Fire Penetration vs Controlled Destruction

Hi there. I'm running a life based Elementalist flameblast totem build in preparation for the upcoming SSF league option. I run Orb of Storms to proc EO and Mastermind of Discord (25% Fire Pen). Plus I have 3% Fire Pen from the tree, and I run Flammability already.

For my 4th link, I'm trying to decide between running Fire Penetration vs Controlled Destruction.

How should I think about that tradeoff? Is one strictly better given the above, or does one shine vs bosses, and the other vs trash?

Thanks,
P.

From a friend of mine who runs a ridiculously powerful Elementalist FB build:

4 Links: Flameblast - Fire Pen - Cont Dest - Chance to Ignite
5 Link: Add Inc AOE/Swap Conc Eff.
6 Link: Empower

You can shove in Faster Casting somewhere if you feel too slow. We didn't need it.

Well, I think your instincts are on the right tracks. Controlled Destruction will definitely be better against whites, magics, rares.

With 28% fire penetration and at least -50% fire resistance on enemies already, Controlled Destruction will probably also be better against bosses, too.

Fire Penetration is usually amazing for single element builds, but nowadays because of the resistance map mod change, it's much less likely for enemies to be overcapped, so lower-resist is less weakened (thus more strong). Plus, you already have some thanks to Elementalist.

I really hate to say this, since I'm biased to like stacking penetration to the ceiling, but anti-enemy-resistance measures have diminishing proportional returns (constant, linear) while More Damage Supports have constant proportional returns (multiplicative). The reason Penetration is great most of the time is that the initial returns are huuuge if the enemy has really high resistances (and if enemy has 0% calculated resists before the Support, then x% penetration is the same as x% more hit damage).

Thanks to both of you, that's really helpful!

I feel Mastermind of Discord is a better ascendancy (25% fire pen) than the Liege of the Primordial (2 golems) in a pure fire build. Would you agree as well?

Thanks again.

P.

Hey there, I see you decided to play around a bit after all.
The way I see it, penetration will be better on that setup when Flammability can't drop enemy reses low enough, might happen with high fire res rares with hexproof or rare/bosses on curse resistant maps. I'd use penetration myself, you'll nuke low res enemies with no effort anyway.

16%. That's the magic number when comparing those two.

If the enemy has 16% or more of whatever resist after all your other sources of penetration/resist-reduction are taken into account, then the penetration from the support gem is a better damage amp. Below that, controlled destruction is stronger. (This is assuming level 20 gems, but it should be a fairly similar breakpoint for lower levels too)


Since you're already able to get 28% penetration at will vs anyone, and you've got flammability for an extra 44+% reduction from flammability, pretty much anything that isn't curse resistant/immune/hexproof will be effectively negative already, so controlled destruction should be better generally. Hexproofs might be a bit annoying, especially if they happen to roll ele resist affixes, but for the most part you should be better off with cd.

Bosses themselves generally have 30% ele resist, with the guardians/shaper having 40%, so even with their curse resistance you'll still be better off with cd against them (unless you roll ele resist onto your maps)

You got any math to back up the 16% resist claim?

Penetration is probably better most of the time if you're only counting the hit. But the DoT from the hit doesn't penetrate whereas I believe it would get the more multiplier from Controlled Destruction. So I'm not sure the winner is so clear.

What's the 3rd link? You have Spell Totem and Flameblast but didn't say what the 3rd link was.

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mark1030 написал:

You got any math to back up the 16% resist claim?

Controlled Destruction Level 20
44% more spell damage

Fire Penetration Level 20
37% fire penetration

ResistanceMultiplierChange = (1.00 - enemyRes + firePenetration) / (1.00 - enemyRes)

1.44 = (1.00 - X + 0.37) / (1 - X)

too lazy to algebra, so using wolfram alpha:

x = 0.159091 (probably 15.[90repeating] percent)

this assumes that the damage mix of the Flameblast is 100% fire; Fire Penetration is less effective if, for instance, you are dealing 80% cold damage and 20% fire damage

15.9 is approximately 16%, so 16% resist becomes the magic number

Thanks for explaining.