ice bite is broken.

Im so glad I read this! I always thought lava lash/ ice bite/ arcing blows were good. 6% damage increase... wow... thats horrible!

"

Ouroboros226 wrote:

Im so glad I read this! I always thought lava lash/ ice bite/ arcing blows were good. 6% damage increase... wow... thats horrible!

It's not 6%. It's 6% in the example, which relies on only Hatred. If you use Ice Shot, 50% of your physical is converted to cold, then you get 30% of that, so it's a 15% on Ice Shot. If you use Hrimsorrow, now 75% of your physical damage is cold, it adds 30% to that. Plus to whatever you get from gear. Granted I'm not 100% sure Hatred still adds from your base full physical value when using Ice Shot, so if it doesn't Ice Bite is the worst. But for example if you use Infernal Blow+Avatar of Fire, Lava Leash is a 30% damage boost for a single point. You'll be hard pressed finding any node giving you a bigger boost, and then you can use Anger on top.

Basically, you should mostly only take those if you run a skill that has an innate damage conversion, ice shot/glacial hammer for icebite, burning arrow/infernal blow for lava leash and lightning arrow/lightning strike for arcing blows. There's also exceptions with Avatar of Fire being added and Uniques converting stuff like Blackgleam or Hrimsorrow, but those are fringe cases.

The thing that kills WED nodes is they're good only for large amounts of flat damage, like that new unique 1H axe does, or if using Elemental hit.

For converted/added damage physical nodes are making them distinctively lackluster. WED nodes were good before, when physical nodes were leaner and WED nodes beefier. Now, even for skills like infernal blow you need 20% on your converted damage to match 10% physical damage, and for 'added' skills like burning arrow you need even more.

If you're using a WED gem the situation is little better and you will get more damage by taking 20% WED node then you would with 10% physical node but it's still not enough to save the whole bacon from burning, 'cause, you know, bacon is for sycophants and products of incest.

Now, if those nodes gave us, say, 15% more weapon elemental damage or something it would be definitely worth going for, currently it's just an afterthought node.

"

Vipermagi wrote:

Or, you know, a weapon that doesn't have Phys damage mods, but instead high Fire/Cold/Lightning. Doesn't have to be an extreme case. Even for one-handed weapons with Phys and an Element they can be worthwhile, depending on the rest of your gear. The more flat Elemental damage you have, the better these passives are.

You know, exactly as Dellusions (the person you quoted) has said.

Isn't that what I said with the whole quill rain thing?

That doesn't change the fact that it's extremely under-budget and extremely poor in value.

"

dudiobugtron wrote:

It's funny, because 'catalyze' (30% elemental damage with weapons) was deemed OP and they had to nerf it.

These nodes are good to get if you're going past anyway; they're definitely worth 1 passive point if you deal all fire dmg, or whatever. Not sure what everyone is complaining about!

You have to keep in mind that was in the beta, and Catalyze was also 3 times more effective than either of these nodes. You had Elemental Hit which was more effective, and you had people running Wrath + Anger as well because they were almost free to run. Plus the way elemental damage was treated was entirely differently (elemental cleave).

Only time these things are worth taking is if your running extremely niche builds (i.e. Hrimsorrow Glacial Hammer build, or AoF Infernal Blow build, etc.)

If you have 50% fire conversion, then lava lash is at least as good as a 15% increased physical damage node. That's fine.

If you have 100% fire conversion, then lava lash is at least as good as a 30% increased physical damage node. That's awesome.

If you treat the nodes like that, then it's easy to understand what they do.

"

Granted I'm not 100% sure Hatred still adds from your base full physical value when using Ice Shot, so if it doesn't Ice Bite is the worst.

It does. It keys off base physical damage, all "added" do. Increased and More is applied on top of the base damages.

The conversion attacks would be really poopy if this were not so, with how massively important Melee Physical Damage is to melee characters.

"

PyrosEien wrote:

Lava Leash is a 30% damage boost for a single point. You'll be hard pressed finding any node giving you a bigger boost, and then you can use Anger on top.

Yeah, but it never costs just one point. There's a toll tax involved in getting to the gate. Arcing Blows is the only one of these three located in a sensible position.

"

Ice Shot, 50% of your physical is converted to cold

40~

They don't want our temporal chains-inflicting damage to be too high I guess.

"

LimitedRooster wrote:

Yeah, but it never costs just one point. There's a toll tax involved in getting to the gate. Arcing Blows is the only one of these three located in a sensible position.

Lava Lash is one away from 2x12% nodes and a 2% life leech node, 2points away from Unwavering stance, between duelist and marauder. That's a very good position. Ice Bite is close to frenzy charge and IR, which isn't a terrible place, but not really a great one either especially if you don't go DW to go into the duellist area, or come out of it, generally more efficient to go around from the bottom and enter the duellist area via diamond skin+golem blood.

I find Arcing Blows to be the shittiest actually since it vastly limits your weapon choices being in the shadow claws and daggers area. I guess it make sense since LS works with both and before cyclone/reave/spectral was the only real aoe option, but sucks for Lightning Arrow which has very little reason to go up there unless stacking crit for whatever reason(like a death wish).

Regardless though, these points are fairly niche, but for 1pt+1filler in general for most builds, they're gonna be the most loaded damage increase you can get in these builds. There's a few really good 2 points nodes(like the 1H damage one in the ranger area or ambidextry also in the ranger area) but for the most part, these are the most efficient when using elemental converting attacks. They suck if all you have are auras.

More concerned about the WED nodes nowadays, they went from OP at the start of open beta to really weak nowadays due to the multiple simultaneous nerfs. I still think elem builds are viable but they certainly feel like the least efficient way to build now.

"

PyrosEien wrote:

Lava Lash is one away from 2x12% nodes and a 2% life leech node, 2points away from Unwavering stance, between duelist and marauder. That's a very good position.

Two and three points away.

"

but sucks for Lightning Arrow which has very little reason to go up there unless stacking crit for whatever reason(like a death wish).

The shadow region in this case is for some minuscule crit, Projectile%, and Energy Shield%. If you don't Energy Shield%, you're going to have a bad time.

Yes, this does work against all that inherent evasion% you get from Dex. We can blame the shadow region or we can blame the horribly weak functions of Dex.

What would really bake newb's noodles would be the theoretical template for a hypothethical Added Physical Projectile Damage support gem. Something like "Gain 20% of physical damage as extra physical damage" so it wouldn't scale with weapon ele damage, hatred, and added fire.

The inelegance.