Strongest melee single target?

Sunder already states in the gem description that only other enemies will take damage from the second aoe.

Molten strike is in my experience the strongest single target damage. It's useful in any situation and works wonders with lgoh.
I used this setup: Molten Strike - Multi Strike - Greater Multiple Projectiles - Concentrated Effect - melee physical damage (in case of a physical damage weapon) - LGOH. From the passive skill tree you get yourself Point blank for extra more damage.
With a fast weapon it provides nice life regeneration and with some crit. chance your surgeons mod flasks refill quick too.

Just try it.

"

Zed_ wrote:

Sunder already states in the gem description that only other enemies will take damage from the second aoe.

I just tested, cause i wasn't sure.
The skill description says "other enemies" indeed, but according to the animation, it also includes the primary target.
When you hit the ground without any mobs around, only the wave is displayed.
Each time the secondary AOE is applied, there's an additionnal animation (quake circle), that is not easy to see, depending on the area ground color.
When you hit a mob alone, you can clearly see both the wave and the circle, which would make me believe that the primary target takes both damage simultaneously.

"

Kwaak wrote:

Molten strike is in my experience the strongest single target damage. It's useful in any situation and works wonders with lgoh.
I used this setup: Molten Strike - Multi Strike - Greater Multiple Projectiles - Concentrated Effect - melee physical damage (in case of a physical damage weapon) - LGOH. From the passive skill tree you get yourself Point blank for extra more damage.
With a fast weapon it provides nice life regeneration and with some crit. chance your surgeons mod flasks refill quick too.

Just try it.

Yeah, despite its random factor (balls spreading), it has technically a huge potential indeed.
Cause if you manage to get the default 3 balls land close enough to the primary target, you end up with a pretty sick 410.48% damage indicator.
I guess you need either a huge AOE modifier (to improve each ball AOE so that they can more easily overlap), or concentrated effect (to reduce the spreading AOE, and make the balls land close enough).

#####

Alright, i corrected a few numbers.
I think we're pretty much done with red gems :

cleave : 136.6% (single) | 163.92% (dual)
dominating blow : 155.4%
earthquake : 109% (additionnal 195.11% after duration)
glacial hammer : 170.4%
ground slam : 104%
heavy strike : 184.2% (without knockback)
ice crash : 138.15%
infernal blow : 160.4%
molten strike : 146.6% + 87.96% per proj
static strike : 218.56%
sunder : 171.955%
sweep : 107.1%
vigilant strike : 203% (without cooldown)

i also think that molten strike is under the top (if you include supports), thing is you can get point blank without heavy investment in the bottem side of the tree, what gives it basicly a link more, the projs itself cannot fly that far to get some downsides from point blank (if i remember correctly it is an avg increase per proj of ~40% 'more'), that can be further augmented with conc. effect, the only limitation molten has is the delay till the balls land, so it is better suited for slow moving big targets (bosses).

"Most damage" is a bit subjective.

If you are wondering about the most damage from a single hit, then it's absolutely a CI Puncture:
- Huge phys damage 2h sword (min. aspd base and no aspd affix)
- crit cap and 400+ multi
- Vulnerability for double dip on the bleed
- Snakebite for free Poison
- 8+ frenzy charges
- Added Fire, Herald of Ash for damage and ignite
- Hatred for a decent addition to the hit
- 6L: Puncture + MPD + MPDoFL + AF + LessDuration + IncCritMulti

Probably in the neighborhood of a million+ damage from a single crit attack after you let the bleed, poison, and ignite all run their course after the initial huge hit.

For sustained dps, probably a similar setup to the above but running a max dps 2h axe (so, with aspd) and Vigilant Strike with something that produces Endurance Charges constantly.

Most damaged over a sustained period of time, not a single hit.

"

For sustained dps, probably a similar setup to the above but running a max dps 2h axe (so, with aspd) and Vigilant Strike with something that produces Endurance Charges constantly.

I had totally forgotten that skill existed, I have 20% chance to gain an endurance charge when being hit and 10% to gain one on crit so I can theoretically spam it non stop, the fact it has fortify means I wont feel bad about leapslam+fort+fa.

edit: i tried it on lake voll but it did not kill him even with 3 successful multi strike hits. an EQ without conc effect kills him in one button press.

"

I used this setup: Molten Strike - Multi Strike - Greater Multiple Projectiles - Concentrated Effect - melee physical damage (in case of a physical damage weapon) - LGOH. From the passive skill tree you get yourself Point blank for extra more damage.

I will try that too.


So far I've found simply swapping out Iaoe for conc effect in my 6 link EQ has done BY FAR the most sustained single and aoe damage of any skill ive tested so far.

"

pneuma wrote:

For sustained dps, probably a similar setup to the above but running a max dps 2h axe (so, with aspd) and Vigilant Strike with something that produces Endurance Charges constantly.

