I didn’t mean make it look like Presence of Virtue, I meant to imply that stat wise what it offers is just inferior to presence of virtue. Before I get into this let me point out that I understand that similar skills are perfectly fine being weaker in one class than another because you need to also consider devotion, itemization and the rest of the class’s kit. Nothing in GD should be entirely considered in a vacuum. That being said:
Soft capped IEE gives:
37 elemental damage, 80 energy leech, 65% energy regen, 100% elemental damage, ~171 of each elemental DoT on a chance to proc one of each, 25% aether resist (great new addition), 25% crit damage, 126% elemental DoT damage.
Soft capped PoV gives:
49 Internal Trauma or bleed damage per sec on a chance for either, 133 OA, 6.5 energy regen, phys retaliation, +18% health +13% healing effects, +10% block chance, +30% damage blocked, 24-29 phys damage, 25% life reduction and damage reflection resistance, +100% retaliation damage.
Now even if we ignore the benefits for shield/retaliation builds and think "they don’t seem that far apart. Mainly because the 25% crit damage on IEE is huge and sexy and indeed what we often max…
The 133 OA on PoV is hugely useful to many builds, and +18% health in GD is often well over another 1400 health. The improved healing makes lifesteal more effective.
Again, we can’t really compare them in a vacuum, but Arcanists don’t really struggle for damage these days so much as surviving and the first 2 nodes often don’t provide Arcanists with much. You put 1 point in IEE sometimes or maybe a few for preference for energy hungry builds, Overload is often untouched. I personally have no problem with Arcanists being glass Cannons if Zantai wants to go that route and wouldn’t mind seeing flat OA on Overload or IEE.
I dunno. You could think of it as “2 nodes on POV are almost universally desirable whereas only 1 node in IEE is desired to the same extent.” I don’t mind the third node being more niche.
The problem is that if you care about themes, which Z does and so do I, then you can’t just put whatever you want onto the skill. That approach homogenizes the classes. Sure more defensive stats on IEE would be amazing but it doesn’t really fit. If the aether resist on Overload scaled on a bit of a curve (higher aether resist with more investment) and if IEE had flat OA I’d probably feel more torn about where to put my arcanist skill points.
Then again maybe IEE is fine. This shit is hard to say. I find it easier to pick items that are never used and suggest buffs for them.
I think you said it best though @Pareto
that “I feel IEE is generally in an awkward spot: it’s a passive for elemental weapon damage which finds no applicable skill in Arcanist, and once you look beyond, both the skill and the mastery lose their appeal as secondaries.”
This is true. Even though Rebuke gets passed over a lot for min-maxers in Oathkeeper builds, it’s pretty much never a full out bad pick because it factors into all the weapon damage skills available. IEE’s elemental flat damage is inherently not useful for most of its skills. Shrug.
