POE2 Style Gauge theorycraft (V3.01) [updated 2026-May-04]

To start, my perspective is that the reason that all high-end play in POE2 (and POE1) tends towards speed-clearing is:

If a player's reward yield for going through a given Area is completely unaffected by HOW one engages in combat... then players will thus tend towards fast kills and high damage to end fights quickly.

There is no "tangible" incentive to do more than the bare minimum in combat.
Therefore, the most popular "guiding star" for builds in the game is to get character stats + damage numbers really high, to stay as far ahead of the game's difficulty curve as possible.

So in this unexplored design space, a system could be set up where combat itself makes an impact on a player's reward yield.
I'll brainstorm and map out such a system.

The general principle behind this system is that "doing more" during combat increases your reward yield in some way.
For those who prefer to end fights quickly and stay far ahead of the difficulty curve, the reward yield will be the same as usual.
The "floor" of your reward yield stays at its usual level, but the "ceiling" can be raised via engaging with this system.

There's already a strong example of a game series that rewards doing more during combat with increases to your reward yield, even when you have powerful skills that can cheese fights:
The Devil May Cry (DMC) games and their combat scoring systems; they reward scoring well with more currency drops to spend on unlocking new Skills and extending your Life/DT bars.
POE2 is already trending in an action game direction with its combat, so it's only appropriate to look to the DMC games for inspiration.

Thus, this system sets up a new "guiding star" for builds, creating a new challenge with how you adjust your character's stats and equipment.
The challenge comes from letting the game's difficulty curve catch up with you to a degree you're comfortable with, so that you're better poised to "do more" during combat and thus "get more" out of it.

To frame this another way, one could say this system adds a second path of mastery.

These two paths can be envisioned as two axes of a co-ordinate system; on it, character builds can be mapped based on which of the two paths each one prioritizes, and also taking on the challenge of doing well on both paths simultaneously.
That said, Path #2 focuses heavily on manual execution, so it's just as much about the "pilot" as it is about the "vehicle".

With its potential to shake up the meta, this would absolutely need its own League first.

DMC's "Stylish" combat scoring system in a nutshell:
- Landing hits with the different skills on your weapons (or dodging hits with a standard dodge roll or "Trickster" dodges) builds up your "Style Rank" gauge.
- Spamming one skill repeatedly is disincentivized by using "repetition penalties"; these cut off style point gain on a given "component" of a given skill, until its "repetition penalty" time period has passed (it lasts about 6 seconds).
- There's a constant time decay on the Style Rank gauge, to disincentivize taking too long to perform any action, which incentivizes aggressive play.
- Getting Hit and taking damage from enemies + environmental hazards will knock you down a few ranks.
- Your current Style Rank is used to determine the quantity of Red Orbs + other pickups dropped by a monster upon its death.

The Ranks (lowest first):
E (not shown); D; C; B; A; S; SS; SSS

I'll use the term "Skill Components" a lot, so here's my explanation for it.
The description for a given Skill/Support Gem may have sub-sections focusing on different "components" to the Skill, giving each one its own stats.
Examples:
- 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
- Staggering Palm's actual Hit + the projectiles that come from the granted buff
- The Small Meteors + Large Meteors of "Walking Calamity" for Bear form.

Every Skill has at minimum one Skill Component.
Some Support Gems provide a "Skill Component" to the equipped Skill - e.g. Armor Explosion, Elemental Discharge, Impending Doom, Bone Shrapnel, Fan the Flames, Xibaqua’s Rending.

Each Skill Component has its own "base Style Point value".
Skill components that deal DOT would gain Style at some specified rate of "style per second", whilst it's spending time dealing some amount of DOT to at least one target.

These "base Style Point values" on the components of player Skills/Supports stay constant regardless of Gem level, character level, etc.
These values do not scale with anything, and they cannot be directly modified/"rigged" to your benefit/detriment.
This has the benefit of making testing and tweaking these "base Style Point values" a lot simpler.

The general sort of guidelines for setting style point values for Skill Components would go like this:
- Skills that are relatively fast to execute and/or deal low base damage - functioning like "jabs", would have lower base Style point values.
- Skill components that deal out multiple Hits within a given usage (e.g. "Sustained Skills") – or function like combo strings with different animations from repeated button presses - would give each individual Hit a relatively low base Style point value, to incentivize landing all of those Hits on valid targets.
- "Weightier" Skills would overall have higher base Style point values.


For added measure, there would be diminishing returns applied to the Style Gain you'd get from one instance of a Skill Component when it damage multiple targets.
This is to prevent pack size - which gets cranked up as high as practical in high-level play - from rigging your style gain too much, while still providing a reward for hitting multiple targets.
This can include:
- multiple enemies being hit by the same Skill Component instance (e.g. Slams or anything with a good amount of AOE size)
- multiple enemies getting hit by one specific swing from a Strike animation that deals multiple different swings
- multiple enemies taking damage simultaneously from a Skill Component that deals DOT (e.g. Tornado, Incinerate)

The "base Style Point value" on a given Skill component does two things:
- Contribute to the buildup of your Style Rank gauge
- Build up Style Points on enemies you're fighting, which are then reaped upon killing those enemies (more details later on what they're being reaped for).

Some Skill Components will explictly NOT contribute to the buildup of your Style Rank gauge, such as:
- Minion auto-attacks
- Player versions of Monster Modifiers that you take via Behead, Headhunter, Ritual Sacrifice, and so on.
- Skills that are socketed into Meta Skills that require being equipped with Skills in order to do anything.
- e.g. Ancestral Warrior Totem, Spell Totem, Mortar Cannon, Mirage Deadeye, all "Cast on X" skills, all "Invocation" skills

These can nonetheless build up Style Points on enemies, and also be subjected to repetition penalties to cut off or reduce style point gain.
Especially important to keep in mind for Meta skills, because the repetition penalty of one Skill Component applies to all instances of it.

The same letter grades from the Devil May Cry style rank gauges could be used.
E (no rank), D, C, B, A, S, SS, SSS

The Ranks may each be of different lengths, in terms of how many points you need to climb up to the next Rank.
E.g. Devil May Cry 4 makes S, SS, and SSS relatively short - i.e. these three are each one third the usual length of a style rank.
Alternatively, these "lengths" may be uniform for all Ranks, for simplicity's sake.

When you land a Hit that provides enough style points to move your Style Rank gauge up to the next Rank, or even skip directly to a higher rank, the style points from that Hit will all count toward the Rank you’re coming from, not the Rank you’re going into (or the Ranks you pass by).
E.g. going from E to C with the style gain from one Hit would count all the style points from that Hit towards E only, none to D or C.

Style points gained from a DOT-dealing skill component that get you up to the next Style Rank may technically be spread between those two ranks - the one you're leaving, and the one you're entering.

I also want to detail how DMC3 + DMC5 handle transitioning between Style Ranks, as references.

DMC3's penalty for getting hit is too harsh for POE2.
DMC5's penalty can be rendered irrelevant by getting your stats high enough so that you never get light-stunned.
So POE2 needs its own penalty system.

The Style Rank gauge has a constant time decay, to disincentivize taking too long to gain Style.

Dying will instantly set your Style Rank gauge all the way to the bottom of the lowest Style Rank.
In an Area that DOESN'T create a new Instance with new enemies when you respawn into it... the Style Points + "Style Point Limits" (more on this later) already built up on Monsters can stay.
Having to build your Style Rank back up from the bottom is enough of a punishment, and you don't get a new assortment of fresh enemies to fight and reap Style from.

