Bone Curse, how does it work on multiple hits?

[Frostfeather]

If I have one minion attack something with Bone Curse, I can see the curse damage separate from the minion damage and it looks right.

If I have multiple minions attack something with Bone Curse, I still only see that one curse damage number and it's apparently not a bigger number.

Is that right? - that whether you're hitting with 20 attacks or 1 attack, you get the same Bone Curse damage? Seems pretty lame in general, but particularly lame for minion builds.

[JanWar]

All skills do more damage if you specialize in that skill and take damage skill node within. Without specialize bone curse just debuff spell, it won't get more damage by itself.

[Ango1eiro]

Bone curse triggers on each hit. But you need to specialise in it and lvl up, for example, bleed chance node to see an actual impact. Works good if you have a lot of minions with high attack speed.

[Frostfeather]

After quite a bit of training dummy testing and Last Epoch Tools searching, it looks like I'm right, though I now know why:

Bone Curse damage is actually technically a DoT. Either the damage is "activated" for a tick or it's not; it doesn't matter if the enemy took 1 hit or 1 million hits at once. Bone Curse damage is the same either way.

So Bone Curse's description is misleading and Bone Curse is not nearly as good as it would seem for large numbers of minions with high attack speed.

[Psykrom]

All curse damage is DoT as far as I know.

[Quillithe]

Originally posted by night4:

After quite a bit of training dummy testing and Last Epoch Tools searching, it looks like I'm right, though I now know why:

Bone Curse damage is actually technically a DoT. Either the damage is "activated" for a tick or it's not; it doesn't matter if the enemy took 1 hit or 1 million hits at once. Bone Curse damage is the same either way.

So Bone Curse's description is misleading and Bone Curse is not nearly as good as it would seem for large numbers of minions with high attack speed.

I'm not sure just being tagged as a DoT means this, that's just how all non-hit damage from afflictions is flagged.

The bleed or shred armor nodes will reveal it's getting triggered a lot

[Frostfeather]

Originally posted by Quillithe:

Originally posted by night4:

After quite a bit of training dummy testing and Last Epoch Tools searching, it looks like I'm right, though I now know why:

Bone Curse damage is actually technically a DoT. Either the damage is "activated" for a tick or it's not; it doesn't matter if the enemy took 1 hit or 1 million hits at once. Bone Curse damage is the same either way.

So Bone Curse's description is misleading and Bone Curse is not nearly as good as it would seem for large numbers of minions with high attack speed.

I'm not sure just being tagged as a DoT means this, that's just how all non-hit damage from afflictions is flagged.

The bleed or shred armor nodes will reveal it's getting triggered a lot

But the freeze node definitely doesn't work that way, it only activates when Blood Curse does damage (which is once per tick max), not when affected enemies are hit. We need better descriptions to understand these inconsistencies.

On a side note: the Bleed is hilariously weak. One single swipe from a Wraith (with their own Bleed) gives a bigger Bleed vs 18 minions stacking 40 stacks of Bleed via Bone Curse. Not even joking.

I assume you could stack +DoT damage to increase it, but that's a poor investment compared to any minion-oriented gearing instead for this type of character.

[Xyphotron]

Your post is quite disheartening (but thank you for the information).

I've been trying to build around skeletons and bone curse for weeks, maximizing the "curse damage" part. First, I was very disappointed to learn that the "aura mode" ("signet of agony") didn't apply the slow and mark of death debuffs ("sigil of mortality" and "crippling anguish"), so I had to remove it, along with the heavy investment in "mana regen" on my gear...

Now, you're telling us that the whole concept of optimizing bone curse damage via minions is null and void. I'll try to test by myself (which is difficult without a combat log feature). If you're right, that would be the final straw for me.

[tiamats4esgares]

This is interesting. I think it may have changed when 1.0 went live with warlock and curses. Because I used to get tons of stacks of armor shred, I mean 100's, and now it's less. I'll do some dummy. testing when I get home.

The 50% more phyiscal damage buff might be worth it alone (plus more vanguards frequency that I don't have to waste passives for, 12% execute, and the slow) but it's disappointing if the armor shred truly isn't working anymore.

Another sad thing is Bone Curse doesn't trigger on hit effects but it DOES trigger on death effects.

[Frostfeather]

Originally posted by tiamats4esgares:

This is interesting. I think it may have changed when 1.0 went live with warlock and curses. Because I used to get tons of stacks of armor shred, I mean 100's, and now it's less. I'll do some dummy. testing when I get home.

The 50% more phyiscal damage buff might be worth it alone (plus more vanguards frequency that I don't have to waste passives for, 12% execute, and the slow) but it's disappointing if the armor shred truly isn't working anymore.

Another sad thing is Bone Curse doesn't trigger on hit effects but it DOES trigger on death effects.

To be clear, it does seem to trigger the Armor Shred & Bleed on Minion hits as far as I can tell. I can stack the Armor Shred and Bleed very high. The Bleed is extremely weak though.

Part of what I meant was that the Freezing node (Bitter Winter) doesn't activate upon hitting an enemy and there's nothing in the description to distinguish that from the Armor Shred & Bleed. The Freeze only potentially activates when the Bone Curse damage ticks. So it requires you to gear for your own Freeze Chance Modifier, not Minions'. Which becomes increasingly not viable over time for such a modest benefit.

