POE2 Style Gauge theorycraft (version 2)
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Abstract
------ This write-up goes into a thought experiment of implementing a combat scoring system – e.g. Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, and Hi-Fi Rush – into Path of Exile 2 (POE2), as the next logical step to take given its combat being more akin to action games compared to other ARPGS. Sharing scores with friends is as timeless a tradition in video games as sharing speed-run times. The combat scoring system of the Devil May Cry games ("Stylish Points/Rank") was chosen for this thought experiment, to try to emulate as closely as possible. The write-up covers: general ideas of what base "style" score values to assign to Player Skills (and enemy Skills); a few concessionary changes to POE2 itself to make the experience with this scoring system more consistent; and using this scoring system to influence the "Item Rarity Tier System" and rewards - controlling the quantity of dropped Gold + the rarity, tier, and stack size of drops. By letting combat have more of an impact on loot, this gives combat a layer of meaning that’s kept within the ARPG genre’s usual focus on loot/equipment. There’s a supplementary section going into how specific categories of Skills may interact with the combat scoring system + covering edge cases, all for the sake of further exploration. The write-up focuses purely on how this idea may be integrated into POE2 without radically altering what it already contains. The impact of this idea on the trajectory/direction of the game’s development and its updates is outside the scope of this write-up. This view of POE2 from this alternative angle may open up new avenues of discussion for the game and where it could go development-wise. ------
Introduction Part 1 (Devil May Cry as a reference)
POE2 takes a more "action game" approach to combat, so it seems only appropriate to imagine up a new idea for it that's inspired by action games: A combat score system, Devil May Cry’s in particular. The Devil May Cry games’ "Style Gauge" combat scoring system solved the question of how to incentivize using a variety of Skills even when your kit contains high-damage Skills that you're fully allowed to spam. In the beginning with those games, you CAN start out by just doing the bare minimum to engage with the Style Gauge, using tactics that are "meta" in terms of staying alive and dealing damage. After you do well enough to beat your first playthrough on standard difficulty, the next level of challenge is playing through it again while engaging more with the Style Gauge in mind and increasing your scores (especially with all the new weapons and moves you unlocked during the first playthrough), which also serves as your training/preparation for the next difficulty up. The cycle repeats from there, but even after you beat the highest difficulty, the Style Gauge is still present so you can try to further boost your scores within the highest difficulty, to engage in the long-running gaming tradition of showcasing your high scores, alongside showcasing speed-run times.
Introduction Part 2 (General application to POE2)
Switching back to POE2, I laid out a thought experiment for imagining a combat score system to implement into it, using Devil May Cry's as a reference, to emulate closely. It can be engaged with at any time, but engaging with it constantly should not necessarily be a hard requirement to reach the different milestones of the game - e.g. getting through campaign, reaching the first version of the "main pinnacle boss" in endgame, then doing hardest versions of all the Pinnacle bosses. For reference, the Ninja Theory DmC game has "Must Style" as a special challenge difficulty that requires engaging with the Style Gauge in order to so much as be allowed to damage to enemies, which should not be the "baseline" experience with the Style Gauge for POE2. Nonetheless, engaging with it provides a new avenue of mastery to travel on - focusing much more on manual execution and snap decisions in combat, as opposed to the more "strategic/brains/mental" side of understanding numbers and stats to craft a solid build, and it’s available to engage with even after your build is strong enough to speed-run through most if not all types of combat encounters. This new guiding star also opens up a new direction for build-crafting. It's important to note that extremely high damage/AOE still has a place in the Style Gauge's "flow"; its "cycle" of building up Style points to climb up from the bottom of the Style Ranks to a high Rank, and then letting loose with high damage + high AOE to kill things quickly and reap as many rewards as you can while your Style Rank is high. And shifting back and forth between those two sides of the cycle depending on the situation. The Style Gauge should not be able to be rigged for or against you, so that its rules and challenges stay consistent no matter where you are in terms of character level or area level. Going down this path should also reward you appropriately (more on that in "Rewards provided by the Style Gauge"). Because of the possibility of things being altered a fair amount in response to the Stylish Gauge's inclusion, it would be best to start this out contained to its own League, or maybe its own difficulty level a la Ruthless from POE1.
Skills + Skill Components, brief overview
When I say "Skill Components", I'm talking about the sub-sections in a Skill/Support Gem's description that each have their own stats. E.g. Rolling Slam's two slams; the multiple different strikes with each button press of Tempest Flurry or Wolf-Rend or Primal Strikes or Ice Strike; the Explosion on Armor Explosion; Staggering Palm's actual Hit + the projectiles that come from the granted buff; the Small Meteors + Large Meteors of "Walking Calamity" on Bear form. Every Skill Component would have its own base Style point value, which stays the same regardless of Gem level. As a general sort of guidelines... Skills with a relatively low base speed (based on the base speed of the corresponding weapon; or baked into the skill, especially by adding seconds to "Total Attack/Cast Time") and/or have relatively high base damage - e.g. Mace, Bear skills, skills with windup animations such as Comet - would overall have higher base Style point values. Skills that are relatively quicker to execute and/or deal low base damage - functioning like "jabs", would have lower base Style point values. Skills that deal multiple hits within the same animation – or function like combo strings with different animations from repeated button presses - would give each hit a relatively low base Style point value, to incentivize landing all of the Hits of such a Skill on valid targets. "Final Strikes", and Skill "final Hits" that have explicit stat blocks in the Skill description may have a higher base Style point value compared to preceding Hits within the same Skill, to further incentivize reaching the end of the Skill’s animation/combo-string. The repetition penalty for Final Strikes helps keep that in check, especially when taking into account the Crescendo supports. Digging deeper into specific types of Skills will be done in a separate post; there’s a fair number of cases to cover.
Repetition Penalties on Skills + Skill Components (‘Style Gain Prevention’?)
These repetition penalties punish repetitive Skill usage by cutting off Style point gain, which in turn necessitates cycling through different equipped Skills in order to climb up the Ranks on your Style Gauge. The DMC games have a "binary" penalty for its Skill components – i.e. It gains Style, or it doesn’t. After a skill component has Hit something and gained any amount of Style during its usage - or enough "Style Point gains" have occurred from repeated usages, it stops gaining Style Points until its penalty period is finished. At least in the DMC games, a skill component's repetition penalty lasts around 6 seconds. A Skill component must actually hit something for its repetition penalty to engage, so even if it misses a few times, it can still gain Style. Generally, repeated spamming of a skill component does not "sustain"/"extend" the penalty; it will be able to earn Stylish points again after its raised penalty's time is up. There are some exceptions to this rule, such as Dante's Ebony & Ivory rapid-fire shots, if you're CONSTANTLY hitting enemies with those shots. The repetition penalties can work well even on builds that increase Skill/Attack/Cast Speed as much as possible, because these can make you bump into the repetition penalties of your Skills sooner, making you bump into more situations where you cannot gain any Style Points off of the Hits you dish out. The ideal scenario is to make sure you're gaining Style from as many of your landed Hits as you can, if not all of your landed Hits. Because Skills behave in different ways, some Skill components would penalize repetition in one way, while other Skill components penalize it in a different way. There are likely concerns about there not being enough Bind slots for gamepad or for mouse + keyboard for "binary" repetition penalties to feel fair. Although Gamepad already has a total of 22 bind slots if you use "Skill Set Swap", or 12 if you don’t use Skill Set Swap. One simple solution is to give Mouse + Keyboard a way to hard-swap Bind Slot Sets, to increase the total number of Bind Slots from 13 to 26. POE1 has this, though it's tied to Weapon Set; POE2 could do this, without tying the Bind Slot sets to Weapon Sets. Aside from that, there’s the option of a multiplier between 0 and 1 that lessens Style Gain from a Skill component for excessively repeated usages or landed Hits - Hi-Fi Rush uses this sort of penalty. Exponential decay is my first thought (x1/2, x1/4, x1/8, x1/16, x0).
