{
"post": {
"title": "PoE Skill Comparison for 3.10",
"selftext": "",
"url": "https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Xk_dREw6GC4TN1JRCTVzENWlJIxCx8HtqRbANV2Fgxc/"
},
"comments": [
{
"body": "**For a copy you can interact with, [click here](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Xk_dREw6GC4TN1JRCTVzENWlJIxCx8HtqRbANV2Fgxc/copy), click the link at the top-left in the sheet, or use File -> Make a copy. May require logging in to a Google account. Then, you can right click on a column and choose Sort Sheet A -> Z to sort, ie. by Base DPS or Trap DPS, use the toggles for gem levels/multipliers, and input stats for weapon comparisons.**\n\nIf all you want is a comparison of new/changed skills, [here you go](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mPagjSCYk3SdLxfiX7PKN1DZQQs3r2oX9cYONBUeKhs/).\n\nThese numbers aren't going to be 100% accurate, that's not the goal of this. Use Path of Building if you want accurate numbers. Use this to get a sense of the relative base strength of different abilities, but keep in mind different abilities scale in different ways.\n\nData is using level 20 gems and a rough estimate of ideal, but reasonable, circumstances, mostly taken from the Wiki or my own testing. I tried to include any notable enchants or threshold jewels as their own entries, and notes for any special cases used. Otherwise, no gear or points on the skill tree are used.\n\nI'm assuming 0 resists for simplicity, thus assuming 10% penetration is 10% more damage, this can affect the balance between physical/elemental/chaos abilities.\n\nToggles in the top left control whether to calculate using just the skill gem, or the skill gem and a selection of support gems. Other dependencies are usually color coded together, eg. attacks that scale with number of projectiles will have orange indicators that match the input for number of additional projectiles.\n\nInfo for level 21+ gems and things dependent on it like Empower won't be updated until after the torrent or patch are released.\n\n---\nI've made a lot of changes this past league, overhauling almost the entire thing.\n\nImplemented support multipliers for attacks, though they require weapon value inputs to function. Integrated all the spell stuff to a single sheet, so now you can easily use the checkboxes to choose your own supports. Added a new minion section. Added Wiki and PoEDB links for all the skills. Added a chart for seeing Cooldown Recovery breakpoints. Added some links to a list of monster armour values and a calculator and a list of what I believe to be the boss Ailment thresholds.\n\nAs always, any help in pointing out errors is appreciated.",
"replies": [
{
"body": ">If all you want is a comparison of new/changed skills, \n> \n>here you go \n> \n>.\n\nSheet is nice, but for example when I look at Pyroclast Mine here, it looks like it got hit by 20% nerf, while it got hit by 20% throwing nerf, 50% nerf on additional projectiles (major dmg scale) and +2 extra projectiles from eternal lab got removed. So it's like 60% or something nerf actually.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Yeah, there's a lot of factors for skills like that are hard to actually quantify, especially if I haven't actually played the skill. Best I can do is try to give indications if the base damage before all those extra multipliers is good or not compared to other stuff.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Makes sense, nice work anyway."
}
]
},
{
"body": "Yeah the pyroclast mine nerf is a lot more than it sounds like on longer chains. Worst case scenario (40 chain length which was already stretching it before and is probably impossible with 20% less throwing speed) you get half the total projectiles. \n\nAlso blastchain length double dipped the damage because on longer chains you would get more projectiles which also did more damage. Now the chain is shorter and the juicy mines towards the end of the blastchain suffer the most -projectiles.\n\nUnless you already blew up bosses with <10 mines in that case you probably won't notice much except throwing 20% slower while mapping."
