Long Pain damage increase

[Raven Darkholme]

I haven't played a monk since before WM1, remembering how insanely good they were in Act 1 (possibly better than chanters), but I was kinda disappointed in their level scaling.

Today I wanted to try out a high level monk via console, mainly because of the new deadfire armor, so I gave him max xp and leveled him up.

More by curiosity than actual intention of using it, I selected Long Pain fists, since the other abilities left over didn't really interest me.

Now the weapon description is very misleading, stating the weapon has a base dmg of 12-18, while regular fists have 10-15, which is good, don't get me wrong, but when I actually went into combat and my damage output all of a sudden DOUBLED, I checked the description and the base damage was an insane 24-36 (Firebrand has 20-30).

Without any Mi bonuses (21 Mi) The highest single hit of Torment's Reach i saw, was 120!!! (with swift strikes bonus shock damage talent).

Now not only does Torment's hit twice for potentially the same damage since it is a full attack, but also do you not have any recovery with the long pain fists (they are also 2 frames faster than regular ones), 10 Dex, Swift Action gauntlets, Swift Strike and NO durgan enchantment on the Deadfire armor, also for some strange reason vulnerable attack doesn't increase Long Pain Fists recovery.

 

In short the fists do more damage per strike than firebrand (as long as you have swift strike and can spam torments reach, but let's be honest that is always) but they do it twice instantly and if you happen to not have wounds but swift strike active you still do almost the same damage (around 20-30 less than with torments reach) as Firebrand, but you have 0 recovery and 20 frames for the attack animation instead of the 30 of firebrand (at only 10 dex) which has also 24 frames recovery. Ofc it is more recommended to have 18 dex with firebrand, going down to 10 frames of recovery and 24 frames attack, but at this dex long pain fists go down to 16 frames attack animation and ofc still 0 recovery.

 

I'm gonna see for what the fists will hit with 30 Mi and better equip and edit it here, but since 120 is already more than I have seen from firebrand I felt the need to post here, since the weapon description of the fists is very misleading and mostly suggest them having range and not this massive damage increase.

[Boeroer]

Did you miss this?

 

I think I listed everything you can (and can't) do with the Long Pain in that build description. As far as I know nothing has changed since then.

 

Since the base damage scales and is insanely high at higher levels, every dmg bonus you can get is golden (crit, Merciless Hand, high MIG, also hater talents - but also lashes like Lightning Strikes and Blood Testament). Total opposite of Transcendent/Novice's Suffering where additional dmg bonuses besides MIG don't work with the flat "suffering" damage bonus.

Edited December 7, 2017 by Boeroer

[Smelyansky]

So are you saying if you go Long Fists you can dump Dex?

[Boeroer]

Depends. Attack animation and recovery will become slower and your dps will suffer. Also the summoning process of The Long Pain is quite lenghty. With low DEX you're summoning around like forever - it's no fun.

 

Better dump RES.

[Raven Darkholme]

Did you miss this?

 

I think I listed everything you can (and can't) do with the Long Pain in that build description. As far as I know nothing has changed since then.

 

Since the base damage scales and is insanely high at higher levels, every dmg bonus you can get is golden (crit, Merciless Hand, high MIG, also hater talents - but also lashes like Lightning Strikes and Blood Testament). Total opposite of Transcendent/Novice's Suffering where additional dmg bonuses besides MIG don't work with the flat "suffering" damage bonus.

Yeah sadly never saw your build and when i searched for long Pain mainly looked for it in title.

 

 

So are you saying if you go Long Fists you can dump Dex?

10 Dex works super well, no reason to dump it because you have massive hp as monk you can go 10 con, too (ofc combined with Veteran's Recovery).

I had max Mi and Int for my build (9 res I beliieve for Concentration), but as I said i only tested level 16, ofc you might need more Res and Con at low level.(especially before you have long pain)

[Jojobobo]

I think it's a little crazy that Long Pain does so much damage. Caedebald's Blackbow only does slightly more damage, and it's a 8th level Wizard spell.

