PoE Perfect Agony Guide — Path of Exile

Perfect Agony is a keystone passive skill in Path of Exile that drastically changes how critical strikes and ailments work for your character. It sets your damage over time (DoT) multiplier for ailments to be equal to your critical strike multiplier, but with significant drawbacks: critical strikes no longer deal extra damage, and only critical strikes can apply ailments.

PoE Perfect Agony

Mechanics

Damage over Time Multiplier for Ailments is equal to Critical Strike Multiplier:

• This mechanic overrides your default DoT multiplier for ailments and instead uses your critical strike multiplier. This means that if you have high critical strike multiplier, it directly boosts the damage of ailments like Bleed, Ignite, and Poison. However, any other sources of DoT multiplier that would apply to ailments are ignored in favor of using your critical strike multiplier.
• Every source of critical strike multiplier, whether it’s generic, local (specific to a weapon), or conditional, will contribute to your ailment DoT multiplier.

Critical Strikes do not deal extra Damage:

• With Perfect Agony, critical strikes will no longer deal increased damage on hits. The critical strike multiplier still exists but is only applied as the DoT multiplier for ailments. This is similar to the effect of items like Ungil’s Harmony, where critical strikes are calculated but do not increase hit damage.

Non-Critical Strikes cannot apply Ailments:

• This means that ailments (such as Ignite, Bleed, Poison, Shock, etc.) can only be applied if the hit is a critical strike. This can significantly reduce the reliability of applying ailments, especially if your critical strike chance is low.

Strategic Considerations

Building for Ailments:

• Since only critical strikes can apply ailments under Perfect Agony, it’s crucial to maximize your critical strike chance to ensure that ailments are applied consistently. Items like Marylene’s Fallacy can be useful in this context, as it offers a substantial increase to critical strike multiplier, which directly enhances your ailment damage. However, be aware of its drawback of reducing your critical strike chance.

Elemental Overload Interaction:

• If you use Elemental Overload with Perfect Agony, it’s important to note that you will not be able to apply ailments with hits. This is because Elemental Overload makes it so that ailments “never count as being from Critical Strikes,” effectively preventing any ailment application under Perfect Agony’s rules. This makes the combination of these two keystones generally incompatible.

Proliferation and Spread:

• The restriction on non-critical strikes applying ailments does not prevent the spread or proliferation of already-applied ailments. Skills like Ignite Proliferation Support or passives like Master Toxicist will still work, as they spread existing ailments rather than applying new ones directly through hits.

PoE Perfect Agony Build

Classes:

• Pathfinder: 36%
• Trickster: 34%
• Assassin: 17%
• Gladiator: 5%
• Slayer: 4%
• Occultist: 2%
• Warden: 0.8%
• Ascendant: 0.6%
• Elementalist: 0.6%
• Deadeye: 0.2%
• Necromancer: 0.1%
• Chieftain: 0.1%
• Berserker: 0.1%
• Hierophant: 0.1%
• Juggernaut: 0%
• Inquisitor: 0%
• Saboteur: 0%
• Champion: 0%
• Guardian: 0%
• Shadow: 0%

Main Skills:

• Viper Strike of the Mamba: 62%
• Lancing Steel of Spraying: 10%
• Soulrend of Reaping: 9%
• Lightning Strike: 5%
• Unhinge: 5%
• Vaal Lightning Strike: 4%
• Poisonous Concoction of Bouncing: 3%
• Molten Strike: 3%
• Flicker Strike of Power: 2%
• Power Siphon: 1%
• Shield Crush: 1%

Masteries:

• 12% increased Mana Reservation Efficiency of Skills: 73%
• Poisons you inflict on non-Poisoned Enemies deal 300% increased Damage: 63%
• +25% to Critical Strike Multiplier against Unique Enemies: 47%
• Auras from your Skills have 10% increased Effect on you: 46%
• +10% chance to Suppress Spell Damage for each Dagger you’re Wielding: 41%
• +100% to Critical Strike Multiplier against Enemies that are on Full Life: 38%
• Chance to Suppress Spell Damage is Lucky: 35%
• +500 to Accuracy Rating, -2 to Accuracy Rating per Level: 33%
• 100% increased Energy Shield from Equipped Helmet: 32%
• Poisons you inflict deal Damage 20% faster: 27%
• Every 4 seconds, Regenerate Energy Shield equal to 1% of Evasion Rating over 1 second: 23%
• 10% less Physical Damage Taken while on Full Energy Shield: 21%
• 10% of Leech is Instant: 20%

Conclusion

Perfect Agony is a niche but powerful keystone for characters focused on maximizing the damage of ailments through critical strikes. By converting your critical strike multiplier into a DoT multiplier for ailments, it allows for potentially enormous boosts to damage over time effects. However, it comes with significant trade-offs, including the loss of extra damage from critical strikes and the inability to apply ailments with non-critical hits. As such, it’s best suited for builds that can achieve a high critical strike chance and are designed around dealing damage through ailments like Ignite, Bleed, or Poison.

Enhance your gameplay experience by purchasing PoE currency. Buy PoE Currency at U4GM with a 6% off coupon “z123”. Happy hunting, Exile!