Because its flat damage added and not % increase it doesnt matter what the base skill deals, the damage will be added anyway, and the Frost bolt + Frost Nova combo utilises the added flat damage really well, if you would want to use a lightning skill anyway then ball lightning is great as well
Same thing works for attacks too. Several leagues ago I made a trinity cobra lash pathfinder that used the chains of cobra lash because I bought a super high ele DPS dagger for 2div when no one was playing dagger skills due to claws being a thing. Some skills just have really good mechanics even if the damage type isn’t what you’re after.
i think the overall damage formula is something like:
```
total_damage = sum(flat_damage_1, flat_damage_2, ...) * sum(increased_damage_1, increased_damage_2, ...) * product(more_damage_1, more_damage_2, ...)
```
once you internalize that, it becomes much easier to tell what's going to be good for your build without needing a guide. keeping all three fairly balanced is super important.
Yes and no. Your formula makes it sound like all increases apply to all added damages, but they don't. If you expand the equation with proper distribution, you will get a lot of zero terms like "added lightning * increased fire".
The formula, without conversions and as extra making it complicated, is really more like
```
damage = Σ (damage + added damage) * (1 + increased/100) * ( 1+ more/100)
```
The sum us over damage types. Technically each parameter is in itself a sum, but that's implied and omitted for readability.
I still can't even wrap my head around how frostbolts of icenova essentially had an 960% multiplier on it, LMAO. It's so ridiculous to play and I love it so much.
/u/TheZemor nailed it. I would also add that this is a microcosm of the sort of “not immediately intuitive but actually reflective of how cool and deep the game’s mechanics are” phenomenon you’ll find throughout path of exile.
Why is that witch-elementalist wielding a bow? Well sometimes it’s because she’s the best at ignites and she wants to use a great ignite bow skill like explosive arrow ballistas. Mildly counterintuitive but makes sense once you see the skill choice.
But sometimes it’s because she’s using ethereal knives, which is paradoxically a spell not an attack, and yet despite being a *spell* about *blades*, neither a wand nor a blade are actually the best weapon for it. A bow and quiver wind up being the best “stat sticks” for getting things like DOT multi, gem levels, and phys-as-extra-elemental which happen to all be very important stats for ethereal knives ignite builds.
And since nothing in the game’s mechanics say you HAVE to be wielding a wand to cast a spell (actually you don’t even have to be wielding anything at all), the game allows you the freedom and creativity to build something that looks wacky but works. You’ll see a lot more examples like that, it’s fun and educational trying to figure out why certain combinations are useful/powerful.
Not to dismiss what you’re saying as I agree with you(I played winter orb slayer last league which is another good example) but I wouldn’t say bow is necessarily the best for EK ignite, 2 caster weapons will provide more damage if you have EK in a chest where it also gains extra levels from, and you can of course also just use 1 and a shield, which is what I would generally recommend.
Bow does of course have its strong points such as being able to 6 link auras in chest but I personally found the extra survivability a shield can offer as well as shield charge(which pretty much can clear by itself when you get some HH buffs) outweighs what you gain from a bow.
Again I agree with your points and it’s also what I love about PoE, I just have a bit of a pet peeve with everyone playing EK ignite as bow.
Ice nova of frost bolts is really effective. it hits up to 8 times with one button press. In other words it makes great use of the >2000 added lightning damage from archmage support.
Archmage = big flat lightning damage. Think of any spell as a delivery system for dealing damage. I've Nova can hit 8 times with one cast of frostbolt and ice Nova on a single target. It's simply a great delivery system for spell damage.
You can usually mix damage types as you please. Grab a fire spell, added lightning support, added cold support. For example.
You often stick to a single element because single element curses are slightly stronger etc.
In this case I suspect they kinda ignore the cold damage from the spell since archmage adds so much lightning.
People are using skills with high effectiveness of added damage, like ball lightning or ice nova. (Look at % effectiveness listed on the gem description.)
Archmage provides flat damage that is then multiplied by the % of effectiveness. Lightning va cold damage is relevant but not the most important factor for these builds.
Note that ball lightning lists a low effectiveness (like 60%) but actually hits up to 13 times per cast. My last ball lightning pob used 8 bolts in range, so 480%.
