Soulrift’s duration is increased by 0.5 seconds for every 30 essence you spend while its active, up to 8 seconds. (So, we need to spend at least 480 essence)
Soulrift deals 200% of its Shadow damage per second to surrounding enemies for every 30 essence you gain while its active.
If we can gain at least 480 essence back during its active, Soulrift damage increases by 3,200%
Soulrift Duration is in a utility temper, too. So the duration isn’t a problem.
Bone Spirit may be a good skill to spend all essence at once per cast.
Now the question is how to gain essence as much and fast as we can.
Lucky hit to gain essence from weapon affix, gear tempers and exposed flesh.
The big question is whether or not the damage procc happens if we generate essence while being at max. If not, we need to dump it quickly and spirit might be a tool for that. Six ranks of imperfectly balanced and a ton of attack speed for blight may or may not be enough.
Thinking about it, bone spirit will probably not increase soul rift’s duration via the Unmaker. It doesn’t spend any essence but drains it, after all. I don’t think getting to 100% uptime will be too difficult, though. Skill ranks from the Unmaker plus rune words reduce it to ~30s base line before CDR and we can get even more reduction from rune words.
I’d expect fully leveraging the duration increase to be rather trivial. It’d require spending 480 essence before it expires. That may seem steep but every 30 spent essence extends the duration and prevents it from expiring. Toss in a bit of attack speed and a Soulrift duration temper or two and Blight should easily hit the full extension, with room to spare for weaving in other casts, moving, dodging the ball, etc.
The big question is, as you mentioned, does gaining essence at full essence qualify for the 200% damage bit? If so it seems kind of… busted. If not both spending and restoring essence would be limiting factors.
The other big question is what exactly that 200% value entails. I suspect it is a damage proc for 200% of the skill damage per second (after modifiers). If it was 200% weapon damage it doesn’t quite track to word it that way. Likewise, I doubt it increases Soulrift output directly because that would be extremely overpowered.
I didn’t mean 200% weapon damage but 200% of soul rift’s weapon damage, which would come out as something like 250-350% weapon damage with a ton of skill ranks.
2 * (65% + 6.5%*[skill ranks - 1])
If it’s actually using the scaled damage from soul rift, it sounds like a big mess as to which stats scale the original dot, which scale the direct damage procc on top of that and which might even double dip:
Soul Rift’s actual tick damage:
all +damage stats except crit damage
Soul Rift’s tick damage for the Unmaker’s damage calculation:
damage, shadow damage, dot damage
player conditionals: damage while healthy/fortified/after blood orb
but not target conditionals: damage against elites, against healthy/injured/crowd controlled
The Unmaker’s procc scaling:
target conditionals: crit damage, vuln damage, against elites/healthy/injured
potential double dip: damage, shadow damage, player conditionals
I can’t wait for the PTR to see how it works and if Soulrift even is dot damage
Oh, yeah I guess it could do that. It could even operate like Wither. Individual ticks of Soulrift itself just straight up get doubled when the 30 essence is gained or something.
Well, the ability itself says damage per second. Seconds are a unit of time. I get the reservations. We’re talking Diablo 4 here. Still… Are there even abilities specifically saying damage per second that don’t qualify as a DoT?
On an unrelated note, Affliction is another rabbit hole to explore. Does it work with cursed aura? Does the spreading mechanic of cursed aura count as a re-curse? How about the runewords related to secondary curse effects? Accursed Touch… I see you there. Questions to explore and bugged interactions to find…
I don’t think there’s been anything else dealing damage per second. The wording is unique but that doesn’t let us conclude anything. Even bone storm reads “damage over 10 seconds” and isn’t a dot. We’ll have to wait and see.
With Affliction, I’m 100% certain it won’t work with cursed aura. “Your curse skills deal…” and the aspect reads “a dark aura inflicting decrepify”. This won’t count as casting the skill or even proccing it, just applying the effect.
I just rewatched part of the campfire to check and they did specifically say Soulrift does damage over time. It’s was said a bit after the 1:33:20 time point there.
As another edit. They did specifically say the Unmaker does a pulse of damage when the 200% bit activates. That kind of implies a distinct damage instance, or proc effect. You’re probably right and it just takes 200% of the weapon damage % of Soulrift and slaps relevant modifiers on after.
I think I may have watched part of the campfire and forgot to watch the rest… Useful info in there. Shocker, I know. Dear self, maybe fully watch the thing where the devs talk about the new things.
In any case, the main reason I was interested in it is due to the whole DoT vs not a DoT anti-synergy issue. If the proc isn’t DoT damage and the skill triggering it is we’ll get more of that. It’d be a bit disappointing if true.
Oh I don’t expect it to work. Cursed aura is probably seen as an aura applying them vs a cast. Stranger things have happened though. It’s kind of a shame because it’d be cool if it did interact in some way.
Same issue, blood moon breaches “inflict” curse effects. Affliction also specifically states “your curse skills”, but the unique is triggered by minions and not the player.
Affliction has potential but there are limitations. We don’t know if the damage can crit and curse skills don’t procc lucky hit. I’ll take it for its’ 15% damage multi and the rest is a nice gimmick. I’ll be surprised if builds using it as their main damage dealer are any good.
Look at: Decompose, Blight, Blighted CE tool tips.
No as it was stated in the patch notes, the description is updated to say it’s not a cast, so people should now know it is not affected by size temper. So it will not function with the Affliction keypassive also probably.
Running Blight + Ebonpiercer with it too huh? I managed to solo into Torment IV with the pairing yesterday and it was quite enjoyable to play. I don’t know how it performs past that point because resist/armor is a mess on that character at the moment.
It took longer than it would’ve due to replaying campaign for the hell of it. Interestingly, leveling to 50 before campaign completion does allow bumping difficulty up to Penitent. You cannot bump it to torment tiers for reaching 60, however. Penitent didn’t seem much different from expert. Perhaps they need to fine tune the difficulty gradient across the options a bit better.
Unmaker working that way is as I feared too. I believe Blight ends up costing a little over 30 essence with 7/3 Imperfectly Imbalanced. That should be where Unmaker sits at 12/12 MW with no MW crits/GA and 3 skill pts in it. At least each cast could trigger it. My brain does not feel like pondering whether that makes it worth it for Soulrift ranks + synergy at this precise moment…
I’ve been running Sac Soul with it to automate Flesh Eater and corpse consumptions for the essence to bomb Blight (gawd I hate manually managing Flesh Eater…). Sac Soul props up Grim Harvest for a nice little chunk there.
For no particular reason, Affliction may have the notorious 100% lucky hit bug. I’ve been running Decrepify as a free cast and CD’s seem to come back up a little too quickly with it…
It’s absolutely not worth it. At least with lucky hit based essence regen.
If the Unmaker worked with overflow, I would have gotten a ton of proccs. However, the damage itself is really low.
I tried it on a vuln/crit sever build too but the damage was negligible. Using a CDR shako was better in every way. Until you get that the Unmaker will be good for its’ primary effect.
If not both spending and restoring essence would be limiting factors.
Dear self, maybe fully watch the thing where the devs talk about the new things.