PoE 2: Impale Explained

Impale is an on-Hit Debuff that's tied to Physical Damage in Path of Exile 2.

What is Impale?

Impale is a Debuff that stores a percentage of Physical Hit Damage on a target. The stored Damage can be Extracted with subsequent Attack Hits.

By default, Impale stores 30% of the pre-mitigation Physical Damage of an Impaling Hit. Therefore the stored Damage hasn't been mitigated by a target's mitigation layers such as Armour - this is because an Extracted Impale will add its Damage directly to the pre-mitigation Damage of the Attack Hit that Extracted it, which is then mitigated by any relevant mitigation that a target has before they take Damage from that Hit.

The Impale Debuff can be inflicted with any Physical Hit Damage, but Extracting an Impale must be done via an Attack Hit.

Impale can stack up to a maximum of 60 Debuffs, with each stack retaining its own stored Damage.

Extracting Impale

When an Impale is Extracted, its Damage is added directly to the pre-mitigation Damage of the Attack Hit that Extracted it. This Damage is not scaled by your Damage modifiers, as it was already scaled by them on the Hit that inflicted the Impale.

A single Attack Hit can only Extract one Impale at a time. When this occurs, the strongest Impale is always Extracted first.

Note: Impale can only be Extracted with a Hit that has the Attack tag.

Chance to Impale

Impale needs to be enabled to allow Hits to inflict this Debuff, such as by a modifier on an item or Skill. For example the Bonestorm Skill is a Physical Spell that inflicts Impale by default.

Note: Impale cannot be inflicted by a Hit unless a modifier allows it to do so.

Duration of Impale

Impales inflicted on you by Monsters last 4 seconds by default. You can lower the Duration of Impale on yourself by utilising modifiers such as Time Manipulation.

Impales that you inflict on Monsters last indefinitely and are only removed by Extracting them or by exceeding the maximum cap of 60 Impale Debuffs, at which point the weakest Impales are discarded first, as and when the cap is exceeded.

Impale Magnitude

The default Impale Magnitude is 30% of the pre-mitigation Physical Hit Damage of an Impaling Hit. You can utilise modifiers that improve the Magnitude of Impale to make this Debuff stronger, effectively storing more Damage. For example the Bonestorm Skill has 200% More Impale Magnitude and therefore the Impales inflicted by this Skill will have a Magnitude of 90%, storing 90% of the pre-mitigation Physical Damage of the Hit (30 * 3.0 = 90).

Impale Support

The Impale Support Gem allows any linked Skill to inflict Impale based on the Physical Damage of that Skill's Hits. However it also prevents the Skill from Extracting Impales.

Dreadfist

The Dreadfist Unique Gloves provide an interesting conundrum where your Critical Hits inflict Impale and therefore you'll likely want to invest into Critical Hit Chance and Critical Damage Bonus to scale the inflicted Impales. However, these gloves also prevent your Critical Hits from Extracting Impales, so you'll need to find a way to consistently deal non-Critical Attack Hits to Extract any inflicted Impales.