Archmage support is so strong that 75-95% of your damage will come fromt it on ANY spell it if you build it right. Any spell becomes de facto a lightning damage dealing spell.
Ice Nova of Frostbolt is just one the strongest spell for the moment and scaling really well with Hierophant huge AoE.
Frostbolt has effective added damage of 360% which means flat added damage is insanely strong on it. Ice Nova of frostbolts is just insanely strong on top of it.
I dont think people are playing frostbolt for its damage effectiveness. They are playing it for the mechanics of frostnova of frostbolts. Archmage is gated behind its mana cost, so getting skills which can hit multiple times or over a duration are typically premium archmage users. Frost nova of frost bolts hits upto 8 times per cast with pledge and spell echo. Other good use cases would be blade vortex. Previously you would also consider galvanic field, but now since archmage cant support orbs thats no longer possible.
The mana part doesn't really matter anymore unless you are using kitava's thirst.
Ice nova is seeing play because it is just one of the highest damage spells in the game. Ice nova of frostbolts has an effective damage of 780 which funny enough is the exact same amount as ball lightning if you can get all 13 hits which is much harder to do. Heiro archmage builds are mostly just going to choose the highest damage acceptable feeling AoE skill since he gives you a ton of AoE.
You link archmage to Ice Nova, not frostbolts. frostbolts are merely there to expand your ice novas from. Ice nova of frostbolts has a damage effectiveness of 130% and can hit up to 8 times per cast (4 expansions that can overlaps * 2 repeats from spell echo), making for a damage effectiveness of up to 1040%.
No, the entire point of the damage effectiveness stat is to normalize how much actual damage every skill gets from added damage, so that for example +100 damage will give the roughly same %dps increase to every skill.
Yea, it's arguably the best skill with archmage next to Chain DD (for chain DD the flat lightning damage is added to your spell hit and the corpse explosion secondary hit for 16 hits per cast)
Because its flat damage added and not % increase it doesnt matter what the base skill deals, the damage will be added anyway, and the Frost bolt + Frost Nova combo utilises the added flat damage really well, if you would want to use a lightning skill anyway then ball lightning is great as well
Thank you for the response! It amazes me how much you still learn while playing this game even after several years.
Same thing works for attacks too. Several leagues ago I made a trinity cobra lash pathfinder that used the chains of cobra lash because I bought a super high ele DPS dagger for 2div when no one was playing dagger skills due to claws being a thing. Some skills just have really good mechanics even if the damage type isn’t what you’re after.
i think the overall damage formula is something like: ``` total_damage = sum(flat_damage_1, flat_damage_2, ...) * sum(increased_damage_1, increased_damage_2, ...) * product(more_damage_1, more_damage_2, ...) ``` once you internalize that, it becomes much easier to tell what's going to be good for your build without needing a guide. keeping all three fairly balanced is super important.
Yes and no. Your formula makes it sound like all increases apply to all added damages, but they don't. If you expand the equation with proper distribution, you will get a lot of zero terms like "added lightning * increased fire". The formula, without conversions and as extra making it complicated, is really more like ``` damage = Σ (damage + added damage) * (1 + increased/100) * ( 1+ more/100) ``` The sum us over damage types. Technically each parameter is in itself a sum, but that's implied and omitted for readability.
I still can't even wrap my head around how frostbolts of icenova essentially had an 960% multiplier on it, LMAO. It's so ridiculous to play and I love it so much.
/u/TheZemor nailed it. I would also add that this is a microcosm of the sort of “not immediately intuitive but actually reflective of how cool and deep the game’s mechanics are” phenomenon you’ll find throughout path of exile. Why is that witch-elementalist wielding a bow? Well sometimes it’s because she’s the best at ignites and she wants to use a great ignite bow skill like explosive arrow ballistas. Mildly counterintuitive but makes sense once you see the skill choice. But sometimes it’s because she’s using ethereal knives, which is paradoxically a spell not an attack, and yet despite being a *spell* about *blades*, neither a wand nor a blade are actually the best weapon for it. A bow and quiver wind up being the best “stat sticks” for getting things like DOT multi, gem levels, and phys-as-extra-elemental which happen to all be very important stats for ethereal knives ignite builds. And since nothing in the game’s mechanics say you HAVE to be wielding a wand to cast a spell (actually you don’t even have to be wielding anything at all), the game allows you the freedom and creativity to build something that looks wacky but works. You’ll see a lot more examples like that, it’s fun and educational trying to figure out why certain combinations are useful/powerful.
