Currently Vitality Decay as a whole is too reliant on Blood Orb of Chhton, there are other options but nothing come close (not even Vitality Blade Arc or Vitality BWC). Basically it is the only damage type that is overly dependent on conversions to remain functional this is made worse by the fact that the duration bonuses for Vitality Decay are in odd places such as Anatomy of Murder and Molgurr’s Mortality
Imo, this is bad for build diversity as we don’t have many options when building around this particular damage type
My proposed changes
Add Vitality Decay over seconds damage to Affliction’s Fetid Pool. I say this cause no constellation currently has any Vitality Decay proc. We have to use Tainted Eruption with Blood Orb
The odd placement of duration bonus in Nightblade should be addressed by either adding a Vitality Trickster set or Vitality Reaper/Witch Hunter set (with additional RR on set completion)
Or just remove it all together as currently Vitality Decay Trickster despite the impressive RR and WPS at its disposal is little more than subpar at the moment
Uroboruuk’s Reaping, basically the only Vitality Decay relic in the entire game …is melee locked. This would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that the only Vitality Decay in the game is a Ranged weapon
This should be addressed by either changing the skill into some AoE skill (not a proc) or by removing weapon limitation from Reaping Arc
Deathbound Amethyst has a mediocre bonus for Vitality decay on Phantasmal blades. Either replace it with something more useful or move the bonus to something like Bone Harvest or Blade Arc (this will work well for Vitality Blade Arc)
Phantasmal Blades is bad for DoTs unless one picks the Bleed Route (I could be wrong about this so feel free to correct me here)
We don’t have a 2h Vitality Decay Melee weapon that can make all our problems go away (like Nightshade’s Reach, Guillotine, Stormreaver, Infernal Brimstone). In my opinion Guardian of the Death’s Gates should provide bonuses to Vitality Decay and should deal Vitality Damage (or should have Physical to Vitality conversion)
A 2h Vitality Decay Melee weapon would also suit Reaping Arc (should you decide to not remove weapon lock) and will benefit Vitality Blade Arc
Just so we’re clear I’m not implying Vitality Decay doesn’t work at the moment. My concern is that the gearing is “too tight”, we don’t have too many options and whatever ones we have are mostly conversion items. I personally don’t think conversion should be build enablers
No, you are not wrong about this. You are 80% right. Phantasmal Blades, with or without CD, is bad for DoTs PERIOD, whether it is bleed, poison or vitality decay !
I’m glad you brought this up because I will explicitly point out what is wrong with it. Let’s take a look at this:
* At 26/16 you have 510% WD on CD PBlades. Unfortunately, you do not do 5.1*flat DoT with it, but a 0.85 fraction because the DoTs can’t stack with themselves from the same source.
* At 26/16 you have 500% WD on Cadence. WoW !
So let’s see what happens with an imaginary 1k bleed or poison flat DoT:
PBlades (CD type) - 8501.4= 1190 (if it crits).
Cadence - 10005= 5000.
Holy shit…this means that Venomlance Witchblade >>> Venomlance Witch Hunter.
I’m discussing CD type PB because with the transmuter on there’s no point to even mention DoTs since you have less than 10% WD. From this simple math it folows that either CD on PB should be reduced to base 2.5 (or even 2s) OR every DoT put on PB should have 4x the values to be viable.
Nice breakdown good to know I’m right about PB’s low non-Bleed DoT potential
All the more reason for them to remove that vitality decay mod from deathbound amethyst and put it in a place where it might work better. Heck even Callidor’s Tempest can make better use of that skill mod than PB
It would work like that only with DoTs from weapon damage, (un)fortunately Dot damage from skill modifiers are not weapon damage but an add-on damage like bleed on Fightning Form for example, so skills with transmuter that add % total damage modifier are the most benefit for these DoT skill modifiers, like BWC, Blade Arc, CT. Phantasmal blades doesn’t have transmuter which increase % total damage but put them in negative, making DoT damage even lower, IMO DoT skill modifiers without increase % total damage modifier should naturally have higer DoT damage than one with % total damage modifier.
So I’m not sure why you bring this up regard DoT skill modifiers, and I don’t think PBs is meant to be flat DoT multiplier (by % weapon damage) like Cadence, or Savagery + Feral Hunger/Execution etc. It’s just another DoT source to stack up with other skills.
It was about how DoTs simply do not work with PBs even when they are in the form of flat damage added to weapons, so making a DoT modifier for PB, such as that on Amethyst, represents an even worse idea.
It was also about the fact that there is a specific weapon in this game (Venomlance) that is explicitly designed as a WH PB weapon. How do I know it is designed for CD PB ? Well, it gives cooldown reduction, +2 nightblade and a flat DoT on the weapon. ABB doesn’t scale well, so the only thing you can do with it is acid shotgun. If that’s the case, the flat DoT can be removed completely because PBs are not capable of carrying a DoT build unless they have a 2nd, separate modifier, that operates on total damage. Even flat acid would be better than that mediocre 130 poison DoT. Either that, or redesign it for WBs that can use cadence…because in this state, the item is trash.
This last point has nothing to do with Vitality decay as a whole, of course, but it does point out that every modifier that adds DoTs to P-Blades should be removed because the values are too low to count. Instead of that decay on Deathbound Amethyst I would suggest a modifier that changes the inherent bleed of the skill to Vit. decay because otherwise, as you pointed out, the damage is negligible. Even, then, I have my doubts that CD PBlades can be used in any way in conjunction with DoTs.
For Venomlance, changing it to Cadence weapon is bad IMO, they can change flat poison damage to skill modifier like DEE but that’d eliminate reaper combo, so I think the best solution is to change proc skill into a high weapon damage cooldown skill like 300%-400% weapon damage with 4-5 seconds cooldown, this would definitely help every build combinations that want to use the weapon without using Cadence to multiply flat DoT damage.
