New Skill and Support Gems ideas to make Physical Damage better

Leave your suggestions which will help make PHYSICAL DAMAGE, specially MELEE, more desirable. More SHIELD Gem Skills are also desirable and helpful to melee.

- NEW Passive Skills (including new Keystone and Notable Passives)
- NEW Skill Gems
- NEW Support Gems

Main issues, as far as I can gather:
- Physical Damage is generally much lower.
- Utility is very little besides extra Life/Mana Leech from gear and passives — which are very few.
- A serious lack of really competitive AoE (AREA OF EFFECT) skills compared to Elemental AoE skills and support (melee/ranged weapon included but mostly Physical Melee).
- - -

Physical Damage Crit effect:
Some people question that maybe Physical Damage should have its own effect when it Crits.
- What if whenever a target (player included) takes a Physical Damage Crit:
1- The target would suffer a more notable (but still brief) Stun effect.
2- The target would suffer a short bleeding effect (similar to Ignite, I know).
3- The target would suffer a small and short debuff to its damage (Physical, Elemental, Spell, all of it). This would make Physical Damage an even better option for the "more defensive" player and also more interesting in PvP and Hardcore.

Below I suggest some Support Gems (which could very well be made into Skill Gems with some changes) and also Skill Gem ideas that could help Physical Damage, Melee in particular:

SUPPORT GEM SUGGESTIONS

>> "COLLATERAL DAMAGE"
- Strength Support Gem ("Red")
- Melee, AoE, Physical Damage
- Every time you hit a target in Melee, X% of the Physical damage dealt spreads to Y nearby enemies.
- Damage goes up with Gem levels as does the number of added targets.
- Quality increases AoE.

>> "MURDEROUS STRENGTH"
- Strength Support Gem ("Red")
- Melee, Physical Damage
- Melee attack skills supported by this gem consider Strength at a higher percentage to determine bonus Melee Physical damage.
- Gem level and Quality increase the percentage value of Strength to determine Melee Physical Damage.
(for instance, at Gem LV1, Strength bonus goes up from 5 STR = +1% Melee Physical Damage to 5 STR = 1.2% Melee Physical Damage i.e. +20% bonus at Gem LV1)

>> "FIGHTING SPIRIT"
- Strength/Intelligence Support Gem ("Red" or "Blue")
- Melee, Physical Damage
- Melee attack skills supported by this gem have the Intelligence of the character being added up with Strength for a new total Melee Physical damage bonus applied to them. Attack Speed is reduced by Y%.
- Attack Speed is recovered as this gem levels up and in very high levels the player starts to get a bonus to attack speed of supported Melee Skills.
- Quality increases Melee Physical Damage.

>> "WEAPON FINESSE"
- Strength/Dexterity Support Gem ("Red" or "Green")
- Melee, Physical Damage
- Melee attack skills supported by this gem have the Dexterity of the character being added up with Strength for a new total Melee Physical damage bonus applied to them. Attack Speed is reduced by Y%.
- Attack Speed is recovered as this gem levels up and in very high levels the player starts to get a bonus to attack speed of supported Melee Skills.
- Quality increases Melee Physical Damage.

>> "FLYING BLADES"
- Strength/Dexterity Support Gem ("Red" or "Green")
- Melee, Projectile, Weapon, Physical Damage, Sword, Axe, Claw, Dagger
- Whenever you use a Melee skill and hits one or more enemies with a Sword, Axe, Claw or Dagger skill, 2 or more bladed projectiles spread within a 180 degree radius, flying in a short distance, piercing any other targets hit. Each projectile deals X% of the primary hit's Physical damage as Physical Damage.
- Damage goes up with Gem levels and also the number of Projectiles (from 2 to 4-5).
- Quality increases attack speed.

>> "ADDED BLEEDING"
- Intelligence/Dexterity Support Gem ("Blue" or "Green")
- Melee, Physical Damage
- Melee attack skills supported by this gem add X% of the Physical Damage inflicted by their first hit on their target(s) over Y seconds as Physical Damage.
- Damage (%) goes up with gem level.
- Quality increases Critical Damage of bleeding.


