentionally do 4 seconds of attacking, followed by a burst window for 4 seconds of damage, in order to maximize the damage from "75% More Cast Speed".

This has some benefits: you can plan for a higher mana usage spell, since you're only casting it with "75% reduced cost", and you will always plan on casting it with "75% More Cast Speed". The problem is that you're stationary for 4 seconds, so you need to plan for how to survive as a stationary character; but if you can be stationary for 4 seconds, can't you be stationary for longer? In which case, simply being stationary for 8 seconds continually casting gets you more damage, even including the 75% More Cast Speed buff: 1.75(4) = 7 < 8. Not to mention it'll be annoying to just have to leap slam around mindlessly for 4 seconds every fight before you get to do damage.

The only other option here would be actually trying to scale an Attack damage skill, but there's not much of a viable way to scale both Attack and Spell damage equally to a strong level - at least none I've seen. So until there's a build that can do this reliably, we only have one solid option: a "weave" gameplay pattern, which is one that I'd like Path of Exile to support regardless.

3. Do a "weave" playstyle; leap -> cast -> leap -> cast -> leap -> cast, etc. This allows you to have nearly full uptime on Fanaticism which means you can plan your actual spell usage around the buff (e.g. for balancing cost, damage windows, etc)

In order for a weaving playstyle to work here, we need to make use of Fanaticism's 75% More Cast Speed buff to deal increased damage. Compare these two scenarios: X channels Spell for 1 second. Y casts Leap Slam (which takes time "t") and then channels Spell for (1 - t) seconds. When does Y do as much or more damage than X?

We would need to have (1 - t) * 1.75 >= 1. This implies t <= 3/7. And therein lies the problem: we would need to, on average, have all our movement and at least one attack skill cast happen within 3/7 of a second, followed by a very precise 4/7 seconds of casting a spell, in order for us to actually have this "weaving" playstyle do more damage than simply casting the Spell for that same period of time without Fanaticism. The problem is: this is far too small a window. Leap Slam only gets under 3/7 of a second cast time with very large attack speed investment, far more than "Faster Attacks" + "Momentum", and that would still leave us with very little room for error for how long we can cast our Spell.

One of the difficulties with respect to weaving skills/abilities in Path of Exile is that one's animation lock for a skill is usually equivalent to the skill's cooldown. This is unfortunately true for PoE2 as well: you can't weave an auto attack with a skill because the cooldown for auto attacks are just the animation lock for auto attacks. This means any movement or using any other skills is always a damage loss.

Compare this with MOBA characters: weaving auto attacks and abilities in League, for example, is core to the game, because auto attacks and each individual ability all have their own cooldowns, which are generally significantly longer than their animation lock. So you can get really interesting playstyles where you have to know what abilities to use and weave in the right order for the right situation, while allowing for movement in between. If I'm playing Nidalee: maybe you need to kite a melee enemy, so you weave ranged autos in human form like so: auto -> Q -> auto -> Alt+E, W -> auto. You're able to move in between these attacks as well. Then the trap procs or the spear hits and you want to engage in melee cat form: R -> W -> auto -> E -> auto -> Q. Then disengage to ranged kite again to avoid their melee ability: W -> R -> auto -> Q -> etc.

But where is this kind of responsive, weaving playstyle in Path of Exile? By no means should it be mandatory or essential, but it'd be nice if it were a possibility, so that we could at least combine spell usage with movement abilities seamlessly. Fanaticism, I had long hoped, might bring out that possibility even if only in a very simple sense: something like leap -> cast Divine Ire for half a second -> leap -> Divine Ire for half a second -> etc. Fanaticism would make that half a second of Divine Ire worth more than a second of normal Divine Ire casting, so Fanaticism would turn a stationary skill into a playstyle that does more damage while also being more mobile (half-second casts that do more damage than a second of casting, while also moving around every second to avoid enemy attacks).

This can still be possible, but it would require one of several changes. Ideally, we would get two changes to supplement this kind of playstyle to make Fanaticism more viable:

1. There would need to be an attack movement skill that can be made very fast while investing into Cast Speed (e.g. maybe a Unique makes Leap Slam scale according to cast speed, both for "increase" and "more" cast speed modifiers, which would allow Fanaticism to supercharge Leap Slam's speed too)

2. The "weaving window" for Fanaticism needs to be increased; say, Fanaticism lasts for 8 seconds and you need to do an attack once in the past 2 seconds to get a charge, as this would allow even the moderately slow Leap Slam to fit within this playstyle.

For a more overall improvement to PoE (both 1 and 2), reduce animation times to be shorter than skill cooldowns! This would allow for us to seamlessly reposition between skill uses without feeling like we lost damage, as otherwise optimal gameplay is just holding down the attack button. Great for flicker strike, which combines movement with it; not so great for other skills. Perhaps I'll make a separate post for this larger suggestion, should readers find it agreeable, but I don't know how many other players share my desire for that kind of gameplay.

in the past i built one deliberate Fanaticism character: Toxic Rain + Voltaxic Burst

the playstyle was to attack with Toxic Rain charging the 'spell window' and then quick burst of Voltaxic Burst (skill i love to hate)

it worked (one of my best Delve Azurite nodes clearer to date), but my main gripe with it - it isnt '4 seconds' - it counts 'full seconds etc' - in reality it is more like every 6 or so seconds

then there was a problem of scaling - ive picked chaos because at that time it was mostly generic damage, so no differentiation between spell and attack


your analysis is sound, i kinda noded all the way while reading it. but i think that in general: POE is not a game for that kind of dance, maybe POE2 is (in campaign - maybe, later on - it is the same zap zap pew pew as POE1) so if they want to encourage mixing of attacks and spells, it should be mostly numerical and the 'mechanical' component should be FAR less oppressive

(also - Battlemage's cry is a very underutilised skill that achieves pretty much the same thing)

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but i think that in general: POE is not a game for that kind of dance, maybe POE2 is (in campaign - maybe, later on - it is the same zap zap pew pew as POE1)

Yeah - it might be the case that they just don't want to include this kind of gameplay. If that's the case, I guess I'll just have to live with it and stick to my Tectonic Slam screen-clear builds, lol.