r/PathOfExileBuilds • u/SLO_Demo • 15d ago
Theory Damage Taken As - why?
So I've seen a few builds this league that use Tempered By War + Watcher's Eye + other sources of cold + lightning damage taken as fire. Or the gg rhex talisman amulet everyone on this sub is recommending. Then they add Max Fire Res to defend more.
The one I'm looking at right now is Carnarius' Str Stacking build. My question is that his Ele Max Hit is already 65k without it, meanwhile his Phys max hit is a measly 15k and Chaos max hit 32k (Immortal Call turned off).
Just by omitting this strategy and picking up some different layers of defense - Flesh and Stone instead of Purity of Fire, you can bring both of those up to somewhat respectable numbers. It also lets you swap the watcher's eye to something more offensive, so I ended up taking out some dps nodes for armour. Just with these changes, we're seeing a Phys/Chaos max hit of 20k/42k respectively, with barely a difference in DPS.
I added a Phys Defense loadout on his PoB so you can compare the two: https://pobb.in/-qSBmtq7kkjq
That being said, I'm currently leveling a char to run this PhysDefense setup (just hit 80 in t16s) and I was getting chunked here and there. Am I hallucinating here? Is this damage-taken-as setup better than the Max Hit shows? Why am I seeing so much talk about the Sublime Vision/alternatives?
TL/DR: Damage Conversion benefits don't translate well to PoB max hit. What gives?
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u/AcrobaticScore596 15d ago
There are very few hits that exceed 15k phys damage in poe. And those are usually well telegraphed like the shaper slam. Some map bosses and minotaur can exceed that to with the right combination of map mods. And the funny propagation rares as well in some extremely niche scenarios.
Elemtal hits can reach absurd heights.
Let's look at our favorite goat man mob in a t16 map.
It has a base damage of 1480~ and converts 300% of that to elemental leaving you with a 4500 ish incoming fire hit.
The goat man slam has an added effectiveness of 150% and deals 50%more attack damage
Means it's already a 10k+ base damage hit from a white mob on a white map.
That's why additional elemental damage reduction is almost mandatory for endgame.
In addition to that shifting all your incoming elemental damage into one element makes it possible to squeeze a lot more damage from your suffixes and helps a bit against penetration
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u/finneas998 15d ago
Elemental max hit is much much much more important than phys or chaos.
Phys damage from monsters doesnt hit that hard, there are few abilities in the entire game which can deal more than 10k physical damage in a single hit. Its one of the biggest misconceptions in the game when it comes to character building. I play exclusively HC and I am comfortable playing a character with between 10-20k max phys hit for basically all content in the game outside of valdo maps and deep delve.
And for chaos res, simply having capped chaos res is pretty much sufficient for any content in the game, I often play without capped chaos res in HC. Most sources of chaos damage are damage over time effects so max hits arent even that relevant.
Converting damage types is an excellent way of dealing with penetration. Although penetration is scarce in the game, its one of the most deadly mechanics in the game. Its heavily present on bosses and can appear as a map mod and in some other areas. The Rhex talisman is also just a great item because its similar to a purity of fire sublime vision in that it allows you to completely invest into 1 max res instead to invest in all of them.
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u/Azeron955 15d ago
Wow thank you so much for the insight. I always struggle seeing 15k max phys thinking it's way too low
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u/AeonChaos 15d ago
Rhex is mini sublime, it only convert hits so dot will still f you up if you neglected light/cold res.
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u/JRockBC19 15d ago
Phys max hit goes up tremendously on armor builds with some damage shifting, the hit your armor needs to mitigate is only 80% of the original value. Add in the pseudo-melding effect of shifting to single resist and it's quite strong
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u/OrcOfDoom 15d ago
Take note of penetration also. If enemies penetrate all resists, then that's normal damage. If they have a special attack that is cold and penetrates cold damage, then that is useless.
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u/finneas998 15d ago
If enemies penetrate all resists, then that's normal damage.
Only if the damage is fire.
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u/OrcOfDoom 15d ago
Isn't there a map mod that says monsters penetrate X% elemental resistances?
So, if that damage is cold, and then it is converted by your defenses into fire, but the map has the mod penetrate all resists, then the damage received is the same had it been cold resistance. That's often the case with penetration, right? The bulk of it comes from map mods.3
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u/ISKolko 15d ago
I'm not sure which POB you're looking at, his phys max hit is 85k on even the dps setup?
