Demon Form - Shape Shifting Issues and Balance Changes

[Kotodama]

I started messing around theory crafting a build. Currently level 41 and went Demon Form. Firstly the pros do not outweigh the cons, which is probably why absolutely no one but me probably even decided to try playing it.

The fact that you lose ALL bonuses of your weapon is too much of a downside for an ASCENDANCY that is supposed to give to great power to your build. No one is going demon form because PoE is a Gear Focused game and something that completely eliminates the use of a weapon automatically feels terrible. A good weapon will out perform Demon Form easy. The amount of spell damage, crit chance, increased Mana, Extra damage, etc immediately makes it so that Demon form is practically useless once you get a really good weapon.

What GGG needs to do is change this lack of weapon application to Shapeshifting. If my demon can get all the bonuses of my armor in my demon form, why cant they get their weapon bonuses?

You dont even have to give us the full bonus, GGG, just give us 50%. Right now the ONLY viable Infernalist build is a minion focused one. There are no other builds. all of them are using srs and firewall with arconists sometimes. Please make this demon form change to actually make it something worth playing. Dont change anything else, just make it so that they gain 50% or hell, even 35% or something, of the stats of their weapon.
_

Problem #2) Staff and Wand attacks have the Spell Keyword, but they dont count as a spell in Demon Form and therefore break you out of Demon Form. Why?

I can literally slot spell related gems into those support slots and increase the effectiveness because it says "Spell" in its key word text. Demon Form states that she will be removed from Demon Form if a non spell was used. Using Firebolt from a staff is a spell, and therefore shouldn't remove your demon form. However, it currently is breaking.

[Overeagerdragon]

Yeah none of the witch ascendancies are worth the payoff atm

I have spirit from sources OTHEr than my weapon but still lose ALL of my summons when I change to demon form...

So I'm basically swapping minions that are ignored 80% of the time for taking more damage whilst ALSO disablig some 50% of my kit that could deal chip damage... wtf

[ministrog]

from what i can tell, if you spec just the form, spell gem level has no cap, but soft capped on mana req. you'll need a massive MP. look up what happens to skill as their gem level goes above 20. nearly everything i've seen points the damage goes up exponentially.

the branching ascendancy node seems to be a cap so all you need is just over come the degen like an RF build.

edit: i just did some more research, it's life loss, not mp degen. mb

[Karnaij]

my demon form gives me 1500% spellpower giving me spark is at 5k-6k when its 800 without demonform. Its going to get nerfed its so udderly broken just get regen lifesteal life on kill and watch your stacks fly up and damage sky rockets

[Karnaij]

after taking my weapons off cause i never use them my dps is 365 on sparks at 100 stacks at 6000 dps im pushing slowing into 150s putting me at 10k dps idk its really op

[Kotodama]

Originally posted by ministrog:

from what i can tell, if you spec just the form, spell gem level has no cap, but soft capped on mana req. you'll need a massive MP. look up what happens to skill as their gem level goes above 20. nearly everything i've seen points the damage goes up exponentially.

the branching ascendancy node seems to be a cap so all you need is just over come the degen like an RF build.

edit: i just did some more research, it's life loss, not mp degen. mb

The second ascendancy node caps it at max 10 demonflame. Meaning a 5% max HP per second degen. Right now I've solved it to get around close to 50 max stacks before I started losing HP.

100 stacks means 50% max HP per second. That is just way too much and not possible to build for unless you keep your max HP as low as possible (meaning making yourself 1 shot by any mob eventually). So the 10 demonflame cap makes it so you can infinitely stay in demon form.

Because you can cap it out at 10, it means that the spell power bonus per demonflame ALSO caps out at 10 stacks, which is only a 15% stacking up to 10 times. Meaning you LOSE power because you cap it.

Because it is life loss, it isnt counted as damage so the only way to mitigate it is through Regen Life per second. Which isnt too bad but it means getting Max HP makes it worse because it increases the damage you take and Max HP is used on every single item for virtually all classes.

Point being, its too weak. When you consider the amount of stats you get from a weapon or a WAND + SHIELD? Where you can fully customize a wand + shield and get INSANE stats on them? Where you can get + gem skills on both the weapon and the shield? Crit chance, percentage damage in the hundreds vs just a 15% x 10 Demon flame?

