I'm back to ground slam again. Why is lightning strike so bad? Help.

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whrsmycoffee wrote:

I don't think I've picked that many % damage modifiers at all. Remember, I have played 70 levels and all the way, ground slam has been better than LS.

If iron grip doesnt make a HUGE difference (double) in damage, ground slam still wins. Read the pros I wrote in the OP. I could add to that list that ground slam stuns. Even if lightning strike somehow ended up doing a bit more damage than ground slam, all the other pros would still heavily favour using ground slam.

I don't see how my passive tree is favouring ground slam over lightning strike.

I want to use LS, but it just sucks.

You focused on 1 aspect of his post, and discounted entirely the rest of it.

He's 100% correct.

LS damage is actually incredibly high with a good link, quality LS, MACE nodes (Popular choice, axe I suppose is possible), RESOLUTE...Cannot stress this enough, don't think - just do. Also, Iron Grip will make a substantial difference as well. Average templar even in their 40s is rocking near 300 strength, thats potential damage LS isn't capitolizing on till IG.

I'm not knocking GS, I've personally never played it.


What I am saying is that LS is far from crap, it's fantastic with the right build.

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Okanitu wrote:

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whrsmycoffee wrote:

I don't think I've picked that many % damage modifiers at all. Remember, I have played 70 levels and all the way, ground slam has been better than LS.

If iron grip doesnt make a HUGE difference (double) in damage, ground slam still wins. Read the pros I wrote in the OP. I could add to that list that ground slam stuns. Even if lightning strike somehow ended up doing a bit more damage than ground slam, all the other pros would still heavily favour using ground slam.

I don't see how my passive tree is favouring ground slam over lightning strike.

I want to use LS, but it just sucks.

You focused on 1 aspect of his post, and discounted entirely the rest of it.

He's 100% correct.

LS damage is actually incredibly high with a good link, quality LS, MACE nodes (Popular choice, axe I suppose is possible), RESOLUTE...Cannot stress this enough, don't think - just do. Also, Iron Grip will make a substantial difference as well. Average templar even in their 40s is rocking near 300 strength, thats potential damage LS isn't capitolizing on till IG.

I'm not knocking GS, I've personally never played it.


What I am saying is that LS is far from crap, it's fantastic with the right build.

I'm saying LS is bad COMPARED to ground slam. I'm sure all of you have success in using LS, and I admit that sure, I can use it. But ground slam is superior, and I am wondering why. If I picked mace nodes, I'm sure ground slam would get as much better as LS would.

I would like to use GS too, however it does 50% less dmg compared to my LS build.

can you elaborate what dps you have with each builds? (LS and GS)

GS surely eats less mana, however I am at 1300 dps 1hand with LS and only 650 with GS.

I dont have faster attacks yet but I am running +phys melee dmg, +weap ele dmg, + add fire dmg and + LS or GS.

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danteafk wrote:

I would like to use GS too, however it does 50% less dmg compared to my LS build.

can you elaborate what dps you have with each builds? (LS and GS)

GS surely eats less mana, however I am at 1300 dps 1hand with LS and only 650 with GS.

I dont have faster attacks yet but I am running +phys melee dmg, +weap ele dmg, + add fire dmg and + LS or GS.

The 1300 dps is the single target damage. The main source of damage are the projectiles for which DPS is not stated anywhere in the game. However, it is obvious to me when playing that the projectiles do far less damage than ground slam, for reasons I stated earlier in the thread.

If you compare the damage alone, you may be right (actually i don't know any real comparisons but looking at the data it sounds reasonable to assume GS has higher DPS).

LS starts to shine if you consider what it actually is: projectiles.