Repetition Penalties - allowing X full Style gain hits
As another thing, Devil May Cry has some Skill components that can gain Style at full value from repeat Hits, before that style gain gets cut off for the rest of their repetition penalty periods. Nero’s "directional Jocky" on the "Gerbera" Devil Breaker has 3 "consecutive" full Style Gain hits allowed within the repetition penalty period; Nero's Blue Rose standard gunshots allow for 11 bullet hits within the repetition penaly period. The repetition penalty in this case is engaged upon the first successful Hit with the component. There is a catch for these: After doing a full Style Gain hit with a given Skill component, if you don't gain Style again with the same component (or perhaps with any other Skill component that CAN gain Style, to allow for some fast alternating) within some brief period of time after the component's animation is over, the Style gain for that component is cut off early. For some Skills, this can be between one to two seconds, while for others it's only a fraction of a second long. e.g. Dante's "Ebony and Ivory" standard gun-shots in DMC3 allows only 2/3 of a second (specifically, 40 frames while playing with an an FPS of 60) after the last Style-gaining shot, to gain Style off of the next landed shot or in some other way. Otherwise its style gain is cut off early for the rest of it repetition penalty. Combining "X 'consecutive' full style gain hits" with "reduction in Style Gain Effectiveness to x0" creates a shape akin to "Sustain" vs "Release" on an Attack-Decay-Sustain-Release (ADSR) envelope. Some Skills can allow Style gain at full effectiveness for some number X of Hits (decided on an individual basis for each Skill Component) before the Style Gain reduction kicks in, whether binary or gradual. It makes sense to use this "shape" for Skills that are meant to be repeated some number of times – e.g. Most Martial Weapon Default attacks.
Repetition Penalties - 'Repetition Debt'
There are some Skill components where you CAN sustain their repetition penalties from excessive use - e.g. Dante's Ebony & Ivory rapid-fire shots, if you're CONSTANTLY hitting enemies with those shots. I surmise that this works with something I'll nickname "repetition debt", involving comparing how many landed Hits you dealt with a given Skill component so far (variable "X"), vs the number of full Style gain Hits allowed with that Skill component (variable "Y"). There are three different types of "repetition debt" we may apply to Skills, sorted from softest to harshest. 1. No repetition debt No matter how large X gets compared to Y, when the repetition penalty's period is over, X is immediately reset to 0. Thus it's allowed to gain Style at full value again. 2. Somewhat forgiving repetition debt After X is larger than Y... when the repetition penalty's period is over, X is reduced by Y (X = X - Y), not reset to 0. In this case, if X is less than Y after this subtraction, X is immediately clamped down to 0. 3. Harsh repetition debt After X is larger than Y... when the repetition penalty's period is over, X is reduced by Y (X = X - Y), not reset to 0. If X is less than Y after this subtraction, X is not further changed. E.g. for a Skill component with Y = 10, and it's dealt 19 hits (X = 19), then X is reduced to 9. So this Skill component can gain Style at full off of only one Hit before its style gain gets cut off or reduced. Similar variations can be thought of for style gain via DOT from Skills, or the "reduction of Style gain effectiveness" on indefinite channeling Skills. Those would be based on time (seconds), instead of Hits. The specifics of categories of Skills will be looked at in a separate post, to break it all down further.
Hitting multiple enemies simultaneously – e.g. With Area of Effect skills
Slams and things with AoE can hit multiple enemies at the same time are useful for Style gain. Splash Damage on Strikes allows them to Hit multiple enemies that are close enough to the enemy getting hit by the Strike. Based on information on the DMC Speedruns Archive, DMC5 applies diminishing returns from the third enemy caught in a given Hit onwards. This is mainly to deal with meta strategies that DMC3 had for Style Gain: specific moves such as Devil Trigger’s Transformation Flux (fully charged), or Beowulf’s "Volcano" slam (fully charged), could shoot your Style Rank from the very bottom all the way to the top of SSS with one hit, if you kill a large count of enemies in one go with that Hit. This allows you to spend more time in SSS and less time in all the other Ranks, thus pulling up your end-of-level average. For POE, it’s very important to apply diminishing returns on Style gain when multiple enemies are caught in the same Hit. POE's players try to crank monster pack size as high as they practically can in the late-game anyway - enough that they're always fighting something. So limits should be placed to keep Monster Pack Size from "rigging" the Style Gauge too much. One extreme solution is for Style gain from a Hit to stay the same regardless of how many enemies are caught in the Hit. But this takes away incentive to use Skills that are designed to Hit multiple enemies simultaneously during combat against mobs, plus you should be rewarded for getting your less powerful Skills to Hit more than one target via good positioning/timing. Allowing some amount of extra Style Gain if you can hit multiple targets also makes boss fights a greater challenge for Style gain compared to monster packs, by virtue of there being only one or two targets to reap Style from, the majority of the time anyway. These diminishing returns may be applied on an individual basis for Skill components, to add nuance. There should definitely not be any bonus multiplier for killing Enemies with a given Hit (which DMC3 does); not in a game where you can go back to areas where enemies have numbers so low compared to yours that you can one-shot them very easily.
Losing Points from your Style Gauge
The two most basic ways to to lose points from your Gauge are: · The time decay lowering your Gauge continuously at a fixed rate. · Dying instantly resets your Style Gauge to zero. With regards to taking damage or getting hit, the DMC games penalize you by making you lose whole Ranks on your Stylish gauge. DMC3 makes you lose two ranks at minimum, and this is harsher the higher your Rank is. DMC5 is more lenient by knocking you down 2 ranks always (no more, no less), and it happens ONLY if you get staggered/light-stunned. The penalty of getting hit at all knocking you down 2 or 3 Ranks is too harsh for POE, especially when you take into account that POE’s monsters get up in your face a lot + POE's players try to crank monster pack size as high as they practically can to increase rewards (in practice, the "goal" here is to devote most if not all of your time in a given area to fighting + killing Monsters). Also, because you can configure your build to reduce damage enough that getting light-stunned never happens, deducting Style based purely on getting light-stunned might as well not exist. The most appropriate way to do it is that all the various Monster attacks/hits should each have different "style point values" to deduct from your Gauge, upon you getting Hit. Similar to the general guidelines for the player's Skills: quick + low base damage + basic "jab-like" Skills from enemies deduct smaller quantities of Style Points; "weightier" Hits - e.g. cannot be Blocked, cannot be Evaded, a relatively long wind-up, a recognizable animation, or a combination of those things - would have bigger deductions. Standing in a "zone" that deals Damage Over Time to you incurs an additional decay to your Style Gauge, on top of the usual time decay. Each specific DOT "zone" could have its own "style deducion rate (per second)" from standing in it. Meanwhile, DOT-dealing Debuffs that get stuck on you + can be extended via Temporal Chains should NOT deduct Style Points from you. For consistency’s sake, these Style point deductions should be unaffected by the Levels of your character or the areas, unaffected by how much damage you take or deal, and regardless of whether or not you pass the Accuracy/Evasion check to Evade hits (more on this one later in "Concessions for Consistency"). I’m rolling around in my head the idea of these deductions getting harsher as you get really high up in Style Rank. That and the standard time decay getting faster at higher Ranks. It adds to the idea of making holding the higher ranks more difficult, BUT the reason DMC3 does this is to counterbalance buffs granted by higher Style Ranks: higher Action speed; "Crazy Combo" moves requiring fewer spammings of an attack button to activate; and augmenting certain moves - e.g. extended duration usage; more hits during usage; greater range; stronger knockback; faster knockdown speed for airborne moves. So making the deductions to your Style Gauge harsher at higher ranks should be accompanied by your character getting buffed at higher ranks - e.g. an increase to Action Speed, akin to Onslaught. Though with the Style Gauge potentially being very volatile in its changing between Ranks during combat, the modified character stats parameters may make your character and their stat numbers not as stable to control, if stats can change on a dime like that AND are major, like a bucking bronco. The Passive Tree's stat increases, and buffs such as Onslaught, are static, stable, and more predictable, since they're not closely tied to the Style Gauge. It's some food for thought.
