Balefire Not Updated With 3.26 Scorching Ray Changes

Scorching Ray was changed in patch 3.26 to have each additional stage of the debuff to add 80% damage instead of 60%, yet the tooltip for Balefire's scorching ray states: "Additional debuff stages add -40% of damage", essentially being 20% worse per stage than regular Scorching Ray. Either the tooltip wasn't updated or Balefire is currently using an older version of Scorching Ray.

Taken from gem changes post:


Taken from patch notes:


Taken from in-game (Normal Scorching Ray Gem):


Taken from in-game (Balefire Scorching Ray Gem):

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Donk_Shartfarger#0553 wrote:

yet the tooltip for Balefire's scorching ray states: "Additional debuff stages add -40% of damage", essentially being 20% worse per stage than regular Scorching Ray.

It's 120% between -40% and 80%. Per the second tooltip, Balefire's SR looses 40% of damage each stage. Unless this is actually happening in-game (would be clearly noticeable), it should be a displaying issue.

No, the -40% of damage means to say 40% less than 100% of the base damage (60%) per stage. They just changed the wording because of this very reason, it's confusing and reads poorly. I do believe it's more than a display issue, the damage disparity between the level 25 version from Balefire and a level 16 scorching ray does not seem nearly big enough when fully stacked up on high health targets.

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Donk_Shartfarger#0553 wrote:

No, the -40% of damage means to say 40% less than 100% of the base damage (60%) per stage. They just changed the wording because of this very reason, it's confusing and reads poorly.

If you get x1.6 damage adding from -40% (you turn 0.6 to 1.6), from +80% (normal SR) it would be x2.8 damage adding (1.8 turns to 2.8). This is not how it works. Also even if "Additional Debuff stages add 60% of Damage" and "Additional Debuff stages add -40% of Damage" meant the same, the first line presents the value clearly and intuitively, which can't be said about the latter. There was no reason to change the way how the value appears.

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Donk_Shartfarger#0553 wrote:

I do believe it's more than a display issue, the damage disparity between the level 25 version from Balefire and a level 16 scorching ray does not seem nearly big enough when fully stacked up on high health targets.

I can't 100% deny it without tests (and I don't want to run them). I'm just saying that in most cases a bug is either displaying or functional. The -40% value is definitely out of place, you don't add negative numbers. If it was a functional bug as you suggest, the tooltip would correctly display the old value, (+) 60% (I referred above as a first line). Like how can it show one value, function as another, and still be wrong in both?

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MonaHuna#6449 wrote:

If you get x1.6 damage adding from -40% (you turn 0.6 to 1.6), from +80% (normal SR) it would be x2.8 damage adding (1.8 turns to 2.8). This is not how it works. Also even if "Additional Debuff stages add 60% of Damage" and "Additional Debuff stages add -40% of Damage" meant the same, the first line presents the value clearly and intuitively, which can't be said about the latter. There was no reason to change the way how the value appears.

What I mean to say about the disparity between the skill hotbar tooltips is that I believe Scorching Ray's, prior to update 3.26, read like this on all versions ("Additional Debuff stages add -40% of damage"). Only now, after the update, the hotbar tooltip is matching the gem description. This means to say that it's likely that the Scorching Ray that Balefire gives is Scorching Ray that is pulling old gem data from prior to 3.26 where the hotbar tooltip reads weirdly like this and is thus doing less damage due to the different stage scaling.

As far as the math goes (using the logic in the hotbar tooltip) it would be

1st stage = 100%
2nd stage = 100% + (100% + (-40%)) = 160%
3rd stage = 100% + (100% + (-40%))*2 = 220%
4th stage = 100% + (100% + (-40%))*3 = 280%
5th stage = 100% + (100% + (-40%))*4 = 340%
6th stage = 100% + (100% + (-40%))*5 = 400%
7th stage = 100% + (100% + (-40%))*6 = 460%
8th stage = 100% + (100% + (-40%))*7 = 520%

With the old quality adding more damage per stage (an additional 10% damage per stage at 20 quality) it should be a total of 590% base damage at max stages.

With the gem changes in 3.26, excluding quality as it only increases the value of the fire exposure by 5% at 20 quality, the damage scaling should be as follows (I will remove the negative numbers as we can both agree it was a confusing and incorrectly written hotbar tooltip):

1st stage = 100%
2nd stage = 100% + 80% = 180%
3rd stage = 100% + 80%*2 = 260%
4th stage = 100% + 80%*3 = 340%
5th stage = 100% + 80%*4 = 420%
6th stage = 100% + 80%*5 = 500%
7th stage = 100% + 80%*6 = 580%
8th stage = 100% + 80%*7 = 660%

This a difference of 140% base damage at max stages between pre and post 3.26 gem changes and, from my anecdotal evidence playing a Scorching Ray Elementalist this patch going from a regular Scorching Ray gem to using a Balefire at level 60, it seems to be the case that Balefire is using an older Scorching Ray gem data.

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MonaHuna#6449 wrote:

Like how can it show one value, function as another, and still be wrong in both?

With what I explained in mind, the reason why it displays differently and functions differently is because old Scorching Ray gems read like this on their hotbar tooltip which was different than the gem description, meaning that the Balefire's Scorching Ray is quite literally a pre 3.26 level 25 gem with the weird hotbar tooltip, different stage scaling and all.