Your Style Rank gauge can be deducted from, by components from Monsters skills + anything else in the environment that can Hit you or deal DOT to you.
Monster skills and environmental hazards can have "base Style Point values" (assigned with guidelines similar to what I'd outlined in the previous section), which are used to make deductions from your Style Rank gauge.
This includes additional "Skills" granted to Monsters via modifiers - Azmerian Wisps, Magic/Rare modifiers, Abyssal modifiers, Delirium modifiers, etc.

Taking DOT from something you can physically move out of will apply its own decay to your Style Rank gauge, on top of the usual time decay.
DOT-dealing Debuffs/Ailments that get stuck on your character, especially those that can be extended via Temporal Chains, will NOT affect your Style Rank gauge.

Once again, these "base Style Point values" stay the same regardless of Area level, Monster level, damage received, etc.
It is impossible for these values to be directly modified/"rigged" to your benefit/detriment.
Like with player Skills, this has the benefit of making testing and tweaking "base Style Point values" on components of Monster skills + environmental hazards a lot simpler.

The "base Style Point values" on Monster Skills are also important for something later.

ADDITIONAL NOTE
Should the deductions get harsher + time decay get faster when your Style Rank is high?
It wouldn't make sense to do that without ALSO providing character buffs when your Style Rank is high, which is what DMC3 does.
E.g. increased Action Speed similar to Onslaught, additional Strike Range.
Though buffs granted this way can make the character feel more difficult to control, since the Style Rank gauge could potentially change rank a lot during combat.

I think it would be more stable (both for character control, and server-side calculations) to NOT do those sorts of things.

- A Skill Component's repetition penalty cuts off its Style gain after it has gained Style once, or "enough times", in order to disincentivize spamming it.
- A Skill Component's repetition penalty engages as soon as the Skill Component successfully gains Style, if it's not engaged already.
- After some number of seconds has passed since the repetition penalty for the Skill Component was engaged, the repetition penalty is disengaged and that Skill Component can gain Style again.
- In the DMC games, a repetition penalty usually lasts 5 to 6 seconds, though sometimes it can be sustained (more on that later).

This NEVER outright blocks off Skills from being used.
Of all the ways a combat scoring system could "guide" one's approach to combat, this method is the least "railroad-y" approach.
Temporarily cutting off point gain for just one of your options still leaves you the rest of your options to use for point gain.
Even then, something that can't gain points right now can still be used for setting up other things that CAN gain points.

The repetition penalties can work well even on builds that increase Skill/Attack/Cast Speed as much as possible.
Higher action speeds can make you bump into the repetition penalties of your Skills sooner + more often.

The number of "full Style Gain" Hits that a given Skill Component is allowed to have, before its point gain is set to zero for the rest of the repetition penalty's period (or some sort of reduction is applied).
Some Skill Components would allow only 1 Hit to gain Style at full value, but for Skills that are meant to be repeated a few times, its components can have this variable set to a value greater than 1.

Components on "Sustained Skills" (skills that cause a large number of hits over a period of time) would definitely allow for multiple full Style Gain hits.
This also works for Skills that are meant to be used manually + repeatedly a few times.

To write out the variables for this:
"a" = the base style point value of a given Skill Component
"b" = the number of full style gain hits allowed for the Skill Component, before style gain is cut off; serves as the "threshold".
"x" = the number of Hits on at least one valid target that the Skill Component has landed so far
"f(a, b, x)" = the function to get how much Style should be gained from a newly landed Hit

f(a, b, x) =
if x > b: 0
else: a

Pretty simple formula, but sometimes simple is best.

For some Skill Component, it makes more sense to give them a gradual reduction in style gain.

Basing the falloff on exponential decay, the function (and the additional variable for it) may look like this:
"h" = the "loop size" of Hits for each iteration of the style gain fall-off.
g(a, b, h, x) =
if x > b: 0
else: floor(a / [2 ^ (x / h)])

- (x / h) may be rounded down to keep it an integer, which makes the function "stepped" instead of a continuous curve.
- At first, "b" could be "h * log2(a)", so the style gain cut-off is at around the point where the style gain would be 0 anyway. But "b" could technically be any value, if style gain should be cut off earlier.

The specific Skill Components this could be best for:
Those of Skills with a duration that's extendable in some way
- Flicker Strike
- Bear Rampage
- Wyvern Flame Breath
Those that can run "in parallel" to other actions you're performing
- Totems, "Hailstorm Rounds" on Crossbows
- Volcano's projectiles; you have the first batch of projectiles from the initial eruption, and the Volcano can shoot out more projectiles if you slam near it.
- Moon Beams from "Lunar Blessing" on Wolf form
- The different sized Meteors from "Walking Calamity" on Bear form
- Molten Fissure Aftershocks

"Repetition Debt" is a way to cause the spamming of a given Skill Component to sustain its repetition penalty for a longer period of time.

Any Skill Component can handle repetition debt in different ways.
To reference variables "b" and "x" again...

1. No repetition debt
No matter how large x gets compared to b, 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.
Generally, Skill Components that allow only one full style gain hit would use this.

Minion auto-attacks would use no repetition debt, since those are fully out of your control.

2. Somewhat forgiving repetition debt
After x gets larger than b... when the repetition penalty's period is over, x is reduced by b (x = x - b), not reset to 0.
In this case, if x is less than b after this subtraction, x is then clamped down to 0.

3. Harsh repetition debt
After x gets larger than b... when the repetition penalty's period is over, x is reduced by b (x = x - b), not reset to 0.
If x is less than b after this subtraction, x is not further changed.

E.g.
For b = 10 and x = 20, x gets reduced to 10
Thus this Skill Componenent can gain Style at full value off of only one more Hit, before its style gain gets cut off again.

4. Harsh repetition debt 02, for "gradual style fall-off"
After x gets larger than h... when the repetition penalty's period is over, x is reduced by h (x = x - h), not reset to 0.

E.g.
For b = 40, h = 5, and x = 20, x gets reduced to 15
The repetition penalty period for this may be quicker than the usual duration, so that this more gradual restoration can happen faster.

This would apply only to SOME Skill Components that allow for more than one Hit to gain Style at full value.
Since this focuses on Hits, this will not be used on DOT-dealing Skill Components.

After such a Skill Component (we'll label it "A") has gained Style, you have to - within the Component's "considered consecutive time period" - deal another Style-gaining Hit, using ANY of your available Skill Components (including "A"), so that "A" can continue gaining Style when you next use it.
Otherwise, the style gain for "A" is cut off early.

If you're not quick enough, that Skill Component's style gain is immediately cut off for the rest of its repetition penalty period.

In practice, this incentivizes committing to repeated use of a Skill until it either stops gaining Style, or you're in a better position to use other Skills.
If the component's value for this parameter is lenient enough, it's possible to interweave Hits dealt by other "Hitting" Skill components, so as to keep the style gain for the component from being cut off early.

It's akin to how in the DMC games, when you're far away from an enemy and you want to get closer... repeated gun fire is used to keep your Style Rank gauge "afloat" at its current position, as you get close enough for your other Skills to reach.

How would this work with "gradual fall-off for style gain"?
IF that should ALSO be gradual instead of cutting off style gain all at once...
The best way to do that is use an interval to repeatedly increase "x" by "h", then stop the interval when "x" > "b".