The Ranks of the Style Gauge
The Style Ranks of the DMC games, for reference: E (no rank), D, C, B, A, S, SS, SSS The simplest thing to do is just use the usual letter grades, but also add a rarity icon (or lack thereof) as an indicator. Normal Ranks: E (no rank), D, C Magic Ranks: B, A Rare Ranks: S, SS Unique Rank: SSS Signaling the Rank's corresponding Rarity is important for something I'll describe later.
Transitioning Between Ranks
For reference, DMC3 and DMC5 handle going between the ranks differently. DMC3: · When going up from your current rank to the next Rank, you start the higher rank with its bar at around 58% or 60% (the rank up animation obscures the actual starting point); the excess Stylish Point gain from the given Hit is added to that 58% / 60% starting point. This can allow for some pretty big rank jumps, if you dealt a Hit that gained a lot of Style based on a good base Style value + number of enemies hit by it (and DMC3 giving you a x2 bonus to Style gained from Hitting an enemy if that enemy died to the Hit). · When going down from your current rank to the previous Rank, you start the lower rank with its bar at around 40% to 42%, so if you take too long to gain Style, and/or you start taking Hits from enemies, your Rank can go down pretty quickly. · Getting hit by anything at all knocks you down by two ranks, at minimum. The higher the rank, the harsher the rank-loss. DMC5: · When going up from your current rank to the next Rank, you start the next rank with its bar at 0%, so any excess Style Gain from the hit is added on top of 0%. When executing a lot of Hits, you won’t climb ranks up as quickly compared to DMC3. · When down to 0% of the current Rank, it doesn't send you down to the previous Rank immediately. You have a grace period of 5 seconds during which you can gain Style to stay in your current Rank, or else you'll degrade down to the previous Rank, which will immediately start its 5-second grace period, and so on, until you hit the very bottom. · Getting light-stunned/staggered will knock you down by two ranks, and this does not get harsher the higher your rank is. Not too sure how specifically POE2 could handle going between Ranks on the Style gauge, but it never hurts to have references. A more specific detail to maybe give POE2's version is when you earn enough Style points such that you transition to the next rank up, the points you earned from that one Hit will all count to the Rank you’re coming from, not the Rank you’re going into. So going from D to C with the Style gain from one Hit would count all the Style points from that Hit towards D only, none to C. As for Style gained from DOT (more on that in the 2nd post), that may technically be spread between the two ranks - the one you're leaving, and the one you're entering. Though I did have the idea of giving DOT style gain fall-off, so depending on when that fall-off starts taking effect, you'll get a bigger proportion of Style points in one Rank instead of the other. There are cases where looking at the spread of your Style points in the different Ranks becomes relevant; more on those later.
Concessions for Consistency
To improve consistency with interacting with the Style Gauge, some elements of randomness should be looked at. Block Chance, aka "Random Block" or "Passive Block" Random Block, tied to your Block Chance stat, will not prevent/mitigate Style deduction from enemy Hits. Random Block gives you a way to stay in the fight and stay aggressive, which the Style Gauge encourages anyway. Thus you’re in a better position to make up for your Style Gauge getting chunks taken out of it. Accuracy + Evasion The player’s Evasion stat should continue functioning as a layer of defense, but as with Random Block, it will not prevent/mitigate Style deduction from enemy Hits. Same reason as with Random Block; taking no damage lets you stay in the fight, so you're better poised to make up for the Style points that were deducted from you. But what about your own Accuracy vs enemies’ Evasion? My first initial thoght is I don't think your own Skills should be able to gain Style if they get Evaded by a target - i.e. the target's Evasion beats the Hit's Accuracy. A target's HP and dealing damage to it work in tandem to function like a "soft time limit" - a "hit limit" for reaping style from that target before you end up killing it. As its HP gets lower, you have fewer chances to gain Style points before it dies and you have to find another target. Leaning into low Accuracy overall (especially with projectiles thanks to the distance-based penalty), while also using at minimum one Skill that cannot be Evaded anyway as your one damage-dealer, allows for an easy way to build up more tools that can gain Style without dealing damage, to the point that this "soft time limit" can be ignored. On the other hand, things that deal zero damage cannot contribute to chance/buildup/magnitude of debuffs/ailments, and also cannot light-stun. So being able to gain Style without dealing damage may be cancelled out by being unable to interrupt enemies to stop them from hitting you and taking Style points away. Nonetheless, if I were to solve this specific Accuracy/Evasion part. I can think of two possible ways to solve this: 1. Your Skills DON'T gain Style if the target Evades the Hit via the Accuracy/Evasion check + they don't contribute to repetition penalties. Not liking this one. It doesn't feel good for a Hit that PHYSICALLY made contact with a target to not gain Style anyway because of something semi-random. In terms of Style Gain, Skills that deal DOT or already cannot be Evaded (e.g. Killing Palm, Slams/AoE stuff in general) outclass everything that could fail to Hit because of the Accuracy/Evasion check. 2. Apply a global bonus so your Hits "Always Hit", or always pass the Accuracy/Evasion check Takes away the semi-randomness for the sake of consistency. Your Accuracy by itself will do nothing, BUT it can still be useful for any stat bonuses that scale off of it - e.g. "Critical Strike" and "Penetrate" on the Amazon ascendancy; "Falcon Dive" for 1% increased Attack Speed per 400 Accuracy Rating (up to 20%). This also means that, putting aside getting REALLY creative with your build, your Hits are guaranteed to deal SOME amount of damage to your targets, which feeds into the above talk about that "hit limit" for reaping Style from those targets before they die and you have to find new targets. I'm leaning more towards No. 2 as the solution. Critical Hit Chance + Critical Damage Bonus The Critical Damage Bonus can be a problem because you don’t want to accidentally deal more damange than desired, while you’re focusing on Style Gain. However, there are some other effects that are triggered by Critical Hits – e.g. "Concussive Spells", The "Crumbling Maul" implicit modifier, The aggravated bleeding effect from "Smiling Knight", Gaining Power Charges with "Voll’s Protector", the bonus from Sniper’s Mark. To allow those other effects to still be usable, the simplest brute-force option is to apply "Critical Hits deal no Extra Damage", to both your own Hits and to Hits from enemies.
Rewards provided by the Style Gauge
The big radical thing that the Style Gauge would do is disable most if not all other sources of bonuses to Item Rarity/Quantity and gold drops, so that the Style Gauge is the one big manager of this class of bonuses, which causes combat itself to have more of an impact on them. The most basic reward would be providing the following bonuses upon killing enemies based on your current Style Rank: · "Increased Quantity of Gold Dropped by Slain Enemies" · "Increased Rarity of Items found" The latter is more a middle-man to interacting with POE2’s "Item Rarity Tier System" (https://www.poe2wiki.net/wiki/Rarity#Item_rarity_tier_system). The Style Gauge Ranks may also interact with this Item Rarity Tier System more directly. It does create a balancing act when it comes to your own gear + stats, vs Style Gain: Engaging with the Style Gauge and getting greater rewards from it lets you acquire stronger gear via drops and via purchasing from Vendors, both for your current character AND future characters within the same League. However, cranking up your damage numbers a lot means killing enemies quicker in general and thus your Style Gauge’s rank may not get as high as it did previously. Nonetheless, the option to just use strong gear + high stats to tear through Areas is always present, whenever your mood gravitates towards that. Given that your Equipment is the source of your base numbers for damage/armor, with many of the Passive Skill Tree + modifiers on equipment providing bonuses that scale off of your base numbers... It would at the very least create different priorities for what kinds of nodes would be allocated to one’s Passive Skill Tree, to avoid that whiplash. Damage nodes are still useful to adjust your Skills' time-to-kill + hits-to-kill to your taste, but you would not go all-in on it. Extra damage nodes would probably be kept contained to one of the two Weapon Sets.
