BOMBIES EVERYWHERE!! (WftA skills discussion) [Updated with 11/27 News Post Info!]

11/27: FRESH DISCUSSION STARTS HERE, Y'ALL

So because this is a much nicer section than GD, and it is Gameplay Help and Discussion...let's do some quality discussing whilst I'm still forlornly stuck at work. Mostly because I feel like it so NYAH.

So. For those who haven't seen, we're getting a bunch of corpse manipulation gems in War for the Atlas, with a bunch of different effects. There's some really interesting ideas here, but let's summarize first. AHEM:

Unearth
Projectile, Spell
Fires a projectile which pierces all targets until it reaches the target area (i.e. where you clicked). When this area is reached, the projectile creates a Bone Archer corpse. Maximum 7 corpses at once, projectile itself deals Physical damage increasing with level.

Bodyswap
Movement, Spell, AoE, Fire
ALLAHU ACKB-NO BAD 1453. Anyways. The player explodes, dealing damage to nearby enemies equivalent to [3-X]% of their maximum Life, scaling with Level. Targeted corpse also explodes, dealing [3-X]% of its maximum Life as AoE Fire damage, scaling with level. You reappear where the exploded corpse was. Corpse explosions do not scale with spell damage modifiers, though your own corpus exploding is exempted from this rule.

Volatile Dead
Spell, AoE, Fire
Destroy up to 3 corpses (likely scaling with level), dealing [3-X]% of the corpse's base Life as AoE Fire damage. Creates an orb that homes in on enemies before dealing spell damage in a larger area (looks to be AoE Fire damage). Corpse explosion damage is not affected by spell damage modifiers.

Cremation
Projectile, Spell, AoE, Fire, Duration
Blow up a body, dealing [4-X]% of its Life as AoE Fire damage. Creates a Volcanic Geyser that repeatedly casts Fire projectiles sequentially over the surrounding area for a duration (whatever that turns out to actually mean). Maximum of 3 Geysers at once, potentially scaling with level. Corpse explosion is once again not scalable with spell damage.

SO YEAH. See? Bombies. Bombies everywhere. And yet, there's some very interesting combo-style builds this suggests to me. Unearth will probably deal relatively low overall projectile damage, but it provides ammunition exactly where you need it for the other three spells. Which is cool because Volatile Dead especially is basically "we're giving you-the-player the ability to sic the Volatile Core enemy mod on enemies. Have fun!"

Oh, I will have fun, Grinding Gear. I WILL have fun...

Without knowing how the gems level it's impossible to really forecast builds properly, a'course, but we can make some suppositions. One example is that the corpse explosions can't be scaled with spell damage/supports, but the gems said nothing about elemental damage/supports. Volatile Dead and Cremation, especially, gets to sortakinna double-dip their damage by scaling Fire or Elemental damage to improve both the fiery corpse explosion and the flaming aftereffect cast. Elemental Focus will be a very critical gem here, methinks, as will Conc. Effect for Volatile Dead. Obviously Desecrate has also found a whole new meaning in life what with all these bodysplosion skills.

That's not really what's got me interested, though. Let me propose something and see if you guys agree with it. Spoiler'd because I get wordy enough as it is and folks can skip this part if they want and just discuss what they think of the other new skills

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1453R wrote:

Volatile Dead and Cremation, especially, gets to sortakinna double-dip their damage by scaling Fire or Elemental damage to improve both the fiery corpse explosion and the flaming aftereffect cast.

I doubt that they are stupid enough to base the damage of the second effect on the damage of the first effect in a way that allows double dipping.

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zagibu wrote:

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1453R wrote:

Volatile Dead and Cremation, especially, gets to sortakinna double-dip their damage by scaling Fire or Elemental damage to improve both the fiery corpse explosion and the flaming aftereffect cast.

I doubt that they are stupid enough to base the damage of the second effect on the damage of the first effect in a way that allows double dipping.

Well no, they're not going to do that. Mostly what I meant is that you can find ways to scale both effects at once, even despite their 'Spell damage does not work on your spell that turns corpses into a damaging explosion' modifier.

Also, side note: that modifier is a total screwjob and I'd love to hear why they thought it was necessary when they're clearly willing to allow you to scale the Bombie damage via any other possible method. Just...not spell damage. For some dumb arbitrary reason they didn't bother giving us.

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1453R wrote:

Well no, they're not going to do that. Mostly what I meant is that you can find ways to scale both effects at once, even despite their 'Spell damage does not work on your spell that turns corpses into a damaging explosion' modifier.

Oh, yeah, but that has nothing to do with double dipping, so don't call it that.

Hmmm I'm liking the thought of making Unearth into a totem with GMP and then just spamming the hell out of Volatile Dead. I'm not super familiar with corpse mechanics, though. Would increases to minion life affect the corpse's life pool? What about damage decreases from Spell Totem (I'm guessing not since we're not using Unearth to actually deal the main damage)?

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tornshoe wrote:

Hmmm I'm liking the thought of making Unearth into a totem with GMP and then just spamming the hell out of Volatile Dead. I'm not super familiar with corpse mechanics, though. Would increases to minion life affect the corpse's life pool? What about damage decreases from Spell Totem (I'm guessing not since we're not using Unearth to actually deal the main damage)?

The corpses aren't minions, so no. You'd need to increase the gem level of Unearth to get higher-level corpses, which would also increase corpse life. Damage decreases from Spell Totem would decrease the damage the actual Unearth projectile does, but not the corpse life because corpse life has nothing to do with damage. if you're using Unearth Totems purely as ammunition for Volatile Dead, then frankly none of that matters and all you really need are...well, Unearth and Spell Totem. Maybe Empower if you want to get super expensive, but Volatile Dead doesn't scale its primary damage based off corpse health anyways.

Also that actually sounds moderately cool and may be worth a try too. I love how combo-y all these skills are.

Oh man, now I'm going back through re-reading the new gems and wondering if we'll be able to shotgun Volatile Dead. Since both its initial burst and volatile orb deal AoE damage, the shotgun potential is yuuuuuge. I also have to wonder if both the corpse explode and the volatile orb hits count as hits from you. If so, on-hit effects could be really cool to combo.

Unearth's design is somewhat irritating to me. It scales like EK, meaning you'll most likely get Projectile Damage, Spell Damage and Hatred + HoA. But those things won't benefit the other new skills at all.

Don't get me wrong, I do see the advantage of using Unearth over Desecrate. You're not bound to 3 charges only, and with GMP on Unearth you can cover a bigger area with corpses.

The way it scales it seems to be either a nice utility skill with very low damage or a primariy damage skill without being able to benefit from it's utility.


Another thing that isn't clear to me is Bodyswap's "Deals 13 to 19 Fire Damage". The explosion around you is based of you own life and the explosion around the corpse is based of the corpse's life. Where exactly do the 13 to 19 Fire damage come in?

I'd go a different way... instead of using cold conversion to make unearth the main skill, I'll either go for bodyswap stuff, CoC or Comk volatile or cremate. Maybe cremate selfcast. Since they all have enemy life based damage, I can imagine them being decent league starters.

Scirching Ray cast while chanelling Creamtion(or Volatile Dead, will see which will work better) + Unearth Totem (for single target) Chieftain here I go!