For DOT-dealing Skill Components, those have a different definition of variables "b" and "x".
"b" = the number of seconds the Skill Component can deal DOT for, before style gain gets cut off
"h" = the "loop size" of time spent dealing DOT, for each iteration of the style gain fall-off.
"x" = the number of seconds the Skill Component has spent dealing DOT to at least one valid target

"f(a, b, x)" and "g(a, b, h, x)" would be identical as usual.

DOT-dealing Skill Components can also use the "gradual style falloff" tool discussed earlier.

The disengaging of the repetition penalty for a DOT-dealing Skill Component would work the same way it does for Hits.
Reducing "x" (x = x - b, or x = x - h), OR just resetting it back to 0 if the Skill Component should have no repetition debt.

For reference, a Skill with the "Sustained" tag causes a large number of Hits over a period of time (though some DOT-dealing Skills have this tag, such as Incinerate).

Sustained + Channeling Skills could be given their own gradual fall-off.

Sustained + Channeling Skills that deal their Hits WHILE being Channeled can have a "style gain effectiveness" multiplier, starting at x1 and decreasing down to x0.
The decrease to "style gain effectiveness" engages when the total time spent channeling going past some threshold.
The decrease may be linear, and the "slope" of this decrease can be specified for each individual such Skill.

The restoring of "style gain effectiveness" would work similarly to hwo it's done with individual skill components, using what I'd call "channeling debt".

The "style gain effectiveness" for this type of Skill applies to ALL its contained Skill Components, on top of the other repetition penalties / gradual style fall-off / repetition debt that these individual Skill Components have.

This "style gain effectiveness" is specifically for Sustained + Channeling skills that deal damage WHILE being channeled.
Thus, to list a few exceptions, Bonestorm and Volcano and skills that use "Perfect Timing" would NOT have this, because they don't deal any Hits until AFTER channeling is stopped, by releasing the Skill button.

"Active Block" skills that can be channeled forever (Raise Shield, Buckler Parry, Resonating Shield) can be used to block deductions to your Style Rank gauge from Monster Hits or environmental hazard Hits.
Active Block by itself does NOT give you Style Points.

The "style gain effectiveness" multiplier would be used on these skills, to cause these deductions to gradually "break through" your Active Block.
Your Style Rank Gauge is fully protected at first, but then Hits from Monsters and environmental hazards can deduct small bits from your gauge.
When the "style gain effectiveness" multiplier hits x0, Hits from Monsters and environmental hazards deduct their fulls amounts as if they're not being Active-Blocked.

Side-note, Resonating Shield would already have "style gain effectiveness" since it deals hits while being channeled.

As for Shield Charge, I'd say it would NOT use a "style gain effectiveness" on its Active Block, because:
- It has a preset movement pattern that requires manual steering
- Its duration is finite, with no way to extend it beyond holding down the button to get one more step in before it finishes.

(More on Shield Charge later in the "Skill Cases" post)

There may be concerns about there not being enough Bind slots for gamepad or for mouse + keyboard, for players to comfortably engage with the system.
For reference, Gamepad in POE2 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 with a toggle (holding down "CTRL" doesn't count).
This would increase the total number of Bind Slots from 13 to 26.

POE1 already does this, though it's tied to Weapon Set.
POE2 could implement this WITHOUT tying the Bind Slot sets to Weapon Sets... or maybe it should.
After all, since Skill slots are not directly bound to your equipment anymore, switching around your Skills is super easy anyway.

Things that deal little to no damage to enemies, or remove little to no Life from them, should not build up style points on enemies.

To explain why...
A target's Life and your damage to it can be used to "estimate" how long the fight against the target could last, before it's killed.
This functions as a sort of "soft time limit" or "action limit".
As the target's Life gets lower, you have fewer chances to build up Style Points on it + build up your own Style Rank.

If we allow Skill components that deal very low damage (or even zero damage) to still gain Style...
- Spells that deal Elemental damage or Chaos damage would all be equipped with Brutality supports, to completely nullify said Elemental damage or Chaos damage.
- Players would lean into low Accuracy overall, especially with projectiles thanks to the distance-based penalty.
- The "Your Hits can only Kill Frozen Enemies" modifier from the "Southbound" Unique Gloves in POE1 would be another way to game this, and it should be addressed ahead of time.
The "soft time limit"/"action limit" could thus be fully ignored.

The solution to this is "Style Gain Minimum Damage Threshold" on Monsters, implemented as a percentage of a Monster's maximum Life.
This is akin to Stun Threshold + Light-Stun Chance being based on maximum Life.

Different Monster Rarities may use different Max Life percentages.
One example of these different percentages:
> Normal = 10% or 5%; Magic = 4%; Rare = 2%; Unique = 1%

If the amount of damage dealt to a given target via a Hit falls below the threshold, then the landed Hit of the skill component gains no Style at all.
No Style Point buildup on the monster, no buildup to your Style Rank gauge, and the repetition penalty for that skill component is not contributed to.
The damage is checked against the target's threshold after it's been mitigated by the target's defenses (Evasion included; more on this later).
Overkill damage from the Hit counts towards overcoming the threshold - e.g. using high-damage Hits to kill Monsters with very low Life.

With regards to DOT, the final "per-second damage" value dealt to a Monster is checked against the threshold.
The threshold that DOT is checked against may be half that of the above one, which focuses on Hits.
Or both Hits and DOT use the same set of thresholds.

This threshold should also account for the "Your Hits can only Kill Frozen Enemies" modifier on the "Southbound" unique gloves from POE1.
Hits that subtract little to no Life from the target (because the target's Life is already very low) are considered to fall below the threshold.

Culling Strike falls below this threshold always, because it technically does not deal damage.

"

www.poe2wiki.net/wiki/Culling_strike#Mechanics wrote:

The effect of culling strike is not considered dealing damage to the target, and will never count towards overkill damage.
A hit does not need to deal damage to cull.

With regards to Decimating Strike, the automatic 5% to 30% removal of Life from full does not count towards the threshold.
It focuses exclusively on the Hit's actual damage, to compare against the threshold.

"

Decimating Strike info in POE2 wrote:

Hits against Full Life Enemies remove between 5% and 30% of Life, before the damage of the Hit is applied.

It's very important to add a way to "cap" how many points can be gained from a Monster on kill.
This is a "soft limit", because it technically can go up; a "hard limit" will be elaborated on later.
My idea of Monster skills (plus additional things granted by Monster Modifiers) having their own "base style point values" can have another use.

I'll also use this term a lot: "Style Point Sum", the sum of the Style Points of different Ranks you built up on a Monster.

A given Monster has a "Style Point Limit", which starts out at 0, but can be raised in certain ways.
It serves as a "cap"/"limit" on the quantities of Style Rank currencies you can ACTUALLY get out of the Monster on kill.

- A Monster builds up its "Style Point Limit" by PERFORMING its own actions + using actions granted by its modifiers, using the "base style point values" of those actions.
- The Monster's actions do not need to actually hit you or deal damage to you to raise its Style Point Limit; they simply need to be performed.
- Some actions provide an instant increase (e.g. projectiles being fired that hit you OR miss you), while those with longer animations may gradually increase the monster's Style Point Limit over the animation's duration.
- This means that if a longer action is interrupted, the increase to the Style Point Limit gets cut short.
- This is akin to how your own Skills GRADUALLY deplete your Mana over the course of the Skill's animation, instead of spending the full amount at the start of said animation.