A ‘Unique’ Style Gauge mechanics for Unique Monsters: ‘Style Reward Drop Gauge’
Unique Monsters would get their own "unique" reward system tied to the Style Gauge: a drop gauge that can be built up with Style points repeatedly. Each successful filling queues a "drop" for when the Unique monster is killed. We can also do something akin to how DMC3+5 calculate your end-of-level Style grade by using formulas to "average out" your Style points, based on how many points you got in each of the Style Ranks. In this case, for a given "filling" of this Style Reward Gauge, the Style points you earned within each Rank are averaged out to give you the "average" Rank for this filling. Earning most of your points in the lower ranks pulls the current filling’s average down, and the higher ranks pulls its average up; that sort of thing. Each filling at minimum provides a guaranteed drop of the corresponding Item Rarity of the filling’s Style Rank; it could also provide an increase to the "Item Rarity / Gold Dropped" from killing that Unique Monster. This specific set of guaranteed drops should be unaffected by the Style Gauge Rank bonus you typically get from killing a given Monster. The specific guaranteed drops you gain from killing a "Map-marked Rare/Unique" for the first time also are unaffected by the Style gauge Rank’s on-kill bonus. On the UI, we could show the "filling Style Ranks" and a number indicating how many of each you have on the Unique monster so far while it’s still alive. Also show the current "average Rank" of the current drop gauge filling you’re working on. This approach makes it relatively easy to get into, while keeping the ceiling high. Unique Monsters are better sources of rewards in general with this way of doing things, provided you get enough Hits in. If you're in a position where it's impossible to fully fill the gauge one more time before the boss dies, or the average rank of the current "filling" is too low to pull up to a higher rank before the boss dies... then you can just kill the boss with something high-damage. It adds another layer of challenge to fighting Unique Monsters, because you have to think about Style Gain for most of the fight, since gaining Style points always builds towards rewards. One coud say this increases Item Quantity in a more controlled fashion. I wonder if Rares should get their own version of this drop gauge as well (maybe a simpler one), if only because of the existence of special Rares on the Act Map that function like boss encounters. It could be done for Rares too, though probably the drop gauge of a Rare monster would not give Unique drops, at least not as easily. This would also work with any special rewards that comes exclusively from certain Unique monsters - e.g. Pinnacle Bosses, though not sure how. Taking priority over other possible rewards that may drop? Perhaps for the sake of predictability, rewards gained from filling this drop gauge would ALWAYS be from the pool of special rewards exclusive to those specific Unique Monsters (e.g. Exclusive Uniques, exclusive items, so on).
Tracking your Style Rank Results in Area Instances
In each Area Instance you go to, we may also track Style performances in them. "Area Instances" can be Campaign Areas, Endgame Map Areas, Pinnacle Boss Realmgate encounters at the different Difficulties. For a given Area Instance, show the following rubric for gauging overall Style performance: · How many Style points you gained within each of the Style Ranks, from E to SSS. The mean/average Style Rank may be shown alongside this. · How many enemies you killed in the area. Don’t provide any "final letter grade" based on these; let the overall picture painted by these "grading axes" do the talking. There is a sort of consequence that the more Passive nodes you allocate as you gain Levels + the stronger your equipment and stats, the tougher it is to go back to low-level areas to improve your Style results back there. It does create a new sort of challenge for repeat playthroughs, seeing what ways you can improve your Style score in the earlier Campaign levels. We can say it like this: if you’re able to consistently improve your Style results in The Riverbank - more enemies killed, and "shifting" your earned Style points further up and away from the bottm ranks - on every new playthrough you do, especially for every single Class, then you’re doing pretty well. Still, if you’re not in the mood to go back to the early Areas on your current character, then you can just progress forward to Endgame and use the Style results in Endgame maps/encounters + Pinnacle bosses to gauge your performance, especially since the Waystones give you more control over each endgame Map’s difficulty. Similarly to the DMC games using the goal of getting strong end-of-level ranks as "training" for the next difficulty level, getting consistently strong Style results on lower Waystone levels can signal that, with your current level of manual execution + your current build/stats, you can get your foot in the door with regards to higher Waystone levels – i.e. Beat a Map’s objectives without dying so many times that you "fail" the Endgame map. The Act Map lets you see your "high score" Style-wise for a given Area, Map, or Realmgate Boss. How to decide what makes a score "higher" than another? Since we’re showing a "multi-dimensional" score result, the value to compare results for a given Area would have to be some calculated "area"/volume ("average Style Rank" value X # of enemies killed, as one example). We could ALSO do a similar sort of tracking for the map-marked Rares/Uniques during Campaign, and for the Pinnacle Bosses at the different difficulty levels. Since those have their own means of gauging Style performance via the "drop gauge", performance can be gauged by showing the number of completed "drop gauge" fillings, and the Style points/Rank distribution of each filling, maybe including the one "unfinished" filling.
Rewards specific to Leagues/Content
The Style Gauge and its Ranks may also be used to influence League-specifc rewards. For the usual drops from monsters, it’d still work the normal way where the current Style Rank provides an on-kill bonus to Item Rarity + Gold Dropped, working well in tandem with League content’s tendency to "stockpile" your rewards and drop it all at once after the encounter is over. One notable example of something League-specific is Tribute from Ritual encounters. It would be influenced by Style point gain ONLY from the specific Monsters that are spawned by the Ritual encounter(s) in the Area. Most basic implementation for Ritual is that your current Style Rank multiplies the Tribute you gain from killing Monsters in the Ritual encounter. Ritual rewards as a whole may perhaps be reworked to better fit the Style Gauge, as another thing to imagine and feel out another time. Another notable example is Delirium, which provides a list of cumulative rewards (categorized by type) that grows as you kill Monsters while in the Delirium fog. While buliding up to a reward, the Style Points earned are tracked to determine the "average Style rank" of this reward after its gauge is filled. This determines the "rarity"/tier of the reward. Low-level Uniques up to high-level Uniqes; Lesser/Regular Currency up to advanced/"Perfect" Currency; Lesser Essences up to Perfect Essences, and so on. Your current Style Rank would also affect the tiers of Liquid Emotions + amounts of Simulacrum Spliters you get, similar to the usual bonuses to Item Rarity and Gold Dropped.
What might the general ‘build meta’ for the Style Gauge be? - e.g. equipment, Passive Tree nodes
Defenses, damage reduction, ailment/stun thresholds, are very important, so you can stay in the fight for as long as possible without worrying about death. This allows you to be in a better position to make up for any Style points that get deducted from your Style gauge. Damage is still important, to get your Skills to reasonable time-to-kill or hits-to-kill values, and for applying debuffs/ailments/stuns, but it wouldn’t be something you go all in on, mostly to prevent huge jumps in damage output when equipping higher-level equipment, which may make reaping Style from enemies more difficult. Keeping extra Damage nodes localized to just one of the two Weapon Sets allows you still tap into high damage for killing things fast when the time is right. Attack/Cast/Skill Speed would be important too. Those increase DPS in a more controlled fashion, and it speeds up Skill animations so that Skill usages finish sooner, allowing for cramming more different Skills into a period of time. The "Onslaught" buff would be considered useful for the same reason, granting 20% increased Skill Speed + 10% increased Movement Speed. The "Thrillsteel" Unique helmet provides an infinite-duration Onslaught while it’s equipped. With regards to focusing on Style gain... Immobilizing enemies would definitely be valuable for Style Gain. Heavy Stun, Freeze, Electrocution (and Pin in the case of the Tactician ascendancy) are useful because preventing enemies from doing anything means that you have fewer things - sometimes nothing - interrupting you as you reap Style. Debuffs and Ailments that themselves deal low damage or no damage whilst lasting a long time are also useful, for more easily executing Payoffs and gaining Style Points from those specific Skill Components. The "Rigwald’s Ferocity" Lineage Support may be given some consideration since it has different effects based on which Weapon Set you’re using when using the equipped Skill. Increased Attack Speed but less Damage if used in Weapon Set 1; Reduced Attack Speed but more damage if used in Weapon Set 2.
