Flat damage is in such a laughably bad state

Between the ES-sword (Edge) and Archmage flat damage is just irrelevant. People are playing Lightning builds with a cold gem.

Flat damage is the single most important source to controlling the numbers (read: avoid overflow). And it's just completely out of wack. It's so scuffed.

Besides, flat damage gains don't even feel great. I'd much rather have character progression in the form of 30% more damage, which is completely irrelevant compared the gains you get from increased flat damage (1000 to 15000 flat damage). That's what, 1.3^12 , so many MISSED opportunities for player gains that would feel great.

According to POE ninja archmage support is the entire hierophant ascendancy.

i am not entirely sure what this post is about.

flat damage works great with a lot of things. My only complaint is that lightning flat sources of damage are league ahead of the rest with things like energy blade and archmage.

other sources are stuck with weak numbers i mean look at Bloodthirst Support with its whooping 2% of max life as phys damage while archmage has give or take 20% of max mana added as lightning damage.

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caboom wrote:

i am not entirely sure what this post is about.

flat damage works great with a lot of things. My only complaint is that lightning flat sources of damage are league ahead of the rest with things like energy blade and archmage.

other sources are stuck with weak numbers i mean look at Bloodthirst Support with its whooping 2% of max life as phys damage while archmage has give or take 20% of max mana added as lightning damage.

+1

This is entirely build dependant.

yeah, build dependant. that means - you just dont play builds that dont use it

sources of 'magic' flat damage dominate the game right now:
- attr stacking
- archmage (recent rework was.. hilariously out of touch with game balance)
- ES stacking (energy blade, ephemeral edge)
- life stacking (rathpitch, burning arrow)


these builds deal damage, these builds enjoy the free ride - mostly because things like INT stacking provide both defence and offence for the price of one

the only thing that keeps this in check is.. the price. the charge stacking set has fixed price (these are mostly uniques, and not very expensive ones), works with almost any skill/build. high end attr stackers have to fish for % synth items and these are notoriously expensive

compare that to using your phys weapon as a source of damage. it is a joke. it doesnt mean that it wouldnt 'work', but please, just dont compare these two - these are incomparable.

The issue is that stacker builds can reach higher values due to being an iterative growth rather than a defined one.

Take Brutus's lead sprinkler for example, clearly based around ~1000 strength which is an achievable number with basic gearing and produces a decent outcome.

But what about 2500 strength?

That is really the entire difference between the sources of flat damage. If i'm adding lightning it has a fixed value (and usually an increasingly hard one to get) but for attribute stacking which i'll include Archmage in you can just continue to scale.

For Archmage specifically you only have two ways to scale, you can add flat damage, or you can add gem levels. As above Archmage lets you have linear growth as you continue to accrue mana whereas gem level slows its growth down substantially post 30 (and can be a pita to get there already). Again Archmage eclipses any flat damage sources available on gear just like stat stacking etc does - rings would have to be able to roll +1/2 gem level to compare in this manner.

So we've already established that stackers have superior scaling and that's before we even touch on the fact that fundamentally stackers get at least partial scaling for offense from defence.

2500 Str gives more life than if you have T1 life on every piece or might be pretty close now they buffed the mod values, Int stackers get 500% ES, Archmage characters frequently have an EHP sponge pool 3-4x a regular character etc. Won't even go into Ephemeral edge because Trickster gotta be in the crosshairs already.

Its just a can of worms, only dex stacker feels thematically correct for its stacking methodology but really its just because dex is the weakest stat.

Now the issue with all those is that they continue to scale with investment whereas most methods tap out/tail off substantially early on. It IS expensive to get 2500 strength no doubt about it but if you want to push into where we now consider builds to be "powerful" you don't have much choice.

Mist reflecto jewellery can do wonders for attack skills as a new scaling option for example if you really want to get your wallet out but whats the real issue? Those still work for attributes too and are frankly easier to make as attributes.

Problem is I have no idea how to change this that is more fun for the game, they could add diminishing returns to stacking methods for example but its then totally different to how anything else scales and becomes hard for players to understand without a spreadsheet or to even write as a mod description. GGG do slap "up to" on items fairly often in order to cuck potentially OP builds so maybe they should just be consistent with this instead of applying it arbitrarily.

Edit: won't go into Ralakesh as I think they are dumb from the get go, just dragbox delete would solve that one and then look into the Maven belts as nobody wants to wear one without Ralakesh (Ok they sometimes wore the brutal charges one)

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Lonnie455Rich wrote:

This is entirely build dependant.

Yup.

Elemental Hit of the Spectrum builds are stacking a lot of flat added elemental damage (elemental bow, Hyrri's Ire, Blizzard Crown, jewels, etc).

Frost Blades of Katabasis builds are generally using both (Awakened) Added Cold Damage support and Ice Bite supports, Lightning Strike builds are using Awakened Added Lightning Damage Support, etc.

I'd say these are pretty good numbers.

Why is Katabasis using awakened added cold/ice bite?

This is not sarcastic btw genuinely don't understand