- - -
SKILL GEM SUGGESTIONS

>> "ELEMENTAL BARRIER"
- Strength/Intelligence Skill Gem ("Red" or "Blue")
- Shield, Buff, Duration
- Enchants your shield with protection from X elemental damage. This skill has a 10-15 seconds cooldown.
- Protection goes up with Gem levels.
- Quality reduces the cooldown very slightly.

Come on, people... :- P

Bring on your ideas!

>> "MURDEROUS STRENGTH"(Maybe call it Killing intent, like those anime shows you know) works better as a keystone, something like. Melee Damage bonus from strength is increased by 50% You get no(or half or something) HP Bonus from strength.

Dex already improves accuracy so it already has a purpose in melee fights, the int support could be something that adds crit chance to melee skills depending on how much int you have(it would have to be a strength stat gem and potentially more powerful than critical strikes to be worth anything though and that's already pretty strong). It could work as a support or passive depending on how powerful you wanted to make it but melee needs supports so I would go with that. Melee shadows would splash strength for it maybe and Duelists/Marauders could make good use of it with some thought and gear.EDIT: Could be called Cunning

Chance to flee I think should be switched over to strength, melee characters can get more use out of it and from a flavor stand point I think raw strength works better for instilling fear(maybe a keystone that adds chance to flee in mara area? The area down and to the left of immolation could use a keystone).

And of course you could add something like Brutus's chain attack to drag mobs towards you, so maybe you can engage rares before drawing the rest of the pack. Or maybe something that you could use single target that halves a mobs movement speed to give some crowd control to melee that isn't exactly kiting so much as crippling.

I'll try and think up some more.

Aside from that I think the numbers for armor need to be buffed(not sure how much), as it is you pretty much have to use an aura to even remotely up to snuff to have enough armor not to be 3 shoted by a pack. Of course this could just be me always playing above my level.

If I had to say which of these is most important I would say it would be the crowd manipulation(crippling, dragging mobs towards you) this would add strategy and add more variety to melee combat.

Stun right now requires quite a bit of specialization in the passive tree which costs survivability or damage and I was tempted to make a stun Mara it makes much more sense to tackle most of that build through gear you would just lose too much going through the passive tree. As such I think the stun passives should be redressed, although this could just be from a lack of showing off a successful stun build, I'll look into it in open beta i guess after I have my main up in the 80's.

Maybe make another post if I think up some more stuff.
EDIT:
And something like static blows for ignite, maybe replace the burning damage node in the immolation cluster(or put it between Templar and Mara, though that could make temp very strong for elemental melee builds and they already have a rather strong area), if anything I would have assumed you would make this one first as fire is seen as the least broken of the status affects.

Some cool suggestions and points, thanks, Ikorack.

Bump so more people can read this and maybe bring some more ideas.

A lot of physical damage attacks can stun, and stun is decent effect.

I think burning is sub-par compared to the other elemental effects like shock and freeze. IMO burning should give a damage debuff or something extra, possibly a stun? The DOT alone isn't substantial enough to make it equal to shock or freeze, which are very debilitating effects. Even if burn debuffed the damage of the target or stunned as well as DOT, I still don't think it would be better than shock or freeze.

I agree Burn is kind of lackluster and could use some help.

"

Physical Damage Crit effect:
Some people question that maybe Physical Damage should have its own effect when it Crits.
- What if whenever a target (player included) takes a Physical Damage Crit:
1- The target would suffer a more notable (but still brief) Stun effect.
2- The target would suffer a short bleeding effect (similar to Ignite, I know).
3- The target would suffer a small and short debuff to its damage (Physical, Elemental, Spell, all of it). This would make Physical Damage an even better option for the "more defensive" player and also more interesting in PvP and Hardcore.

There is already stun on physical damage and you don't need even alot of it, or even crit just decent wand with 100% global increased damage and 20% stun threshold reduction on belt and you stun pretty often. add vulnurability for multiplicative effect. And honestly pretty strong IMO. Stun maradeur watch at 6 min mark he stunlocks act 2 boss.

"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bTc37rLuyg

"

Below I suggest some Support Gems (which could very well be made into Skill Gems with some changes) and also Skill Gem ideas that could help Physical Damage, Melee in particular:

SUPPORT GEM SUGGESTIONS

>> "COLLATERAL DAMAGE"
- Strength Support Gem ("Red")
- Melee, AoE, Physical Damage
- Every time you hit a target in Melee, X% of the Physical damage dealt spreads to Y nearby enemies.
- Damage goes up with Gem levels as does the number of added targets.
- Quality increases AoE.

