Mechanical Questions Thread

Hi

I'm Mark_GGG, and I know how PoE works. If you'd also like to, this thread is for you.

We're trying out something new as a way for people with mechanical questions to get answers. People can post mechanical questions in this thread, and every few days I'll come by and answer as many as I can. This is specifically for questions about game mechanics - I can't tell you why a balance change was made, whether something will get nerfed, or what option is "best" for a given build. So if you have questions like "Does X support Y?", "What order do A, B, and C happen in when I get hit?", or "Why do the calculations come out this way when I take this passive?", I can help. Questions like "What will the next league be?", "How do people level so fast?", or "What were you thinking when you nerfed X?" are off topic for this thread, and I'm not going to be answering them.

I'm not perfect, and some things I'll have to look up. It might take me longer to get an answer to your question than someone else's - please be patient in this case. I will be doing my best to answer every mechanical question asked in the thread, although this is on top of my other work, so again, please be patient in waiting for me to get to things. If you ask about announced, but unreleased content (such as unique items shown in previews before the patch that adds them to the game), please understand such things are not always final when shown, and not all the answers might exist yet.

This doesn't mean I won't still be replying in other parts of the forum, so don't feel you have to ask things here to get answers.

That's pretty much all I have to say, so let's get the questions rolling!

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Here's a link to just the GGG posts in this thread, for people who just want to see answers.

Thanks for the questions!

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dogheat wrote:

Why is elemental overload worded to only work with players and not totems?

It's worded that way because that's what it does, and having the wording say something else would be problematic.
If you mean why it works that way, then I'm afraid that's an example of the kind of question that's outside the scope of this thread. I can tell you how it does work (you need to crit something, so your totems critting something won't cut it, but once active, since totems use your skills, they benefit from it), but not why that decision was made.

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Felix35071 wrote:

Elemental conversion follows a specific order and can't go backwards or it'll result in a loop. Would it be possible to implement a "conversion flag" so you could convert backwards in the order, then have the game check if the damage had already been converted once it hits whatever the source damage type was?

Probably not, although I don't have a full logical proof of this.
Practically, definitely not - the amount of extra processing added to common stat calculations by that would be unreasonable, if it were possible.

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Felix35071 wrote:

Is there an inherent limit to the number of enemies a skill can hit? There was recently a thread about this on Reddit and it made me wonder if this is just part of the engine.

There is not one limit that applies to all skills, but there is generally a requirement that skill have a limit for technical reasons (as well as potential balance and or performance reasons) to the number of simultaneous hits that can occur.

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Felix35071 wrote:

Are there any plans to improve the mini map? It's essentially a wireframe of the level so it is technically accurate, but is at times hard to interpret. This one's not so much mechanics but still heavily affects gameplay (without being balance related).

Well outside the scope of the thread sorry. I have no idea about this.

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Felix35071 wrote:

Is there a technical limit to DPS?

There is a technical limit to the visible DPS on a skill popup, due to that being stored in an integer variable.
There is a technical limit on the amount of damage a given hit can deal (same dealio), but to my knowledge not a technical limit on the number of times you could hit a target in a second, so I do not believe there's a technical limit on actual DPS dealt to a specific enemy.
There is definitely a mechanical limit to DPS, because there are limits on how high the values of stats you can obtain from passives/gear/etc. There is some theoretical "best DPS" build* that could exist with perfect gear, that would have more DPS than any other actually possible build. This limit is significantly below where any technical limitation would occur on actual damage.

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Felix35071 wrote:

Was it a conscious decision to prevent on-evade and on-dodge triggers when implementing those systems?

Not really the kind of question for this thread, but no. Those are impossible as a consequence of other important decisions, not a decision to make them impossible.

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Dreggon wrote:

Hey, I had a question about Daresso's Passion:

"X% Increased Damage while you have no frenzy charges"

Is that modifier local or global?

Global

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Dreggon wrote:

Is there any way to definitively distinguish whether a modifier is local or global, if it could reasonably be either?

In general, if a modifier can modify the base behaviour of an item (what a white item of that type would do) then it will be local. There are very few exceptions to this, but they do exist, so the answer to the question is no.

Note that this is not a case where it "could be either" - the modifier depends on the number of frenzy charges your character has, which is necessarily external to the item. A local modifier like this would make no sense, as the weapon itself can't have frenzy charges. local modifiers only affect the item, and are self-contained - if the effect cares about the player, it's inherently non-local.



*It's technically possible that there are multiple such builds with exactly equal DPS that are all "best", but very unlikely.