Strongest melee single target?

Even if core malachai has 10k armour, it's basically nothing compared to how much damage an endgame build puts out, especially one that can actually do core malachai.

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Etherfire wrote:

Even if core malachai has 10k armour, it's basically nothing compared to how much damage an endgame build puts out, especially one that can actually do core malachai.

I'm always open for reconsiderations, so please let me know where i can find a vid of a full core malachai fight with only physical melee damage, performed in less than 30 minutes.
In the mean time, i'm gonna continue basing my opinion on the only run i saw, mine.

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xhul wrote:

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Etherfire wrote:

Even if core malachai has 10k armour, it's basically nothing compared to how much damage an endgame build puts out, especially one that can actually do core malachai.

I'm always open for reconsiderations, so please let me know where i can find a vid of a full core malachai fight with only physical melee damage, performed in less than 30 minutes.
In the mean time, i'm gonna continue basing my opinion on the only run i saw, mine.

Twinned core malachai with 2h EQ.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNS3uIK_uTw

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Nephalim wrote:

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xhul wrote:

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Etherfire wrote:

Even if core malachai has 10k armour, it's basically nothing compared to how much damage an endgame build puts out, especially one that can actually do core malachai.

I'm always open for reconsiderations, so please let me know where i can find a vid of a full core malachai fight with only physical melee damage, performed in less than 30 minutes.
In the mean time, i'm gonna continue basing my opinion on the only run i saw, mine.

Twinned core malachai with 2h EQ.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNS3uIK_uTw

Thanks for your time, but like i said, i was talking about pure physical melee damage (otherwise, it's pretty hard to see how crap physical can be).
Anyway, any dual malachai fight deserves respect, especially with earthquake =]
EDIT :
Even with hatred+TOH+vinktar, i believe the physical damage per hit on this example is pretty high.
But you take the same physical DPS, but with let's say, 8 APS, and the fight would have last 25 minutes easy (still with the elem boosters).

There is no such thing is a pure physical build.

You would be surprised how many things exist without you knowing it.

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Nephalim wrote:

There is no such thing is a pure physical build.

yeah no kidding, right. with hatred, added fire and everything else that scales off % physical.

the only pure physical build i can conceive actually exists is a BM puncture build

Earthquake beats everything pretty handily (with the exception of Molten Strike, but to get the most consistent benefit from that you can't have any global AoE nodes).

If you're doing one quake per attack, it has an effective damage effectiveness of around 300%.

But that's kind of niche unless you have the enchant (which is super expensive right now), since you're capped at around 0.7 second attack time.

If you go to the next breakpoint at one quake every two attacks however, that's still 200% damage effectiveness, again beating out every skill in the game except for the aforementioned Molten Strike setup.

Also, since all elements of the hit are AoE (compared to single-target skill + splash or many others like Molten Strike where the initial hit isn't an AoE), you get full benefit from conc effect.

If I were to do a theoretical six-link Earthquake for single-target, I'd go:

EQ
MPD
Less Duration
Conc Effect
Faster attacks if you can't get to the breakpoint through passives/gear
Either Poison or Added Fire, depending on how much generic increased damage you can apply to the poison.

About poison: Its duration is only 0.9seconds due to 20/20 less duration, but due to conc effect and the damage multiplier to LD that comes out to a total of around 18% more damage over 0.9 seconds. If you can get up to 200% total increased damage that also applies to the poison, that brings it to a very reasonable 56% more damage that doesn't care about elemental resists.

for a single target? sustained?

Viper strike

this stuff stacks. the tougher the mob the more dps you do, it gets out of hand pretty fast

I get the sense that a goalpost is being moved, just a little...

In the current patch and all previous patches, builds that have elemental damage will always always always beat builds that deal only physical damage, when measuring top damage output of an endgame build. This is not because of Armour vs Resistances as xhul originally said, but because of the existence of elemental scaling directly off of physical: Hatred, Added Fire Damage, and recently, Herald of Ash. The reserved buffs are really what pushes the decision structure over the edge because there are not really comparable pure physical damage reserve buffs, especially with Curse Cast Speed being faster than ever, so any pure phys build can add more damage by tossing in Hatred and Herald of Ash.

So there's a reason elemental will always be king compared to phys (current and all previous patches)

As for conversion, it's really more a question of secondary effects. What Attack skills are out there that have a great secondary effect but no elemental conversion? Off the top of my head, Tornado Shot and Earthquake, maybe Reave, but that's about it. This is rather off topic because the community rarely assesses endgame damage output for single targets rather than crowd clearing, but it stands when comparing physical to elemental in general. That is, Cleave, Heavy Strike, Dual Strike, Double Strike, all are seen as pretty suboptimal by the community. Then the elemental conversion skills show up, with massive AoE Static Strike, the most ranged melee Lightning Strike, the LGOH savior Molten Strike, the uniquely powerful Ice Crash, etc., not to mention ranged staples like Lightning Arrow, Ice Shot, and nowadays Blast Rain and maybe Shrapnel Shot?

Anyways, hopefully it's clear that Armour is not the reason pure physical sucks for endgame damage output in the majority of cases, but rather an abundance of options for elemental "amplification" of physical damage.

Back to the Armour vs Resistances issue, I think it is actually somewhat of a strategic design choice. The way I see GGG has cut the cake, (pure) elemental damage has much more potential, but runs up against harder barriers, barring workarounds like Inquisitor ignore resistance and to a lesser extent EE+double curse+curse effect. This matches my experience: on my AoF melee, I absolutely slaughter most packs of enemies but hit some real walls when running across curse immune and or highly resistant enemies, despite using Fire Penetration and Flammability with all the curse effectiveness nodes I could find.

Physical Damage on the other hand has a much more even coverage. You cannot have negative reduction of physical damage, but enemies will never negate more than a dozen percentage points or so of your damage. This is consistent with my experience. All of my "physical builds" despite having substantial elemental components pretty much treat all enemies equally. Regardless of curse immunity, curse effectiveness, and elemental resistances, they all take roughly the same amount of damage. Only Life presents as a barrier between my phys builds and enemy death.

That point might actually bring my rambling tussle with xhul back on the original topic. Because when we talk about single target damage, we are talking about bosses. And bosses tend to have high elemental resistances and curse effectiveness reduction. So elemental builds are at a natural disadvantage compared to physical builds, unless using Inquisitor or maybe EE+double curse+curse effectiveness nodes. I believe that is enough to make the decision a little less obvious when considering single target, maybe even favouring physical based builds (even if it has substantial elemental conversion and addition)