Things that deal no damage, should they still gain Style?
Is it an issue if Hits that deal no damage at all can still gain Style? Factoring in my idea of having your Hits "Always Hit" so that all your Hits pass the Accuracy/Evasion check, a Hit dealing no damage at all would have to be because of some creative building (or use of Brutus' Brain on a Minion gem). As mentioned before, a target's HP + dealing damage to it work in tandem to function like a "soft time limit" - a "hit limit" for reaping style from that target before you end up killing it. As its HP gets lower, you have fewer chances to gain Style points before it dies and you have to find a new target. Skills that deal zero damage but still gain Style avoid having to worry about that, though the repetition penalties do keep those in check. On the other hand... in this game, damage contributes to magnitude/buildup/chance for ailments/debuffs, and light-stun chance + heavy stun buildup. So Hits that deal no damage: cannot be used for applying debuffs to execute Payoffs, slow down enemies, or deal damage; cannot immobilize/incapacitate enemies to let you more safely Style on them; and cannot light-stun enemies to interrupt them, to give yourself some breathing room or get another hit in. These make you miss out on opportunities to gain Style. More importantly, considering the late-game "goal" to making sure all your time in an Area is devoted to fighting Monsters, Skills that deal zero damage can’t help you at all. Even if you gained Style from them, it would likely be all taken away from you anyway, by getting Hit a crap-ton of times by enemies. You NEED high-damage Sklls to kill enemies quick so as to carve out some breathing room. But if you don’t have enough Skills that deal high enough damage, you’ll bump into repetition penalties a lot, so your Style gain gets blocked a lot, and your Style Rank won’t get particularly high. So in order to reap more Style points so as to climb up to the high Ranks, you need to make sure all your equipped Skills can each deal a reasonable amount of damage, so that you have a wide breadth of moves to reliably cycle between for Style gain. So with these things in mind, I'm leaning more towards "it’s fine to allow Hits that deal no damage to still gain Style".
Couch Co-Op + Party Play
I've been focusing only on solo play for now, but thinking about how it would impact multiplayer + Trade league is important too. What makes Couch Co-Op (technically a special variant of Party Play) interesting is that it's done using two different characters belonging to the same account. But yeah, this specific topic is much more of a conundrum that would require additional discussion. But within this first run through it... At minimum, in Party Play, the different players in the Party each get their own Style Gauge. The alternative is how the Switch version of DMC3 has a 2-player co-op Bloody Palace, where the two players share the same Style Gauge. At least noting it as an idea to maybe lean into later. It’d be funny if some people take a more PvP-ish approach to this. While they’re not directly fighting each other, they’re both competing for getting high Style Ranks via killing enemies, and trying to kill-steal. There’s also a more co-operative approach to co-ordinate attacks and hits in order to get each player on the team to a high Style rank and keep everyone up there for as long as possible. Area / Boss Style rank results would have to also show how many points were earned by each Player + how many enemies were killed by each player. It can get somewhat cluttered without some additional thought to how to lay it all out. What about the different bonuses based on Party size that are currently present, or number of players near a monster when it gets killed? We do want the Style Gauge to govern as much of that stuff as possible, but it focuses on Item Rarity + gold dropped, and avoids directly boosting Item Quantity so as to avoid a glut of drops on screen. What about the drop allocation - e.g. "Free for All", "Short Allocation", "Permanent Allocation"? First instinct is that it has to be squarely in "Permanent Allocation". Should it be modified so that the loot from a killed Monster goes exclusively to the player that killed it? No, definitely not. Players in the party would step over each other and accidentally/deliberately sabotage each other; it destroys any and all potential for co-operation in this system. A wackier idea is that the player with the highest Style Rank at the time always gets drops allocated to them, or the random allocation's is allocated based on the Style Ranks of the players. Sabotaging others by kill-stealing may still be done, though it "stings" less.
Trade Leagues
Another tough topic that will require further discussion, after this initial run-through of mine. This feature can already cause a shake-up to item drops in SSF; odds are if this is kept to SSF only, then it’d lead to stopping all migration from SSF to Trade. So, best to figure out how to implement this in Trade too, what the consequences would be, which such consequences to try to manage, which ones to leave as they are, and so on. What if some people want to have characters who are meant to stay in the low-level Areas forever and never progress farther in Campaign, to keep doing high-Style runs of those Areas to get lots of rewards to sell via Trading? Red Vale in Act 1 is a notable location because if you click around in the environment for loot, you’ll inevitably drop at least one weapon of every weapon type. But it’s a low-level area, so all the drops are low-level too. Item Levels + the types of items that drop would be a limiting factor here. So you’re getting low-level items whose random mods are all low-level and cannot be very powerful. Especially since every weapon + equipment base-type has an endgame variant, so the stuff with the greatest base power is in the endgame anyway. It’s tough to truly comprehend how trade prices would get influenced by this, because new strategies to get Rare/Unique stuff would be needed. It could very well change what kinds of players gets to those chase rewards first to set the initial trading price. Conclusion It’s all a new untamed world to explore, I can say that much. This thread shall be a major help in that exploration. There is also the overall question of how the game itself in the future, plus future updates (to POE2 or POE1), would be shaped by this, especially since it affects combat, the fundamental way of interacting with the game and getting through it. Those are outside of the scope of this write-up, and are too abstract to accurately predict. The biggest factor in those things being very difficult to predict is that the CORE IDEA of a combat scoring system may make it into POE2 (maybe POE1 as well), but it's likely to be different from this hypothetical one I’m describing here. Nonetheless, this whole thing makes for a fun thought experiment, viewing POE2 from a different angle to think of new ideas. The post below does more exploration, focusing on specific Skills and categories of Skills. ----
Edit History
2026-03-05 Added a few new sections to this post, relating to repetition penalties: - "Repetition Penalties - allowing X full Style gain hits" - "Repetition Penalties - 'Repetition Debt'" Added a mention to Couch Co-Op + Party Play, about one of the DMC games has a two player co-op mode where the two players share the same Style Gauge. Last edited by MoonlightHelix#4341 on Mar 5, 2026, 11:02:24 AM Last bumped on Mar 5, 2026, 2:17:56 PM
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This supplementary post feels out the Style scoring idea at the micro level - i.e. specific Skills and categories of Skills.
It's an exercise in covering edge cases. More exploration and all that.
