Living Lightning Speed and Supportability

1. They don't actually "attack every 0.14 seconds" as is stated on the gem. It's much longer.
2. They don't seem to be affected by support gens affecting the parent skill. Not sure if this is intended. For example, Infernal Legion does not affect them in an Unearth + Living Lightning + Infernal Legion combination.

I just unspecced ALL the nodes that boost my minion damage and they do exactly the same damage. The ONLY node that affect them is the "expendable Army" which increase the limit of them by +2.


I am very sad to realize I've done THE FULL CAMPAIGN with not a single node in my tree actually providing damage at all since they where my only source of damage.

Did some testing - they clearly do not attack at a rate of .14 seconds
It looks to be roughly every 1 second which matches the datamined stuff on poedb
https://poe2db.tw/us/Living_Lightning#LivingLightningLivingLightningPlayerSummoned
So they deal 7x less damage than expected


They are not supportable - I can't support in "Feeding Frenzy" for example, If I support them with "Poison" support they don't poison even though they should deal chaos damage due to Lich passives and/or "Entropic Incarnation"

I can support "Skittering Stone" with "Poison" support and "Feeding Frenzy" and they work as expected - this is an almost identical Support Skill summon so unless noted they should work similar with supports


They do scale with minion damage - tested using unique boss bar dmg values

Level 18 Resonating shield
176% increased minion damage each hit dealt an average of 206.3 dmg
with
342% increased minion damage each hit dealt an average of 353.3 dmg


If these 2 issues were addressed this support would actually be usable

I think the only way to squeeze some more dmg is to make them extract impales you inflict.

I did some testing in 0.4 and the attack speed is still 1s before bonuses. Also, Feeding Frenzy II support still does not work with Living Lightning.

"

iao#2860 wrote:

Infernal Legion does not affect them in an Unearth + Living Lightning + Infernal Legion combination.

Infernal Legion has constraint: "Supports skills which create Minions which can be damaged"

Living lightning only says they are untargetable and phasing which is the same text as raging spirits has... so it SHOULD work?:

"

Enemies will not directly engage these Minions, and can pass through them.

However the AI script has these stats [poe2db]:

"

Stats
{
[...] untargetable_by_monster_ai = 1
[...] set_base_cannot_be_damaged = 1
[...] set_base_maximum_life_is_one = 1
}

Either a bug in the script, or bug in the skill text.

Feeding Frenzy likely doesn't work for the same reason, because they cannot be damaged the second modifier to damage taken would not apply.

"

biggleswrth#1469 wrote:

If I support them with "Poison" support they don't poison even though they should deal chaos damage due to Lich passives and/or "Entropic Incarnation"

Entropic Incarnation will not work because the 100% physical to Lightning happens before external effects. Conversion / Extra are both two stage processes where skill-local happens first. (This is the same as Raging Sprits, where 75% gets converted to Fire. You will then only get the 10% Chaos from the 25% that is not converted.)

Did you test with Lich? Could be a bug.

"

axeltt012#4323 wrote:

I just unspecced ALL the nodes that boost my minion damage and they do exactly the same damage. The ONLY node that affect them is the "expendable Army" which increase the limit of them by +2.


I am very sad to realize I've done THE FULL CAMPAIGN with not a single node in my tree actually providing damage at all since they where my only source of damage.

Whenever I read a post like this the thing that comes to mind is the "first time?" scene from The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.
Been there, done that. Had a Tactician in 0.3 trying to utilise the asc node which gives 25% of main hand weapon's dmg to allies.
What I had later learned from reading forums is that Living Lightning doesn't seem to work with anything, doesn't scale with anything but character's strength and dexterity (doubtful even that), and sure as hell "Watch How I Do It" asc notable has no effect on them. Nor on raging spirits. Nor the Insect Swarm from that unplayable spirit gem.

And that's just one of many many builds that I had to spend hours upon hours to rework if not scrap completely, because some skills or mechanics or interactions fundamentally don't work as stated or are thoroughly bugged :)

It's many months and a whole league later, and Living Lightning is the same as before. As is the case with many bugs going as far back as 0.2 or 0.1. So very cynically I must say: get used to it.