}
]
},
{
"body": "FYI, molten strike fires four projectiles (up from 3)--they buffed it in 3.9.\n\nAlso, according to [https://moldydwarf.gitlab.io/MoltenStrikeDPS/index.html](https://moldydwarf.gitlab.io/MoltenStrikeDPS/index.html) the chance to hit per projectile is 41% with wildfire and no conc effect.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Thank you, fixed the number of projectiles and added a field to put in custom values for the projectile hit chance. I've seen sooo many estimates for the hit chance, as low as 20% and as high as 45% and I frankly have no idea which one's correct.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Assuming the information from GGG is correct, the calculator looks accurate.\n\nMolten strike inner radius: 5 (unaffected by AoE modifiers)\n\nMolten strike outer radius: 20 \\* sqrt(1.25) (wildfire) = 22.36\n\nMolten strike AoE radius: 9 \\* sqrt(1.25) = 10.06\n\nAgainst a target with collision radius 2, a ball hits if it lands anywhere from 5 to 12.06 units away. Assuming distance is uniformly distributed, this has a (12.06-5)/(22.36 - 5) = 7.06/17.36 = **40.6**% chance of happening.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "A few minor notes:\n\n - In Metamorph league, [most Molten Strike users](https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds?skill=Molten-Strike) used Concentrated Effect (70%), Dying Sun (82%), and Wildfire (97%). Assuming no other sources of AoE, the net effect is +1.5% AoE. This translates to 40.1% hit chance per ball assuming 100% accuracy.\n\n - The calculator assumes that AoE modifiers exactly affect the total area where a ball can land. This makes the outer radius formula slightly more complicated. To see the exact formula and its derivation, view the source and look for where the `maxBallLandingDist` value is computed. Assuming +25% AoE, the outer radius should be 22.2 rather than 22.36. For small effective AoE modifiers like 25% used here (and especially 1.25% with the most common setup), this difference between the formulas is small.\n\n - I agree with your math on the ball hit chance. There's a subtlety correctly captured in your formula that might not be obvious to others. The ball distribution is uniform in radius and angle (as you're assuming). It's not uniform in the arc area (as the calculator incorrectly assumed prior to 2017-07-15). This means that balls are bunched up closer to the deadzone and are spread apart more at the outer edge. This is very good for DPS. It also makes the formulas easier. See /u/andinuad's old [reddit post](https://redd.it/6mcwnu) for a longer discussion.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Yes, that was one of the ambiguities that was cleared up by Mark, ball landing positions are computed by sampling radius and angle independently, so the distribution is not uniform over area.\n\nNot following what you mean by \"exactly affect the total area\", can you elaborate?",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Ah, looking at the source, I see what you mean. You're assuming that the AoE modifier takes into account the fact that the molten ball landing area is an annulus rather than a disk (as it is in most cases)."
},
{
"body": "> Not following what you mean by \"exactly affect the total area\", can you elaborate?\n\nWhat I meant is that we can come up with a formula that gives the area of the landing arc. If we only allow the outer radius to change as a function of the AoE multiplier, then we can derive the relationship between the two. \n\nHere's the code snippet and the math derivation from the calculator. Note that this derivation ignores constants that cancel like the 270 degree aspect. Let me know if it's still unclear and/or if you spot any errors.\n\n var maxBallLandingDist =\n // If R is the default outer radius, r is the (never changing)\n // inner radius, m is the aoe multiplier, and d is the scaled\n // outer radius, we can solve for d as follows:\n //\n // pi*d^2 - pi*r^2 = m*(pi*R^2 - pi*r^2) <---- note that m modifies the entire right side of the equation instead of just the R^2 term\n // m*(R^2 - r^2) = d^2 - r^2\n // d^2 = m*(R^2 - r^2) + r^2\n // d^2 = m*R^2 - (m-1)*r^2\n // d = sqrt(m*R^2 - (m-1)*r^2)\n //\n Math.sqrt(\n MS_DFLT_OUTER_RADIUS * MS_DFLT_OUTER_RADIUS * aoeMult -\n MS_INNER_RADIUS * MS_INNER_RADIUS * (aoeMult - 1)\n );",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Yep, see my comment below. In my OP I assumed AoE modifiers would treat the molten strike AoE as a disk rather than as an annulus since the former is how the vast majority of skills work. I'd be impressed at GGG's attention to detail if they took this into account.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "> annulus \n\nLearned a new word today :) Thanks."