The final Style Rank currencies you gain from killing a monster would be calculated based on comparing the values between its "Style Point Limit", and your "Style Point Sum" on it.

There's two approaches I can think of.

For added measure, every "species" of Monster has a "Maximum Style Point Total", functioning as a hard limit.

It's used to clamp down the built up "style point sum" on a Monster, in case it exceeds this "maximum", for calculation of the actual quantities of style points received on kill.
It may be "increased" in a manner proportional to Area Level + the number of Monster Modifiers on said Monster.
Other than that, there's no way to directly rig these values.

This is to deal with the edge case of deliberately prolonging fights against Monsters that have Energy Shield and/or Life Regen, to try to build up an extremely high amount of style points.

The process for caculating the style rank currencies to give a player upon a Monster being killed would be:
- The reduction multiplier is calculated via comparing a player's style point sum (BEFORE it gets clamped down) against the Monster's style point limit.
- The spread of the different ranks of the player's style point sum on that monster is normalized, for later usage in this process.
- If needed, the player's style point sum on the Monster is clamped down so it's no bigger than the maximum style point total for this Monster's "species".
- The style point sum is reduced, via the reduction multiplier.
- The reduced sum gets divided up appropriately into the different style ranks, using the normalized style rank spread from earlier.
- And thus, the final quantities of style points are provided to the player.

A Monster that gets revived repeatedly can potentially be exploited to gain a lot of Style Rank Currencies from repeated kills.
My idea to solve this is to track the specific method that was used to revive a given Monster, and decide whether to nullify, mitigate, or do nothing to the ability to build up style points on this Monster + building up your own Style Rank gauge.

Example #1
Vile Hags and Liches in Act 1 + 2 can revive monsters repeatedly; that particular revival method will cut off all style point + style rank buildup.

Example #2
The "Ogham's Legacy" Unique Strongbox, which spawns a Rare Monster and revives it from death a set number of times, giving it a new modifier with each revive.
The repeated revives is the point, so the style point + style rank buildup for this Monster may be mitigated, or left unchanged.
The additional Rare Monster mods raise the hard cap on style points reaped from the Monster on Kill.
Those Mods can also give the Monster more ways to raise its style point limit, thus you may have to work harder to catch up with said limit.

Monsters that are repeatedly spawned during a boss fight, to serve as "adds", will have style point buildup on them completely cut off, so that they cannot be reaped for style points.

Nonetheless, you can build up your Style Rank gauge using these adds.

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.
Thus you’re in a better position to make up for your Style Rank Gauge getting chunks taken out of it.

This focuses purely on Hits, as DOT does not use Accuracy/Evasion at all (which means that DOT can never "miss").

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 and stay aggressive, so you're better poised to make back what was deducted from your Style Rank gauge.

As for your own Accuracy vs enemies’ Evasion...
I already have the "style gain minimum damage threshold" on Monsters, and Hits from you that fail the Accuracy VS Evasion check will always fall below said threshold.

It becomes important to keep your Accuracy Rating at a good level so your Hits aren't missing all the time.
You need to do this even without this system in mind, in order to more easily complete fights + progress through the game, plus because allocating DEX is required for certain equipment/Skills anyway.

Nonetheless, I'll write down a possible idea if I want to get rid of some semi-randomness for the sake of consistency.
A conditional effect where your Hits "Always Hit" - i.e. always pass the check of your Accuracy VS enemy Evasion.
Your Accuracy by itself will do nothing, but it can still be useful for any stat bonuses that scale off of it.
- "Falcon Dive" (increased Attack Speed) on the Passive Tree.
- "Critical Strike" (additional Critical Hit chance) and "Penetrate" (added Physical damage) on the Amazon ascendancy.
This effect would be applied to you only when you have a "Style Cultivator" equipped to you.
More on "Style Cultivators" later.

Your Hits always Hitting is a no-brainer benefit, with regards to completing fights + progressing through content.
Style Cultivators may be equipped for that benefit alone, but if getting a strong score on the Style Cultivator lets you get rewards of greater quantity / quality, there's incentive to engage with them more deeply.

On the matter of doing well with regards to the Style Rank gauge + style point buildup on Monsters, it's not a no-brainer benefit, especially given the "style gain minimum damage threshold" + the "soft time limit"/"action limit" concept I talked about earlier.

Critical Damage Bonus can be a problem because you don’t want to accidentally deal more damage than desired when focusing on Style Rank buildup or style point buildup on Monsters.
The "Resolute Technique" keystone is tempting, because it disables all Critical Hits.

However, disabling all your Critical Hits will lock you out of other effects that trigger on Critical Hit.
E.g. "Elemental Expression", "Concussive Spells" Support, "Volatility" Support, the "Crumbling Maul" implicit modifier, "The Smiling Knight", "Voll’s Protector", the Frenzy Charge bonus from Sniper’s Mark, and so on and so on.

So the simplest option is to apply to you a conditional bonus of "Take no Extra Damage from Critical Hits" + "Critical Hits deal no Extra Damage".
This effect is applied to you only when you have a "Style Cultivator" equipped to you.
Once again, more on "Style Cultivators" later.

To use a Style Cultivator, you bind it to your character.
This could be done via a dedicated inventory slot, similar to Grafts from POE1 3.27 or the Blood Crucible from POE1 3.16.

You may bind at most one Style Cultivator to your character.
When you bind a Style Cultivator to yourself, your Style Rank guage is automatically set to zero + the repetition penalties on your Skills are fully relaxed.
This provides a clean start to your style gaining for the Cultivator.

Also this does mean that even when you have no Style Cultivator on your character, your Style Rank gauge is visible at all times, so you can get a feel for how well you're doing generally, with regards to style rank buildup.

Dying while a Style Cultivator is bound to you will...
I have two ideas:
1. The active Style Cultivator is destroyed and you have to bind a new one to yourself.
2. The active Style Cultivator stay intact, and its progress is not set back or wiped in any way.

Or since the Style Cultivator is an item class, some will use #1 and others will use #2?
#2 is better suited for Cultivators with a large required number of Monster kills; #1 is better suited for Cultivators that are narrower in scope - e.g. completing a boss fight.

You have the option to destroy the currently active Cultivator yourself, if you want to stop using it and bind a new one to your character.

A Style Cultivator is filled with the style points that are reaped from Monsters on kill.
The completion requirement is X Non-Unique Monster kills.
A Style Cultivator has a "minimum area level".
- Monsters that fall below this minimum level do not count towards the required number of kills.
- Style points reaped from monsters in an Area whose level is below this minimum will not be fed into the Style Cultivator.

The emphasis on "Non-Unique" Monsters up there is mainly because I'm considering the idea of specific Style Cultivators that focus on Unique Monsters; more on that later.

The Rewards

When a Style Cultivator's required amount of Monster kills is reached, it still stays on you, but can be "opened".
It certainly can no longer be "destroyed" after it reaches this point.
Opening it shows a Shop Interface, showing an assortment of purchaseable items divded into tabs.

To purchase items from this assortment, you spend the style points that you built up on this completed Style Cultivator.
The tabs of this Shop interface are each labelled with a Style Rank; to purchase items in a given "Style Rank" tab, you must use style points of the matching rank.
A Style Cultivator will not necessarily show all ranks; some rank tabs may be omitted, if the Cultivator has no rewards that would belong to those ranks.

