Charms do not fill the role they are supposed to

Hi guys,

so Charms basically fill the role of Utility Flasks from PoE1. It's quite clear, they basically do the same things (minus a few) like temporary ailment immunity, magic find, resistances and so on. The biggest difference is, that while in PoE1 we have the option to automate our flasks, in PoE2 we exclusively have automation and we cannot trigger our charms manually and prevent automatic activation.

That leads to a problem. Namely that charms do not fill the role they seemingly are supposed to and which you would expect them to fill from their descritption.

We need the option to disable or remove automatic triggers and activate a charm manually.

And rethink the resistance charms please. They are the most useless thing ever.

"

Azdrubel#6242 wrote:

And rethink the resistance charms please. They are the most useless thing ever.

To improve resistance charms specifically, they should make it so resistance charms provide a small innate resistance bonus (at all times) along with a big resistance bonus on hit (when activated). With this change, resistance charms would be useful in all stages of combat.

Resistance Charms:
• Ruby Charm: +10% Fire Resist (innate) + 15% Fire Resist (on hit)
• Sapphire Charm: +10% Cold Resist (innate) + 15% Cold Resist (on hit)
• Topaz Charm: +10% Lightning Resist (innate) + 15% Lightning Resist (on hit)
• Amethyst Charm: +6% Chaos Resist (innate) + 12% Chaos Resist (on hit)

"

CharlesJT#7681 wrote:

To improve resistance charms specifically, they should make it so resistance charms provide a small innate resistance bonus (at all times) along with a big resistance bonus on hit (when activated). With this change, resistance charms would be useful in all stages of combat.

Resistance Charms:
• Ruby Charm: +10% Fire Resist (innate) + 15% Fire Resist (on hit)
• Sapphire Charm: +10% Cold Resist (innate) + 15% Cold Resist (on hit)
• Topaz Charm: +10% Lightning Resist (innate) + 15% Lightning Resist (on hit)
• Amethyst Charm: +6% Chaos Resist (innate) + 12% Chaos Resist (on hit)

I disagree. They would only be marginally more useful. Think about it, the triggered effect is completely meaningless. You can't use it to cap your res, because that means you have uncapped resistances for the majority of your map/playtime OR you use it with capped res in which case it only does something if you somehow have lowered resist but no penetration is in effect, which basically only happens if you run an ele-weakness map or get cursed. In both cases the charm doesn't really help, since for ele-weakness all your resistances are affected and for a singular curse you would have to know in advance which mobs you are facing. Besides, since the charm triggers on hit, it will ALWAYS trigger, all the time. So chances are, by the time you might actually get some use out of it, it will be out of charges.

And regarding your proposed effect of permanent resistances, that is equivalent to the lowest tier resistance roll on a belt (t1 - 6% to 10%). So you are trading the fairly rare +1/+2 charm slot stat for the lowest tier of a specific resist. That's just plain bad. And even worse if you only have 1 charm slot, since then you trade what is effectively a belt-implicit for 10% of one resistance. Not to mention that you could instead run a 20% rarity boost for a boss drop, which is just infinitely better.

If we went with resistance charms giving a permanent effect it needs to be on the same level of resistance rings, so something like +25% permanently, with a on-hit-trigger of another +25% resistance AND +15% maxmimum resistance of that element. Otherwise it is pointless to run the charm since it just doesn't do enough.

Charms have low duration and generally take a lot of kills to charge, so there's no real reason they shouldn't provide near immunity to their damage type. They should cap the player's max resist and give enough resist to hit that even through a curse if they were already capped.

"

Azdrubel#6242 wrote:

If we went with resistance charms giving a permanent effect it needs to be on the same level of resistance rings, so something like +25% permanently, with a on-hit-trigger of another +25% resistance AND +15% maxmimum resistance of that element. Otherwise it is pointless to run the charm since it just doesn't do enough.

Why not just simply and offer static resist and max resist with charms?

Resistance Charms:
• Ruby Charm: +15-25% Fire Resist / +5-15% Max Fire Resist
• Sapphire Charm: +15-25% Cold Resist / +5-15% Max Cold Resist
• Topaz Charm: +15-25% Lightning Resist / +5-15% Max Lightning Resist
• Amethyst Charm: +10-15% Chaos Resist / +5-10% Max Chaos Resist

The only good ones right now are Stun, Freeze, and Slow. Bleed and poison are pretty ok.

I think the resistance ones should give like a +10-25 bonus when equipped and make you take 10% less when proc’d.

Another big problem is you really don’t get access to the other slots. I think advanced belts should have 2 slots and elite belts should give 3.

"

PigKnight#4198 wrote:

The only good ones right now are Stun, Freeze, and Slow. Bleed and poison are pretty ok.

They really aren't, and that's my point. Those charms seem good, but they are not. They have too few uses, gain too few charges and are way too trigger-happy. The slow-charm is always empty, because it triggers on f-ing everything, like chilled ground for example. So you almost never have it when you need it. The stun- and freeze-charms seem good on paper, but they only work if you already have a high threshold against those ailments anyways, since otherwise, again, they trigger all the f-ing time and are never available when needed. If you play CI you get stunned and frozen all the time, so every stray projectile from a mob that has already died will freeze or stun you and suck away your charm-charges. Great, now you are immune to an ailment while searching for the next pack to kill instead of when you need it, which is when you see a scary rare monster and want the immunity right then and there.

Bleed and poison are only functional because the ailments are rare enough. But on a map with "Monsters poison on hit" it's the same story again: your charm is empty in the first minute of playing.

That's just not a functional concept. The builds that need these charms the most to compensate for weaknesses get the least use out of them. The best way to choose a charm is to pick one that only rarely triggers since then you get the intended effect when you need it instead of whenever. Or just slap on the rarity charm since it's the only charm that has a trigger that specifically only triggers when you actually want it to.

It's just really bad design.

"

Azdrubel#6242 wrote:

It's just really bad design.

After thinking about it some more, here is a potential solution to resistance charms.

To improve resistance charms, the developers should change it instead of granting resistance on hit to absorption on hit whereby the damage absorbed would be converted into healing. This effectively makes absorption equivalent to damage reduction and useful in all stages of combat (e.g. initial hit). With this change, it makes resistance charms effectively proactive as a mechanic (as compared to reactive in the current state)...

Resistance Charms:
• Ruby Charm: +25% Fire Absorption
• Sapphire Charm: +25% Cold Absorption
• Topaz Charm: +25% Lightning Absorption
• Amethyst Charm: +18% Chaos Absorption

Note: Absorption would be calculated to take resistance into account first.

Example: A player with a Ruby Charm and 75% Fire Resistance takes 400 fire damage. The 75% resistance takes the fire damage down to 100 HP. The Fire Absorption on the Ruby Charm takes 25% off that figure, leaving 75 HP, and then those 25 HP are converted to healing, leaving a final damage of just 75 HP.

Charms were just a bad direction to go.

My rather casual gamer friend summed it up pretty succinctly when he said, and I paraphrase:

"How do charms even work? I can't even tell if they are even helping."

If they insist on keeping charms the way they are, at least make them impactful enough to give a shit about.