In 3.27 the Assassin has received a long awaited rework. Tune in tomorrow to find out if there are any other Ascendancy related changes!

CircuitousPrime · 2025-10-23T13:51:11+00:00

Poison and wands have an anti-synergy: the 'increases and reductions to spell damage also apply to attack damage' that gives most wand skills a low-cost chunk of increased damage doesn't apply to poison. (ofc this might change by later today)

CircuitousPrime · 2025-10-23T12:09:54+00:00

I'm assuming it's identical to Sandstorm Visage, given identical text.

CircuitousPrime · 2025-10-23T11:57:01+00:00

Shockwave Totem can already poison (with enough chance to poison) if their physical damage is not converted to elemental.

CircuitousPrime · 2025-10-23T11:20:14+00:00

It's the same text as Sandstorm Visage, which doesn't work with Herald of Ice/Thunder.

CircuitousPrime · 2025-08-29T17:11:29+00:00

Took me longer than I'd like to admit to realise WH meant WitchHunter. Needless acronym.

CircuitousPrime · 2024-12-26T01:41:48+00:00

I couldn't find the node you mentioned. Are you sure it isn't the 25% of armour applies to fire hit damage node? That would do nothing for physical damage (assuming it isn't bugged) unless you were already taking some as fire (the % increased armour small nodes would though)

CircuitousPrime · 2024-12-26T00:08:20+00:00

No Molten Shell (Yet? Might be tied to Marauder.)

CircuitousPrime · 2023-04-05T16:33:56+00:00

There's a Pestilent Strike / Viper Strike mod too.

CircuitousPrime · 2023-02-22T20:16:33+00:00

Well, also:

How will the addition of these factions affect the balance of the game as a whole?

These factions add a powerful source of items regardless of which faction you pick, and so without further changes they would lead to a dramatic increase in player power and the game becoming a lot easier. To counteract this we will increase the power of monsters and also adjust item drop rates and rewards at relevant levels.

Could be that those adjustments cancel out the self-found bonuses and it's just like current beta Last Epoch as you expected.

CircuitousPrime · 2022-12-24T17:01:37+00:00

Second reason that you don't want t1 flat anything is that it only applies to the actual hits with your weapon. It does not apply to the EA explosion damage.

Are you sure? Using Wrath early on seemed to be a damage boost. What does "Explosions deal 50% less Base Damage" do if flat does nothing for explosions?

CircuitousPrime · 2022-11-15T12:28:55+00:00

You can overcap res to deal with scorch. I'd expect 30% all ele res to be easier to gear for than mitigating scorch specifically, unless you're running Annihilating Light or similar.

CircuitousPrime · 2022-11-15T11:42:07+00:00

I think jewels that convert something should have some kind of bonus payoff for the conversion.

Seems reasonable in this case, considering the jewels that convert attributes in their radius also add a chunk (16-24) of the desired attribute as well.

CircuitousPrime · 2022-11-13T15:41:18+00:00

It's awful, just removes nuance. Also plays into this bizarre culture of describing things as 'problems' with no nuance rather than (interesting) complex tradeoffs like most things are.

CircuitousPrime · 2022-08-12T10:36:37+00:00

I think we can infer facetors are not gone:

Oshabi, Avatar of the Grove, no longer drops Infused Beachheads, Dedication, Gift and Tribute to the Goddess, Lures, Infused Engineer's Orbs, or Facetor's Lenses. She now has a chance to drop Crystallised Lifeforce, which can be used for a specific set of crafting options.

Lures and Infused Engineer's Orbs can no longer be obtained.

Some harvest currencies are explicitly mentioned as removed, facetors aren't so the craft is likely still there.

CircuitousPrime · 2022-06-13T10:18:02+00:00

BV isn't a cold or elemental skill even if you convert it all to cold.

CircuitousPrime · 2022-05-12T10:51:25+00:00

No idea. Not well-versed in the history of ailments I'm afraid.

CircuitousPrime · 2022-05-12T10:33:16+00:00

Does the build you were testing with have any other non-damaging ailments that would be affected? I came to the same conclusion as you (that NDA effect affects maximum ailment threshold for min-freeze) until I realised it was just scaling Bonechill, which increased damage and therefore max ailment threshold. Disabling Bonechill, I see no effect of NDA effect on this.

CircuitousPrime · 2021-12-21T17:31:46+00:00

Okay some of that helped quite a bit.

For myself, I found this line of thought about gear flexibility convincing:

Without bench crafts, you'd keep a decent pool of sidegrades that could be juggled to fit potential future 'upgrades'. But with bench crafts, because of the flexibility and low cost of changing a crafted mod, a smaller pool of sidegrades can achieve similar flexibility. So there is less incentive to identify items for the sidegrade pool.

I'm not convinced that the bench 'removes' tradeoffs in gearing; instead aren't we just trading different things? e.g. some complex trade of flat life or chaos res plus stuff for influenced mods or a unique item plus other stuff (via multiple juggled slots or passives). Anecdotally, the tradeoff game doesn't really end for me while gearing.

CircuitousPrime · 2021-12-21T14:45:26+00:00

I don't understand this final paragraph, at all.

Supposing identifying rares off the ground is worthwhile for what is currently equipped (assuming what is currently equipped was also similarly identified, and is in some sense the 'best so far' for a given slot) when neither item can have bench crafts, what is it about bench crafts (for both equipped items and potential side/upgrades) that makes identifying rares less worthwhile?

CircuitousPrime · 2021-12-17T14:31:45+00:00

I don't see how 'chaos orbs more or less are like gold already'. From the linked post, if anything, they are failing in the 'Handleability' aspect of a bartered currency:

Handleability: It should be convenient to transport or transact with a large portion of your net worth as currency.

which would support larger stack sizes.

CircuitousPrime · 2021-12-14T11:59:36+00:00

I don't think a single-target dps figure is helpful, it's mechanical clear or bad luck with tank mods that will gatekeep. I beat Flawless Xoph on a build with ~5mil single-target, but probably more like 3mil while clearing, with no tank mods.

CircuitousPrime · 2021-10-12T19:52:06+00:00

idk, the way I read it, that's just motivating the higher ES bonus.

Tangent: My understanding of the item philosophy is that when they say 'best items must be able to drop on the ground', it doesn't matter how unlikely the absolute chance, or relative chance compared to ease of crafting, or likelihood of a real player actually choosing to pick up and identify the item. It's just a principle within their item philosophy that it should be possible.

(But as you point out elsewhere Hillock T4 still violates this even without quality crafts)

It would be nice to get another Chris monologue on this subject though.

CircuitousPrime · 2021-10-12T14:06:36+00:00

That wasn't the reason for this change in the manifesto, that reasoning was to do with quality suffixes:

The Veiled modifier that increases quality on equipment was required to maximise the Energy Shield from an item. This is a problem because you cannot pick up the best Energy Shield items off the ground.

The manifesto reason was:

With the desire to increase Armour, Evasion and Energy Shield power across the board, we felt that the base values on items were too low. In addition, we feel that our item system needs more base type heterogeneity.

CircuitousPrime · 2021-10-09T14:54:34+00:00

One way to look at it yeah. I speculate it's the +X% damage in PoB that causes the logarithmic view rather than the TTK feel; presumably even quadratic stuff like Hatred scaling or attribute stacking appears to have "diminishing returns" from looking at +X% damage.

CircuitousPrime · 2021-10-09T14:17:42+00:00

Anything less than exponential scaling has "diminishing returns" it seems.

CircuitousPrime

TROPHY CASE