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"body": "Molten Strike is also a really interesting skill because each of its individual radii (except for the dead zone) rounds down to the nearest integer. This makes calculating the effect of added aoe somewhat unintuitive, because adding a single %aoe can raise, lower, or have no effect on MS' average hit chance.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Yeah, one thing I don't know how to model yet is how discretization works with Molten Strike. \n\nFrom Mark_GGG's past statements, both the balls and enemies are modeled as squares instead of circles in the game, but it's unclear what orientations are used. I tried running some PVP experiments (counted every hit on a lot of recordings from different attack angles) and my best guess was that at least the ball orientations were random. If they are random, then the circular assumption in the calculator isn't terrible. If they're non-random, then there should be a consistent DPS difference by controlling the angle you attack a mob from.\n\nDo you know any of the details about how orientations are chosen, radii are rounded, and/or grid snapping works?",
"replies": [
{
"body": "I'm really not sure. I would assume the orientation is random. For grid snapping, I remember there was a discussion on pathfinding when they did some retouches on PoE's pathfinding system which could pertain to that, but I don't remember anything definitive. And if the Molten Strike projectiles are modeled as squares, I don't know whether that means their radius is the side-to-side versus corner-to-corner distance. The safest bet would likely to be to continue to model the projectiles as circles since it sounds like a nightmare to test beyond that.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Apparently in 3.7 they switched from Manhattan to Euclidean distance to resolve some pathfinding issues:\n\n[https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/briy7b/highlights\\_from\\_the\\_370\\_melee\\_revamp\\_baeclast/](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/briy7b/highlights_from_the_370_melee_revamp_baeclast/)\n\nSo circles should be accurate."
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"body": "Sounds convincing enough, I'll change the default to 41% with the jewel.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Cool. BTW the listed number of projectiles is still 3 even though the damage formula uses 4.\n\nMaybe make the number of projectiles a parameter as well?",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Fixed, and done, thanks!"
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"body": "\"If all you want is a comparison of new/changed skills, [here you go](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mPagjSCYk3SdLxfiX7PKN1DZQQs3r2oX9cYONBUeKhs/).\"\n\nWhen I click that link I need to request access.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Whoops, fixed."
}
]
}
]
},
{
"body": "Personal thoughts:\n\nBlade blast seems like a nice single-target boost for Bladefall and Ethereal Knives, but is pretty weak on its own.\n\nStormbind's an odd one, it's better dps to only upgrade a single time rather than upgrading 3 times, unless the aoe upgrades start giving you more overlaps.\n\nSpellslinger seems like a really good leaguestarter for an eventual CoC or Poet's Pen build, and it'll stay useful for applying buffs/debuffs like exposure from Wave of Conviction.\n\nMines' sustained dps got nerfed a bit, but they were crazy good to start with, and the burst was their primary function anyways.\n\nKinetic Bolt seems... Ok. Needs a single-target booster, either Power Siphon or something in Spellslinger.\n\nPower Siphon and Kinetic Blast buffs were fairly small. Same with the ballista buffs, but they are at least clearly more damage than just using the bow yourself now, and the totem health changes should help.\n\nThere's a really good damage correlation between needing to cast constantly for SRS and getting the most damage, not needing to cast much for Skellies and getting ok damage, and Animate Weapon being between the two on both aspects (but a ton more health). 6-link skellies should still be 2-3 million dps without gear, so they'll survive just fine. Also, the caster skellies look a lot better in comparison now.\n\nHerald of Agony nerf was substantial, but the cluster jewel notables can more than make up for it, so it's actually a skill that scales with investment now.\n\nEdit: Also, Explosive Arrow may not be king for ignite anymore, but it may be the new king for single-target hit damage. Tons of flat added, and above average scaling, it might unseat Scourge Arrow.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Blade Blast is like a vaal skill for the Blade skills (except BV, since it eats your stacks, not sure how good that'll be). I'm a bit surprised I haven't heard more people talking about it, it can potentially add a really large amount of damage. It might not necessarily be enough to save Bladefall from 'meh' status though.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Seems like it could scale really well with Awakened Spell Cascade on Bladefall, 25 explosions (or 12.5 triggered) per Bladefall cast for burst on a skill that's about a screen-wide aoe clear is pretty good."
},
{
"body": "You need 3 hits from Blade Blast (348.5 average per hit) to exceed the damage of 1 Ethereal Knife (791), so it all depends on how likely it is for the Blade Blast to overlap.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "The gem reads like it does damage twice. First is damage in an area when you cast it. Then, if it does damage to any enemy, it detonates blades within the area. So I guess that means you would only need two blasts to hit the enemy in addition to the on-cast area damage."
}
]
}
]
},
{
"body": "I'm absolutely going to mess with Stormbind. Looks like fun(and they decided to remove the teleport on it)",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Seems like it has a lot of potential. Trying to find the balance between boosting the mana cost to upgrade runes faster while being able to sustain it on a skill with such low cast times, or just negating the mana costs and using un-upgraded runes should be interesting.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "I plan to hit exactly 72 mana per cast on secondary to max it out with one click if possible.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "If I'm understanding[ what Rory wrote](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/fh78tk/path_of_exile_delirium_gem_information/fk9fctt/) correctly that would upgrade 3 runes at once, but can't upgrade a single rune 3 times. Since placing runes is faster than charging them, that still might be the best way to go, though."