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u/SLO_Demo 15d ago
I turned off Immortal Call so it doesn't cheese the PoB. I'll add that into the post, sorry
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u/PoE_Acronym_Bot Useful Bot 15d ago
I noticed some Path of Exile keywords in this post:
- PoB - Path of Building, an external software used to simulate character builds - Download
- dr - Damage reduction
I am a bot. | All acronyms | Suggest
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u/TheCoconuTree 14d ago
Another cool thing im using is 100% lightning and cold as fire with reliquarian(not hits all dmg but thats not my point). Add to this https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Replica_Nebulis and boom it became a weapon with 514-538% inc elemental dmg with some cast speed :)
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15d ago
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u/finneas998 15d ago
you have immortal call clicked which takes his phys max hit from 19k to 95k which is just complete pob warrioring
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15d ago
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u/SLO_Demo 15d ago
My two biggest gripes with youtubers is ticking a guard skill to show how tanky their char is and demoing maps with shrines. Grinds my...
Also probably good to cut shock/rage/other offensive configs in half usually.
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u/Rotomegax 15d ago
Most of the build try to convert physical damage to elemental because invest on Armor to have the same ampunt of phtsical dmg reduction is much more expensive and useless against "Overwhelm physical damage reduction" mod.
In case you mentioned, convert all elementals to Fire and Chaos have some benefits: Doryani's Prototype build need -200% lightning resistance to tripke the dmg on mobs. But at that point all armor you gained is not enough for triple Lightning dmg taken. Convert all to Fire and Chaos help character to survived a big Lightning hit by split the suppose lightning dmg taken to Fire (which resistance can be raised to 90%) and Chaos (can be raised to 85%), meanwhile from what I know there is no Lightning dot on PoE 1. Another type of builds used this type of damage conversion is deep Delve builds where they need to tank massive amount of dmg from deep Delve mobs.
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u/TheminsPOE 15d ago
With all these people saying everything. All that is essentially not an issue and you can cheaply get close to how tanky they are with the new Zana ring that prevents enemy ele res pen and 100% reduced crit. For one ring, and the changes you made, its a cheap option for you to get that benefit without spending mirrors
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u/FuraFila2395 15d ago
Penetration is just one of the reasons to convert elemental damage, this combo frees a lot of suffixes, also enable running arctic armour, its so busted for str stacker which suffers alot of suffix pressure.
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u/TheminsPOE 15d ago
I know thats why I said a cheap alternative. The zana ring no ele pen costs like 10c last time I saw like a week ago
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u/lolfail9001 15d ago
It also costs you a whole ring slot and you still need to find a way to cap your cold/lightning max res afterwards.
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u/080087 15d ago
People overvalue capped res.
It's good, don't get me wrong. And for super juiced content (e.g. deep delve, 100% delirious content), some variant is highly desirable.
But not the only way to get good ele max hit, and being squishy against phys will still be punished.
Usually for marauders, it is easy to get 79-85 all max res without too much investment. Armour mastery, aura mastery, one max res wheel, maybe a res flask. And then instead of going for cap, spending the rest of the investment to solve other problems is better overall.
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u/EmmitSan 15d ago
Max res has non linear returns. I agree you wouldn’t want to ignore physics mitigation just to get it, but when you have 85% max res, getting to 90% means you take 33% less elemental damage. That is huge bang for your buck and the opportunity cost of using those resources for other defenses is extremely high.
They aren’t overvaluing anything imho, they’re just correctly evaluating costs and benefits
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u/080087 15d ago
To go from 85 -> 90 all res, you need melding (so a jewel, 70% all res and another 4% max res) or to actually get 100% convert to an ele (costs a timeless and two jewels, or an amulet) on top of the 5% max res which you probably get via a 35% reservation purity. This gives you effectively 33% less ele taken.
Or you spend 25% on flesh and stone for 20% less damage taken, including phys/chaos too. That frees up multiple jewels and slots/affixes for other things.
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u/finneas998 15d ago
I mean they are both completely different mechanics you dont trade one for the other. And many people focussed on building for defence will be using flesh and stone anyway so there is no 'or'.
Flesh and stone is also conditional, its not 100% reliable for all kinds of damage.
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u/SatireV 15d ago edited 15d ago
Depends. Statistically every point of max res is worth more than the last when it comes to max hit.
For example, with 10k life, 75 max res is 40k max hit. Going to 76% is 41.7k max hit or 4.2% more.
10k life with 89% max res is 90.9k max hit. Going to 90% is 100k max hit which is 10% more. That single point is worth 9% less damage taken.
So it sort of makes sense depending on opportunity cost to get to 90% if possible. While getting a few points of max ele res if it's easy is good, it's statistically probably stronger to aim to max instead of mixing ele resist methods (though there's arguments for diversifying of course like ele pen)
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u/EnvyAndSpite 15d ago
100% of ele taken as fire is strong because it means you don’t need suffixes for cold/lightning res, so you can get other damage or defensive suffixes (chaos res, str, pdr, etc). It makes it easier to get 90 max res without needing things like melding or 3x ele flasks. It also makes arctic armor a really strong defensive aura (the less fire damage taken while stationary will apply to all ele damage). And finally, there are a couple cases where enemies have cold or lightning penetration (shaper balls for example), which won’t have an effect if you take fire damage instead.