Mark_GGG

This is a technical limitation of how we're able to detect the condition and apply the bonus - it's applied as a conditional damage stat, which fundamentally are a part of hit calculation, so can only apply to hits (and damaging ailments, which are part of a hit and calculated with it). I came up with a potential long-term plan for a new system that would allow the keystone to be implemented in a different way that could apply to all damage, but it's complicated and wasn't feasible for this patch. It's something I'd like to do eventually, as I think that system would unlock some other potentially cool stuff, but at this point isn't even a complete plan, so not something to expect anytime soon.

c), but order is not random (in some cases it is arbitrary, but it's never random). Each hit is processed separately, and that includes stuff you do for blocking it if that hit was blocked. There is no "grouping" of hits - each is separate and sequential.

No.

"basing the dot off the actual damage dealt" only makes sense for ailments, and leads to double-dipping. Ignoring resistances for DoT would be a minor efficiency gain at best - there's still a bunch of other calculations that have to happen for damage taken, this is only removing a single step from a multi-step process (resistances, modifiers to type of damage taken as, modifiers to damage taken, modifiers to where damage is taken from, etc), and would lead to obviously wrong interactions - if you're taking fire damage, and do something that raises your fire resistance, that's obviously supposed to work, but wouldn't be able to under that system.

Doing that would be mechanically possible*, but prohibitively complicated and potentially a maintenance nightmare, because there is no unified code path that all sources of damage over time go through that this could be put into - different damage over time effects are applied in different ways so skills can do different things.

Individual DoT skills could easily apply such a resistance-penalising effect to things affected by their specific DoT effect, but making it generic to all skills would be harder (but still possible).

*with some finagling of wording - it would only be able to depend on them having the DoT on them, not being affected by it or actually taking the damage

Yes. That is the same thing.

Fundamentally, damage-over-time is calculated by the source only as a value of pre-mitigation damage-per-second to try to deal. That is applied to the target, which adds to a total value for damage per second they're taking of that type, and all mitigation and damage taking happens to the total, not to individual sources. Nothing about the source of a specific effect can do anything other than change the calculation of that initial, pre-mitigation dps value. Resistances are mitigation, so apply on the defender side to all damage-over-time of the appropriate type - different sources of damage over time can't be resisted differently, because this process isn't done to and has no concept of individual sources.

No, only the specific skill you dealt the crit with gets the benefit, not other skills with the same name.

This is not a "simple change". This fundamentally cannot happen without completely rewriting everything to do with taking damage over time from the ground up to be massively less efficient.

Yes

Edit: I just realized your explanation also means that Evasion based characters now have no way to mitigate secondary attack damage compared to before where they could with attack dodge.

Evasion also applies to secondary damage from attack skills.

That would be an entirely different mechanic with no relation to triggering, which would need built from the ground up.

Spell dodge and spell block were changed in the past to apply to secondary damage abilities. These abilities do NOT deal spell damage however. What this means is where before 75% of secondary damage was mitigated by spelldodge, now 0% will be. Or in other words your character will take 400% more secondary damage on average than before.

Spell dodge and spell block were only changed to apply to secondary damage from spells, not all secondary damage (secondary damage from attacks being affected by the attack versions of those mechanics).

Chance to Suppress Spell Damage also applies to secondary damage from spells, just like Chance to Block Spell Damage.

Grants Combo Strike and supports other linked strike attack skills, granting them a cooldown and allowing them to be triggered by Combo Strike

Yes (with caveats, see below).

and each other.

Not in any reasonably practical way. The rest of your post indicates to me you are operating under misapprehensions about triggered attacks. Triggered actions are instant, they would not take an attack time to perform, they don't have an "end" in the way a skill being used does, and thus having a "sequence" doesn't really make sense.

In order to do this at all, a lot of work would have to happen because most player attack skills can't currently be triggered - most slams would be simple to add the capability to, strikes would be harder unless we accepted slightly lesser functionality than using them, some specific case like Leap Slam just aren't going to practically work, and thus need a way to be excepted. In g...

A skill is either triggered or not. If it has a trigger condition, it is a triggered skill, and cannot be used. If the support gives modifies melee attack skills it's linked to by giving them a trigger condition, it does that to all of them.

You are describing a support that modifies all attacks it's not linked to (by giving them a trigger condition). That is fundamentally not how supports work.

Supports can't affect skills they aren't supporting, and they can't do different things to different skills they support without a way to distinguish. If the support is making melee attack skills triggered, then it does that to all melee attack skills it supports, and thus none of them can be used, because they're triggered.

This is not true.

No. Supports apply to all skills they support. They have no concept of treating the "second" one differently - there is no actual ordering in terms of how supports apply.

You could potentially have something like cast while channelling which e.g. triggers a supported slam skill when you hit with a supported strike skill - that can differentiate the skills by having a trigger stat that only applies to slams, and a stat for causing the trigger that only works with strikes.

Also, if a skill is triggered, it can't be used at all, and the kind of "alternating" you describe is fundamentally at odds with how actions are input in PoE. That would need an entire new system added on top of the existing handling of actions.

If it was just a support gem, it would lead to an infinite loop where your first attack triggers a second attack which triggers the first attack, which triggers the second attack, and so on and so forth

In practice that wouldn't happen because in that case both attacks are triggered, and thus can't be used, so there's no way to get the loop started. Skills can't work if they have multiple triggers, either, so such a support would effectively make all linked attacks useless.

This is not true. Triggering a skill is not using it - triggering an offering skill does not count as having used a minion skill recently, for any effects in the game with that condition.