To list a few examples of what a Style Cultivator can offer, it can offer equipment, currencies, augments, and Uncut Gems.
The Monsters killed and information about them could be used to influence the rewards the Cultivator provides, as one idea.

I had mentioned the idea of having style rank groups "correspond" with the different Rarities, but I'll scrap that idea because it's too restrictive for how a Style Cultivator may want to arrange its rewards - e.g. spreading a bunch of Unique equipment across the rank tabs based on Item Level.

It could also just show everything on one grid, and the specific style rank for each item is shown with special corner art.
Though I think dividing it into tabs makes it more obvious what's available to you, especially for these following parts of the shop interface:
- The style points of a given rank may be converted downwards to a lower rank, with the appropriate conversion rates; upward conversion cannot be done.
- All style points can be converted to Gold, with the appropriate conversion rates.

After you're officially done "purchasing" rewards from a completed Style Cultivator, the remaining style points you didn't spend are converted to Gold.

And with that, the completed Style Cultivator is gone, and you can bind a new one to your character.

Different Types of Cultivators

Akin to the various types of Incubators in POE1, themed around specific item classes + Leagues, there can also be different kinds of Style Cultivators, focusing on different branches of side content.

A Style Cultivator themed around a specific branch of side content will scope its "kill X monsters" requirement - and what style points can be fed into it - to focus exclusively on Monsters from that branch of side content.
So you still have to actually play the side content, if you want rewards from it.

E.g. a "Breach" Style Cultivator focuses exclusively on tracking kills + absorbing style points of Monsters from Breach encounters, and provides Breach rewards on completion.

Unique Monsters / Boss Fights / "Overseer Style Cultivator"
There can also be another type of Style Cultivator focusing on boss fights and Uniques.
A generic one for any boss fight, and ones focusing around specific Pinnacle bosses/encounters.

The key feature of Unique Monsters, especially ones that function like proper boss fights, is that they perform at least one "phase change".
These "phase changes" do things such as: change the Unique Monster's moveset / arena in some irreversible way (which can be subtle); transform the Unique Monster into a new form with new moves, a new name, and full health.
Count Geonor has two: transforming into "Geonor the Putrid Wolf"; and his Sky Beams inflicting Corrupting Blood on Hit.

Some of these "phase changes" and any other "happens only once" actions can be used to change up how style points are reaped from Unique Monsters.

Whenever such an action is performed by the Unique Monster, the Style Points that are built up on it are "reserved".
This means that the Style Points built up on the Unique Monster so far are checked against the Style Point Limit + converted into a "Rank-marched batch" to be used later.
A given batch of Style Rank currencies is "Rank-marked" by calculating the "average Style Rank" of the batch's Style Rank currencies.

For added measure, the Unique Monster's "style point limit" and the style points built up on it are both reset to zero, so you can build up another batch of style points.

With this in mind, a specific type of Style Cultivator dedicated to boss fights needs to be made, which I'll nickname "Overseer Style Cultivator".
It becomes completed after the boss fight as a whole is finished, and it accounts only for the style points from non-add Unique Monsters in the boss fight.
In the case of a boss fight with two Unique Monsters, you must kill both of them; killing one of the two counts as a "phase change", for reserving a batch of style points.

The count of "reserved" Rank-marked batches on the Unique Monster is used to determine how many rewards you can purchase from the completed Overseer Style Cultivator.
The rank-marked batches are sorted by the Ranks they're marked with, highest first.
You may purchase a reward using only the style points in the current batch.

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 "average Style Rank" can be shown alongside this.
- How many enemies you killed in the area.
It should not provide any "final letter grade" based on these; show the bigger picture provided by these two "grading axes".
This essentially functions as your "high score" for that Area.

How to increase your high score?
Since the high score has two dimensions, the value to compare results for a given Area must also be "2-dimensional".
It would be: the "average Style Rank" of the obtained Style Points X the count of enemies killed.

Map-marked Uniques and "mini-boss" Rares may also have "Style Rank distribution of obtained Style Points" shown, on the Act Map.
Uniques can show multiple Style Ranks as per the design of that system, and they'd be in the specific order they were obtained.

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.
Still, if you’re not in the mood to go back to the early Areas on your current character to try to boost your score there, then you can just progress forward to Endgame and focus on the Style Score results in Endgame maps/encounters + Pinnacle bosses

The "Style Cultivator" system is elegant enough that it wouldn't be too much of a hassle to make it work for Party Play.

In online Party Play, the different players in the Party each get their own Style Rank Gauge.
Each player builds up their own Style Points on a given Monster.
The Style Points of each player are each compared to the Monster's Style Point Limit, the final style points to give to each player are calculated.
The only players in the Party who actually benefit from the style points reaped from killing Monsters are those who are equipped with Style Cultivator.
And finally, in-progress/completed "Style Cultivators" cannot be traded to other players, by design.

So any conundrum of how it should be dealt with for "loot allocation" is fully avoided.

Area / Boss Style rank results on the Act Map would still be scoped to ONLY those of the player viewing the Act Map.

What about Couch Co-op?
Couch Co-op is always done with two characters on the same user account + same League, so both characters feed rewards to the same "non-tradeable currency" pool, and the same Stash.

The simplest tweak to this:
For any character that is in a Couch Co-op session, cut in half the quantities of style points that character receives from enemies on kill, to fill their equipped Style Cultivators.

The Style Cultivators would be valuable; they're a means of obtaining rewards that provides agency to the player, via providing an assortment of choices of what they want.

It's still possible to obtain rewards the old-fashioned way: builds that lean into extremely high damage, so as to "speedrun" content faster, so as to increase the rate of repeat runs, so as to eventually get the items you want to sell on Trade.

Because of that, the "floor" of overall loot/drop yield would not be lowered, so average trading prices of items in general wouldn't necessarily go up.
The system raises the "ceiling" of loot/drop yield by giving you a more action-game-ish way to access relatively powerful items.
Would that cause more powerful drops to be lower in average trade price?

The "style point" costs of Divine Orbs will be important to think about, because those are used as the unit for trade prices.

If a greater amount of Divine Orbs than usual gets added to the game via this, that could cause trading prices to go up via inflation, since everyone has more Divine Orbs, though if there are more items in general anyway via this feature, that may counterbalance that inflation with lowering prices.

Even if the first people to acquire those items set the prices high in the beginning... this alternative way to get the items may result in trade prices going down via more people getting them.
Would there thus be a greater proportion of people selling those items for lower prices?

It'll be a lot to explore.

The Dodge Roll could have two components to it:
1. Executing a "near-miss" with it, measured similarly to how Lingering Illusion + Void Illusion simulate "near-miss" dodging. The base style point value of this would be fixed, and NOT be proportional to the specific Monster skill being "near-missed".
2. Granting additional Style based on how many things you successfully "Avoid" during its animation; the base style point value for this would be relatively small, and for added measure, there'd be diminishing returns based on number of Hits avoided.

The Dodge Roll's components each have their own repetition penalty, as usual.

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 generous 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 Style Gain for the "near-miss" component of the Dodge Roll may also be based on the timing of that "near-miss".
E.g. Dodge-rolling at the last possible second to avoid a Hit gives you the greatest Style gain from that component.