[Frostfeather]

Originally posted by Xyphotron:

I was very disappointed to learn that the "aura mode" ("signet of agony") didn't apply the slow and mark of death debuffs ("sigil of mortality" and "crippling anguish")

Oof. That's good to know, though.

The more I learn about Bone Curse, the more I dislike the skill as well, lol. Kind of a shame because I love cursing enemies for my minions.

[kknd]

Originally posted by night4:

After quite a bit of training dummy testing and Last Epoch Tools searching, it looks like I'm right, though I now know why:

Bone Curse damage is actually technically a DoT. Either the damage is "activated" for a tick or it's not; it doesn't matter if the enemy took 1 hit or 1 million hits at once. Bone Curse damage is the same either way.

So Bone Curse's description is misleading and Bone Curse is not nearly as good as it would seem for large numbers of minions with high attack speed.

That would suggest that the best way to maxamize DPS via Bone Curse and minions is just enough minions with just enough attack speed to keep it up, and as much damage per minion/hit as possible. So, the elite summons route basically.

Honestly, I can understand why they coded bone curse that way, the amount of killing power you'd get if every single minion hit set it off would be obscenely high compared to any other possible build in the game.

[Frostfeather]

Originally posted by kknd:

That would suggest that the best way to maxamize DPS via Bone Curse and minions is just enough minions with just enough attack speed to keep it up, and as much damage per minion/hit as possible. So, the elite summons route basically.

Honestly, I can understand why they coded bone curse that way, the amount of killing power you'd get if every single minion hit set it off would be obscenely high compared to any other possible build in the game.:raven:

If you have many minions, then the Armor Shred & Marked for Death nodes seem to be among the best options. Armor Shred to stack that and Marked for Death to increase Minion damage by reducing enemy resists. I don't think it's a good idea to try and maximize damage through Bone Curse directly as other gearing routes will probably give much better results.

And say Bone Curse did do damage on every taken hit. My total Necro dps with 18 high attack/cast speed Minions would go up by something like 1 or 2%. It would be pitiful compared to what my Minions are doing. If you tried to maximize Bone Curse damage as a Necro, you'd be taking away from Minion damage (or taking away from something else).

Maybe a Warlock could make better use of it if it scales with DoT damage or something... I dunno yet. But I suspect even then, you'd be better off stacking a couple DoTs directly.

[kknd]

Originally posted by night4:

Originally posted by kknd:

That would suggest that the best way to maxamize DPS via Bone Curse and minions is just enough minions with just enough attack speed to keep it up, and as much damage per minion/hit as possible. So, the elite summons route basically.

Honestly, I can understand why they coded bone curse that way, the amount of killing power you'd get if every single minion hit set it off would be obscenely high compared to any other possible build in the game.

If you have many minions, then the Armor Shred & Marked for Death nodes seem to be among the best options. Armor Shred to stack that and Marked for Death to increase Minion damage by reducing enemy resists. I don't think it's a good idea to try and maximize damage through Bone Curse directly as other gearing routes will probably give much better results.

And say Bone Curse did do damage on every taken hit. My total Necro dps with 18 high attack/cast speed Minions would go up by something like 1 or 2%. It would be pitiful compared to what my Minions are doing. If you tried to maximize Bone Curse damage as a Necro, you'd be taking away from Minion damage (or taking away from something else).

Maybe a Warlock could make better use of it if it scales with DoT damage or something... I dunno yet. But I suspect even then, you'd be better off stacking a couple DoTs directly.

Well, I meant within the context of using it as a supporting tool for minions, but your points are undeniable in terms of build setup.

[TheWashableBomb]

LOL I love how everyone is just believing OP as if he's some developer or something.

Bone Curse is applied every hit no matter how fast they occur. Get that ability that causes the curse to stop after 4 hits (but increases the damage). The curse will instantly disappear once getting focused on the mob BECAUSE ALL 4 HITS WAS MADE SIMULTANEOUSLY.

[Frostfeather]

Originally posted by TheWashableBomb:

LOL I love how everyone is just believing OP as if he's some developer or something.

Bone Curse is applied every hit no matter how fast they occur. Get that ability that causes the curse to stop after 4 hits (but increases the damage). The curse will instantly disappear once getting focused on the mob BECAUSE ALL 4 HITS WAS MADE SIMULTANEOUSLY.

I got a chance to test Acute Infliction and it works the same as I've described earlier. It appears to be bugged and you're not getting the full damage from it if you hit too frequently. In your case, you're getting 1 tick of damage from it instead of 4. I'm guessing it's designed to be used with another Acolyte spell that doesn't cast very quickly.

You can also prove what I'm saying is right via Bitter Winter (ideally without Acute Infliction here). If you stack tons of Freeze Multiplier gear and use Bitter Winter with 18+ Minions, then your freeze chance should be very significantly higher than without it as every hit would be potentially triggering the freeze. Spoiler alert: that's not what happens. The Freeze is the same whether you have 1 Minion or 20 Minions because the damage only happens once per tick, not once per received hit.