Sacred Immolation question

[TheMetaphysician]

I haven't tried out Sacred Immolation, and I remember patches  changing it a lot. How bad is the self-damage? Is the self-damage raised by Might and Intelligence? How much self-healing do you need to equalize it out?

[Boeroer]

The self damage is pretty bad. From the top of my head is 35 (or was it 32?) raw dmg per 3 secs - which scales with Power Level and MIG. If unmanaged it will knock you out. Except maybe if you had high CON and low MIG and INT - but then the damage to enemies would also be bad and you would still be on the brink of K.O.

Things that you can do: Exalted Endurance, Lay on Hands (on yourself), Voidward Ring, raise RES into the sky (shortens the duration of the self damage), use items and food with -x% to hostile effects duration. I believe even damage reduction from Cadhu Scalth and Death's Maw and such will help. You can pair that then with regenerating effects like Ring of Regeneration, Three Trolls Stiched or whatever. 

That way you can make it work. What also works beautifully (you won't need much else then) is if you have a Furyshaper with Blood Ward and/or a Chanter with Old Siec in the party. Every pulse of SI will then drain life from the enemies. If there's enough enemies SI will net-heal you even. 

 

[Kaylon]

Old Siec won't drain from more than 2 targets per attack. In fact it will drain from the damage you do to yourself (with no enemies around you will heal for 4-5dmg) and from another target.  With high might you will take around 50+ raw dmg/tick with Voidward equiped. Exalted Endurance + Ancient Memory + Old Siec will heal at best for 30 endurance every 3s and you're still left with 20+dmg to cover. You might squeeze more regen from items/drugs, but it's not enough to out heal the damage taken. To counter the damage taken you need Pain Block from a cipher or use Lay on Hands on yourself. The Herald is still a nice option because he can add the shock lash from Sasha's Singing Scimitar to Sacred Immolation and also buff himself with Energized.

However the most suitable combo for Sacred Immolation is the paladin/monk who can suppress the self damage using Clarity of Agony (without mentioning access to Energized, superior intellect and might).

[AeonsLegend]

So Clarity of Agony would also reduce the self damage? Does that count as well for Berserker Frenzy?

[Boeroer]

I used it with a Chanter and Furyshaper with Bloodward. It seems Blood Ward doesn't have this limitation that Old Siec seems to have (which I didn't even notice in the first place). With both you can def. heal it out (I used it in combo with Inspiring Beacon, that might help as well).

Yes, all the "normal" passive stuff is not enough to outheal it. At some point you have to use Lay on Hands, especially because you also receive damage from other sources as well.

However, if you pile up a lot of RES and +x% hostile effects the self damage is rather short (if your INT is not superhigh).

And of course you can use Barring Death's Door from a fellow Priest.

All in all it's a missed opportunity that the devs didn't introduce a PL8 or 9 ability that removes the self damage or turns it into burn damage rather than raw (which would roll against DR and also could be used with the Scorched Cloak).

[Boeroer]

19 minutes ago, AeonsLegend said:

So Clarity of Agony would also reduce the self damage? Does that count as well for Berserker Frenzy?

It reduces the duration of the self damage of SI significantly, yes. Last time I tried this with Berserker Frenzy and also Alacrity it didn't work at all. It seems that Sacred Immolation's self damage is not tied to the duration of the burn damage - while Berserker Frenzy's and Alacrity's self damage are both tied directly to the buff duration (tnd that doesn't get reduced by RES or Clarity of Agony of course). Maybe because Sacred Immolation isn't implemented like a buff on the character it can't get tied to the self damage directly. Just a guess. And it was right after release when I tried, so things may have changed. But I believe it's still like that.   

[TheMetaphysician]

Ok, I'm doing some theory calculations, since I can't test it right now. I'm interested in whether the Healing Wall build can just heal through it. That build stacks might, but it also stacks lots of healing multipliers, and I'm doing a no-rest run, so that includes Dawnstar's Blessing.