"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 benefit is that the damage reduction applies to types of Hits that the Dodge Roll cannot 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" component of the Dodge Roll can still apply, but you lose the additional style gained from "Avoiding" Hits during the Dodge Roll's animation.
And you may end up with a net loss in Style since you're getting actually Hit by Monsters.

Blink
Blink replaces your Dodge Roll with an instant teleport, so it has no animation that must play out before you can do anything else.
Thus, Blink won't pause the time decay at all and it lacks the "gain additional Style for each Hit Avoided during the animation" component that the Dodge Roll has.
It may also provide a lower max Style gain, since you can cram more Style-gaining actions into the combat encounter anyway.

Black Powder Blitz, from the "Shankgonne" Unique boots
This replaces your dodge-roll with a "rocket jump", so it’s an offensive tool.
It would not have a "near miss" Style gain component to it.
The Style Gain from Black Powder Blitz would depend purely on hitting enemies with the rocket jump explosion.

For one given usage of Shield Charge, an increase to its components' style point gain can be provided, proportional to how long the Skill was channeled for during that usage prior to colliding with a valid target.

Considering Shield Charge has a finite duration and must be steered manually, Hits blocked by the Shield Charge’s Active Block do not need to be given any "reduced Style Gain Effectiveness" or "excessive channeling penalty", like what "Raise Shield" and "Resonating Shield" have.

Shield Charge's style gain bonus would be based on time spent channeling, not distance travelled, since distance travelled can be indirectly increased with Movement Speed.
This Skill's 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.

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 traveled.
Rake would NOT provide a Style gain boost based on distance traveled, because it always "pulls" you towards your target.

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.

The base Style point values of an individual Hit from this specific Skills - or the "style per second" rate for DOT-dealing skills of this type - may be relatively small, to be useful more for slowing down your Style Rank gauge's decay or keeping it afloat within a given Rank.

As additional layers, we may also incorporate a finite number of "full Style Gain Hits" and/or that "style gain effectiveness" multiplier that decays based on total Channeling time, though the thresholds for these would be pretty high up.
And also "harsh repetition debts" could be used as one more layer.

It makes more sense for this category of Skill to use a gradual fall-off to Style Gain, instead of totally cutting it off as soon as you go past that threshold.

To look at the DMC games as reference...
"Strafing-fire" ranged weapon skills would usually have a low base Style point value, but also allow multiple "full Style Gain" Hits with the gunshots. "Harsh repetition debts" are also used to disincentivize spamming them, because you would end up sustaining the repetition penalty of that Skill Component for even longer.
Their main purpose in DMC is to keep your Style Rank gauge "afloat" at its current level, as you get closer to an enemy to use other attacks.

Though DMC's design is about mixing melee + ranged together, whilst POE2 allows a character to go all-in on ranged combat (Spells, Bows, Crossbows).

So style point values can be adjusted with POE2's prefered way of doing things in mind.

With regards to things like Additional Projectiles, or Forking/Splitting/Piercing/Chaining...
The simplest idea is that those will essentially "front-load" the Style Gain from the projectile Hits since you're dealing more Hits within a shorter time frame.
The repetition penalties will cause Style Gain for the projectile "Skill Component" to be cut off or reduced sooner, and it proportionally takes longer before its repetition penalty period is finished.

Totems are officially considered NOT Minions, for reference.

First we'll look at "Meta" Totem skills - e.g. Ancestral Warrior Totem, Spell Totem, and Mortar Cannon.
These cannot do anything on their own; you must socket other Skills into these, for them to use.
The Skills socketed into these Meta Totem skilsls do NOT contribute to your Style Rank buildup.
They CAN nonetheless build up style points on Monsters that they damage, and the repetition penalties apply as usual.

As for the other Totems skills...
I say they should have low base style point values.
The usage of gradual style gain falloff may work for this, for added measure.

Using one TYPE of Totem would keep your Style Rank gauge "afloat" in its current Rank, whether by slowing the gauge's descent, or keeping it about "level".
Using multiple different types of totems could help you reach the next rank, provided they land a good amount of Hits on living targets.

Crossbow Skills can each more easily find an appropriate amount of "full Style Gain" hits allowed, based on their base clip sizes.

The feel for the Style Gain of Crossbow Ammo skills would no doubt need to be balanced around Last Lament, since that Unique Crossbow can bypass Reloading.
To note a funny coincidence, all ranged weapons in DMC do not require reloading.

Though in theory, it should be convenient to test, given that Style Gain is NOT affected by exact damage dealt.

Shotgun-fire/"Merging" Crossbow Shots
Shotgun-fire skills such as Fragmentation Rounds or Permafrost Rounds may allow a few 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.
Increased Style Gain would be provided based on how many of the individual fragments in the shotgun blast hit a valid target.

Shotgun-fire Crossbow Skills have the "Merging" tag, where if multiple fragments from a shotgun-fire bolt hit the same target at the same time, they're "merged" together to deal one Hit with combined damage.
The Style gain should be increased accordingly, to avoid a net loss in Style that would come from TECHNICALLY landing fewer Hits.

Curses
Successfully landing Curses on enemies won’t provide Style gain, but special Skill components that rely on Curses can gain Style and have repetition penalties as per usual.
e.g. "Hexblast", "Doedre’s Undoing", "Hayoxi’s Fulmination", "Impending Doom.

Marks
Applying a Mark by itself does not provide Style Gain, but special Skill components related to Marks can gain Style and have repetition penalties as per usual.
e.g. the blood explosion from activating Bloodhound’s Mark, the Shockwave from activating an applied Mark by using Wolf form’s Cross Slash.

I think Skills that have Stages do NOT necessarily need to provide more Style Gain directly based on the number of Stages.

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.

Most of the Herald skills have some component that does its thing when the Herald's on-kill conditions are met (the only Herald that doesn’t have a proper "Skill Component" is Herald of Plague; it just propagates Poison from a killed enemy to nearby enemies).

Each Herald component has its own repetition penalty to keep each one in check.

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 gradual fall-off.

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.

These particular Skills build up ammo passively, and using the Skills fires all the shots.
In both cases, it’d be most practical to apply a number of full Style Gain Hits to the impacts, like with most other projectile Skills.

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.
This one would need "gradual style falloff", definitely.

Skills triggered by Cast on X Skills CAN build up Style Points on enemies, BUT cannot contribute to building up your Style Rank.
The repetition penalties of the socketed Skills are engaged as well.

Skills triggered by Invocations CAN build up Style Points on enemies, BUT cannot contribute to building up your Style Rank.
The repetition penalties of the socketed Skills are engaged as well.

"Ritual Cadence" is interesting because it spreads out the usages of the Invocation's triggered Skills over a long period of time.
Because of the "considered consecutive time period" on some Skill Components - as part of their repetition penalty systems, you WOULD need to weave your manually used Skills in between the Hits landed by those triggered Skills, in order to maximize the Style Gain you're getting out of a "Ritual Cadence" Invocation.

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.

If these Skill Components are spawned from Skills triggered/used by Meta skills, they DO gain Style for the purpose of building it up on enemies, but they don't contribute towards your Style Rank gauge, and they have repetition penalties as usual.

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 this is where the "full Style gain Hits" + "gradual style fall-off" tools would work well.

Those repetition penalty tools would work for Ice Fragments as well. The repetition penalty would be shared across all instances of Ice Fragments.

