Unarmed physical damage is too hard to scale

1. rings can roll things like increased cold damage, but there's no mod for % physical damage

2. staggering palm and stylebender clusters are way too weak compared to their elemental counterparts

3. scaling melee damage doesn't really work because staggering palm's secondary portion only benefits from projectile damage, and it's mandatory for clear speed

4. the sources of generic attack damage on the tree are extremely limited

5. there's only one unarmed cluster on the tree, and it has 25% reduced damage downside, when it's already too difficult to find % inc damage. why does it even have a downside?

6. seismic cry doesn't do anything because unarmed attacks are all strikes

7. level scaling is the main way to scale their damage, but this only provides flat damage, and the mana costs are ridiculous on things like level 37 killing palm while passives related to mana costs are too far away from the build

8. quarterstaff prefixes are completely useless for unarmed physical attacks, because almost all of the mods are local, and inc elemental damage with attacks mod doesn't do anything despite being global

9. the quality effects on staggering palm and killing palm are basically useless, which makes going gemling less meaningful although gemling should be the class for unarmed builds due to level scaling

10. conversion could be a solution to most of these problems, but there is no way to convert physical to something else, except avatar of fire, which is on the opposite side of the tree and is basically a 25% less damage multiplier. and there's an issue with it, it makes it more difficult to get the buff on staggering palm since physical damage has inherent 50% more multiplier for stun buildup

11. flurry reads "inc aoe while unarmed", but why would I be unarmed when unarmed attacks can be used while wielding a quarterstaff, and the only way to scale their damage is by using a quarterstaff that has an affix for melee gem levels? makes zero sense

12. even if I dropped all the physical stuff and wanted to build around shattering palm, shattering palm's damage counter RESETS when you use shattering palm on the same target instead of accumulating. not sure if this is an oversight, or an intended mechanic, but it's extremely stupid regardless

yep

and one more thing, why do concoction skills have much higher base damage than palm skills when they can shotgun with scattershot and deal like 120% more damage for free, on top of getting free proj levels from quivers, when they don't even cost any mana?

The unarmed nodes seem completely pointless. None of the skills really do that much damage. I wonder if they kinda put them there for now and are working on other melee skills that might be only unarmed? Could be cool to play an unarmed melee "caster" with flat damage skills.

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Kashou#2868 написал:

The unarmed nodes seem completely pointless. None of the skills really do that much damage. I wonder if they kinda put them there for now and are working on other melee skills that might be only unarmed? Could be cool to play an unarmed melee "caster" with flat damage skills.

the flat damage values aren't that bad if you can get to higher levels on palm skills, but I don't think they can ever compete with concoction skills because of all the issues I mentioned

I suppose shattering palm is the only way to play with these skills

I feel like not only palm skills, but most full physical skills is at best in "meh" state right now. Compared to elemental scaling, there is basically nothing phys can provide.

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OloloPhewPhew#0656 написал:

I feel like not only palm skills, but most full physical skills is at best in "meh" state right now. Compared to elemental scaling, there is basically nothing phys can provide.

Ah, sounds like in PoE1, where physical is mostly there to be converted to elemental.

But let's just wait until they brought in more patches.
Keep the feedback coming, though, so GGG know what they could add/ change

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Kashou#2868 написал:

The unarmed nodes seem completely pointless. None of the skills really do that much damage. I wonder if they kinda put them there for now and are working on other melee skills that might be only unarmed? Could be cool to play an unarmed melee "caster" with flat damage skills.

The fact that the Way of the Wind node specifically lists "attacks while Unarmed" in addition to "unarmed attacks" makes me think that we'll get a separate weapon class that counts as Unarmed. We know Claws have been datamined. Maybe they'll be the Unarmed class?

There are indeed very few ways to scale physical damage right now. Hopefully, we see more avenues for pure phys builds down the line.