(Anybody know if the +20% damage for spells from the Captain's Banquet food applies to the self-damage?)

 

Ok, so the self-damage is 32 base (per 3 seconds), plus the Might multiplier, subtracting the 25% from Voidward. I'll leave the Might multiplier out, since it cancels out with the might multipliers from the healing sources. 32 x .75 = 24.

 

Sources of self-healing (these are adjusted to the per-3 second rate, which is wrong sometimes because of rounding, but close enough for government work):

- Exalted Endurance (3 base), +25% paladin power level = 3.75

- Ancient Memory (3 base) +40% chanter power level = 4.2

- Blackened Plate Armor -- crap, Life in Death doesn't affect the wearer, I thought it did.

- Troll cloak, (.5 base)

- Ring of Greater Regeneration (.5 base)

TOTAL: 8.95

 

Sources of healing boosts:

- Dawnstar's Blessing: +50%

- Mercy and Kindness chant: +50%

- Practiced Healer: +15%

- Prissy pet: +15%

- Bonesetter's Torc: +10%

- Footprints of Ahu Taka boots: +10%

- Physiker's Touch belt: +10%

TOTAL: 160%

 

8.95 x 2.6 = 23.27

 

Wow, that is almost exactly the self-damage being done. Add on top of that the fact that the Prissy pet also returns health on kill, and you should be getting some healing from kills you get with Sacred Immolation. (It'll be interesting to see if these rough calculations hold up in practice. There are rounding issues, and then also the fact that the healing from the cloak and the ring tick slower than the self-damage, so they might not cancel it out in practice. And I'm also not at all sure if I've got the additive/multiplicative multipliers straight. To make the numbers match what my tooltips are telling me, it looks like Power Level is a multiplicative modifier, while everything else is additive, which is how I've treated them, putting the power level modifications in with the base numbers. I'm sure there is a thread around here somewhere that explains the multipliers, but I haven't looked at it.)

 

Now, whether SI is worth the loss of all that self-healing on the tank is another question entirely. The Healing Wall tank does already have sky-high defenses, and so doesn't need that much self-healing.

 

Edit:

 

Hmm...there is an alternative source of healing: if I use Come Come Soft Winds instead of Mercy and Kindness as the second chant. You lose a 50% boost to healing, but gain another base 2 (+40% chanter power level) = 2.8 source of healing. So the base (with power level boosts) would go up to 11.75, the multiplier down to 110%. 11.75 x 2.1 = 24.675. That is actually more! Because I've stacked so many sources of additive healing boosts, the Mercy and Kindness chant ends up being less valuable than the extra source of base healing. (And you get some more AOE damage from Come Come to go with the SI damage, so it fits the theme.)

 

Now, if there is another chanter in the party with Mercy and Kindness, the healing goes to 11.75 x 2.6 = 30.55, pretty easily outhealing the damage. Have that chanter also have Old Siec, and you are outhealing it no problem. But I doubt the damage output of SI is worth devoting that many resources to it (though the constant healing to your party will be crazy, which is useful, of course). I'm interested if I can just throw this onto my existing Healing Wall without changing much that is already there.

Edited April 20, 2020 by TheMetaphysician

[Kaylon]

That's not how it works.

3 hours ago, TheMetaphysician said:

I'll leave the Might multiplier out, since it cancels out with the might multipliers from the healing sources. 32 x .75 = 24.

That's not correct, the healing bonus should be added to the other bonuses...

You should also keep in mind that Sacred Immolation has a base duration of only 12s and it costs 4 zeal. That means you want to squeeze as much int, mig and fire power levels in your build in order to make it worth the cost. With Otto, Sun and Moon/Magran's Favor, Shark Soup/Hot Razor Skewers and maybe even a Potion of Ascension you can reach up to 8 fire PL - which makes a huge difference. However the self damage will increase too and it can reach over 60 raw dmg with Voidward equiped. You want to use also the Ring of Focused Flame or else your accuracy will be rather poor.