Ice Crystal Shatterings share a global repetition penalty, but we should also consider that they need to have enough damage dealt in order to shatter them, or using Freeze-consuming Skills in order to shatter them instantly + deal more Damage, and their Life can be adjusted.
Ice Crystal Shatterings would need some additional thought.

Minion Command Skills would grant Style + provide Style Rank buildup, no question.

Skills that Minions use themselves without your manual input can build up Style Points on enemies, but cannot contribute to your Style Rank buildup.
They would also have repetition penalties as usual, probably with no repetition debt since those particular components are out of your control.

The special Djinn minions from the "Disciple of Varashta" ascendancy are a standout example, since they don’t roam the field, and have no auto-attacks.

These are different from the Aftershocks that travel along Molten Fissures.
These "standard Aftershocks" function as "repeats" of the Hits that trigger said Aftershocks.

Simplest first idea is to have the Aftershock be considered an additional Hit from the attack that caused it.
So it would have the style point value of the Attack that caused the aftershock, though this does also mean that repetition penalties of the Skill Component may also nullify/reduce the Aftershock's style gain.

This threshold would be a percentage of the Max Life of a given target.
Different Monster Rarities may use different percentages.
Examples:
> Normal = 10% or 5%; Magic = 4%; Rare = 2%; Unique = 1%

If the amount of damage dealt to a given target via a Hit falls below the threshold, then the landed Hit of the skill component gains no Style at all.
No Style Point buildup on the monster, no buildup to your Style Rank gauge, and the repetition penalty for that skill component is not contributed to.
The damage is checked against the target's threshold after it's been mitigated by the target's defenses (Evasion included).
Overkill damage from the Hit counts towards overcoming the threshold - e.g. using high-damage Hits to kill Monsters with very low Life.

With regards to DOT, it checks against the final "per-second damage" value dealt to a Monster.
The threshold that DOT is checked against may be half that of the above one, which focuses on Hits.

This works to cover the following edge cases:
> Equipping elemental/chaos spells with Brutality supports, so they deal no non-phys damage.
> Leaning into low Accuracy so that all your Hits are Evaded while still providing style points - e.g. keeping your DEX low and using projectiles because of the distance-based accuracy penalty.
> Leaning VERY heavily into damage types that the monsters you're fighting are resistant to.

Culling Strike is also covered. It technically does not deal damage, and thus you never gain style from Culling a target.

"

www.poe2wiki.net/wiki/Culling_strike#Mechanics wrote:

The effect of culling strike is not considered dealing damage to the target, and will never count towards overkill damage.
A hit does not need to deal damage to cull.

It can also address the edge case you bring up later: the "Your Hits can only Kill Frozen Enemies" modifier from the "Southbound" Unique gloves from POE1, and any other modifier like this.
Given a monster with Life at 1, as long as it's not Frozen, all the Hits landed on it will never take its Life below 1.
Damage dealt is apparently not changed; it's just that the actual HP subtracted from the target is adjusted so that the target's Life never goes below 1.

To prevent cheesing of style rank buildup + style point buildup on enemies in this specific case, the Hits that are subtracting little to no Life from the target are considered as falling below the threshold.
Sorta switching focus away from "damage dealt" and onto "Life subtracted" by those Hits, whilst you have such a modifier active on your character.

DOT is unaffected by this modifier, but using a DOT skill component on a Monster with only 1 Life will provide a negligible amount of style points.

Every "species" of Monster has a "Style Point Total Maximum".
It's used to clamp down your built up "style point sum" on a Monster, in case it exceeds this "maximum", for calculation of the quantities of style points received on kill.
It may be "increased" in a manner proportional to Area Level + the number of Monster Modifiers present on the Monster.
Other than that, there's no way to directly rig these values.

This is to deal with the edge case of deliberately prolonging fights, especially against Monsters that have Energy Shield and/or Life Regen.

The process for caculating the style points you to give a player upon a Monster being killed would be:

After all those steps are done, the final quantities of style points from that killed Monster are provided.
I'll later go into specifics on how they're provided; all I'll say here is I'm trying something new in place of the "non-tradeable currencies" bit

A Monster that gets revived repeatedly can potentially be exploited to gain a lot of style points from repeated kills.
My idea to solve this is to track the specific method that was used to revive a given Monster, and decide whether to nullify, mitigate, or do nothing to the ability to build up style points on this Monster + building up your own Style Rank gauge.

Example #1
Vile Hags and Liches in Act 1 + 2 can revive monsters repeatedly; that particular revival method will cut off all style point + style rank buildup.

Example #2
The "Ogham's Legacy" Unique Strongbox, which spawns a Rare Monster and revives it from death a set number of times, giving it a new modifier with each revive.
The repeated revives is the point, so the style point + style rank buildup for this Monster may be mitigated, or left unchanged.
The additional Rare Monster mods raise the hard cap on style points reaped from the Monster on Kill.
Those Mods can also give the Monster more ways to raise its style point limit, thus you may have to work harder to catch up with said limit.

Monsters that are repeatedly spawned during a boss fight, to serve as "adds", will have style point buildup on them completely cut off, so that they don't give you style points on kill.

Nonetheless, you can build up your Style Rank gauge using these adds.

On the matter of getting your Skill/Attack/Cast Speed so high as to execute the aforementioned 9 different spells (without Brutality supports), we'll suppose that:
- the components of these Spells are successfully landing all their Hits on valid targets, or spending all of their active times dealing DOT to valid targets, so there's overlapping Hits on the same Monsters.
- the components of these Spells are doing just enough damage to overcome each target's style gain minimum damage threshold.
- the components of these Spells are doing low enough damage to leave all damaged targets alive after the 9th spell has landed its Hits.

Depending on how the "style gain minimum damage threshold" is set for each Monster Rarity, satisfying that last condition may become difficult, perhaps even impossible. If all your Spells must deal enough damage so their components can all gain style, the overlapping hits on Monsters from these different skill components will kill Monsters "early", before you can cast a spell near the end of your "cycling".

Putting that aside, this also increases your risk of racing too far ahead of the "style point limits" of the Monsters you're fighting, especially if some of those Monsters cannot raise their style point limits all that fast.
E.g. their action speeds are lower (whether inherently or via being Slowed) than yours.
Thus, the actual amounts of style points you receive on Kill gets reduced; in some cases, the quantities of style points obtained from a Monster would go down to zero.

The maximum quantities of the style points you can get from Monsters on kill now depends on the "species" of those Monsters.
If you're fighting small monsters with very basic Skills, you likely won't obtain a massive amount of style points from that encounter.

Monsters in POE1+2 are generally aggressive, so during the period between all 9 spells being fired, and their components actually hitting targets, you're likely to get hit multiple times by monsters, taking chunks out of your Style Rank gauge and probably even knocking it down a rank or two, so when your Hits land, you're building up points of Ranks that are lower than you probably want.

Depending on the base style point values of the components of those 9 elemental spells, one sub-second cycling of said spells may not get your Style Rank super high.
At the very least, you probably won't jump from E-rank all the way to SSS-rank in under a second.