Its just way too weak. A weapon by itself gives you MORE spell damage then 10 stacks of demon flame without the downside of having to build life regen. Meaning all you get is a better dodge. (because you can ALSO build cast speed better on gear than on demon form).

People saying they can build for 100% Demon Flame for 50% life loss per second is just not possible. Your life would have to be below 300HP to even make that feasible.

[Kotodama]

By the way this ALSO means that the druid that is to come, who will shape shift will ALSO suffer greatly because they wont be able to use weapons or gear pieces just like Demon Form. So what they do with Demon Form will tell you the problems that Druid will have.

[Zyavaranah]

Being honest i love how demon form works. Lack of weapon is justified with bonuses provided by demon form, and going low life with high es does not make you that squishy. demon form has a lot of bugs with resses/entering map in party and supports not working properly.

Seeing how fun it feels compared to minions (which feel pretty underwhelming at their current state imo) i am hyped about druid coming.

[Hyde]

Is life regen on items flat? I feel like, late game, solving demon form wont be impossible.

[DELAMAIN]

Originally posted by Hyde:

Is life regen on items flat? I feel like, late game, solving demon form wont be impossible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XABh72qmsk8&t=242s

[DELAMAIN]

tell me if this worth it looking on video?
i like tree of BloodMage...
dont know what is better

[Kotodama]

Originally posted by DELAMAIN:

Originally posted by Hyde:

Is life regen on items flat? I feel like, late game, solving demon form wont be impossible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XABh72qmsk8&t=242s

So if you notice, as I said, you are required to use an item that reduces max HP in order to reduce the amount of life that burned by demon form. Meaning that Ghostwrithe is one of those mandatory items (another could be the helmet that consumes energy shield and turns it into regen which is the one I use.) However, Damage over time from chaos damage and poison? that can kill this build because it goes through energy shield. Meaning the nearly 8k shield they have becomes the 500ish health they have.

[robruckus65]

Originally posted by DELAMAIN:

tell me if this worth it looking on video?
i like tree of BloodMage...
dont know what is better

Bloodmage is a debuff until you have 4 ascendancy points then it is okay then at 6 it can do decent damage but it scales horrifically late game since the life cost out scales your ability to get life. Demon form is a bit better life wise but it still isnt great damage wise. If you want to cast spells and do tons of damage sorc is better.

[DELAMAIN]

Originally posted by robruckus65:

Originally posted by DELAMAIN:

tell me if this worth it looking on video?
i like tree of BloodMage...
dont know what is better

Bloodmage is a debuff until you have 4 ascendancy points then it is okay then at 6 it can do decent damage but it scales horrifically late game since the life cost out scales your ability to get life. Demon form is a bit better life wise but it still isnt great damage wise. If you want to cast spells and do tons of damage sorc is better.

When i read BloodMage tree it seems super for late game. Tanky+bleed dots with elemental crits.
I am new to PoE but was thinking to make dot tanky caster.
Isnt leech suppose to overcome dot cost?
Infernalist pushes you to use demonform and fire...

[robruckus65]

Originally posted by DELAMAIN:

When i read BloodMage tree it seems super for late game. Tanky+bleed dots with elemental crits.
I am new to PoE but was thinking to make dot tanky caster.
Isnt leech suppose to overcome dot cost?
Infernalist pushes you to use demonform and fire...

The leech kind of works early and mid game but late game spell costs get too high and it doesn't scale well at all. THe way you hav3e to pay 100% of the mana cost as life is insane. It doesnt take into account anything that lowers mana costs either it is the full base mana cost from your life. And you need to pretty much be in melee range to pick up the blood orbs so if you are not constantly oneshotting everything you are pretty much dead. The chaos dots are pretty lack luster and fall off hard. You can make them both work but they just aren't great as is. Witch's strongest setup right now is infernalist minions you get the hellhound and more spirit.

[OG Microsoft Kush]

This is a funny post now because a lot of people are playing 200+stack Demonform with Spark/Hexblast/Fireball and the build is amazing.

If you're stopping at 10 stacks, yeah it's useless compared to having a weapon(s). Once you're past like... 50ish stacks, everything just dies. At 150+ Bosses just melt.