I’ve been trying out a warder with Shifting Sands and Blind Fury. One thing I’ve noticed is that Wendigo Totem can have both of these celestial powers bound to it, while Grasping Vines only works with Shifting Sands. Does anyone know what the mechanical basis is for this limitation?
I’ve tried bringing this up before (though I included Bull Rush and Maul alongside Blind Fury) and have never received a response or explanation on it nor has it been changed in the updates since.
At this point, I’ve just accepted that it’s intended and won’t change sadly 
. Sad really as I was considering trying Physical Grasping Vines with Bloodsurge some months back (and yes I know it would be meme-tier or worse, at least I’d be able to suggest reasonable/accurate balancing adjustments to it after playing it).
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Interesting. I’d assumed it was because vines are a separate “entity” from the player but not a pet like totem and that somehow interferes with the proc. I’ve also noticed that Totem won’t proc powers on crit to target dummies, though it does work fine against normal enemies.
Bloodsurge’s grasping vines mods just needs to be IT/sec instead to keep from getting eaten up by armor.
Blind Fury/Maul/Bull Rush not being bindable to Grasping Vines isn’t a problem specific to Grasping Vines which has had me confused in the past. For example, you can’t bind Sigil of Consumption to any of them either (ignoring reasons why you would realistically).
The only assumption I can make is that the binding options on these procs are limited by design because of the small radial nature of them (versus larger ones like Tainted Eruption). But then again, the existence of other small close-quarter devotion procs like Flame Torrent and Guardian’s Gaze renders that point void so god knows what the logic is here.
Basically, melee oriented physical damage devotions dont work on anything that doesnt have its own “body”. Thats why it works with players, player scaled pets(anything that says “scales with player bonuses”, including totems and thermite mines) and regular pets. Thing is. You wouldnt want to put them on spells anyway, as spells have no default weapon damage, and if a skill doesnt have default weapon damage then it doesnt use the percentage damage portion of the devo proc.
I find that reasoning strange, given the fact that Shifting Sands works with vines no problem, and the mechanics aren’t that different. Doesn’t the engine recognize a point where the skill was cast that it can use as a center for casting Blind Fury?
I also find this off in this situation as devotion procs shouldn’t care about what skill is bound to them to determine weapon damage unless it’s a player pet or pet-scaled pet? The skills in this case are not pseudo-pets.
Blind Fury wouldn’t be centred on the spell unless it is a pet entity like OK’s Guardians or the Briarthorn, it would still be centred on your character.
I was unsure on this so went to go quickly test for myself again to be certain and sure enough it is true. However, I found whilst doing so that a couple of player-scaled pet binds don’t seem to work.
Tests were made against the training dummy and Aetherials just outside of Devil’s Crossing. Any auras you see active or additional skills on my bar were taken specifically for OA (e.g. Overload, Conviction, Lethal Assault etc.).
Mortar Trap
Successful crit, no Blind Fury proc. Not shown but I also tested on the dummy to no avail.
Rune of Kalastor
Kalastor is an oddity. The base skill cannot proc Blind Fury that I’ve seen but Ignition can.
The other ones I looked at - Thermite Mine, Blade Spirit, Wind Devil (with and without Maelstrom), Wendigo Totem, Inquisitor Seal and Guardians of Empyrion (with and without Celestial Presence) work perfectly against the training dummy and against enemies as normal.
I also briefly tested Bull Rush with Thermite Mine and Mortar Trap against the dummy towards the beginning and found the same to be true - Thermite were proccing it consistently whereas I never saw one from Mortar Trap so I assume the same applies to it (and presumably Maul too).
@Zantai I wasn’t sure whether to open up a new bug report thread as the above is pertinent to the current thread but I think it deserves investigating regardless.
Looks like there are several types of hits (for instance “direct hits”, “direct spell hits”, “mass spell hits”) and all the player and pet skills are manually put into one of the category, while all the procs are also manually assigned to work with select categories. Maybe somewhere along this process of manual assignments the system (if there was any) was lost.
I’d hope there is some kind of system. But every time i check the possible proc bounds for my class i can’t find any. 
edit: in the examples above one can assume that mortar fire and rune explosions are considered as “spells” and don’t work with Blind Fury while the Kalastor ignition was manually put as a “direct hit”. or maybe it’s just a bug 
The two runes need to be blacklisted as they don’t work with a radius type of proc (the runes cease to exist when their attack completes so there is nowhere to cast a radius on).
As for binding rules. All of the close radius procs are restricted to similarly close range skills, primarily melee attacks, which is why Grasping Vines are not an option.
Like this, I always thought that at least procs that work similarly have the same rules of binding. But it’s not the case. For example, Falcon Swoop and Blades of Wrath are very similar, they are shotguns released in one spot, they have the same cooldown and the same devotion branch, both proc on attack.
But while Falcon Swoop works with Grasping Vines, Devouring Swarm, Word of Pain and Olexa’s Flash Freeze, Blade of Wrath only works with GV and DS. What are the rules for these kind of procs?
Like I mentioned above, though, I don’t understand the logic around this when Grasping Vines can be bound to procs like Flame Torrent or Guardian’s Gaze that are also melee range. Sure, they linger but ones like Bull Rush, Maul and Blind Fury have a low cooldown allowing you to trigger them often to counteract that.
Blades of Wrath is on critical hit and those tend to be restricted to a specific type of skill.