This factor alone gives LS a huge amount of new possibilities to even out the odds:
1. The number of potential targets can be increased significantly through projectile-enhancing gems like fork, chain, pierce, LMP, GMP -> this gives LS a great AoE advantage against GS
2. LS can actually be used as a ranged attack -> great utility to survive in situations which would be lethal for melee (and those are numerous right now)
3. The damage is equally elemental and physical -> reduces the problem of elemental/physical-resistant monsters

GS may be better in situations where the monsters are packed into a tight cluster.
Everywhere else and (especially against ranged enemies) LS shines.

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chrisguitar wrote:

If you compare the damage alone, you may be right (actually i don't know any real comparisons but looking at the data it sounds reasonable to assume GS has higher DPS).

LS starts to shine if you consider what it actually is: projectiles.

This factor alone gives LS a huge amount of new possibilities to even out the odds:
1. The number of potential targets can be increased significantly through projectile-enhancing gems like fork, chain, pierce, LMP, GMP -> this gives LS a great AoE advantage against GS
2. LS can actually be used as a ranged attack -> great utility to survive in situations which would be lethal for melee (and those are numerous right now)
3. The damage is equally elemental and physical -> reduces the problem of elemental/physical-resistant monsters

GS may be better in situations where the monsters are packed into a tight cluster.
Everywhere else and (especially against ranged enemies) LS shines.

Using LS you can shock and GS you Stun.

What´s better?

My experience with GS is that it displays far less DPS than some of my other aoes.Yet it seems quite powerful in use. How is the damage from GS actually distributed through enemies?

LS definatly need stuff like Static blows and maybe some crits to shine. If you go for a huge lighning damage skill and don't try to use shock status you will get probably worse results. If we assume you use Conductivity and that you have staic blows + the node below it you have 30% chance to cause shock without critting! (so yeah it could work out good with RT as well, thanks to those nodes and the curse)
If you can afford enough dex and accuracy to hit mobs don't go for RT since crits are another chance to get shocked enemies - shock will not show up in the DPS tooltip, but remeber shocked enemies take 40% more damage and you can stack shock up to 3 times (120% more damage!) but you need to deal enough lighning damage to keep the shock up long enough to get more hits in (so LS = more lighning damage = longer shock = better use of it)

And also consider this: LS can get lighning penetration + conductivity curse and despite the tooltip not showing any DPS increase you'll ignore most/any resistances (and mobs without any will go into negative resists - the reduction of those two together is easy greater than the extra physical damage provided by Vulnerability)

About the projectile damage - if you pay attention to your nodes you can easily get only nodes which also afect the projectiles (so don't take melee physical damage, but physical damage with melee weapon is OK (because the projectiles still come from a melee weapon - i'm sure a dev confirmed somwhere that those nodes work with the projectiles)).
During the closed beta i had a lighning strike templar where i gave up the advantage to effectively kite and used the point blank support gem (together with faster attacks to negate his drawback) - going against a group of mobs and hitting the outermost with the melee hit normally results in the projectiles hitting other mobs in the group almost immediatly (because they are so tightly together) and get almost the full 50% more damage - which again is not shown in the tooltip ;)

I have to admit that Lightning Strike has lower DPS then some of my other abilities. I just started a Templar and had to remove it from my skill tree because of the low dps output...though I can see how it can shine with the proper support gems.

Ok so thanks for your answers!

I thought I would provide an update: ground slam still owns LS.

I CAN make LS viable, but it takes far more support gems to do so, and still, it hits less enemies (yes, it does. I have increased AoE on GS and the cone is huge.). Even if I do LMP+Fork+LS, GS still hits more enemies, and does more damage. And stuns. And targeting is easier.

Now, I understand that if I didn't have RT and had spent the extra 7 passives to get Iron Grip LS would do better than it does right now, I get that. But my point is still the same as in my OP; GS just takes a lot less investment in support gems and therefore linked gear.

What I have understood from this thread is that if I want to use LS and if I want it to be better than GS, I will take up Iron grip and do LS+Pierce+LMP. I'm still pretty sure that I once again will go back to GS, considering how much damage LS will have to do to outweigh GS other perks.