 

Edited April 20, 2020 by Kaylon

[TheMetaphysician]

Lol, of course you are right, I had a brain fart.

 

Might is an additive bonus in PoE 2, right? Not mulitplicative like it was in PoE 1?

[TheMetaphysician]

Ok, I'll use my current level 19 Healing Wall's might: he gets a +45% boost to damage from Might. Assuming the Might bonus and the Voidward ring's reduction are additive, what we get instead is:

 

Self-damage from Sacred Immolation: 32 base, bonuses (+45% - 25% = 20%), is 32 x 1.2 = 38.4

 

Self-heal adds the 45% might bonus to the other bonuses 

          - (variation with Mercy and Kindness): 8.95 x 3.05 = 27.2975

          - (variation with Come Come): 11.75 x 2.55 = 29.96

 

Now there is a gap of 8-10 damage per 3 second tick. That isn't terrible, and can be made up with another heal. But, again, that extra resource spent further reduces the value of SI in the first place. I thought I might be able to throw it on the Healing Wall build since it already stacks healing bonuses, but it doesn't look worth it. Stoic Steel is a better choice.

 

Interestingly, the high Might of the Healing Wall, which you need anyway to make the SI damage good, does less for the healing than for the damage, because the healing starts with a lower base number and relies on multipliers, while the damage comes from the high base number. But lowering might makes SI less good. And, as Kaylon pointed out, all the other stuff you'd need to do to make SI better (power level stacking) ups the damage too.

 

Man, I just don't see this ability ever being worth the trouble. I wish they had lowered the base damage to a more manageable number. It is such a cool idea, and was awesome in PoE 1.

[Boeroer]

10 hours ago, TheMetaphysician said:

Might is an additive bonus in PoE 2, right? Not mulitplicative like it was in PoE 1?

It wasn't multiplicative in PoE either. Works exactly the same in both games. 

[Boeroer]

10 hours ago, TheMetaphysician said:

Ok, I'll use my current level 19 Healing Wall's might: he gets a +45% boost to damage from Might. Assuming the Might bonus and the Voidward ring's reduction are additive

Unfortunately, once damage reductions get incorporated, things usually become much more complicated than that - due to double inversion and such.

Best thing would simply be to quickly create a lvl 20-Herald via console and just try it out. All the theorycrafting might be futile: if we only make one false assumption it's not going to be correct.
For example: is it correct that "Come, Sweet Winds" profits from healing bonuses? Is Voidward's dmg reduction going through double inversion as all the other ones (graze, underpenetration) which would make it much more potent? Did you account for the fact that high RES makes the self damage duration a lot shorter while it doesn't influence the duration of the outgoing burn damage effect (which is the best way to make it all worthwhile in my opinion since it's a multiplicative reduction with potentially high numbers)?

So better test it right away I'd say. After that one can still see if one can deduce the correct formula from that. 

Having said that: I don't really bother using SI - although I think one can make it work. If not self-contained in one character then with the help of the party. For example "Take the Hit" could be great (if it works with SI's self damage in the first place) because a party-wide heal like from that Healing Wall char would apply to all party members the same (doesn't get split) - while the self damage would be cut in half. You basically double the healing/dmg ratio.  

By the way: did anybody ever check what happens when you have two fighters with "Take the Hit" in the party? Or one with Take the Hit and another char with Furrante's Breatsplate?

Edited April 21, 2020 by Boeroer

[thelee]

21 hours ago, TheMetaphysician said:

(Anybody know if the +20% damage for spells from the Captain's Banquet food applies to the self-damage?)

i'm not even sure if the paladin counts as a spellcaster for captain's banquet purposes.

 

21 hours ago, TheMetaphysician said:

Ok, so the self-damage is 32 base (per 3 seconds), plus the Might multiplier, subtracting the 25% from Voidward.

