Detonate Dead

I could swear the damage is based off the solo-player enemy HP while in parties. It feels like I kill much more easily with the skill alone than in a group, even though it's supposed to be based off enemy HP which should scale with the group size.

Also, it looks like the skill crits again. I remember for a while it did not, but it definitely lights things on fire consistently with a diamond flask (not sure about damage).

That's non-obvious from any in-game descriptions and really violates the principle of least surprise. Only DD and IB rely on enemy HP for damage, so to increase their HP and not increase their damage for any reason is going to be a pain point.

The skill is by far the strangest skill in the game with all the unexplained weirdness. Should just convert it to flat fire and physical damage and be done with it.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

Being in a party increases the monsters' life. It doesn't increase the damage output of any player skills

Yay, in addition to nuances and unlisted caveats we now have skill descriptions with listed mechanics based off solo vs group play. So far all of you out there there is a chance your skills in group play don't act right at all. Because the description doesn't matter! Yay! </sarcasm>

Well that's because this is percent-based but scaling to group content would clearly be imbalanced as flat damage never does.

Flat damage also doesnt require you to kill something first.

Well some of it does (ie that from detonate dead) and anyway you have to kill one mob but they're stronger. Think about it this way:
1 mob takes 1 times as much time to kill in solo, 1.5 times in groups. Theoretically it's somewhat like this 1 1 1 1 1 solor, 1.5 1 1 1 1 group with detonate dead, 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5 without it. While that's not perfect and doesn't take into account the actual damage done since its base is only 18% it's generally why that's too strong.

This spell and Raise Zombie have become more useful if just to stop the new Necromancer mobs from resurrecting the same undead over and over.

Really annoying that this is a dex skill :( Goes so well with templars and witches.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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pneuma wrote:

I could swear the damage is based off the solo-player enemy HP while in parties.

That is correct.

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pneuma wrote:

even though it's supposed to be based off enemy HP which should scale with the group size.

Being in a party increases the monsters' life. It doesn't increase the damage output of any player skills (if it did what would be the point?), so would be unbalanced for it to do so for this one.

Being in a party increases the monsters' life. It also reduces the damage output of Detonate Dead because your ammunition remains the same while fights become longer. Detonate Dead is therefore unbalanced in groups.