In the course of the rebalancing on the occasion of the upcoming beta for the Path of Exile expansion The Fall of Oriath, developer Grinding Gear Games has now taken on the Damage over Time, i.e. damage over time effects.
The expansion, which is due to be released this summer, changes almost the entire game by converting 5 to 10 acts. That's why GGG uses this opportunity for long overdue balance changes.
Due to the way in which damage was previously applied, Damage over Time (DoTs) effects benefited twice from damage modifications.
For example: if a hit left fire damage and consequently the Ignite DoT on the target. Then all modifications such as + X% damage were applied to the fire damage and they worked again on the Ignite effect, which produced a fire damage DoT. Up to now, this has been referred to by the term “double dipping”, ie double effect. The same applied to poison and bleeding effects.
So far, the best character builds in Path of Exile were those who made use of this effect. The problem for the developers was that they had to take this double effect into account for every new spell, skill, talent point or item. Accordingly, they were severely limited in the creation of new effects and had to design much more weakly. As a side effect, characters that did not use these mechanics were less effective and therefore rarely played. In order to provide more variety at this point, GGG is changing the DoT effects in the coming beta and thus trying to achieve a better balance overall.
DoT effects in the Path of Exile - The Fall of Oriath Beta
Skills will add their Ignite / Poison / Bleed values as a separate damage value to the base damage. This means that fire damage abilities will have a minimum and maximum damage-over-time value for the Ignite effect, from which the Ignite damage is then calculated when the trigger is triggered.
DoT values are based on the skill's damage base and then influenced by appropriate damage modifications. Some will reinforce both the hit and the DoT, others only a part.
Since the base values have been lower than usual due to the "double dipping" problem, they will be increased in the course of the beta. In this way, GGG ensures that DoT characters remain competitive. The base damage is doubled and new talent points are introduced which increase the damage or add other suitable talents.
Some of the support gems are also customized. For example, Increased Burning Damage Support, will now receive a multiplicative bonus. Other changes are in development and will be announced soon.
The Path of Exile - The Fall of Oriath Beta should start in late April / early May. The release is planned for June / July. Who the You can find a detailed explanation of the developer on the official website.