 

I think if the devs were to go with one last rebalance of the game (which I doubt they will now), they should really nerf monks. They're so strong (with their Wound lashes applying to so many Retaliation effects to a ridiculous degree) that to an extent you could consider all other classes a little irrelevant. From what I'm reading for the PoE2 multiclass system, it seems like Shattered Pillar or Hellwalker monks are pretty big deal for multiclassing - so it seems like their mechanics still haven't quite got the right spin on them (it is of course in beta still though, so maybe it'll get worked out).

Edited December 7, 2017 by Jojobobo

[Natures Bounty]

I agree that the base damage of tlp is a bit too high, but if we talk about balance, priests, wizards, druids and the dragon thrashed should also be nerfed to some degree.

the mechanics of poe 1 are fun and interesting. Still, they require rebalancing, although they were patched so often. I do not understand why the devs decided to throw all this work away and develop so many new but totally unbalanced mechanics for poe 2. why start from scratch?

[Jojobobo]

I agree that the base damage of tlp is a bit too high, but if we talk about balance, priests, wizards, druids and the dragon thrashed should also be nerfed to some degree.

the mechanics of poe 1 are fun and interesting. Still, they require rebalancing, although they were patched so often. I do not understand why the devs decided to throw all this work away and develop so many new but totally unbalanced mechanics for poe 2. why start from scratch?

Well nothing is perfect, and at some point you have to draw a line in the sand and move on as a developer. I'm now happy enough for the game to be left as it is (even if some of the 3.07 items don't work properly) because it feels mostly there. I was extremely annoyed when the devs were looking to not bother fixing Confident Aim for Fighters, as it was more or less on the critical path in terms of taking an ability for a Fighter (there would be only two other options at level 3 - and it was certainly one of the better options). Fortunately after enough bitching and moaning, Obsidian saw sense - but as a player it's not very pleasant to have to cajole a game's company into that situation.

 

Dragon Thrashed definitely needs a nerf - I smashed through PotD solo with a Chanter that had defences way lower (and I mean way lower) than was recommended just because I was regularly blinding people to optimise Dragon Thrashed. However, it also meant I could PotD solo the game only using guns, which was extremely cool so I'm not so sure! Certainly for party play, it's a little much.

 

Personally, I think it was a bit silly for them to introduce items into the game in 3.07 that weren't properly tested. There's certain items that must be notoriously overused (Shod-in-Faith for example) that would have shown in a minute or two there was a problem with something like the Company Captain's Cap. It made what should have been a slam dunk for Obsidian (supporting a game way the point that's obligatory, which is great) into something that is now quite bitter-sweet - and overall I'm sure they could have avoided these mistakes.

Edited December 8, 2017 by Jojobobo

[Boeroer]

I don't know if the Long Pain is too strong. At least not in a party setup.

 

First of all you need to get two wounds so you can't start right away with it.

Secondly it needs some time summoning.

Then you need another wound to trigger Lightning Strikes (you want to do that).
If you want to use Torment's Reach or Force of Anguish you are forces to go into melee because else you won't get wounds.

And if you really want to max the damage you have to go high MIG and take things like the hater talents - best is every one of them.

 

It adds even more micro to a monk but you get rewarded with awesome damage, which is fair I think.

 

They could be a bit slower though, that's a nerf that would make sense. adding a short "charge fist" animation to the attack cycle would be ok.

 

All in all it's very powerful, but there are other things in the game that are even more powerful. I mean Kalakoth's Minor Blights with Blast strikes me as the more powerful thing for example. It's also a summoned weapon but its summoning only takes a fraction of the time the summoning of the Long Pain takes. Its damage is high - even the AoE part has good damage, and paired with Blast it's hilarious. Combine it with Alacrity, Combusting Wounds and Pull of Eora and in my book it's one of the most powerful ability/weapon combos in PoE if you factor in that it involves very little micro and fuzz.

 

Same with Rot Skulls and Citzal's Spirit Lance. Even if you don't spec your wizard towards two handed weapons at all the lance still annihilates whole groups of enemies and is also good against single ones.

 

All in all i think the Long Pain was on of the best things OBS intruduced with a patch. It turned a melee-only class into a viable melee OR ranged class. They should have done something similar with fighter and barb, too. It onlytakes one ability as one can see...  

 

Edited December 8, 2017 by Boeroer