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Increasing a character's stats past the baseline value of 10 should have only positive effects on gameplay and combat. Following this is good game design and makes sense. In PoE, there are many abilities that have drawbacks such as afflicting the character for a duration or forcing them to take damage. In all of those scenarios I've found, the following things happen with regard to self-harming effects: Duration increases with the player's INT, beneficial effect increase (like from Strand of Favor, which contradicts its description), and Power Level (if class ability). Damage the player takes increases with player's MIG, Power Level (if class ability), and all percent damage increases such as the human race bonus when bloodied or near death. Why does INT increase the duration of these harmful effects while RES simultaneously reduces it? Now we have two stats that the player wants to increase, both contradicting each other. INT should have no influence on duration, which will allow RES to do its job properly. The reason it works like this currently is that the game treats self-harming effects as both helpful and harmful. This should not be the case. On the other hand, ability self-damage should scale as the character becomes stronger to keep things balanced. All the abilities I mention below are relatively balanced to Power Level. Because self-damage is almost exclusively raw and all +% bonus damage increases will scale this damage up, it's easy to see that things can very quickly get out of hand. Forcing this self-damage to scale from Power Level only will allow DPS characters to use abilities like Frenzy and Sacred Immolation without having to compensate with high CON. The following abilities should be changed: Monk Forbidden Curse duration. Should be RES only. Monk Forbidden Curse damage tick. Should be PL only. Blood Mage's self-damage should be PL only. It's almost certainly being affected, but there's no tooltip and since it's random damage there's no way to prove it via screenshot. Paladin's Sacred Immolation damage tick. Should be PL only. Barbarian's Frenzy damage tick. Should be PL only. Blunderbuss's Powder Burns duration. Should be RES only. Wizard Spell Deleterious Alacrity of Motion. Should be PL only. Strand of Favor's passive effects both apply to self-inflicted effect duration. Only the Ward of Favor ability should apply. Fixing the scaling issues of harmful self-inflicted effects would be a strong improvement to combat overall. This will make the commonly ignored aspects of some classes and builds competitive, which would enhance the game's variety.