I think it should have another type conversion. As for now it’s good for a Warlock, because other masteries don’t really utilize aether damage. There’s also Necromancer, which only has DE and RE’s explosion (second modifier), I am not mentioning Reaping Strike due to it being attack modifier and it kinda won’t work with Cabalist.
My suggestion would be to swap the aether part from this skill modifier to another damage type, which is not elemental or aether (elemental modification already applies to Ugdenbog Venom Launcher and Putrid Necklace). Most viable choices would be physical, pierce or vitality (not chaos because of another modifier for Doom Bolt).
Let me hear voices, people, or rather read your opinions.
I actually tried an acid AAR Warlock. Base damage of AAR looks nice, 100% aether and ~70% elemental to acid, but kinda short on % damage, because only ~1500%. Devastation with some basic item skill would be cool as heck. Using Ugdenbog Venom Launcher for 45% elemental -> acid as a bonus would be funny as heck.
I would prefer to keep it as it is, as it currently is the only item that converts aether to acid. On the other hand the options you mentioned are already available on other items and 100% physical to acid conversion on 1 item would be rather OP.
That and wait for what kind of gear options FG brings. I could see it becoming quite useful and build enabling on Warlock and Templar builds depending on the items FG adds.
I mean, I don’t think it’s weak or anything, but rather only Warlocks would benefit from that, and that’s kind of a waste. Oathkeeper or whatever is the name of the new mastery doesn’t provide any flat aether damage, so I don’t think it’d be useful for anything aside of a Warlock.
And with your proposed change warlocks would gain barely any use out of it.
I think it is fine to have some niche gear that only benefit one mastery combination or very few. As warlocks are already rather under powered and lacking in options I’m opposed to removing any more options from them.
By itself the item enables(even if sub optimal) acid devastation and AAR. There is also the option building of acid melee warlock.
Depending on what items FG adds acid warlocks could become a decent option. As the mastery needs a buff IMO, this would be rather welcome.
Edit: It also enables acid PRM
I made a build discussion around this conduit affix a while ago: Acid warlock sadness
The affix is interesting, but the issue really comes down to lack of %acid bonus and skill support gear for skills you’d want to convert. In my example it would be arcanist support. Getting into the overcap territory is currently impractical for most all of the skills.
Hopefully FG will add more support for these skills and with a focus of %acid.
I mean, it’s rather better to have multiple masteries have a use out of an item than literally one mastery benefiting from it. I say one because Occultist doesn’t do anything with this modifier as this mastery has no aether damage. Warlocks, from what I’ve heard, are getting some nice buffs in FG, so if this would be changed to, e.g. vitality, not only Occultist would benefit from it, but also Necromancer. Moreover, Arcanist mostly has elemental damage, rather than aether. Look at any of its skills, the majority of the damage is elemental, which can be converted via using Ugdenbog Venom Launchers.
In the end, the aether -> acid has no impact on arcanists. If you want you can easily make a strong Warlock even without this modifier. Want to use Devastation, AAR, no problem, just pick Putrid Necklace and one Venom Launcher. Anyway, I doubt anyone will try it even if FG because the lack of acid support itself just breaks those builds.
That’s why I think the aether modification has rather no sense.
This is true with most total damage conversion not just acid warlock. Unless there is a dedicated set made for the conversion. (Which there’s only a few)
This one conduit with +1, nice energy, health, resist overcaps, and 100% conversion is far better than 2 items that only get to 90% and take 2 slots.
The gun and the putrid necklace give acid resist? and maybe ~100% acid x 2 if you roll some unlikely affix/suffix. And skill bonuses to stuff you don’t really need (deadly aim?)
Most everything Arcanist is 1/2 aether and half elemental. Those 2 slots can be used for 2x items that give great bonuses, like a +300% acid dagger or some specific arcanist [elemental] skill bonuses.
So…in your example…a partial acid devastation warlock would be better converting the aether and profiting from Cof RR on both parts. etc. And using existing elemental devastation items or sets.
TLDR: acid/elemental combo is better than acid/aether for a warlock. In terms of current item and devotion support.
Necromancers actually get to use aether to poison conversion better than arcanists since there’s also ways to get vitality to poison on items that also grant buffs to ravenous earth or bone harvest
Well I gotta admit you have a point there, and this also proves that I was wrong because I didn’t think it all along. Even though, I still think this modifier doesn’t really do much as for now.
Also, I missed that one. Do not make it physical.
Necromancer actually has no main attacks it’d use with this Conduit’s conversion. Yeah, there’s DE, but, really? That skills base damage is just a joke, if you don’t support it, you deal 20 - 30k damage per tick. Spectral binding gives aether on hit, and on-being-hit, which is also not a huge amount to actually bother converting that damage, additionally (I’ll just ignore the fact my english sucks and this sentence doesn’t look like it’d have much sense to me) you need WD to make the on-hit aether (or acid, if you convert it) work with caster (your builds most likely will end up as a caster, most likely without WD). Reaping strike doesn’t have to be talked about, because I just explained it in my previous sentence, basically. Ravenous Earth has aether damage after killing a unit, which has rather no impact on bosses. Bone Harvest doesn’t have any aether damage at all. You can’t convert converted damage (Siphon Souls).
So basically, unless you convert vitality to acid, this won’t do anything for Necromancers (bear in mind that you MUST have occultist mastery in order to use that conversion, so making a Death Knight or Spellbinder doesn’t work).
Yeah, there’s also Reap Spirit. Does anyone use it as a nuke anyway? I mean, it does work with Diviner and pet builds, but it then is focused on aether and vitality damage.
Bone harvest has high% weapon damage and that includes aether damage from spectral binding… ravenous earth already does acid so converting its modifier into acid isn’t a stupid idea.
The only problems with this conduit for necromancers are the lack of other stuff to support it and the weakness of certain skills like drain essence.
This conduit makes sense unless you liok at the numbers so why change a cobduit rather than adjust numbers?
I suspect the BoD aura conversion is likely not passed on to others so as to not mess up MP play. That’s why pets don’t see that aura effect.
However, the only way to really balance this kind of pet tweak would be to do away with all general % pet damage equipment and make all items have specific damage type boosts to pets. I don’t think Crate wants to do that much work.
Currently 1/2 the versatility of pets is the ~1000%+ to-all-damage (through items and/or devotions) that you can find for pets. A non-pet build will see maybe 80-300% to-all-damage through devotions/gear. The impact is that every single pet flat damage addition immediately has a huge base multiplier. Then it is just a matter of specializing a bit more through certain gear or devotions for even more %.
I wasn’t being serious with the convert all damage to X thing.
But I don’t think a 100% Physical to Acid/poison conversion for pets would be overpowered. We already have 100% phy > chaos with a single Voidwhisper Ring. This would be on a amulet, meaning no 2 Familiars.
It could also be made not part of the aura and just another modifier on the amulet, to not cause any unintentional problems.