Half decent support something like this is already in works.

"

>> "MURDEROUS STRENGTH"

Spoiler

- Strength Support Gem ("Red")
- Melee, Physical Damage
- Melee attack skills supported by this gem consider Strength at a higher percentage to determine bonus Melee Physical damage.
- Gem level and Quality increase the percentage value of Strength to determine Melee Physical Damage.
(for instance, at Gem LV1, Strength bonus goes up from 5 STR = +1% Melee Physical Damage to 5 STR = 1.2% Melee Physical Damage i.e. +20% bonus at Gem LV1)

>> "FIGHTING SPIRIT"

Spoiler

- Strength/Intelligence Support Gem ("Red" or "Blue")
- Melee, Physical Damage
- Melee attack skills supported by this gem have the Intelligence of the character being added up with Strength for a new total Melee Physical damage bonus applied to them. Attack Speed is reduced by Y%.
- Attack Speed is recovered as this gem levels up and in very high levels the player starts to get a bonus to attack speed of supported Melee Skills.
- Quality increases Melee Physical Damage.

>> "WEAPON FINESSE"

Spoiler

- Melee attack skills supported by this gem have the Dexterity of the character being added up with Strength for a new total Melee Physical damage bonus applied to them. Attack Speed is reduced by Y%.
- Attack Speed is recovered as this gem levels up and in very high levels the player starts to get a bonus to attack speed of supported Melee Skills.
- Quality increases Melee Physical Damage.

Those are basically "melee physical damage" and "melee physical damage on full health" supports, but more underperforming. Also you get only 2% physical melee damage per 10 strength, physical damage nodes give you 8%. with "melee physical damage" support up to 12%

"

>> "FLYING BLADES"
- Strength/Dexterity Support Gem ("Red" or "Green")
- Melee, Projectile, Weapon, Physical Damage, Sword, Axe, Claw, Dagger
- Whenever you use a Melee skill and hits one or more enemies with a Sword, Axe, Claw or Dagger skill, 2 or more bladed projectiles spread within a 180 degree radius, flying in a short distance, piercing any other targets hit. Each projectile deals X% of the primary hit's Physical damage as Physical Damage.
- Damage goes up with Gem levels and also the number of Projectiles (from 2 to 4-5).
- Quality increases attack speed.

There is something in this skill. But I worried that this gem may become essential and ahoy
Melee damage slingers on the loose. And just fork for melee.

"

>> "ADDED BLEEDING"
- Intelligence/Dexterity Support Gem ("Blue" or "Green")
- Melee, Physical Damage
- Melee attack skills supported by this gem add X% of the Physical Damage inflicted by their first hit on their target(s) over Y seconds as Physical Damage.
- Damage (%) goes up with gem level.
- Quality increases Critical Damage of bleeding.

One word "puncture", but less bleeding and dieing.

Melee seems to be linked to fire damage, which underperforms on crits as opposed to cold / light crits. Perhaps a keystone that augments melee crits (or support gem to augment melee hits) to "expend" all burning statuses on the target and inflict a small burst of aoe fire damage proportional to the amount of damage remaining on the expended burn ailments.

I could see this synergizing well with Infernal Blow to make a decently viable melee crit build.

Thanks TAHKE! Loved your critics and good to know something similar to what I proposed is in the works. How do you know that..? :- D

The fact that I proposed some ideas which in the end are similar to the "Melee Weapon Damage" melee is not in itself bad or wrong. After all, Added Fire/Lightning/Chaos are similar elemental supports that add damage. The point I intend is to give Physical Melee players with 4+ linked sockets the option to stack more damage than is currently possible. This is what is really lacking right now for Physical Melee.

CanHasPants you're right, Fire/Melee have a connection somehow. After all, a good Fire cluster and Lava Lash are in the Marauder area and Added Fire Damage is a Red Gem too.

It still stands that Melee Physical Damage (specially) needs some looking after.

"

Earth Wall wrote:

Knock-back skill pushes mobs away from player and puts a wall in between the mobs and the player

Maybe deal some physical damage on contact with the wall, but the important part is the pause and defense from mob attacks.

Oh and the idea is the player slams into the ground so hard the earth shatters and a wall comes up,