Dodge Roll + Dodge Roll replacements
The Dodge Roll could gain Style if you can execute a "near-miss" with it, measured in a way similar to how Lingering Illusion + Void Illusion do it. The dodge roll "near-miss" style gain has a repetition penalty applied to it as well. The Style gauge's decay could also be paused for the duration of the dodge roll's animation, since you can't do anything until its animation is over, similar to what DMC3 does with gaining Style off of side-rolling / Trickster dodges, though DMC3 is also a bit more giving since it seems being really close to an enemy (even if it's doing nothing at the moment) is enough to gain Style from the usage of that Dodge skill. The Dodge Roll's Style Gain may also be based on the timing of the near-miss – e.g. Dodge-rolling at the last possible second to avoid a Hit gives you the greatest Style gain from the Dodge Roll "near-miss". As for Blink, because that allows for instant teleportation – and thus it has no animation you need to sit through before you can do anything else... Blink won't pause the time decay at all. It may also provide a lower max Style gain, since you can cram more Style-gaining Hits into the combat encounter anyway. Black Powder Blitz from the "Shankgonne" Unique boots replaces your dodge-roll with a "rocket jump", so it’s more an offensive tool. It would not have a "near miss" Style gain component to it, and the Style gain from Black Powder Blitz would depend purely on hitting enemies with the rocket jump explosion. What about the "Bulwark" keystone? That modifies the Dodge Roll, trading away its ability to Avoid Damage and replacing it with taking 30% less Damage from Hits (the catch being that this includes Hits that the dodge-roll usually can’t Avoid – e.g. Slams). Considering it lets Hits make contact with you, this Keystone would allow enemy Hits to deduct Style from you, at full value for consistency’s sake. The "near-miss" Style bonus from the dodge-roll could still apply, but now you may end up with a net loss in Style, since Hits can deduct Style from you.
Curses, aka Hexes, and Marks
Successfully landing Curses on enemies won’t provide Style gain, but special Skill components that rely on Curses can gain Style - e.g. "Hexblast", "Doedre’s Undoing", "Hayoxi’s Fulmination", "Impending Doom" – and have repetition penalties as per usual. Curses are nonetheless useful for boosting damage dealt when you switch gears to focusing on high damage. Applying a Mark by itself does not provide Style Gain, but special Skill components related to Marks can gain Style - e.g. the blood explosion from activating Bloodhound’s Mark, the Shockwave from activating an applied Mark by using Wolf form’s Cross Slash - and have repetition penalties as per usual.
Skills with Stages
I think Skills that have Stages do NOT necessarily need to provide more Style Gain directly based on the number of Stages. More specifically, many of them provide extra effects based on how many Stages they have, and those can set up more Style Gain - e.g. Supercharged Slam creating more Aftershocks with more Stages, Volcano's initial eruption shooting out more projectiles, Flameblast getting larger and thus it can Hit more enemies simultaneously, and so on.
Herald skills
Most of the Herald skills have some component that does its thing when their on-kill conditions are met (the only Herald that doesn’t have its own "skill component" is Herald of Plague; it just spreads Poison from a killed enemy). Each Herald component has its own repetition penalty to keep each one in check. They’d be great for dealing higher damage at the appropriate time; a Herald skill may be kept confined to one of the two Weapon Sets, so that it stays out of your way while you’re focusing on gaining Style, or the damage of its Skill component is kept relatively low so its hitting component is used more for Style Gain.
Skills that can be Channeled indefinitely
A penalty to Style gain would be applied based on how long the Skill is channeled for, reducing "style gain effectiveness". Channel the Skill for too long, and the components tied to it will gain zero Style. Those components may also have the usual repetition penalties based on how many times they each Hit a valid target. As for how the "style gain effectiveness" comes back for this type of Skill, it does not regenerate/recharge. You have to wait for that 5-to-6 second period to be up before the Skill’s Style Gain Effectiveness is set back to 100%. This makes it consistent with the repetition penalties used with all the other Skills.
The ‘indefinite channelling’ Active Block Skills (Raise Shield, Buckler Parry, Resonating Shield)
Raise Shield and Buckler Parry in particular need to be looked at, since those have no Mana cost and thus can be channeled forever without needing to worry about spending Mana. They are useful for preventing/mitigating Style deductions from enemy hits; the Active Block by itself should not gain Style. As described for "indefinite channeling" skills in general, the Style Gain of specific Skill components tied to the Active Block (Shield Bash, the Buckler Parry hit, Magma Barrier’s Magma Spray, Resonating Shield’s shockwaves) will be reduced to zero if the Active Block is channeled for too long. The reduction to "Style Gain Effectiveness" from channeling the Skill for too long should also apply to their Active Block’s effectiveness at preventing/mitigating Style loss. Channel the Active Block for too long, and enemy Hits will deduct Style from your gauge at full value. The individual repetition penalties of Shield Bash + the actual Parry hit of Buckler Parry + Magma Barrier’s Magma Spray + Resonating Shield’s shockwaves would keep those specific components in check, for added measure.
Shield Charge
Bringing this up mainly because this Skill has Active Block during the Shield Charge. Considering Shield Charge has a preset movement pattern anyway, and you have to steer it, Hits blocked by the Shield Charge’s Active Block don’t need to be given any "decaying Style Gain Effectiveness" or "excessive channeling penalty", like what "Raise Shield" and "Resonating Shield" has. Once again, the repetition penalty on Shield Charge to cut off its Style gain will disincentivize spamming it. Nonetheless, you can use it as a panic button to quickly heavy-stun a pack of enemies right in front of you to give yourself some breathing room, which is especially useful if you used Shield Bash already and the "style gain effectiveness" of "Raise Shield" hasn’t reset back to 100% yet.
Travel Skills that extend Total Attack Time based on Distance Travelled
A few Skills extend Total Attack Time based on distance traveled. Molten Crash (up to +0.3), and Leap Slam (up to +0.5). These could each have an appropriate additional amount of Style gain from the Hit based on distance traveled, up to a cap (much like the Total Attack Time distance-based extension). Rake and Shield Charge deal more damage based on distance traveled, but their total attack times are not extended by distance. Rake would NOT provide a Style gain boost based on distance traveled, because it always "pulls" you towards your target. Shield Charge could have additional Style gain, because it has to be steered. The increase would NOT be based on Distance Travelled, since that can be indirectly extended with Movement Speed; it would instead scale with time spent in the Shield Charge before it collides with something, since that stays the same. The time spent channeling can be extended slightly via holding down its button to keep channeling it, but it's only for one more "step" before the Skill stops itself; holding down the button longer simply performs Shield Charge again.
Skills with Finite Durations, Extendable before usage + cannot Self-Sustain
E.g. · Incinerate does not use Mana; it instead uses Fuel that you build up via spending Mana on other Skills. It has a maximum duration of 5 seconds, and you cannot gain Fuel while using it. · Flicker Strike has a finite number of Strikes based on how many Power Changes it consumes prior to activating it, and you cannot gain Power Charges while using it. · Rampage and Flame Breath can be extended based on how much Rage you have prior to activating them, and you can't gain Rage while using them. Extending the duration is part of the point, so during one given usage of such a Skill, all of its Hits can gain Style points. The repetition penalty would be raised after the Skill has landed at least one Hit during usage AND the usage ends, either naturally or cut short via a dodge roll or a Skill that explicitly can interrupt other Skills. From there, the penalty would apply to all Hits of subsequent usages whilst the penalty is raised. From there, the challenge becomes trying to have ALL of that Skill's Hits successfully Hit some valid target(s), so that you maximize how much Style you gain from the usage. Extending duration increases your potential to gain more, but it still comes down to manual execution and making sure every Hit is hitting a valid target, or in the case of DOT skills, you’re always dealing damage to a valid target. It would result in the base Style point values of the Hits of these specific Skills being pretty small, to further incentivize landing as many as possible. EDIT (2026-Mar-06): Alternatively, we provide a finite number of "full Style Gain Hits" on these Skills, then if during one usage that's been extended for a very long time, you managed to go past that value, then we apply that Style Gain fall-off on subsequent Hits or DOT-dealing time. It makes more sense for this category of Skill to use a gradual fall-off to Style Gain, instead of cutting it off as soon as you go past that limit. Incinerate would not have that because it has an indisputable maximum duration of 5 seconds. As an additional constraint, we could apply a "harsh repetition debt" for this category of Skills. Coming up with that was helpful, because it create multiple different ways to adjust Style Gain on all these different Skills. ...