},
{
"body": "Yeah that's probably the way to go. But even there 1 click might be not enough if you've placed too many runes cause you'd have to hoover through all of them. \nI've read in comments that you boost only the rune you target + the closest ones."
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"body": "I’m definitely gonna mess around with spellslinger for a league starter. Not sure exactly how I’d want to build it. I think I’d really like to do it as elementalist but assassin might make a lot more sense."
},
{
"body": "[deleted]",
"replies": [
{
"body": "I've got totem stats in the Minion section, they should have around 4,400 life base in 3.10, but I won't be able to dig out exact numbers until the torrent/patch."
}
]
},
{
"body": "I'd be interested in seeing if explosive ends up like you said.\n\nI really tried to make it work and feel good last league and it turned out, for me at least, to be hands down the worst skill / build i have ever done. Like....nothing else came even remotely close. Even on a 6l quillrain in act 3 it was just godawful."
},
{
"body": "Never used ps before\n\nHow come it has better ST than Kbolt when kbolt has higher effectiveness and higher base damage bad scales with spell damage aswell?",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Purely because of Barrage Support, it scales really well with number of projectiles, and PS has 8 projectiles base, so it ends up being a 170% more multiplier.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Can PS shotgun with the cone of projectiles?",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Only with Barrage Support, it makes any supported skill shotgun like that.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Oh, so you get 8x3 projectiles that can hit the boss?",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Just 8 + 3, but that's still a lot of hits.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Wouldn't barrage work with kbolt aswell? Granted, not as many projectiles but higher scaling and the possibility that it forks and hits same target again?",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Not sure if it can fork and hit the same target again, but we'll find out tomorrow."
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"body": "Apparently Stormbind can shotgun so the sweet spot might be laying down four runes around the target, and either channeling one tick to blow them all up immediately or channeling enough to upgrade all four once (depending on how many runes you can upgrade per tick)."
}
]
},
{
"body": "Nice work ! \nHowever, I don't quite get how you calculated damage effectiveness per second ? Say Freezing pulse has 1.5 DE and a cast time of .65s, shouldn't it have 1.5/0.65 = 2,31 DEPS ? Your spreadsheet says 2.38, don't know how you got that.\n\nAlso for BV, it is considered to be at 10 stacks (so cast time doesn't matter for the following ?) in your spreadsheet so DPS with self cast should be the same as with spellslinger. This checks out, but why is it different with Poet's Pen ? Is it because you took the +3 gem levels into account ?",
"replies": [
{
"body": "I've got crit chance included, so it's 1.5/0.65 * (1+.06*.5).\n\nYeah, it's just the +3 gem levels."
}
]
},
{
"body": "First time looking at this. (thanks btw) buutt im super confused. Ghazzy was saying Animate Weapon was gonna be crazy strong, but the sheet shows it as 3/4 old skeletons dmg. so its just avg strong?",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Animate Weapon does look really strong, but this spreadsheet doesn't represent it very well. Animate Weapon now comes with a 48% more attack speed modifier (the old one had some increased attack speed) *and* a 48% more damage multiplier. This gives it an effective 219% added damage effectiveness per animated weapon, or 3066% added damage per second at max minions.\n\nAuras like Anger and Wrath will scale Animated Weapon incredibly well.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "thanks. have you played AW before? wondering what the playstyle feels like.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "yes it was good with chains of command because other than putting weapons in your inventory there was no way to produce AW. Now you can make them at will this should make the build more mainstream and usable as an actual skill"
}
]
}
]
},
{
"body": "Be careful with ghazzy builds, his 'budget' setup is going to cost you 20ex the first week of league. Of course AW will be good late game since you can scale it with impale which is S-tier damage these days. But as with all late game builds, the crazy numbers start rising when you starting pumping dozens of exalts into items.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "mmm i was afraid of that. Yea it can be frustrating when people that nolife poe are like \"yea this is a starter/cheap etc\" and then you find out its several Ex. \n\nthese guys are like RL millionaires not understanding the value of money for the lower class.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "agreed. to me starter/cheap build is a bunch of 1-2c pieces and 1 10-30c piece"
}
]
}
]
},
{
"body": "Old skeletons were crazy strong, so AW will also be strong, but a bit more clunky than skeletons since you have to cast it on blades/items."
