Tainted Power: replaced % Lightning to Vitality conversion with 100% of Lightning dealt as Chaos
First of all, I’m surprised you change something as fundamental as the damage type of a spell 10 years in (GM #53).
Second, lightning to vitality meant electrocute to vitality decay. Now you get a spell with chaos and electrocute DoT. That’s a bit weird. Chaos/vitality was always a pretty “natural” couple so I don’t understand the change. Hopefully some exotic build experts can tell me the implications.
Even tho there is electrocute damage still, it’s a very good change for chaos lovers. One thing what this reminds me of is clairvoyant set with it’s aether/vitality mix, some wanted pure aether there too which would also would leave electrocute.
I guess if you want pure vitality get that decree of malmouth scepter but that than that…
Nice pickup in that @KoalaeiO I certainly missed that addition to the test patch.
I find it strange as well since it’s been that way for so long and Chaos/Vitality is a great combo together. Black Flame Warlock is exactly that combo and works just fine. Plus the Transmuter for FoI has the same conversion.
I even made a pure Vitality AAR Warlock back in the day and it was not good at all. I know, heresy(!) against my current Dual Damage build crafting, but it was an interesting experiment at the time.
I always figured it converted to both damaged in order to limit Spellbinder just like with the Clairvoyent set being Aether/Vitality.
Not a true statement since I don’t play that way! I play them as the Transmuter intends. Elitist top20 mentality sure is increasing on the forums lately…
Forum participation is probably less than 0.01% of player base and the vast majority don’t even complete Normal…
Seems that Tainted Flame for FoI got the same change…
Why not just bump up the Chaos items more for AAR and FoI instead of bumping just a little and making this change??
I don’t understand what you said. The Clairvoyant set is clearly designed to turn AAR into aether/vitality/vitality decay as well as every support skill:
Reap Spirit (already aether/vitality damage) gets more aether damage.
Doom Bolt’s chaos is turned into aether so it deals aether/vitality damage.
Curse of Frailty gets -x% aether resistance it debuffs aether/vitality resistances.
Plus 40-60% general conversion from chaos to aether.
Anyway, I don’t see why the transmuter has to be changed instead of leaving it be and adding new heavy conversion modifiers (effectively new transmuters) via itemization. Is it just thematic? It’s true that the Arcanist doesn’t have vitality damage anywhere else. I suspect it’s that.
Yes but at least the couples aether/electrocute and aether/burn aren’t unheard of, for people who tried to go pure aether. I have never heard of chaos/electrocute. That combination is in zero mastery including the Berserker.
As a Warlock especially while levelling the vitality part made a lot more sense, as Pulsing Shard (AAR MI) provides aether & vitality %damage. As a warlock you do not have aether RR (or Chaos), only vit RR with CoF. Therefor I’d always focus on vitality there. Weird change indeed
On second thought I could agree with your observation, I just remembered a similar thing In the past where Cadence transmitter did only for lightning not elemental and a lot of people were baffled, but hey nothings’ set in stone…
AAR was pretty hamstrung at the high level with low damage, and having non elemental damage types still being forced split certainly wasn’t helping the matter. I agree playing split damage is fun, but I don’t think it should be the standard in 2024 when the rest of the game has moved away from it as a forced concept. If that’s via items or transmuter, whatever I spose, although having split damage on the skill line transmuter is probably more deceiving to someone new?
This change makes Black Flame set worth smth. I’m not sure why not, say, make the set do chaos AAR and vit FoI, if the intent is to allow it to be vitality or chaos. But as it stands, if someone wanted to play a chaos AAR they had to take a mashup of items instead of a set for chaos AAR. Now you can use the set.
Thematically it’s also fitting because Arcanist has innate aether and elemental support, and an offhand chaos support in form of Fabric Reality. Nothing in Arcanist is vitality. So any vitality Arcanist is thematically a gimmick that should be granted by gear support, not by the baseline skills.
IMO, it would’ve been funny if the transmutor slot could be used as a node that turns AAR into non-passthrough, area of impact spell with some TDM on it. But i’m not sure it’s possible or if the devs want smth like this.
But if you want a transmutor on AAR and FoI to just make the skill into an offhand dmg type, chaos is the way.
I really dislike the recent meta-shift towards single-type damage builds.
Now, specifically with AAR, the split on Clairvoyant was always weird, and chaos damage on transmuter is… chaos damage, it sucks, go figure, more news at 11.
But the game used to be leaning into double damage types much more. It used to be a designed solution against excessive enemy resists (with couple unfortunate combos like fire/lightning or cold/vitality being fucked sideways anyway). But it overall worked, and it’s an aspect of the game I’m sad to see drifting away.
Dual dmg builds can make a comeback in the future, if the build diversity campaign leads to ultimate further decreasing of enemy resists and -rr% sources. But additionally, a lot of gear should be reworked to support some prominent dualities.
I try to make dual dmg type builds every now and then, and almost each time you face a wall of sacrifices because the gear just doesn’t support the selected duality enough. The only exception here is cold+lightning.
Right now you can still play a lot of dual dmg type builds to great success in endgame. But they aren’t competitive at the top end, not nearly enough gear support.
Is it more deceiving than having 3 damage types on the skill to begin with?
And I think you’re giving new players way too much credit. The horrors I have witnessed from looking at newbie builds is a sight to behold…
So why not just leave the conversions on the transmuters alone and put a TDM modifier on it? That would bump up the damage you all are complaining about for single damage as well as dual damage while keeping the “flavor”.
I don’t think split dmg vs single dmg should be considered a conflict for the meta,
instead the philosophy should be early-mid game = split, endgame = single and requires exclusive items
In that light I don’t like this change, it looks like using the transmuter to fix an endgame item issue. The transmuter was supposed to align these skills with occultist that still has 3x chaos/vitality skills
Also I wonder isn’t there a risk by introducing single dmg so early, some builds are going to be very overpowered at level 50?
That or bring back old AAR and transmuter gives -TDM and adds passthrough. Either would definitely be cool, if it’s not too much work to implement. Conversion and visual changes could come from equipment only.
The main problem with AAR is that he really dislikes split damage - either you convert all flat damage into one type of damage or you just don’t play with this skill.