If you really wanna go full physical, vigilant probably the best deal (assuming you can bypass the cooldown on each hit of course).
But, if you wanna have fun with elemental conversion/addition (and god knows it's a good idea considering the armor rating of end game bosses), Static Strike will do more damage without requiring end charges.
Doing 216K DPS with it, and that's with RT.
It is also insane against trashies if you take "Impact" in the Slayer tree.

It seems that you're playing crit staff(endu charge on crit).

As I said before, EQ is probably the best, however molten strike is also pretty insane. It has a pretty high damage effectiveness, but it's the additional projectiles that take it over the top, even if they aren't supported by melee modifiers.

Edit: best links for molten strike single target dps are molten strike + wed + multistrike + added fire + melee phys + p2l/crit multi/crit strikes

Don't use gmp/lmp as it is a dps loss. You want to focus on your melee hit with the proj as secondary dps.

"

(and god knows it's a good idea considering the armor rating of end game bosses)

Is this... is this sarcastic, misguided, or using new information to which I am not privy? The last developer comments we got on enemy Armour Rating was that the most heavily armoured monsters in the game had about 928 Armour or so, which is a pittance against the vast majority of physical builds. That is, enemy Physical Damage Reduction is dramatically lower than enemy Resistances on average by a large margin.

To put that AR into perspective let's look at even the worst case scenario. Suppose you have a weapon with 150 minimum damage. No flat bonuses from jewelry or gloves or unique items. Suppose for some reason your combined increased damage from belt and giant 24% tree passives is somehow only +100%. Yes, this is laughably small dps, but let's roll with it.

Gem setup Double Strike - Multistrike. The worst possible setup vs Armour and no other damage supports because I'm feeling generous.

150 × 200% × 85.2 % × 70% = 179 hit damage

Against 1000 Armour that is 1000/2790 = 35.8% reduction, which I believe is average Chaos Resistance on bosses and 39% fewer resistance points than Map Boss + resistant map affix.

In the very worst imaginable scenario Physical STILL out-penetrates most Elemental approaches.

Now if we take more realistic numbers we will see just how ridiculously ineffective enemy Armour is unless GGG decided to "dectuple it" somewhere along the line.

420 max damage, + maybe 30 from jewelry, gloves, and uniques, and 300% increased damage from passives, belt, maybe gem quality or something.

Relevant Support links: MPD, Hypothermia, (you could sub in or add Bloodlust too especially if you are using Atziri's Disfavor) Multistrike

Suppose main skill is Static Strike. Phys portion of hit, no AoE, is:

450 × 400% × 136.6% × 50% × 70% × 149% × 139% = 1782 physical hit damage.

1000/18820 = 5 to 6% physical damage reduction. That's equivalent to penetrating 70% elemental resistances vs resistant enemies with no penetration gem required, or, say, 20% penetration against minimally resistant enemies. Tasty. With same hit damage against 5000 Armour = 22% phys damage reduction or so, equivalent to 53% free penetration or 3% free penetration vs weakly elemental resistant enemies.

Needless to say enemy Armour gets blown out of the water with more favorable conditions such as greater weapon base damage, more base damage on jewelry, more increased damage bonuses, and switching to Vigilant Strike instead of Static Strike. Speaking of which, same calc but with viggy instead of Static:

450 × 400% × 203% × 70% × 149% × 139% = 5297 physical hit damage. Juicy!

Did some algebra and in order to even get 10% Armour base reduction vs that you need 5885 Armour, or nearly 6 times the highest confirmed Armour rating of an enemy. And of course easy head calc of Armour required for 50% is just times the hit damage by 10, so you would need 52,970 Armour to even reach 2/3 of an elemental resistant boss, in physical reduction, or about 5200% more Armour than previously confirmed highest monster Armour.

----------------------------

I had a lot of fun getting those calcs but I'm assuming they're out of date and data leaks have confirmed developers have granted monsters 900% more Armour Rating or something otherwise no one would be out there thinking monster Armour actually does anything against an end game Physical build. Please let me know where I can find this updated Armour information.

@adghar :

It seems you know well how armor works.
So, you probably also know that the stronger you hit, the more damage you do.
I'm saying that because some builds dont always have the possibility to focus everything on damage, leaving attack speed aside.
I'm mostly refering to builds that usually have multistrike as a mandatory option, just for the automatic aiming feature (most melee splash toons that dont rely only on secondary damage).
Such builds are double cursed because they also need to invest decently on attack speed to avoid those unmitigable oneshots.
More than just numbers stated by GGG who knows when, i was instead refering to my personnal experience on the field, and i highly doubt core malachai has less than 1K armor, honeslty.
Also, i've played phy-based for quite a long time now, and i recently tried some more ele-based melee toon, and yeah, i slay mobs way faster, without any pen at all.
But yeah, if we all had the possibility to totally omit attack speed, physical would be sitting on the throne, for sure.