}
]
},
{
"body": "I don't think I can process all that data before the start of the league. :("
},
{
"body": "\"Oh, that was a juicy one exile!\""
},
{
"body": "thank you op"
},
{
"body": "Love the \"Drama effect\" part!"
},
{
"body": "Mines are gonna be bonkers this league, atleast I hope so",
"replies": [
{
"body": "lol why would u think so ? Mines were insane in 3.8 ... which is why Icicle was such a hit.\n\nI was excited in 3.9 to try the Icicle and... it got pretty solid nerf, great.\n\nNow in 3.10 I was excited to try Pyroclasm, boom it got 3 big nerfs, and all mines got extra 20% dmg nerf via throwing speed so... no it's not going to be bonkers, it was bonkers in 3.8 and it's getting nerfed every league since then.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Well you forget about arc mines and ball lightning mines. Pyroclast is still good. It maybe got nerfed by 40% so what? You instakilled bosses in 1.5sec, that will take now maybe 2.5sec?? Thats still better than most builds out there.\nI did easily sirius A8 with arc / ball lightning mines. ( ball lightning only for big bosses ), even did carrys. Its super easy, this league maybe a little bit cast speed down so what? Bosses like that have a start up time so you can take time. And with clearing, you anyways clear whole screen with one click so doesnt matter much when you have alot throwing speed.",
"replies": [
{
"body": ">about arc mines and ball lightning mines.\n\nThose got \"only\" 20% nerf yea\n\n> Pyroclast is still good. It maybe got nerfed by 40% so what? \n\nWell the main dmg comes from extra projectiles you get in the chain, and those got 50% reduction nerf on top of those other nerfs. So... it's not 40% overall. It's like 65% or something.\n\nAnd yea sure some min maxed build demolished Sirus in 2 seconds, but now you also get the anti-mine weird 8 second mechanic, so it's surely going to be viable no doubt about it, but I don't think it's going to be bonkers.\n\nStuff that was insane, and didn't get nerfed at all or even buffed via new cluster jewels that will be bonkers. People were doing 80mil shaper dps with BF for example, that's bonkers. Now you can for example slap extra impale on it, etc.\n\nI have to admit, I will prolly start that Pyroclast just cos it looks cool and I wanna try it, even with all the damn nerfs. Unless I change my mind and just go frickin BF a demolish everything.",
"replies": [
{
"body": ">People were doing 80mil shaper dps with BF for example\n\nFirstly, you need some crazy weapons to do that, and secondly, they will have half the clearspeed of most other skills."
},
{
"body": "The 8second rule only applied to shaper, not sirius. You dont really need to minmax to be able to destroy with mines, not at all\nAnd why got arc mines 20% nerf? Because of the throwing speed? Thats not really a dmg nerf to clearing packs, it is so little, you wont notice it in the late game",
"replies": [
{
"body": ">And why got arc mines 20% nerf? \n\nYea, all mines basically got nerfedd dps by 20%, via mine throwing speed (basically cast speed for mines)",
"replies": [
{
"body": "[deleted]",
"replies": [
{
"body": "> Consider some other mines like fireball or **purifying flame**\n\nI don't want to roll another Toxic Rain miner (even though the build is disgustingly good), so I've been looking for alternatives. I saw a guide on the forum for a Purifying Flame Miner and I considered rolling one as a league starter after I looked at the numbers, but then I realized the guide was calculating DPS by adding both the initial hit and the shockwave. The gem description specifically says that shockwaves only damage enemies that were not hit by the first damage portion of the spell, which makes the single target dps far less impressive. Am I missing something here?\n\nAlso, what's your take on Purifying Flame's AoE? From the videos I saw it looked a bit subpar."
}
]
},
{
"body": "True, but you wont notice it that much, still super viable.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "I will notice it, since I played Icicle in 3.9 :) but yes, prolly still super viable. It just sucks when you pick starter and then you see 60+% nerf on it.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "so you're basing your experience for all mines on one mine skill? lmao",
"replies": [
{
"body": "They all have same base throwing speed afaik. So yes, kinda everyone would notice 20% difference. It's not 2%."
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}