Can Elemental Equilibrium work?

So I've been looking at this keystone for a while, and I'm just left wondering how I could possibly make this skill more than just a situational damage boost. As far as I understand it, most people use it by alternating one element with another, effectively boosting the damage done by the second element by 25% for free. That's neat and all, but not exactly exciting.

I had the following idea, but since I'm very much unsure about its viability and mechanics, I'd rather ask whether anyone has tried and succeeded with this approach, than waste several hours on a failed character.

Is it viable to stack multiple, fast hits of one element, and follow up with one big, hard-hitting ability of another element?

Along come some more questions:

What's the lowest resistance a mob can have?
Does hitting with two elements reduce resistance to a third by 25% or 50%?
Which skills would lend themselves best to this build?

I imagine it might be nice with a Discharge build of some sort: Stack up minus resistance while building charges, then get a big boost to your Discharge damage. Frenzy and/or Power charges would work best.

Use it with elemental hit, works pretty well.

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0nin wrote:

So I've been looking at this keystone for a while, and I'm just left wondering how I could possibly make this skill more than just a situational damage boost. As far as I understand it, most people use it by alternating one element with another, effectively boosting the damage done by the second element by 25% for free. That's neat and all, but not exactly exciting.

I had the following idea, but since I'm very much unsure about its viability and mechanics, I'd rather ask whether anyone has tried and succeeded with this approach, than waste several hours on a failed character.

Is it viable to stack multiple, fast hits of one element, and follow up with one big, hard-hitting ability of another element?

Along come some more questions:

What's the lowest resistance a mob can have?
Does hitting with two elements reduce resistance to a third by 25% or 50%?
Which skills would lend themselves best to this build?

I imagine it might be nice with a Discharge build of some sort: Stack up minus resistance while building charges, then get a big boost to your Discharge damage. Frenzy and/or Power charges would work best.

Ignoring what happened to Enduring Cry, the reality of EE's limitations already discouraged a discharge build for me. All three elements at once somehow cancels the effect out. This is due to the fact that it doesn't stack. Also, if all three elements hit at once, the passive has no idea how to calculate the order, I suppose.

The lowest resist is a good question, but I'd be more inclined to test it with Elemental weakness than with EE. The wiki has some good values to work with there.

25% -- they don't stack.

Elemental hit is the obvious answer here, BUT you'd have to make sure you have no incidental elemental damage from items. And this can be surprisingly hard to eliminate.

As for a Discharger, you're really going for the big bang of all three elements going off at once. At most, you could carefully sculpt the enemies into have -25% to two elements (probably lightning and ice, I'd say) and discharging that way. I suppose this could work since Endurance Charges are such a pain to get now. Just forego those and focus on buffing your lightning and ice damage, maybe grabbing the bonus frenzy and power charges around the tree, and then using a fire hit before hand to weaken the enemies. Throw in elemental weakness...

The problem, of course, is how fiddly this can get. You need to generate the charges first, which generally takes two skills, and the last hit before you discharge needs to be a fire AoE. At some point you'll want to stick elemental weakness on the enemies. And then you need to actually get the discharge off, after building up your maximum charge count. Keep in mind that mulitple projectiles do not generate multiple charges.

...It's a damn good looking skill visually, but in effect, has left me quite underwhelmed.

edit: I'm considering building a firestorm/cold snap/shock nova rotation EE character. Probably suck compared to just making an uber fireball build, but we'll see.

I've run an elemental hit wand templar with elemental equilibrium to some success.

As I recall from the EE skill thread if you hit with two elements simultaneously the mob will get both debuffs. So you could do a fireball with added lightning damage to give the mob -50% to cold and then hit with a huge ice spear. It still seems like it's a lot of work to get marginal if any benefit.

As a not if you hit them with 3 elements simultaneously EE will do nothing.

Shock nova+ Frost nova with cold to fire. Could work if shock nova were actually viable.

"

Saffell wrote:

It still seems like it's a lot of work to get marginal if any benefit.

I agree with this. I find there's too many situational and gimicky skills. Some if not most are just plain...meh.
May as well mow shit down with lightning strike, greater projectile fireball, or what have you, then dick around with gimmicky stuff.

Anybody can share, how long the base duration of the debuff of EE is?

I love elemental equilibrium :D

Also, all your questions are answered here:
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/19803/filter-account-type/staff

Alright, so the lowest we can get something's elemental weakness is about -250%, from the curse and 4 hits with two elements (after four hits their resistance is boosted to 100% so they can't get hit anymore). Interesting.

Elemental equilibrium doesn't stack with itself. The highest debuff you can get from it is -50% resistance of one element.