Mark_GGG

At a base level, it's considered good for bonuses to be better with some things than other things. Generally speaking there will be different bonuses that are better with those other things instead, which helps make different builds feel different, and have people make different choices about how they value things depending on what their character is doing.

I'm not trying to tell you you're doing it wrong, I'm trying to get you to think more about the design of specific game aspects and how they interact with other game aspects.

We already do think a lot about those aspects. In all the cases you list, there has been a discussion, in some cases a long back and forth one, possibly trying several versions and seeing how they play, about the specific nature of different ways to accomplish what certain stats are trying to do and which one is the best fit for the design intent for what that specific stat is trying to achieve.

IMO it’s silly to argue that while a skill is being channeled, it’s not being “used”. A character that is cycloning through enemies is certainly “using” the cyclone skill to hit the enemies, no?

No-one is arguing that. You are using the skill - once. The fundamental point of channelled skills is that one use of the skill lasts as long as you hold down the button, rather than lasting for a fixed cast/attack time before the finish using the skill (and can use it again or use another skill).

Those bonuses are explicitly not "gain X constantly while you are using the skill" (some other bonuses are like this), they are "gain X when you use the skill". This is definied as happening at the point where you change from not using the skill to using it - i.e. when you start using it. But it's fundamentally tied to uses of the skill. If you use the skill once, you get the bonus once, regardless of how long it takes to do that. If you're cursed with te...

I would instead explain that minions are not you, and do not have your passive tree - passive bonuses will not apply to minions unless they say they do.

Nice username, btw.

The difference is that this one is specifically using a curse skill that your character has - Mines only have one of your skills - the one they were made from. They can do on-hit effects that apply things, but they cannot trigger other skills (curse-on-hit from a specific curse skill is a special case of triggering), because they don't have those skills.

Yes. Mines do not have a cost, so are not affected by cost modifiers. Reserving is spending, so stats that track mana spent will see it.

That would make it super op for skills that spawn projectiles multiple times, such as Barrage, and stop it working with any attacks that don't spawn projectiles (of which there currently aren't any for wands, but that could change in future).

Not being a cost does not at all mean you magically get back what you reserved. Reserving is spending, that mana was spent.

Reservations are not costs. Modifiers that specify costs can only apply to costs, not reservations.

Yes, this is why Poet's Pen had to change from triggering when you start the attack to when it ends.

This means it won't trigger if you don't reach the end of the attack (because you cancelled it before then), but prevents the above abuse case of starting an attack only to cause the trigger, then immediately cancelling.

The attack is what your character is doing. The projectiles are entirely unrelated except that they are created during the attack.

The attack is an animation on your character which starts, creates the projectiles, and then ends. The attack can end (and thus the spell trigger) before the projectiles hit anything, or afterwards - the attack ending has nothing at all to do with the projectiles. If you cancel the attack before it ends, it won't reach the end, and the trigger will not occur.

No, that is not part of the effect of the Aura - the aura does not grant this bonus.

For contrast, compare to the wording on some Ascendancy notables "Auras from your Skills grant..." which adds an effect to the aura. This means it's part of the aura's effect and will be scaled as such (it also means it's applied by each aura, so if affected by multiple such auras, they each apply that bonus).

Yeah, I completely failed to consider that people entering to trade would bring those monster types into the instance as spectres, and thus add to the spectre list. That'll be the explaination.

Oh, yeah, this is almost certainly it. Those will have existed in the instance as spectres of a player.

It's possible that I'm wrong or out of date about hideouts in this respect, and they do have a set of monsters that count as "native" to them based on the tileset.

Spectre corpses and area corpses are two separate lists, which get added together. Constructing the area corpse list will add the base descrate monster if it would otherwise be empty, so there will always be at least one monster contributed by that list rather than the spectre list, once they two are combined.

I am super impressed by your dedication to testing this and methodology, well done.

However, perhaps I missed it, but I didn't see anything specifying where you tested this? As you might be able to guess from my pointing this out, that will affect the results - all the monster types spawned in generation of the area are in the pool for desecrate, so the number of those affects how "diluted" it already is before you add your spectres to the mix.

If, as I suspect, you tested this in your hideout, then there would be no monsters from the area available, so the initial descrate pool would just be the one base monster type that's added if the pool is otherwise empty to ensure desecrate always has something it can spawn. As such, the results won't be as impressive playing in an actual area with its own monsters.

As usual, /u/taggedjc is correct.

This is entirely correct.

The quoted section of the wiki has at some times been true of arc, but not of projectiles. A set of projectiles that are fired together can only hit each possible target once - the prevention of "shotgunning". Chain does not and never has removed that mechanic. The "Indended Behaviour" in the posted image is neither intended, nor has it been possible for projectiles since the removal of shotgunning. They would chain towards an enemy that's already been hit by one of those projectiles if there were no targets in chaining range that hadn't, but just like every other case of projectiles not being able to hit something if one of the same set of projectiles already had, they would be unable to hit that target, and would pass through with no collision being possible.

This was the case before 3.8.0 (and has been for a long time) and is still the case after 3.8.0. There were no changes to the anti-shotgunning code.

The only thing t...

"[Category] Skills" in PoE means skills for which their gem has the tag (even if the specific instance of the skill doesn't come from a gem). All skills which (inherently) create minions are Minion skills - i.e. they have the Minion tag. There are also some other skills that don't create minions but still have the tag, such as Offerings.

The Phantasm support does not make a skill a Minion skill - supports cannot change the tags of a skill, only it's behaviour. The tags of a skill are based on it's base behaviour, not things supports can add to it - Ice Spear is always a Cold Skill, and never a Fire Skill, even if supported by Cold to Fire, which is a support gem with the Fire tag.

The interaction with Nulls and the Phantasm support was a bug which was caused by the internal systems not having a good enough distinction between the concept of Minion Skills, and the behaviour of summoning minions - the later is important for supportability, but it's the first one, whic...

a) Yes.

b) 3. "increased" and "reduced" modifiers to the same value stack additively.

c) Close enough. Technically for non-instant flasks, this modifier is applied to the value of life recovered per second granted by the flask, since that's the stat you gain from the flask effect, but the result is roughly the same.

d) No. Flasks present themselves as an amount healed and a duration for convenience (the main number people want to know is "how much will this heal me?"), but what they actually are/do is they recover certain amount of life/mana per second, and last for a duration. Increasing the duration means you recover the same amount of life per second for a longer time, which results in higher total amount recovered.

Instant recovery has no duration, so duration modifiers won't apply to instant flasks.