The repetition penalties on those components are mitigating/nullifying their style gain, and depending on each component's parameters, you would not get as much style from another "sub-second cycling" of those same nine spells. Some specific components may even get their repetition penalties prolonged, and will thus require more time to fully "relax". It depends on the specific parameters of each component.
You do still have the 11th skill (and maybe dodge roll if you weren't spamming it too much to Avoid stuff), but in that current moment, your options for style gain are very limited.
If you've fully exhausted everything in your kit that can gain style, now you have to wait for their repetition penalties to relax enough.
The constant time decay on your Style Rank gauge will pull you down a Rank (maybe two) as you focus on avoiding damage which would take your Rank down further.

The point is, gaming the system is made difficult by all these multiple different factors working together.
Another thing due to said different factors is: when looking back on any given combat encounter, there will likely be at least one way you could've obtained additional style points and/or a larger proportion of high-rank points (SSS especially). If so, the assumption that you got the "maximum reward" out of that fight would thus be false.

Character #1 is fully ignoring the feature, so we can assume that character #1 is spamming one Skill repeatedly; the repetition penalties of that Skill's components will thus be bumped into very often, or prolonged for a very long time. The "Your Hits can only killed Frozen enemies" modifier disables style gain on Hits on "almost dead" Monsters, so after Character #1 has gotten Monsters to 1 Life, they cannot build up any more style points on those Monsters.
Looking at all the monsters Character #1 had fought, all the points Character #1 has built up on those Monsters would be low-rank (e.g. lot of E-rank points, maybe some D-rank points), plus the total quantities of style points built up on them would not be very high.

Now character #2 comes along and faces a bunch of Monsters that each have 1 Life.
Character #2 has not yet built up any of their own style points on these Monsters.
Given the "style gain minimum damage threshold", if character #2 wants to build up style points + their own Style Rank, they have no choice but to actually damage these Monsters and thus kill them.

The "sub-second cycling of 9 elemental spells + culling" will kill enemies very early, so the skill components from the later spells in the cycling will have no targets to damage.
Character #2 doesn't even get to Cull anything.

So at the end of this...
The style points that character #2 gets from said killed monsters will be low in quantity (some low-rank, some mid-rank), and character #2 has not built up their Style Rank gauge all that high.
And the style points that character #1 gets from those killed monsters are all low-Rank, since character #1 made no effort to build up their own Style Rank.

Couch Co-op is a special cause, because the two characters are on the same account + same League.
Both those characters pull from the same Stash + pool of non-tradeable currencies (e.g. Gold).
Most practical option to solve this is, for both characters in the same couch co-op session, cut in half the style points gained from killing Monsters.

Path #1 (the default path)
- "Speedrunning"
- Primary focus is stats and numbers, via equipment + passive tree
- Cranking your damage numbers extremely high so as to finish fights/content as quickly as possible
- This allows for doing repeat content runs at a faster rate, which increases one's reward yield indirectly
- After your reach a point where there's no real reason to increase your damage further, drop rarity/quantity boosting modifiers are used

Path #2 (via my feature)
- More of a "Scoring System" approach
- Focuses on "action game" combat prowess + manual execution
- Character damage numbers are adjusted and tweaked, so as to engage more deeply with the system.
- The things that happen during combat add up to affect the style points obtained from fights via this feature, in terms of quantity + rank spread.
- The points obtained via this feature are exchanged for loot/drops, via the "Style Cultivator" item class

To use a Style Cultivator, you bind it to your character.
This could be done via a dedicated inventory slot, similar to Grafts from POE1 3.27 or the Blood Crucible from POE1 3.16.

You may bind at most one Style Cultivator to your character.
When you bind a Style Cultivator to yourself, your Style Rank guage is automatically set to zero + the repetition penalties on your Skills are fully relaxed.
This provides a clean start to your style gaining for the Cultivator.

Also this does mean that even when you have no Style Cultivator on your character, your Style Rank gauge is visible at all times, so you can get a feel for how well you're doing generally, with regards to style rank buildup.

Dying while a Style Cultivator is bound to you will...
I have two ideas:
1. The active Style Cultivator is destroyed and you have to bind a new one to yourself.
2. The active Style Cultivator stay intact, and its progress is not set back or wiped in any way.

Or since the Style Cultivator is an item class, some will use #1 and others will use #2?
#2 is better suited for Cultivators with a large required number of Monster kills; #1 is better suited for Cultivators that are narrower in scope - e.g. completing a boss fight.

You have the option to destroy the current Cultivator, if you want to stop using it and bind a new one to your character.

A Style Cultivator is filled with the style points that are reaped from Monsters on kill.
The completion requirement is X Non-Unique Monster kills, akin to POE1's Incubators.
A Style Cultivator has a "minimum area level".
- Monsters that fall below this minimum level do not count towards the required number of kills.
- Style points reaped from monsters in an Area whose level is below this minimum will not be fed into the Style Cultivator.

The emphasis on "Non-Unique" Monsters up there, is mainly because I'm considering the idea of specific Style Cultivators that focus on Unique Monsters; more on that later.

The Rewards

When a Style Cultivator's required amount of Monster kills is reached, it still stays on you, but can be "opened".
It certainly can no longer be "destroyed" after it reaches this point.
Opening it shows a Shop Interface, showing an assortment of purchaseable items divded into tabs.

To purchase items from this assortment, you spend the style points that you built up on this completed Style Cultivator.
The tabs of this Shop interface are each labelled with a Style Rank; to purchase items in a given "Style Rank" tab, you must use style points of the matching rank.
A Style Cultivator will not necessarily show all ranks; some rank tabs may be omitted, if the Cultivator has no rewards that would belong to those ranks.

To list a few examples of what a Style Cultivator can offer, it can offer equipment, currencies, augments, and Uncut Gems.
The Monsters killed and information about them could be used to influence the rewards the Cultivator provides, as one idea.

I had mentioned the idea of having style rank groups "correspond" with the different Rarities, but I'll scrap that idea because it's too restrictive for how a Style Cultivator may want to arrange its rewards - e.g. spreading a bunch of Unique equipment across the rank tabs based on Item Level.

It could also just show everything on one grid, and the specific style rank for each item is shown with special corner art.
Though I think dividing it into tabs makes it more obvious what's available to you, especially for these following parts of the shop interface:
- The style points of a given rank may be converted downwards to a lower rank, with the appropriate conversion rates; upward conversion cannot be done.
- All style points can be converted to Gold, with the appropriate conversion rates.

After you're officially done "purchasing" rewards from a completed Style Cultivator, the remaining style points you didn't spend are converted to Gold.

Different Types of Cultivators

Akin to the various types of Incubators in POE1, themed around specific item classes + Leagues, there can also be different kinds of Style Cultivators, focusing on different branches of side content.

A Style Cultivator themed around a specific branch of side content will scope its "kill X monsters" requirement - and what style points can be fed into it - to focus exclusively on Monsters from that branch of side content.
So you still have to actually play the side content, if you want rewards from it.

E.g. a "Breach" Style Cultivator focuses exclusively on tracking kills + absorbing style points of Monsters from Breach encounters, and provides Breach rewards.

There could also be another type of Style Cultivator focusing on boss fights and Uniques - generic ones requiring you to just kill a Unique (or two, in the case of dual bosses), or complete a boss fight; and ones focusing around specific Pinnacle bosses/encounters.

This is to take advantage of my idea for allowing Uniques, especially those that function like proper boss fights, to divide up the style points you build up on them into "rank-marked batches", using "phase changes" and any other "happens only once" actions.
This gives such a Style Cultivator multiple batches of rewards to purchase from, but how many rewards are actually offered in each batch may be reduced, to balance that out.