First: Triple the base damage of (5/5) Blight, Quadruple (5/5) BCE damage.
I recommend add half of this damage to base skill ranks, and half to the paragon system.
For example Blight:
Option 1: Keep the same DoT damage and decrease the pool duration to 2 seconds ie: Blight 5/5 = 189% over 2 seconds.
Option 2: Update the damage delivery system for Blight and Blighted Corpse Explosion (BCE) to work like Poison and Burning (monster continues to take damage even if they leave the pool). More on this below.
Second: DoT aspects and uniques should scale the skill(s) they pair with, not outclass the skill damage. I’m looking at you ebonpiercer and x’fal. These items should buff a build’s skills and scale off the same affixes that a DoT build uses.
Third: Shadowblight needs a major buff, overhaul, or fix. The damage is far too low. Check if the DoT bonus is multiplicative or additive or if the bonus is not applied. In season 5, I got the Shadowblight bonus over 1000%, and Shadowblight damage was still low. I don’t understand how that’s possible. Make Shadowblight damage count as skill damage and give it a Lucky Hit Chance.
Side note: Also make damage from Affliction count as skill damage and give it a Lucky Hit Chance.
I hate that Blight and BCE only do DoT to monsters that stand in the stationary pools. When monsters exit the pool, the damage stops.
The only way to do full Blight or BCE DoT is to face tank, and that is ridiculous for a projectile or range skill.
Here’s what we have:
Monsters don’t stand still for 6 seconds, so Blight and BCE never do their full listed damage - which is low to start with.
In endgame, the best builds kill regular monsters (non-elite and non-boss) in 2 seconds or less, so why do darkness DoT last 6 seconds?
Even with crazy layers of CC, monsters might stand in a Blight pool for 2 seconds or a larger BCE pool for 2.5 seconds. That means Blight and BCE will do 2/6 (1/3) of it’s DoT.
Here’s what I want and recommend:
One of 2 things, either make blight pool damage like poison or burning, or reduce the DoT duration of Blight and BCE to 2 seconds.
My damage like poison or burning idea:
When a monster is in a Blight or BCE pool, they should gain a DoT stack of Blight or BCE (one stack for each layered pool). The duration of the stack is the remaining duration of the pool(s). If a monster exits and renters the same pool, the stack should either not change or refresh to the remaining duration of the pool which is equivalent to not change. This way, any monster that leaves a pool will continue to take DoT.
Note: Ebonpiercer also has this type of DoT delivery.
One reason Darkness DoTs needs an mega damage increases is because it can’t critical strike or overpower. DoT either needs its own mechanic (like crit + OP) or other dmg buffs to make up for this disparity.
No, Wither paragon node does not make up for it, because damage that can crit and OP get this at level 1 and it does not require a legendary paragon node to enable it.
More Blight Problems (and recommendations):
- Blight projectile is too slow - Increase the projectile speed times 2.
- Blight projectile can easily miss - If Blight projectile misses, make the pool at the target location, similar to Sever and Frozen Orb. This would be improved further by increase projectile speed (1).
- Blight pool is too small. Make Blight + Enhanced Blight pool = base BCE pool size.
- Blight does both instantaneous explosion damage and DoT pool. Why? Blight should be DoT only. The initial damage is far too low to consider scaling crit to scale it, so instead add it to the DoT so that all Blight damage scales with +DoT.
- Blight has no direct, specific legendary aspect that scales it’s damage. It can only scale indirectly off something else: Curse, Shadow.
- (again) Change Ebonpiercer to augment Blight instead of over shadowing and out performing Blight’s damage.
BCE Problems (and recommendations):
- Damage is too low. - Double damage of regular CE, and quadruple damage of BCE doing double damage over 2 seconds instead of 6, or by increasing base damage times 4 and make it work like poison/burning as stated above.
- Lucky Hit is too low to sustain corpses via Hewed Flesh(HF). - Increase the lucky hit chance to 40% to match blight and/or increase HF to 6% per rank instead of 4%. Otherwise allow CE and BCE to generate more corpses somehow. Add a mana cost if you want, but generate more corpses so I can keep casting CE/BCE. Even with HF 6/3 using Mortacrux, I can’t sustain corpses with high attack speed (Howl from Below).
- Base damage CE does not benefit from necro passives. - Give base CE both Bone and Blood tags. When BCE is selected, remove Bone and Blood and add Darkness tag.
- BCE does not benefit from any increased CE size - fix this to work with tempers and Black River and other sources of + CE size.
- CE is not a Core skill. - Add the Core tag.
- CE does not have a legendary aspect to directly scale it. It does have 3 uniques, 2 weapons + gloves. - Add a legendary aspect for CE damage or corpse generation.
- Howl from Below unique gloves fears monsters, making them leave the damage pool of BCE. Accommodate this by making BCE do damage like poison/burning as stated above or shorten BCE DoT to 2 seconds.
Possible changes to uniques to buff and not replace skills:
Ebonpiercer: Blight projectiles pierce, and create a blight pool under each monster hit (max 4). Blight does triple damage to a Boss.
When x’fal erupts, instead of instant damage, add a 1 second DoT. This way the build’s +DoT also scales the Xfal’s damage.
To try to prove a point on damage…
(5/5) Blight does 56% instant damage and 189% DoT over 6 seconds.
(56+189)/6 = 40.8% per second.
(5/5) BCE does 154/6 = 25.7% per second
(5/5) Enhanced Decompose does 46% + 44% = 88% per second
Blight (requires essence) and BCE (requires corpse), and both are outclassed by basic skill Decompose (requires nothing, generates essence).
Sadly (for BCE), Decompose is a good way to generate corpses for BCE, but unless you can keep the monster in at least 4 BCE pools, You’ll do more damage by just using Decompose.
Using Decompose with Rotting aspect widens the gap, because Decompose does 3x explosions.
Please don’t nerf Decompose, buff Blight, BCE, and Shadowblight!