Any time you have a penalty, you need to invert it. You can't just subtract it. In this case, a -25% from voidward would actually be a -.33 adjustment. For your later example it would be .45 - .33 => .12, which is positive, so you don't need to re-invert it, so it's a +12% bonus. (the inversion basically tries to emulate how in multiplicative systems, penalties are more severe and harder to trivialize)

Importantly, you should add-up all the bonuses and maluses that affect a number in one go (don't separate out the healing) because otherwise the order of operations with regards to inversions could really throw you off. The only situation where you treat modifiers in a different step is PL scaling (which are multiplicative). 

 

4 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Best thing would simply be to quickly create a lvl 20-Herald via console and just try it out. All the theorycrafting might be futile: if we only make one false assumption it's not going to be correct.

I'm normally a big fan of theory, but you should only use theory to guide actual real experiments and is merely saving yourself time from pursuing dead-ends, and that theory needs to be accurate to begin with. To wit, getting the inversion math is absolutely critical to getting an accurate model of what's happening, especially when you're talking about accumulating enough to cancel out self-damage (being off by a little bit means the difference between infinite sustain vs dying throughout a long fight). Plus, not only could assumptions be off, Deadfire having been a game implemented by human beings, there are plenty of exceptions and edge-cases and weird implementation issues. Personally speaking, I have one save game from an old character that's just sitting around in a tavern to recruit level 19 adventurers so I could verify any theory with an actual test character.

Edited April 21, 2020 by thelee

[thelee]

16 hours ago, TheMetaphysician said:

Man, I just don't see this ability ever being worth the trouble. I wish they had lowered the base damage to a more manageable number. It is such a cool idea, and was awesome in PoE 1.

to be fair, I thought it was way too good in poe 1. there was no reason to not always take it and blindly use it in every fight (other than fire absorption on the enemy, though i'm not sure if that existed in poe 1).

 

i'm not sure the ability is bad (it's only really bad if you're trying to consider the paladin in isolation and not with support or consumables to keep them up), i think mostly it is just costed a bit too expensively when the paladin has plenty of exhortations and other abilities you want to use.

Edited April 21, 2020 by thelee

[Boeroer]

53 minutes ago, thelee said:

Personally speaking, I have one save game from an old character that's just sitting around in a tavern to recruit level 19 adventurers so I could verify any theory with an actual test character.

I just use any savegame and use

setClasslevel <char_name> <class_name> 20 false

 and

addAbility <player_name> <ability_name>

It's a matter of 5 minutes to "console" any char you have into a level 20-something/something with xyz abilities. Hiring them and leveling them up manually takes a lot more time. Only disadvantage: you can't empower abilites you added via console. 

Edited April 21, 2020 by Boeroer

[thelee]

6 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

I just use any savegame and use

setClasslevel <char_name> <class_name> 20 false

 and

addAbility <player_name> <ability_name>

It's a matter of 5 minutes to "console" any char you have into a level 20-something/something with xyz abilities. Hiring them and leveling them up manually takes a lot more time. Only disadvantage: you can't empower abilites you added via console. 

i actually don't trust my ability to get that right  (not necessarily in deadfire, though it has happened). i've been bitten in the past where stuff i've added has not been correct, or there's some subtle interaction that direct-add doesn't do, so unless it's something i literally can't do without console (mostly for an item that i need to test or need to enchant differently) i do the extra tedium of recruiting a character just to make sure whatever i'm doing is what is "normal" for the game. I actually have two different saves, one with iroll20s on and one without, so any console-related stuff i keep isolated away from possibly polluting a "normal" test save.

[TheMetaphysician]

Ok, I got to level 20 and tested it out, with all that gear on. The Healing Wall doesn't completely out-heal the damage, but keeps up with it pretty well, so it isn't too great a danger. One self-heal (greater lay on hands or Second Wind) does the trick easily. Not sure that is worth it, but I'm using it anyway.

 

One other piece of gear I haven't put on yet is the soulbound helmet from Seeker,Slayer,Surivovor, which can bind with Chanter. The self-heal on that, combined with the other stuff, easily heals through one use of SI per encounter.