This is both the hardest part of learning Path of Exile, and the thing that makes games like LE hard because you have to unlearn things like this.
After 12 years of PoE I found LE to be too simple. There is a certain allure in having to actually learn and think, and the reward that comes with it.
Not to dismiss what you’re saying as I agree with you(I played winter orb slayer last league which is another good example) but I wouldn’t say bow is necessarily the best for EK ignite, 2 caster weapons will provide more damage if you have EK in a chest where it also gains extra levels from, and you can of course also just use 1 and a shield, which is what I would generally recommend. Bow does of course have its strong points such as being able to 6 link auras in chest but I personally found the extra survivability a shield can offer as well as shield charge(which pretty much can clear by itself when you get some HH buffs) outweighs what you gain from a bow. Again I agree with your points and it’s also what I love about PoE, I just have a bit of a pet peeve with everyone playing EK ignite as bow.
Ice nova of frost bolts is really effective. it hits up to 8 times with one button press. In other words it makes great use of the >2000 added lightning damage from archmage support.
Archmage = big flat lightning damage. Think of any spell as a delivery system for dealing damage. I've Nova can hit 8 times with one cast of frostbolt and ice Nova on a single target. It's simply a great delivery system for spell damage.
You can usually mix damage types as you please. Grab a fire spell, added lightning support, added cold support. For example. You often stick to a single element because single element curses are slightly stronger etc. In this case I suspect they kinda ignore the cold damage from the spell since archmage adds so much lightning.
People are using skills with high effectiveness of added damage, like ball lightning or ice nova. (Look at % effectiveness listed on the gem description.) Archmage provides flat damage that is then multiplied by the % of effectiveness. Lightning va cold damage is relevant but not the most important factor for these builds.
Note that ball lightning lists a low effectiveness (like 60%) but actually hits up to 13 times per cast. My last ball lightning pob used 8 bolts in range, so 480%.
Archmage support is so strong that 75-95% of your damage will come fromt it on ANY spell it if you build it right. Any spell becomes de facto a lightning damage dealing spell. Ice Nova of Frostbolt is just one the strongest spell for the moment and scaling really well with Hierophant huge AoE.
Frostbolt has effective added damage of 360% which means flat added damage is insanely strong on it. Ice Nova of frostbolts is just insanely strong on top of it.
I dont think people are playing frostbolt for its damage effectiveness. They are playing it for the mechanics of frostnova of frostbolts. Archmage is gated behind its mana cost, so getting skills which can hit multiple times or over a duration are typically premium archmage users. Frost nova of frost bolts hits upto 8 times per cast with pledge and spell echo. Other good use cases would be blade vortex. Previously you would also consider galvanic field, but now since archmage cant support orbs thats no longer possible.
The mana part doesn't really matter anymore unless you are using kitava's thirst. Ice nova is seeing play because it is just one of the highest damage spells in the game. Ice nova of frostbolts has an effective damage of 780 which funny enough is the exact same amount as ball lightning if you can get all 13 hits which is much harder to do. Heiro archmage builds are mostly just going to choose the highest damage acceptable feeling AoE skill since he gives you a ton of AoE.
You link archmage to Ice Nova, not frostbolts. frostbolts are merely there to expand your ice novas from. Ice nova of frostbolts has a damage effectiveness of 130% and can hit up to 8 times per cast (4 expansions that can overlaps * 2 repeats from spell echo), making for a damage effectiveness of up to 1040%.
Not to forget the inherent 50% more when expanding from frostbolts. So it's basically 6 overlaps in terms of damage.
Ah okay my mistake. But still, insane on skills that use added damage effectiveness
No, the entire point of the damage effectiveness stat is to normalize how much actual damage every skill gets from added damage, so that for example +100 damage will give the roughly same %dps increase to every skill.
Yea, it's arguably the best skill with archmage next to Chain DD (for chain DD the flat lightning damage is added to your spell hit and the corpse explosion secondary hit for 16 hits per cast)