Brittle Ailment - Path of Exile

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.

Icon Name Associated with Effect
PoE Brittle Brittle Cold Brittle causes hits against enemies to have up to +6% Base Critical Strike Chance against them, based on the cold damage of the hit. The base duration is 4 seconds.

PoE 3.19 Changes

Problem: The base critical strike chance provided by the Brittle ailment serves as an enormous effective damage boost to builds focused on it. As more and more methods of investing in alternate ailments are added to the game, Brittle has begun to overshadow other ailments.

Solution: Reduce the amount of critical strike chance provided by Brittle to make it more comparable to Scorch and Shock.
  • The Brittle Ailment now grants up to +6% chance to critically strike afflicted enemies (previously +15%) and now has a default value of +2% (previously +5%).

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1. Brittle Gems

Name Category Requires Stats
Hydrosphere Hydrosphere Active skill gem Level 34
  • Pulses every 0.4 seconds while Frozen, Shocked, Brittle or Sapped
  • 100% of Physical Damage Converted to Cold Damage while Sphere is Frozen or Brittle
Elemental Hit Elemental Hit Active skill gem Level 12 80% more Area Radius against Enemies affected by an Ailment of the chosen Element. It included ignite or scorch (Fire damage), chill, freeze or brittle (Cold damage), shock or sap (Lightning damage).

2. Brittle Items

Item Category Lvl. Stats Note
Endothermic Buckler Endothermic Buckler Shield 30 On block, this shield will apply a brittle to the attacking enemy causing hits to have +5% critical strike chance for 4 seconds. Base items
Polar Buckler Polar Buckler Shield 50 On block, this shield will apply a brittle to the attacking enemy causing hits to have +5% critical strike chance for 4 seconds. Base items
Cold-attuned Buckler Cold-attuned Buckler Shield 70 On block, this shield will apply a brittle to the attacking enemy causing hits to have +5% critical strike chance for 4 seconds. Base items
Galesight Galesight Helmet 59 Give the player the chance to Brittle: 25% chance to inflict Brittle. Unique
Leadership’s Price Leadership’s Price Amulet 68 You have Scorching Conflux, Brittle Conflux and Sapping Conflux while your two highest Attributes are equal Unique

Brittle Conflux: causes all damage types to inflict brittle.

3. Brittle Passive skills

Name Category Stats
Secrets of Suffering Keystone passives

Upon taking it, the character will be unable to Ignite, Chill, Freeze or Shock enemies, but will inflict Scorch, Brittle, and Sapped upon a critical strike.

  • Alternating Sceptre Alternating Sceptre is a sceptre base type. The Secrets of Suffering modifier has the same effect as the keystone, Secrets of Suffering. Taking the keystone in addition to equipping this item will impart no additional benefit.
  • The Interrogation The Interrogation is a unique Small Cluster Jewel Small Cluster Jewel. It adds the keystone Secrets of Suffering to your passive tree.
  • Replica Malachai’s Artifice Replica Malachai’s Artifice is a unique Unset Ring. The Secrets of Suffering mod has the same effect as the keystone, Secrets of Suffering. Taking the keystone in addition to equipping this item will impart no additional benefit on socketed gems.

Sap Passive skills

4. Brittle Oil

This a list of anointments that can be applied to rings.

Oil #1 Oil #2 Outcome
Verdant Oil Verdant Oil Indigo Oil Indigo Oil Your Freezebolt Towers have 20% chance to inflict Brittle

5. Brittle Calculation

  • GGG has added an Ailment Threshold to monsters. In the great majority of cases, the Ailment Threshold matches the monster’s Maximum Life. It primarily differs for especially high-life monsters (such as The Shaper), where the threshold is reduced to allow ailments to be applied with hits that wouldn’t ordinarily reach the required Life thresholds.
  • The alternate ailments Sap, Scorch and Brittle have a slightly different calculation as they have lower caps on their magnitudes.

Right now, only GGG knows the formulas used to calculate the effect of Brittle ailment.

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