Puncture

So I noticed this was on the list of the first group of skills to be rebalanced with the total rebalance going to be happening in future patches. I wonder if the balancing changes will actually be worth it, or if this skill will remain on the list of skills that would better serve as a support, or in the case of puncture, a crit effect.

double damage and half crit effects via this skill?
i'm joking btw but that fixes the mentioned issue.

Praying that a puncture build will be finally viable as main skill in this upcoming balance changes!

So, will this new buff to puncture also applied to enemies? I wonder if bleeding will be even more of a problem.

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Ewig_Custos wrote:

So, will this new buff to puncture also applied to enemies? I wonder if bleeding will be even more of a problem.

Doubt it. Enemies seem to use different skills even if they look the same, auras are much stronger, flicker has no cooldown, enduring cry gives multiple charges for only one enemy, etc.

BUG REPORT
I'd like to point at the splash issue again, I rebuilt my splash puncturer as a shadow this time to go for crit. The thing still behaves very, very strangely, besides often not registering the initial blow (with a different sounding hit, like a thud or something and absolutely no effect), it also sometimes fails to apply splash damage and bleeding even though enemies visibly flinched and had that blood spurt effect on hit.

Just to clarify, none of the other skills I used with splash behaved this odd (double strike, dual strike, glacial hammer).

It's definitely got a bit more punch to it. I checked my tooltip dps before and after the patch with a level 11 0% quality puncture with Increased Duration and a level 11 Faster Projectiles. Before patch tooltip dps = 375, After patch tooltip dps = 425.

Not overpowered yet by any stretch, but still delightful to watch an enemy's healthbar run down faster than they are chasing me.

It really got some steroids with this patch, kills much faster. Still can't recommend it for melee due to buggyness.

Just look at this video of my splash puncture shadow in act 2 cruel, or better, shadow 'the way he was meant to be played' or 'one good stab' shadow. You can hear that 'THUD' after which nothing happens, it's different then a miss but effect is the same, you can hear it clearly at 1:20 and also on the next hit after whirling and a few times more in a video this short, really annoying.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXM2YiBvJkk

Sorry about the music background, it wasn't intentional.

How does puncture work when dual wielding? Does it just hit with the main weapons damage?

Edit: Also, if the monster is punctured with Temporal Chains... do they take the full damage while moving, even though they are moving very slow? I assume they do, just wondering.

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PhreEkGarden wrote:

How does puncture work when dual wielding? Does it just hit with the main weapons damage?

Edit: Also, if the monster is punctured with Temporal Chains... do they take the full damage while moving, even though they are moving very slow? I assume they do, just wondering.

If both of your weapons are puncture-compatible it will alternate them. If you got a sword in main hand and an axe in off hand it will use main hand only, if you use a mace in main and a dagger in off it will use only off hand.
Although, there's really no point in dual-wielding when using puncture, you don't really do more damage that way and attack speed is of no benefit.

As long as they move, they will take full damage from puncture, it doesn't matter how fast. Some enemy skills, like charge that rhoas and blackguards use count as moving and some, like whirling blades or lightning warp don't. In addition, while under temporal chains, puncture and viper will last twice as long.