[Poll] What is the worst damage type in endgame?(Except Pets and Retaliation)

[Snazzblaster]

The difficulty I’ve always had with bleeding is that itemization supports phys/bleed, pierce/bleed, and vit/bleed. So it’s no problem stacking tons of bleed damage, but your static damage source is going to be substantially weaker than other DoT builds because the damage on itemization might be a mix of the three types.

As others have mentioned, this results in much weaker lifesteal. It all kind of links back to bleed being the weird, non-convertible stepchild of the DoT family. Huge damage numbers, but low quality of life

[x1x1x1x2]

Also, while pierce/bleed and phys/bleed hybrids can work due to devotion support (pierce) bloodrager respectively (phys) and cunning supporting all three damage types, you can’t just half and half your cunning/spirit investments with vit/bleed setups. Tho the real reason why my pick for THE worst damage type is bleed is because the title says endgame. And in the endgame I know, bleed is only good with bloodrager. No matter what skill you wanna build around, you will want bloodrager if you want it to work. There’s no other damage type that is locked into one set for >90% of builds. Chaos has Rah’zin, Black Flame as very good options as far as sets go. Tri elemental is very flexible even tho their top builds aren’t as good as bleed. Pierce and phys at least only has a few required items (treacherous memes belt, chosen epaulets for pierce; Gladiator distinction for phys), not an entire set.

[eardianm]

Also consider melee or caster builds while choosing

Ranged guns not even included, what a jerk face!

I love trielemental but it’s a struggle with guns and most casters seem on the low end as well. I hate building solo fire and having 800% fire resist with 0% physical and everything else and meteor crapping up my screen it’s actually pretty meh ranged results outside of a couple specific fire strike builds.

Voted bleeding third to follow the crowd

[vlan]

Criticism aside, I think it’s important to note that Crate did pretty good at trying to give each damage type an “identity”. Vitality has big lifesteal but resistant enemies, lightning has a large damage range + crit, phys deals with armor, pierce doesn’t but has lower values, bleed is DoT only, chaos has to be clever about RR…

Whether you agree with these identities or not is a different story

[fordprefect]

Well, the poll is closed. The winner is ‘‘bleeding’’ because tri-elemental was obvious so that doesn’t count And ‘‘chaos’’ is second. I was expecting more voters but 49 is not a bad number. I’m still surprised by cold is considered one of the best damage types but as tqfan highlighted, my opinion is corrupt because I don’t play caster and range that much.

I know we can only expect small balance changes at this point but there are solid reasons that bleed leads this poll. Most bleeding archetype depends on melee hits rather than cast skills so chaining that damage type into hit&run doesn’t work. And it’s not fun to play with a DW melee character like that for example. Since more lifesteal won’t do much to those AA hits, my suggestion would be; add some more health/lifesteal procs into various bleeding items and reduce the flat bleed bonusses to compensate that.

And ofc, tri-elemental gears needs better and more modifiers since you rarely get high RR, like improving elemental forcewave mods doesn’t make that tactician too strong.

[hammyhamster1]

Tri-elemental (imho) is on par with dual damage builds. They can be done and some are pretty decent, but you can’t typically get massive RR on both (all 3 wrt to elemental).

I don’t really see this as a big issue. There are many devotions and items that give you bonuses to all 3 elemental types (as opposed to trying to do a dual). You can optimize one element or try to average all 3.

[tqFan]

I’m still surprised by cold is considered one of the best damage types

I wonder though… Can we derive such conclusions from this poll?
Does not being selected as one amongst 3 worst damage type out of 11 means being the best damage type?

What if i.e. Cold is average, consistently gets the job done and people are never totally disappointed by it.
And some other damage type, i.e. Fire, is better on average but for some players the Fire builds they tried just didn’t work
What if Bleeding is the best damage type for 50% of the players?

If we reverse the question to “What is the best damage type in endgame” will the results be also reversed?
How about we test it? I might be totally overthinking, it happened to me to the past

[Willnoword]

Chaos is one of the worst damage types in endgame? What?! Great devotions, huge damage values, best augments, does not require that much RR, best Exclusive skill. I do not talk about sets, there is no bad Chaos set in the game (in my opinion). Is it so bad for modern Gladiators? Okay, Reaper can be pretty hard (and sometimes Benn, but he is rather annoying), but that is it.

Bleeding needs secondary Damage type for life-leeching, otherwise it is good, especially against tough targets. Also does not require much RR, scales with Cunning (natural synergy with Physical and Pierce as well). Variety of sets is not great, of course.

Tri-Elemental? Not great, not terrible. Can be useful if built properly (through classes with double RR or big amounts of flat Damage, converted or not).

