Avatar of Fire, only dmg loss

@draygourn: Damage type is irrelevant in terms of triggering stun; all that matters is the raw amount of damage dealt, and even spells can stun, although obviously only melee stuns work for Endurance Charge on Melee Stun. Here's how it breaks down:
Hit deals less than 12.5% max life = cannot stun.
Hit deals between 12.5% and 50% max life = chance to stun is equal to double the percent (25-100%).
Hit deals over 50% max life = 100% chance to stun.
Any entity with at least 1 ES before the hit has an additional 50% chance to avoid stun.

Reduced stun threshold reduces these numbers; for example, if you have 20% stun threshold reduction, a hit that does 10% max life damage has a 25% chance to stun, and a hit that does 40% max life damage has a 100% chance (assuming no enemy Energy Shield).

The only way IB is different is that Fire Resistance is a much more common monster trait than Physical Resistance, so you'll come across some monsters where it's tricky to hit them hard enough. So if you go down that route, you'll want to look into Fire Penetration, Flammability, and Elemental Weakness to level the playing field against fire-resistant monsters (and make the non-resistant even easier to stun).

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

AoF is only damage loss if you don't understand how damage conversion works in Path of Exile. If you do understand it, all it does is enable all kinds of new options in terms of support gem damage multipliers and passive choices.

However, that doesn't explain how AoF is good for the game, it merely explains how it is not underpowered. The reason why it's good for design is that it turns "+x% increased Fire Damage" into "+x% increased Damage, period." This allows new kinds of builds which eschew the conventional boundary between attacker and caster; for example, you could use Infernal Blow with Endurance Charge on Melee Stun to fuel your Discharges. That's both new and interesting.

AoF only works for a handful of skills. The skills it does work on beg the question of why you'd use it in the first place.
I'm aware Infernal Blow + AoF is pretty popular but....I'm almost entirely certain no one in this game goes through 70+ levels using only 1 gem for damage.

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crackred wrote:

Hi everybody,

anyone have find a way to use avatar of fire? i thought it will be a huge buff for my fire discharger, but from 7k dmg i go down to 4k dmg and i ONLY do fire dmg with 7 endurance charges, it makes no sense.

so where is the point behind that skill?

Did you added fire penetration gem and burn damage into consideration? I heard fire dischargers do damage with burn, mostly.

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PathOfNerfs wrote:

AoF only works for a handful of skills. The skills it does work on beg the question of why you'd use it in the first place.

You can convert any physical skill into fire, but it's a bit more involved and you must use a fairly crappy shield, however it's definitely worth it on some skill setups.

Besides that, you just defined a niche keystone, it's not supposed to be good for every build, not even for majority of the builds. The problem here is a lot of people look at it and don't realize it's niche, it needs a big signpost probably, preferably in hot pink for some extra flash.

***
If anyone in faraway New Zealand just started making it, make one more for Elemental Equilibrium.

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PathOfNerfs wrote:

AoF only works for a handful of skills.

AoF works with almost every Bow skill (the only exceptions are Lightning Arrow, Poison Arrow, and Puncture). That's a lot of skills.

The only problem I have with AoF is it made Goddess Scorned pretty much obsolete, I wanted to make a build with it but there isn't much point now.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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PathOfNerfs wrote:

AoF only works for a handful of skills.

AoF works with almost every Bow skill (the only exceptions are Lightning Arrow, Poison Arrow, and Puncture). That's a lot of skills.

This still begs the question of why would I even bother using it. It's an old Keystone that was brought back with less bang for its buck. If I wanted a fire build I'd probably just use skills that do the job incredibly better.

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AusterlitZ wrote:

you need to learn to read the description of the keystone,and also some basic math

Ahhh, isn't that cute, the little boy made a snarky comment on the internet. How original.

RF + Discharge build could benefict a lot from AoF.

Besides convert all damage to fire (with right passive it increase the overall damage), RF characters have ususally high +max fire resistance. This very good to handle reflect.

I have to say, the purpose of AoF really does escape me. Its a flat out damage loss and all you get in return is that all the damage you deal is fire damage.

But so what? Why is that good? Why is that worth cutting all your non fire damage in half? So you can set things on fire? So you can get past physical mitigation? Thats all fine and good until you hit fire resistant monsters.

Skill seems terrible. Yes, I know you can force it to work in some builds but that doesn't make it good.