Corruption needs a buff/rework

[SwegDerp]

Corruption is an ailment tied to several dark damage weapons that increases damage taken by 1% per stack, stacks up to 100, and lasts indefinitely by default. While on it's own, it seems like it would be excellent against bosses given it's indefinite nature. However, there are two things stopping this from being the case:
First is that stacks only apply on at a time, making getting any noticeable benefit out of it impossible before you outright kill the boss.
Second is that 1-100% is very small for the effort you have to dedicate to getting it. Vulnerability, Lethal hits, Crits, Gloom, and Rupture are all better because they give their benefits much faster.

There is one example in the game at the moment of Corruption being both unique and potentially powerful: the Shadow Dagger
On hit, it does dark damage and inflicts 1 stack of Corruption. pretty simple, and setting it apart from the other epic weapons that inflict the ailment in that there is no conditional for the corruption being inflicted, allowing the weapon to stand on it's own to scale it's unique trait: +5% critical damage per stack of corruption, up to +500%.
While not unique on it's own, as the soul dagger has a very similar effect (+10% crit damage per soul you have, up to 100 souls), it doesn't restrict your spending of souls and therefore scaling your stats with favours.
So why is it still not great?
Because the Shadow dagger has a base attack speed of 2 APS and only applies 1 stack per hit. It would be significantly better if it applied 5 or even 10 stacks per hit

As for the other sources of Corruption, the Rift Wand's corruption feels like it was an afterthought rather than part of the weapon's gimmick. Truth and Justice's alternating between judgement (which is actually pretty good) and corruption feels underwhelming, especially given that it's a legendary weapon. The Shadow Shuriken sit in a weird spot regarding this because they're a strong weapon without the corruption, but they don't scale with intelligence. I bring this up because intelligence is how you would get the crits for the corruption to proc consistently given the high base APS of the weapon making marks less than optimal.

The last two sources of corruption are the Occult Mark, a helmet that inflicts 1 stack of corruption on all enemies for every 1 mana drained, and the Abyss Cloak which gives a corruption aura that inflicts a stack once per second. Both of these are questionable because of their limited rate of application, as well as taking the place of potentially way stronger equipment.

The main way I would fix this is give the weapons that inflict it more benefits scaling off of it specifically, as well as increasing the number of stacks inflicted for many of the sources. Either that or a significant rework, but I like the way in which it differs from the radiant counterpart and don't want to remove that dichotomy.

[Jamjars]

Corruption is a multiplier to all other damage sources. That makes it incredibly strong.

[SwegDerp]

Yes it multiplies all other damage, but you need to have that damage potential in the first place for it to be worth anything.

The reason why I take issue with it is because it's radiant counterpart, Judgement, is fast AND strong getting that extra damage in. Corruption is slow and takes too much buildup before you get the potential value. Things just die before that can happen unless you're severely behind on your build.

[THANKS OBAMA]

I dunno about that. Have you been making stacked debuff/ailment setups yet? It's hilarious seeing what happens when you get Perm Infusions, purposely get cursed twice so you can pick up hex, and then just go ham on enemies.

[SwegDerp]

hmm, perhaps I've been looking at this the wrong way. I've been coming at it from the perspective of non-specialized builds that don't focus on increasing the effect of ailments. I'll give it a shot and see if that changes my opinion on the matter.

[SwegDerp]

Originally posted by THANKS OBAMA:

I dunno about that. Have you been making stacked debuff/ailment setups yet? It's hilarious seeing what happens when you get Perm Infusions, purposely get cursed twice so you can pick up hex, and then just go ham on enemies.

I gave your suggestion several runs and I've found limited success when trying to specifically incorporate corruption into the build. I'm not saying that it's not effective in that scenario, I am saying that the weapons that have it built into their kit can't actually use it as their primary gimmick. They tend to instead rely upon Gloom buffing the damage of cursed hits instead of the bonus damage from corruption.
I did find out that the bonus critical damage on the shadow dagger does scale with ailment effect, which I think is cool but still an under powered effect.

[THANKS OBAMA]

It is an extremely niche setup I will admit, and the damage from the corruption probably isn't even that amazing adding into it, but it is something that worked for me when I was doing it on a recent run, but the kill speed makes it hard for me to determine the efficiency of the corruption itself I guess. I shoulda capped it but I had something like 300% Ailment effect going and was dropping Nettles/Shock/Corruption/Gloom on enemies. I forgot what weapon I was even using now that I think about it. Either way, time for me to do some runs trying to recreate another debuff focused build to see how effectively I can do it.

Am I wrong or has the itemization pool focus been tweaked to be a lot better lately? Feels like I get exactly what I want in recent runs for what I'm building.

[SwegDerp]

I think that shock and gloom would be accounting for the majority of your bonus damage even if you didn't have buffs to the cap of shock stacks. At least, that's what I've found in my own attempts. Items and traits only further skew it.
My point is that if you're not doing well, corruption won't help you. If you're already doing well, then you don't need it and it may actually be detrimental to try to incorporate it because it takes up precious slots that may already be occupied.

As for getting items, I've had a fairly middling experience in terms of getting what I need. Often I'll only getting pieces that benefit my build later on in the run or having to switch what my end-game build goal is mid run. Might be overlooking the item rolls due to getting lots of pretty bad trait rolls though, I've had quite a bit of trouble with that.