3.11 | Carry Me Golems | Carrion/Stone Golem Elementalist | Very Tanky and High DPS summoner

for normal monsters all the way up to t10 unmodded maps, you can do less than 100 damage and apply a shock/chill

its the heavy targets that you won't ever apply the shocks to

This is what makes skitterbots so powerful, even with a great build and no BoR, to even reach a threshold 5% shock it takes millions of dps on almost all endgame and high tier map bosses

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

nah, you guys are thinking about it wrong...

its only 1 point of damage if the damage is a crit. If you do not crit, you still need to pass the 5% threshold, at which point it gets bumped UP to 15%. BoR does not lower the minimum threshold, it just raises the amount of shock it provides.

Thats why in the description it says 1 point of crit, a crit will ALWAYS apply the shock regardless of damage. But a normal attack will not. Yes the confluxes add all your damage types together, allowing your physical damage to shock, but you still need to do the minimum threshold to apply a shock.

I believe this is the biggest confusion around Beacon of Ruin and why its often poorly used. You have to actually do damage or be a crit build in order to use it.

Like the shock description says, anything that wouldn't apply a 5% shock is discarded. That line does not change when you take beacon of ruin, it only means that if you do cross the threshold to apply 5% you instead apply 15% (+30% effect).

Honestly I had missed that it had said crit for shock. However, I don't understand why it says crit for shock specifically since chill should work by the exact same rules. The inconsistent wording is kind of troublesome.

I had always interpreted Beacon of Ruin as raising the effect of the shock/chill to the minimum threshold values BEFORE deciding if the effect should be discarded. Then your shock uptime depends on your % chance to shock. I think that question has been asked a lot over the years and the consensus is what I stated above.

https://old.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/8kt9vb/beacon_of_ruin_boss_interaction/

https://old.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/8nnje0/shock_and_beacon_of_ruin_question/

https://old.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/848vxg/clarification_on_elementalist_beacon_of_ruin_and/

https://old.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileBuilds/comments/8nn3dh/thresholds_for_beacon_of_ruin_elementalist_and/

Not saying that that conclusion is actually correct. I have yet to see any conclusive proof that it's one way or the other when it comes to Beacon of Ruin.

Just did the same test on Avarius, Reassembled, who as I recall has a bunch more life than average critters, and it's still working. My damage against him is completely ineffective - I hit him a couple hundred times, and cannot see even a missing pixel of ES or health.

If he doesn't have enough life to put him in the same ballpark as map bosses, this isn't a good indicator, of course.

If poedb's ally life tag is correct and represents life, he is supposed to have 316793 life. There's no way I'm doing 1267 damage with just whirling blades.

Hmm... I could drop down to a level 1 whirling blades... Ima be right back.

avarius only has 17k life, which means you need 68 damage to shock him...

not sure where you are seeing those life numbers, even at lvl 84 in poedb he only has 75k life

I think Drox might be the best high-end boss to test this with?

High HP, relatively harmless and he has even a stationary phase where he doesn't do anything.

@scrambled: your last link is exactly what I'm thinking, and the same misconception and trap the other three links fall into.

It will shock, but only if its a crit or if it has the capacity to shock i.e. reach threshold of 1%

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

avarius only has 17k life, which means you need 68 damage to shock him...

not sure where you are seeing those life numbers, even at lvl 84 in poedb he only has 75k life

Where are you seeing life numbers? Oh... wait... NVM. that's a level 65 area. Right... I forgot to downgrade his level.

Drox, huh? I dunno about going up against Drox without auras or minions. Also not sure how easy it would be to see the shock / chill effects, he has stuff floating around if I recall.

LOL at all of us searching, testing, etc, on a build that clearly doesn't need the extra damage anyway. :D /me shrugs.

unfortunately i dont have my 4th lab yet.........so i can't test it myself. But it really is a gamechanger. Either you are completely wasting half your ascendancy on points that do nothing, or you are missing out on a HUGE dps boost.

I still believe that the wiki is inaccurate, otherwise chill and shock should have the same descriptions, and if we go by the literal words of the skill itself you still need to be able to apply the shock at which point the Beacon of Ruin raises that shock value if its under 15%. There is no wording to the skill that says that your damage will shock no matter what

I'm pretty sure there are skills or items with those exact words: your attacks have 100% chance to shock, or 50% chance to shock etc

**yea for example: look at the arc skill. There is wording for shock effect, %chance to shock, and regular lightning damage. BoR only has wording for shock effect and minimum shock amount, but not shock chance

AHA!!! I figured out the difference between chill and shock. When it comes to cold damage, chills are on every single hit but FREEZES are on crits.

Shocks, however, only happen on crits 100% of the time but not all normal hits of lightning damage

Honestly regardless of what it actually is, I think it's much more sensible to have it be shocks automatically raised to 15% before running the threshold check. Because if it's the other way around, it would make Beacon of Ruin more useless than it already is. Not to mention it would make Necromancers far superior at applying elemental ailments than Elementalists.