Damage Over Time (DOT) in general
As per POE2’s definitions, any damage that is not DOT is a Hit. We can do it such that DOT from Skills that explicitly deal DOT – e.g. Incinerate, Tornado Shot, Tornado - can gain Style on a per-second basis, instead of per-Hit. Something similar to repetition penalty for Hits can be devised for DOT, such as Style gain falloff after a certain amount of time has passed - that "Sustain-Release envelope" shape is easier to visualize for Style Gain on DOT Skill components. Taking into account the time decay to your Style Gauge, these DOT "style gain rates" can be useful for slowing the decay, or keeping your Style gauge level at a given spot. As described up above, Incinerate would perhaps not have this Style Gain falloff, since it’s something you have to aim yourself, and it has a finite extendable Channeling duration (5 seconds max) based on "Fuel" instead of Mana. Thus its whole point is trying to spend its entire duration "hitting" at least one target.
’Move-while-shooting/strafing’ Projectile Skills
For reference, in the DMC games, "Strafing-fire" Projectile skills would usually have a low base Style point value, but they allow a number of "full Style Gain" Hits with the gunshots before they stop gaining Style as talked about in the Repetition Penalty section in the previous post. In DMC at least, they’re used mainly to keep your Style gauge afloat at its current level, as you get closer to an enemy to use other attacks. Crossbow Skills can each more easily find an appropriate amount of "full Style Gain" hits allowed, based on their base clip sizes. Shotgun-fire skills such as Fragmentation Rounds or Permafrost Rounds may allow more than one Style-gaining Hits before cutting off Style gain (3 shots that each land at least one Hit), even if the default clip size is 1 bolt. The feel for the Style Gain of Crossbow Ammo skills wpuld perhaps need to be balanced around Last Lament, since that Unique Crossbow can bypass Reloading. Probably not too difficult to test given that Style Gain is not affected by exact damage dealt. With regards to things like Additional Projectiles, or Forking/Splitting/Piercing/Chaining... First idea is to have those essentially "front-load" the Style Gain from the projectile Hits, meaning that their Style Gain gets cut off sooner, and it proportionally takes longer before its repetition penalty period is up. But we may do different things based on the different projectile behaviors. E.g. Projectiles that Split towards targets will aim for their designated targets if possible, or go in random directions; Chaining projectiles are designed to always go towards the next valid target; Piercing projectiles continue in their usual direction, and Forking projectiles go at a fixed angle from the target they Fork from.
Ancestral Boost on Strikes
A Strike that is Ancestrally Boosted will target up to two additional different targets, showing two "clones" of yourself performing the Strike on designated targets. Even if you don’t hit anything with your own Strike, these Ancestral Boost copies will still appear and Hit their designated targets. Considering that these Ancestral Boost copies will always Hit their target, the best course of action would be that these Ancestral Boost copies of the supported Strike and its components will count towards the repetition penalties for those components as well, so it may "front-load" your Style Gain for that particular Skill component and thus it spends proportionally more time unable to gain Style. That or for Skill components that allow only one full Style gain Hit before cutting that off, the Ancestral Boost copies would grant no Style, or less Style if making use of a repetition penalty multiplier. E.g. In the case of a strike whose Hit provides two Full Style Gain hits before the style gain is cut off, you land your Hit, and then the two Ancestral Boost copies land their own copies of that Hit. You gain Style off of only two of those three landed Hits. Whirling Assault CAN be supported with Ancestral Call, but its behavior is different. In order for the Ancestral Call effect to actually happen, you MUST land the first Hit of the Whirling Assault, which causes the full attack animation to be used by the Ancestral Boost copies on the appropriate nearby targets, or just one copy hitting the same target. Otherwise, the Ancestral Call effect does not occur and you have to wait for the Ancestral Boost to recharge before you can take another shot at that. This is different from other cases where even if your own Strike misses, the Ancestral copies will each hit its target.
Freezing Salvo, Hailstorm Rounds – Skills that passively generate ammo
These particular Skills build up ammo passively, and using the Skills fires all the shots. Freezing Salvo stores up to 10 additional shots max and accumulates 1 shot per 0.75 seconds - these values can’t be modified. All the shots are fired at once and strike the general targeted area in rapid succession, in a way that you're stuck in the firing animation until pretty much all the shots hit the ground. This one can be held to repeatedly fire salvo shots, but you’d be firing only one shot per usage. Hailstorm Rounds fires all its shots at once, which rain down within the targeted area – the shots start in the center and gradually spread out, which happens sooner for firings with a low amount of Bolts, and can store a large number of Bolts to make it last longer. Notably, while a firing of Hailstorm Rounds is active, you can run around and use other Skills. And more than one of those from you can be active at a time, technically. In both cases, it’d be most practical to apply a fixed number of full Style Gain Hits to the impacts, like with most other projectile Skills.
Cast on X
Probably best to start with the brute-force solution of "Skills socketed into Cast on X have their Style Gain set to 0". For good measure, Skills triggered by Cast on X do not engage the repetition penalties for those Skills, thus allowing you to still gain Style via manual castings of those Skills. Because Skills triggered by Cast on X cannot gain Style at all, there’s two possible ways to go for a given Cast on X skill: 1. Put them squarely in the "kill things fast" side of the Style gauge’s flow. So the most practical option is to keep a Cast on X skill confined to one of your two Weapon Sets, to make sure it stays out of your way while you’re focusing on gaining Style. 2. Keep the damage values of the socketed Skills close to their base values, while also increasing debuff chance/buildup as much as possible, so it specializes in proccing Debuffs that you can then use for executing Payoffs on some Skills. The repetition penalties on those other Skills will keep this strategy in check.
Invocations
Invocations are interesting since they DO require manual activation on your part, after they build up a sufficient amount of Energy (proportional to the base Cast time, or base Skill Attack time) of the Skills equipped. This allows for executing a crap-ton of castings of one fast-cast Skill, or five different spells each being cast once/twice in quick succession. If we set Invocations to not give you Style from the triggered Skills (and those Triggered Skills’ repetition penalties won’t engage), then much like with Cast on X, there would be two way to build Invocations: 1. Focus purely on dealing high damage and insta-killing. This is easier to do with an Invocation since you must use an Invocation manually, though with the idea of extra damage nodes being localized to one of the two weapon sets, the Invocation may be kept contained to that "extra damage" Weapon Set nonetheless. 2. Keep the damage values of the socketed Skills close to their base values, while also increasing debuff chance/buildup as much as possible, so it specializes in proccing Debuffs that you can then use for executing Payoffs on some Skills. The repetition penalties on those other Skills will keep this strategy in check. Given Invocations having a more manual component to this, it’s a toss-up between cutting off all Style Gain, or allowing Skills triggered by Invocations to gain Style (either in full, or cut down to some percentage of the original Style value) + also contributing to the repetition penalties with those Skills - this would incentivize equipping Invocations with new Skills different from the ones you're using manually. Though "Ritual Cadence" may seem mandatory because it spreads out the Invocation's Skill usages over a long period of time, which could more easily side-step the repetition penalties of the Skills being triggered. Triggered stuff in general is certainly its own beast to inspect and figure out with this scoring system. But it's fun to explore these things.
Things that can be spawned by different Skills - e.g. Molten Fissures, Ice Fragments, Ice Crystals
Molten Fissure Aftershocks would definitely have their own repetition penalty and base Style Gain value, independent of the Skills causing the Aftershocks. The repetition penalty would be shared across all Molten Fissures globally, but it would allow some number of "full Style gain" Hits before Style gain is reduced or cut off for the rest of the repetition penalty. Ice Fragments would work a similar way. Globally shared repetition penalty across all instances of Ice Fragments, while allowing a fair number of full Style Gain Hits. A large number of full Style Gain Hits would necessitate a low base Style value for one Hit, so that they’d be useful for slowing your Stlye Gauge’s decay, or keeping it level, but by themselves are not practical for climbing up. Ice Crystal Shatterings share a global repetition penalty, but considering that they need to have enough damage dealt in order to shatter them, or using Freeze-consuming Skills in order to shatter them instantly, Ice Crystal Shatterings may allow fewer full Style Gain Hits, but have a larger base Style Gain value. Would the Style Gain provided by shattering a given Ice Crystal be proportion to its HP?
