tonykantos wrote:
Just think about a lvl 38 avenger din, with maxed veng, and 3 points conviction. He also maxed an elemental off.aura ( for example, HF ), and found a warscepter with +3 veng , or +2 veng ( relatively easy ). X Socket it, and put 5 x neo-thul on ... woah, gg for a sucky lvl 38 pal , I think -_-'.
Vengeance works by enhancing only the physical damage of the weapon, so in your case the war scepter's physical damage is not changed from it's base (it has no enchanged damage). Your Avenger would not benefit from the 5 neo-Thul. Sadly, your Avenger would be worse-off than a zealot, since your attack speed is too slow to apply the cold damage efficiently. Your Avenger would see an excellent damage buff by crafting a skull-weapon, quad-socketing it, and tossing in +Dmg jewels. The Avenger's best weapon is the same as all other phys-dmg melee: really fast and really big.
The main builds that would benefit from these neo-Thul runes are freezing arrow bozons (since cold dmg to attack is added directly to their splash damage. These runes would rock for them. Wouldn't it be neat to see a non-multishot bowzon on the realm?), and Convictors (since they lower enemy res, and thus amplify any elemental damage added to their attack). Almost all other builds would not receive as much benefit from the neo-Thul as they would from an ith rune. With the ith rune, their skill-based Enhanced Damage would amplify the +Dmg from the rune, turning +4-12 into something anywhere from +20-60 (500% ED, like a low level zealot maxing Sacrifice and Fanatacism), to something like 100-300 (very high %ED skills like Charge and LeapAttack). Also consider that your Strength and sometimes Dex act as Skill-based Enhanced Damage, with about 1-2% ED per point, depending on the weapon you're using. After all that, your character might get a DeadlyStrike or CriticalStrike, which will double the effect of the ith rune combine with the %ED, but will have no effect on non-physical damage.
Since the only "% Enhanced Damage" for elemental damage is a sorc's elemental Masteries, I think the new runes are not overpowered at all. They're pretty much balanced alongside ith runes, but raised because they're a higher level, and do not contribute leaching benefits like physical damage.
As a final clarification, if you add 5 neo-Thul, then you increase your attack damage by 250-500. If you take that weapon off, then your damage drops by about 250-500. There will be no further buff to your damage due to skills, because there are no skills affecting the elemental damage. Most chars are capable of doing more damage than 250-500 by the end of A2. CriticalStrike and DeadlyStrike mods do not affect elemental damage (except on mercs).
You're not alone in thinking that raising elemental damage should only be done in small increments, but just do the math and you should see that elemental damage increases do not have many hidden effects, what you see is what you get. One hidden effect is that ice damage to attack is added to FreezingArrow, while Fire dmg is added to Exploding/ImmolationArrow, so you get more damage than expected because it is applied to several creatures all at once.