Molten/lightning strike, frost blades, projectile scaling

Currently I am leveling a shadow varunastra build and wanted to use lightning strike, but kind of have no clue how the scaling actually works, there is a lot of information on the gamepedia, but does not answer any of the things I want to know.

Also single target is like super shitty because of the built in GMP and the fact that shotguning was removed from the game (shittest nerf ever).

For example, do the projectiles deal phyical dmg and elemental dmg obtained trough auras?
So I could know if I should be just using flat dmg scaling or not or to use a penetration gem or not, complete chaos.

Or they are just purely lightning, which is 50% of the phys dmg we converted?
What does phys to lightning do with the projectiles?

Things like this grinds my gears, I played a lot of builds where I had no idea of my actual dmg and the tooltip was utterly useless, but in this case even knowing how to scale this thing is pretty much impossible.

On an other note, since single target is quite bad, I would need to use like molten strike on a 4link to take bosses down, and in that case point blank is quite useful from the tree.

But in this case frost blades would be superior compared to LS, and unlike LS this thing has information about the interaction with PPAD.



As things stand now I think I will most likely use MS/FB with the following setup, if something is wrong in my thinking make sure to correct it, please.

So I pick up point blank from the tree:

Molten strike 4link:
MS - GMP - PPAD - WED - ConcEffect from the new gloves
So its effectively a 6link.

Wiki is stating that it gets the bonus from PPAD, so since I scale trough phys dmg it should be okey.
ConcEffect should reduce the range of the projectiles, which makes me hit less bricks, right?

Frost blades 6link:
FB - Pierce - PPAD - WED - FasterAttacks - MultiStrike

This should be good enough or maybe chain instead of pierce, since it is not meant to be used on single targets either.

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Vipermagi wrote:

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Fun fact: Lightning Strike is an Attack, and Attacks have never shotgunned. That change only applies to Spells. :)

Well then I woder why I could apply 2 stacks of EA before 2.0 with the same attack to bosses, could be that I was just imagining it.



As for the other part, thanks for the information I found it quite useful

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Vipermagi wrote:

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krenderke wrote:

Also single target is like super shitty because of the built in GMP and the fact that shotguning was removed from the game (shittest nerf ever).

Fun fact: Lightning Strike is an Attack, and Attacks have never shotgunned. That change only applies to Spells. :)

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Unsurprisingly, the Projectiles that deal Weapon Damage function like any other Attack. If you have +Elemental Damage to Attacks, you deal additional Elemental Damage.
Neither the flavour text nor the description state that the Projectiles are based on the Lightning Conversion of the Melee strike. As such, that doesn't happen. The Wiki explicitly mentions "Unmodified projectiles will do 75% of full weapon damage".

Phys to Lightning does what it says on the tin. You Convert an additional 50% to Lightning (putting you at 100%), and you gain a chunk of bonus Lightning Damage.

Attacks shotgun. Just spells can't shotgun anymore. GMP + tornado shot for example has always shotgunned

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Attacks shotgun. Just spells can't shotgun anymore. GMP + tornado shot for example has always shotgunned

Vipermagi's definition of shotgun is very precise: multiple projectiles from the same volley cannot hit the same target. Note that he considers it "volley" and not "skill use." You do get an overlapping damage effect from GMP shotgun, only because the secondary effect constitutes a new volley (even though for distance purposes it is considered the same projectile. Kind of inconsistent if you ask me, but rules are rules).

I don't think GGG ever clarified their interpretation of "shotgun" but I presume it is the same as Vipermagi's as he generally has precise technical information down.

Personally I think that definition of shotgun is a bit unintuitive as now there is no good single term to define multiple hits from one skill use hitting the same target (which includes shotgunning but also other effects like the aforementioned Tornado Shot and also things like multiple area hits stacking). "Overlapping damage effect" will have to do for now?

EA appearing to shotgun might have been a visual bug? I know arrow graphics at the very least used to behave very strongly.

EDIT: Forgot to mention a practical consequence of the nitpicking on shotgunning as relevant to this thread:

Molten Strike can overlap damage because the damage dealt is based on the projectile's explosion, not the projectile itself.

Lightning Strike and Frost Blades cannot overlap damage because the projectiles themselves do damage, hence "no shotgunning" comes into play.