Ailment

An ailment is a detrimental effect associated with one or more damage types.

Ignite, chill, freeze, shock, scorch, brittle, and sap are collectively referred to as elemental ailments.

Chill, freeze, shock, scorch, brittle, and sap are collectively referred to as non-damaging ailments.

Bleeding, poison, and ignite are damaging ailments.

Ailment Thresholds Changes 3.15

Now that player damage has been reduced, we've reviewed our Ailment Threshold calculations to compensate for the lower damage of fully-supported skills. It's now much easier to apply stronger non-damaging ailments on enemies with less damage, especially on skills less heavily-supported.

We've also lowered the Ailment Threshold of particularly tough endgame encounters so that Chill or Shock investment is worthwhile on these encounters. Their threshold is now only slightly higher than regular map bosses.

As a much requested quality of life change, players can now see the effect of non-damaging Elemental Ailments on enemies and themselves, so you can finally determine how powerful your Shocks are on enemies and thus know what benefit they are giving you. This also applies to ailments applied to you, and the buff granted to you by the Cruelty support.

1. Ailment Guides

Monsters throughout Wraeclast won’t just hurt you — they can also inflict ailments. Fortunately, you can too.

Ailments usually come from a specific kind of damage. Fire damage can ‘Ignite’, which deals further fire damage over time. Cold damage can ‘Chill’, slowing you down, or ‘Freeze’, causing you to stop moving entirely. Lightning damage can ‘Shock’, causing you to take a lot of extra damage from any source. Some enemies can also ‘Poison’ you or inflict ‘Bleeding’, both of which deal damage over time. If you move while you’re bleeding, the bleeding will deal extra damage.

What are the ailment thresholds formulas for Brittle, Scorch and Sap? How do I know the magnitude of the ailment applied?

• Scorch is the same as shock and chill; the magnitude is given by the formula: 1/2 * (Damage % of ailment threshold)^0.4
• Brittle is the same as above, but the multiplier fraction at the start is 1/4 instead of 1/2.
• Sap is the same but with 1/3.

Do elemental ailments work if you one hit a mob? I tried out Cremator Cluster Node and realized many enemies didn't get destroyed even though I only had fire damage and high critical chance.

The Ignite is effectively simultaneous with the death - it will die and be ignited, but to be destroyed by Cremator it would need to be ignited before the hit that killed it.

2. List of Ailments

Ailment	Associated with	Effect
Bleeding	Physical	Bleed can only be inflicted by Physical damage from Attacks. Bleeding enemies take 70% of the physical damage of the hit that inflicted Bleed as physical damage over time. Moving enemies take an additional 140% damage. The base duration is 5 seconds.
Poison	Physical and Chaos	Poison causes the affected target to take 30% of the combined Physical and chaos damage of the hit that applied Poison as chaos damage over time. Poison can stack multiple times on a single target. Additional stacks do not refresh the duration, but stack independently from each other. The base duration is 2 seconds.
Ignite	Fire	Ignite causes the affected target to burn] for 125% of the fire damage of the hit that applied Ignite as fire damage over time. The base duration is 4 seconds.
Chill	Cold	Cold damage always inflicts chill. Chill slows all actions of the affected target up to 30%, based on the cold damage of the hit. The base duration is 2 seconds.
Freeze	Cold	Freeze prevents the affected target from taking actions, based on the cold damage of the hit. The base minimum duration is 0.3 seconds and the base maximum duration is 3 seconds.
Shock	Lightning	Shock causes the affected target to take up to 50% increased damage from all sources, based on the lightning damage of the hit. The base duration is 2 seconds.
Scorch	Fire	Scorched Enemies have their Elemental Resistances lowered by up to 30%, based on the fire damage of the hit. The base duration is 4 seconds.
Brittle	Cold	Brittle causes hits against enemies to have up to +15% Base Critical Strike Chance against them, based on the cold damage of the hit. The base duration is 4 seconds.
Sap	Lightning	Sapped enemies deal up to 20% less Damage, based on the lightning damage of the hit. The base duration is 4 Seconds.

Mechanics

Ailments are in many ways similar to debuffs. The most notable difference is that ailments are associated with damage types, whereas debuffs are associated with skill effects. Modifiers to skill effect duration affect the duration of debuffs applied by skills, but not the duration of ailments.

There is no limit on the number of different ailments a target can have at any given time.

Application by damage

Ailments can be applied by hits of damage.

Each ailment is associated with one or more damage types. A damaging hit has the potential to inflict any ailments associated with the types of damage dealt. For example, a hit of physical and fire damage has the potential to inflict bleed, poison and ignite. Bleed has an additional restriction: It can only be applied by attacks.

The damage type associations for ailments may be changed by certain effects. As an example, The Three Dragons changes which damage types have the potential to inflict elemental ailments.

A hit of damage also carries a property for each ailment that gives the hit a chance to inflict that ailment. By default, the chance to inflict most ailments is 0%. Any damaging hit has a 100% chance to inflict chill. Critical strikes have a 100% chance to inflict ignite, freeze and shock. Some skill and support gems include modifiers that grant additional chance to inflict certain ailments. Additional chance to inflict ailments can also be gained from passive skills and equipment.

Targets may also have immunity or a chance to avoid certain ailments.

To summarize, an ailment is applied to the target if:

• The hit of damage consists of damage types that have the potential to inflict the ailment
• The chance to inflict the ailment is successful
• The target fails to avoid the ailment
• The target is not immune to the ailment
• Any other conditions are met

Application by other means

Ailments can be applied in ways other than direct hits of damage.

• Elemental proliferation causes elemental ailments to spread to other targets within a radius.
• Certain ground effects apply ailments.
• Slaying a poisoned enemy with Bino's Kitchen Knife equipped spreads poison to other targets within a radius.
• Arctic Armour chills enemies when hit.
• A strongbox with the "Incandescent" prefix ignites the character that activates it.