Skill Components provided by Support Gems
Examples: Armor Explosion, Electromagnetism, Elemental Discharge, "Doom Blast" from Impending Doom, Doedre’s Undoing, Hayoxi’s Fulmination, Xibaqua’s Rending, Bone Shrapnel, Coursing Current, Static Shocks, Fiery Death, Bursting Plague, Deadly Resolve. Each of these elements would have their own repetition penalty as Skill components – their own number of "full Style gain" Hits allowed, and so on. Best for the repetition penalty of a given "Support Gem" Skill Component is shared across all its "copies", especially since using multiple copies of a Support Gem provides that Component on all your equipped Skills. If these Skill Components are spawned from Skills triggered by Cast on X / Invocation Meta skills, they wouldn’t count towards the repetition penalty of that particular Component, since they don’t gain Style. Although, having to make an exception like this may be a sign to give Cast on X / Invocations another look, down the line.
Minions
The main benefit of Minions is that they draw aggro away from you, putting aside super-strong Skills from Unique Monsters ALWAYS focusing on you. You getting hit less because of your Minions taking heat off of you is a benefit in itself, because your Style gauge is getting points deducted from it less frequently. You still have the time decay on your Style Gauge to worry about, that said. On the matter of undamageable Minions - e.g. "Manifest Weapon" from the "Smith of Kitava" ascendancy, I’m curious about if those can draw aggro or not. So based on that, Skills that Minions use themselves without your manual input would grant zero Style points. Minion Command Skills would grant Style, since they require manual input on your part. Generally, because most Minions have auto-attack, you’d need to act fast to get some Hits in before the Minions kill the enemies they’re focusing on. The special minions from the "Disciple of Varashta" ascendancy are a special case, since they don’t roam the field, and don’t do anything on their own. In terms of "meta" directions to build a given Minion skill, there’s two directions: 1. Deal high damage so as to one-shot enemies. This puts the Minion squarely on the "kill things fast" side of the cycle. The Minion would be kept in only one of your two Weapon Sets, waiting until the time is right to switch to it and let it loose, especially since most Minions have auto-attacks. 2. Keep the damage close to the baseline damage values. This prevents the Minion's instances from killing things too quickly. You can reap Style from enemies with the Command skill(s) of that Minion + your own Skills. Increasing Minion defenses so they don’t die easily gives you more breathing room (unless undamageable Minions do not draw Aggro). Spreading debuffs is also useful for executing Payoffs and reaping Style from those specific components. The "Meat Shield" gems are valuable for the latter approach. The "Brutus’ Brain" Lineage Support gem is the most extreme form of Meat Shield, because a Minion equipped with it deals no damage at all, and takes no damage at all. So its Hits/DOT cannot contribute to debuffs. ----
Edit History
2026-03-06 Added something to "Skills with Finite Durations, Extendable before usage + cannot Self-Sustain" Last edited by MoonlightHelix#4341 on Mar 6, 2026, 10:43:55 AM
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Fun thought experiment and a cool idea to add some more meaning to the combat system.
The general consensus is harder content -> better rewards. And the current difficulty implementation is level, mob mods, map mods and now "effectiveness" but I do personally think it's not quite there yet. So you do need a better and stable lever to increase difficulty to actually engage and get benefits in a system like this. If this is "solved" I could see this system being right up the idea of PoE2. But it will instantly break as soon as the difficulty is not there and being tied to IIQ/IIR. Very hard problem to solve in a game with as many variables like PoE. Sorry if you already have that point in your post. It's very long :D |
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" >The general consensus is harder content -> better rewards. >And the current difficulty implementation is level, mob mods, map mods and now "effectiveness" but I do personally think it's not quite there yet. The Style Gauge's difficulty comes not from throwing tougher + beefier things at you, but from demanding that you "do more" in combat, in order to take advantage of its bonuses of IIR + gold dropped based on your gauge's current Rank. Putting in more of that work should provide better rewards, with IIR + gold being the most practical thing to reward; the "Style Reward Drop Gauge" special mechanic I'd give to Unique Monsters (perhaps Rare Monsters too) also emphasizes putting in more work to get greater rewards. "Do more" means - to REALLY simplify the system and not talk about its constraints... you in general need to land more Hits on alive Monsters - and/or spend more time damaging alive Monsters with Skills that deal DOT - before said Monsters die. "Doing more" in combat becomes more difficult when your damage numbers get so high (whether via your Equipment, Crafting, or your Passive Skill Tree) that you're killing everything in one Hit, or in a fraction of a second. That is the trade-off of beefing your damage numbers up with the stronger drops + increased gold that you get from scoring high with the Style Gauge. Your priorities with gear + crafting + the Passive Tree would be different, to allow the things you fight to stay alive longer so that you can Style on them more, whilst still keeping your overall "time to kill" or "hits to kill" at a comfortable level. But if you're more in a mood to steam-roll everything, you can always just do that. The Style Gauge is not meant to outright block you from progressing through POE2 via the usual way; it's a new challenge you can opt into even after you've conquered everything that the game has to offer content-wise. >So you do need a better and stable lever to increase difficulty to actually engage and get benefits in a system like this. I can't quite infer what you mean with this. I think you need to give me a specific example of what you mean by a "stable lever", especially when factoring in all the stuff I'm telling you in this specific post. >If this is "solved" I could see this system being right up the idea of PoE2. But it will instantly break as soon as the difficulty is not there and being tied to IIQ/IIR. To avoid using terms like "break" or "broken", I don't think you can really "raise the floor" with this system - i.e. you would be always able to reap lots of rewards from it while doing as little as possible, thus the distance between the "floor" and the "ceiling" gets shorter. Building your character in certain ways can "raise the ceiling": - Equipping more different Skills to cycle between (with your Skill binds being the bottleneck) - Prioritizing Defenses so that you can stay in the fight longer and more easily make up for lost points - Prioritizing Skill Speed so you can land more Hits within a period of time (the repetition penalties on Skills balance that out, because you may end up bumping into said penalties more often) - Keeping extra damage nodes confined to only one of your two Weapon Sets, so that upon climbing to a high Style Rank, then you let loose with the insta-killing and one-shotting so as to make the most of that Rank's IIR + increased gold bonus. Using these when your Style Rank is too low will pull down your mean/average "Style score" for a given area/boss. But you still need to "do more" to get more out of this system, using something that is impossible to crowdsource: your hand-eye co-ordination + your dexterity with your hands and fingers. But "raising the ceiling" lets you climb higher - i.e. you can get more Style points to try to improve your Area/Boss scores and show those to your friends, when the increased IIR + gold drops stops mattering to you. >Very hard problem to solve in a game with as many variables like PoE. I want to think that with this whole thought experiment, I managed to create something that comes close. I think it helps that it contains a lot of constants that cannot be changed with item modifiers. But this hypothetical system can always be more refined, be better at handling edge cases. Last edited by MoonlightHelix#4341 on Mar 5, 2026, 12:39:12 PM
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" That's the point where I'm coming from. The mentality of this genre is blast, min-max and one shot. You want to feel like a god at a certain point. And to even interact with a system like this you have to get the monsters beefy enough. " Now the binding to IIR/IIQ comes in. This is in stark contrast to the "blasters" mentality. You want to get the best rewards but also want to one shot everything. This does not correlate in this genre imo. " But this could mean you're just hitting with a wet noodle to up your score and then finish off the mob. I don't feel that's engaging. It works in DMC because it's over the top and direct action combat with chaining elements. That releases dopamine at least in my case :D It's a fun experiment though. Would be cool to see in a league context! |
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