Physical, Vitality, Aether, Cold, Pierce and Acid types are more or less okay, nothing wrong with them.

The last two are (again, judging from my experience in endgame) unfortunately trash. Fire and Lightning are super-heavy resistant by most enemies, have poor Damage values, percentage and flat (Lightning also has that disgusting 1-over_9999 diapason, incosistent especially for melee characters and their life-leech), double RR does not save you from poor performance (Widow is the clunkiest RR to use, cannot be bound to pets and minions just because ). And how convenient that Grava, one of the worst Nemesis thanks to his pools of “constant missing” and one-shot balls of “run_or_die” mechanic, is resistant to both. So much fun playing a melee character against that perverse creation . The only good thing Fire and Lightning have are good visual effects. Enough said.

I am surprised by poll results. But whatever, experience is so individual. I do not consider Spellbinder and Dervish classes strong, but here they are valued highly, for example.

[Ceno]

I’m still surprised by cold is considered one of the best damage types

As @tqFan described, your poll doesn’t describe what the best damage type is. Being less frequently voted as “worst” does not make something among the best.

I’d say Cold is pretty average.

If I had to take a guess at the results of a “best” poll, I’d wager Aether, Vitality, and Pierce would be among the top.

[Norzan]

Fire and Lightning are super-heavy resistant by most enemies, have poor Damage values, percentage and flat (Lightning also has that disgusting 1-over_9999 diapason, incosistent especially for melee characters and their life-leech), double RR does not save you from poor performance

Tell that to all the fire and lightning casters and ranged builds that absolutely destroy endgame content.

(Widow is the clunkiest RR to use, cannot be bound to pets and minions just because )

Because Arcane Bomb is a pet, and a pet bound to a pet causes the former to deal much less damage.

Fire and Lightning melee are kind of sketchy, but that’s much less because of the damage type and more how rather poorly supported their melee side is.

[Willnoword]

Tell that to all the fire and lightning casters that absolutely destroy endgame content.

And what are they? Canister Sorcs? Yeah, they destroy . What Fire or Lightning melee/ranged characters do the same?

Because Arcane Bomb is a pet, and a pet bound to a pet causes the former to deal much less damage.

Does it justify its clunkiness? Why not making it an effect from the start, like all other RR devotions (but please, not for the sake of variety)?

Fire and Lightning melee are kind of sketchy, but that’s much less because of the damage type and more how rather poorly supported their melee side is.

Thank you, I forgot to mention it too.

[tqFan]

And what are they? Canister Sorcs? Yeah, they destroy . What Fire or Lightning melee/ranged characters do the same?

Fire / Lightning is indeed carried by casters so your experience might differ depending on which archetype you play.

[Norzan]

Given that people love to heap praise on Fire Strike for ranged, i would have expected way more ranged fire builds.

[tqFan]

Given that people love to heap praise on Fire Strike for ranged, i would have expected way more ranged fire builds.

GrimSheet is far from being complete in my opinion. For example there are only 4 Deceiver builds there. I think Deceiver can do better than that. Very few care to submit their results in the dedicated thread / about filling up this spreadsheet so that it could be an even better approximation of endgame builds.

Also perhaps players may choose to skip weaker but still viable variants of some builds. You could push Keeper of the Blaze I believe but it doesn’t have pass-through so it’s not as attractive as Desolator.

[somnium]

Fire Strike is not OP and I am somewhat surprised that so many seem to think so. Sure it can become godly at AoE but that requires a ranged weapon with 100% passthrough and preferably Storm Spread, which results in the mass trigger of Brimstone and Explosive strike. In other setups (melee or ranged without passthrough) its AoE actually not that great due the short range and the relatively low damage.

But even then this advantage all falls away vs single targets due that lack of targets to proc Brimstone and Explosive strike from. It also has a number of disadvantages compared to Savagery and Righteous Fervor.
1)Its single target damage is quite bit worse due having way lower WD% (Which makes sense due the lack of AoE these skills have).
2)Its lacks useful stats like attack speed, DA and armor%.
3)Fire Strike requires a larger skill point investment due having 4 skill and brimstone req 50 mastery points

Frankly I think that most who praise Fire Strike so much tend to play crucible a lot. Which is a mode that which overvalues AoE damage and undervalues defensive stats and not representative of the main game.

[x1x1x1x2]

The problem with ranged Fire Strike is that all builds of that type look the same. Max FS, Explosive Strike, Brimstone. Hit WPS benchmarks (and 90% of those are inquisitors) then choose your items and damage type of choice. You can’t really partner it with exotic setups as much as you would like on other skills cause FS line and WPS require so many points. FS ranged is good, but almost everyone who builds around it arrive at the same point.