Was testing whether the updated Stone of Jordan affix worked with temporary elemental damage bonuses like Black Hole: Absolute Zero, and noticed something curious. You can snapshot the effect of temporary elemental buffs like Black Hole: Absolute Zero and Spectral Blade: Flame Blades.
Not sure whether it’s intended for Stone of Jordan to work with temporary elemental bonuses, but the snapshotting definitely seems like a bug, because it means you can indefinitely maintain what should be only a temporary elemental damage bonus.
So basically what happens is that, if you cast a Absolute Zero, your bonus top just that element increases above your baseline, but the SoJ effect does not apply and it doesn’t trigger for the other elements.
However, if you use your potion or change floors, you can permanently snapshot that temporary elemental damage bonus into the elements other than itself via the SoJ bonus. It will only be reset when you potion or change floors again.
You can see here I start with 58% elemental bonus to begin with.
Then, with a 40 enemy Black Hole: Absolute Zero pull, prior to potioning, I have +120% to cold, but fire/lightning/arcane remain at 58%.
However, after potioning with a 43 Black Hole pull, I have +129% over 58% (so 187% total) to all 4 elements.
When the Black Hole buff falls off, my cold damage drops back down to the baseline 58%. However, I retain the +129% to the other three elements, and my fire/lightning/arcane bonuses remain at 187%. They stay that way until I potion again or change floors.
You also have a curious effect where you can snapshot in a higher Black Hole buff to fire/lightning/arcane, then let it drop off cold. Then recast a smaller Black Hole, and end up with a temporary cold buff that’s there, but still lower than your snapshot. Here I have a snapshotted +90% buff to fire/arcane/lightning, and have a temporary +51% buff to cold.
What’s even more curious is what happens if you have a temporary bonus in a different element than what you have on your gear. Here, I have 58% cold damage on gear, so SoJ makes all my elemental bonuses 58%. Then with 30 stacks of Flame Blades, I boost up to 88% fire damage. Even though what I really have is 58% cold and 30% fire.
After potioning, it doesn’t snapshot at 88%. Instead, it drops my fire bonus back down to 58%. Presumably because I never actually had 88% fire damage, what I actually had was 30% fire damage and 58% cold damage, so when I potion and it does an elemental damage check for SoJ, it sets my fire to the max I actually have, which is 58% cold.
Now this is where it gets ugly. My fire damage was set to 58% while I had 30 stacks of Flame Blades active. Then, when the 30 Flame Blades stacks fall off, they actually subtract from my fire bonus, and I end up with -30% fire damage. So 28% fire and 58% of the other elements. That’s definitely a bug. Granted, this is a pretty specific situation that is unlikely to come up all that often in regular gameplay, but it’s definitely not desired behavior.
I think there’s definitely some issues with how SoJ does elemental damage bonus checks in relation to temporary elemental damage bonuses like Black Hole: Absolute Zero and Spectral Blade: Flame Blades.
