Hello everyone!
Elements now do something.
⚗️ ELEMENTAL REACTIONS
When a spell or ability leaves its element on an enemy, the next hit can react with it.
Five reactions currently exist:
SHATTER — Frost on the target, followed by a hit with no element of its own. Deals bonus damage.
CONDUCT — Frost, then Lightning. The current arcs to every enemy in the fight.
MELT — Frost, then Fire. The resulting meltwater burns the target for several rounds.
IGNITE — Fire, then Lightning. Creates a hotter, longer-lasting burn.
PURGE — Holy and Shadow annihilate each other. Neither element remains behind.
⚠️ Order matters. Frost followed by Fire causes MELT. Fire followed by Frost does nothing.
The strength of a reaction comes from the hit that triggers it, so a bigger triggering hit produces a bigger reaction.
Use help reactions for the full reaction table, and examine [enemy] to see which element is currently lingering on a target.
🔮 WHAT ARMS A REACTION
A spell or ability can leave its element behind. An ordinary weapon swing does not — even if the weapon itself is elemental.
A hit can spend what is lingering, but only a spell or ability can place an element there.
An enemy can carry only one lingering element at a time. ⚠️ Applying a different element replaces the old one, so casting off-theme can throw away your setup.
⚔️ WHAT YOUR CLASSES CAN ACTUALLY DO — READ THIS PART
I want to be clear about the current state of the system, because the base classes do not have equal access to reactions yet.
Only the Mage can both set up and finish multiple reactions alone, because it is currently the only class with a Frost skill, and Frost is involved in three of the five reactions.
The Warlock can perform one reaction entirely on its own: Fire followed by Lightning for IGNITE.
Paladin, Cleric, Druid, and Alchemist can set up reactions that their own kits cannot finish. They need another player, a companion, or a different class in the mix.
🔴 Warrior, Rogue, Ranger, and Bard cannot start a reaction at any level. Their skills are entirely Physical. They can, however, finish reactions — an ordinary weapon swing is exactly what SHATTERs Frost, and their hardest hits can produce the biggest SHATTERs in the game.
Cleric can arm reactions, but only through skills learned at level 63 and below.
🧭 WHY IT WORKS THIS WAY
Elemental Reactions were originally designed for the Hero Classes. Those classes are being built around elemental identity from the ground up, and this system exists primarily to support them.
Bringing the system into the base game early means you get to experiment with it now. It also means the existing 170 skills have been tagged according to the elements their descriptions and identities already implied, rather than being redesigned around a system that arrived much later.
A future balance pass will integrate the older skills with this system more thoroughly. ⚠️ Until then, some classes will naturally feel much more elemental than others, and even a full endgame rotation of your strongest skills may produce no reactions at all — many capstone abilities are still Physical.
If you want to experiment with reactions right now, mixing a lower-level Frost or Lightning skill into your rotation is often the most reliable way to trigger them.
🔧 ALSO IN THIS BUILD
Damage-over-time effects can now have defined durations, and they will announce when they expire instead of silently disappearing.
Four capstone skills now carry the elements their names and identities always implied: Oathfire Cataclysm, Nova Collapse, Entropy Bolt, and Liquid Gold Blast are now Fire.
Thank you all, as always.
— TheHand