PoE Elemental Overload — Path of Exile

Elemental Overload (EO) is a keystone passive skill in Path of Exile that provides a significant boost to elemental damage for characters who occasionally land critical strikes. Specifically, it grants a 40% more elemental damage modifier for hits and ailments when a skill has dealt a critical strike within the last 8 seconds. However, it comes with the trade-off of removing the extra damage normally provided by critical strikes and prevents ailments from being considered as coming from critical strikes.

PoE Elemental Overload

Mechanics

  • Activation and Duration: When a skill deals a critical strike, it triggers Elemental Overload for 8 seconds. During this time, any hit or ailment caused by that skill will deal 40% more elemental damage. This damage bonus applies to all elements, including physical damage converted to elemental, and even chaos damage if it originated from elemental damage.
  • Critical Strike Damage: While EO is active, the critical strikes no longer deal extra damage. Essentially, the 40% more elemental damage replaces the increased damage normally gained from critical hits.
  • Ailments and Critical Strikes: Ailments inflicted under the effect of Elemental Overload are not considered as being from critical strikes. This means that any damage over time multiplier specifically for ailments from critical strikes (like the inherent +50% or those from passives and support gems) does not apply. This interaction is important to consider, especially for builds that rely on ailments like Ignite.
  • Applicability: EO affects the damage from both hits and ailments, but it does not influence non-ailment damage over time effects, such as burning ground created by Fire Trap. It also cannot be extended or shortened by effects that modify skill duration.

Interactions with Proxies and Minions

  • Proxies (Totems, Traps, Mines): If a totem, trap, or mine lands a critical hit, it will activate Elemental Overload for your skill, and the effect will apply to all uses of that skill, including subsequent ones from totems, traps, or mines.
  • Minions: Minions are unaffected by Elemental Overload, even if the skill that summons them triggers EO through a critical strike.

Strategy and Usage

Elemental Overload is best suited for characters who do not heavily invest in critical strike chance or multiplier but still want to benefit from occasional critical strikes. It allows these builds to gain a significant damage boost without requiring a high crit investment.

  • Maintaining EO: To maximize the uptime of Elemental Overload, aim to land at least one critical strike every 8 seconds. This requires balancing critical strike chance with hit rate. For instance, with a base critical strike chance of 5%, you would need to land approximately 12.5 hits per second to reliably trigger EO.
  • Ignite Builds: For Ignite-focused builds, EO can be particularly effective. Although EO’s 40% more elemental damage may seem less powerful than the +50% to damage over time multiplier that critical strikes provide for Ignite, EO’s multiplier is multiplicative, while damage over time multipliers are additive. This means that EO can actually result in higher overall damage if you have other sources of increased damage over time. Additionally, EO only requires occasional critical strikes rather than consistent ones, making it easier to maintain.

PoE Elemental Overload Build

Classes:

  • Hierophant: 66%
  • Chieftain: 16%
  • Elementalist: 9%
  • Juggernaut: 3%
  • Pathfinder: 2%
  • Champion: 0.6%
  • Inquisitor: 0.6%
  • Ascendant: 0.5%
  • Necromancer: 0.4%
  • Trickster: 0.4%
  • Gladiator: 0.2%
  • Occultist: 0.1%
  • Saboteur: 0.1%
  • Warden: 0.0%
  • Guardian: 0.0%
  • Deadeye: 0.0%
  • Assassin: 0.0%
  • Slayer: 0%
  • Berserker: 0%
  • Shadow: 0%

Main Skills:

  • Ice Nova of Frostbolts: 50%
  • Detonate Dead of Scavenging: 9%
  • Ball Lightning of Orbiting: 6%
  • Ice Nova: 5%
  • Vaal Ice Nova: 5%
  • Cremation of the Volcano: 5%
  • Cyclone: 4%
  • Lightning Warp: 3%
  • Firestorm: 3%
  • Righteous Fire: 3%
  • Explosive Arrow: 2%
  • Death Wish: 2%
  • Vortex of Projection: 2%

Masteries:

  • 10% of Leech is Instant: 66%
  • 10% reduced Mana Cost of Skills: 59%
  • Increases and reductions to Maximum Mana also apply to Shock Effect at 30% of their value: 59%
  • Hits have 25% chance to treat Enemy Monster Elemental Resistance values as inverted: 57%
  • 10% chance to Recover 10% of Mana when you use a Skill: 55%
  • 10% of Damage taken Recouped as Mana: 53%
  • 50% of your Energy Shield is added to your Stun Threshold: 34%
  • 15% increased maximum Life if there are no Life Modifiers on Equipped Body Armour: 24%
  • +30 to maximum Life: 20%
  • Regenerate 1 Life per second for each 1% Uncapped Fire Resistance: 19%
  • 6% increased Cast Speed for each different Non-Instant Spell you’ve Cast Recently: 15%
  • Hits against you Cannot be Critical Strikes if you’ve been Stunned Recently: 14%
  • +15% chance to Suppress Spell Damage if Equipped Helmet, Body Armour, Gloves, and Boots all have Evasion Rating: 12%

Conclusion

Elemental Overload offers a unique way to boost elemental damage without relying on critical strikes for consistent damage. It is an excellent choice for builds that deal elemental damage but do not focus on critical strike mechanics, allowing them to benefit from significant damage increases with minimal investment in critical strike chance. By understanding and leveraging EO’s mechanics, players can greatly enhance the effectiveness of their elemental builds in Path of Exile.

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