Not enough skill gems to scale single target phys.

"

maLcious wrote:

Melee Phys
Faster Attacks
Multistrike

...if you neither want crit nor AoE nor elemental damage, that's about it.

But that's a pretty crazy self-restriction.

Would poison/added chaos/void manipulation be fine?
Rapid Decay if going for bleeds?

Hypothermia works if you have a source of Chilled Ground, but it probably defeats the purpose of being physical-themed.

"

Peterlerock wrote:

"

maLcious wrote:

Melee Phys
Faster Attacks
Multistrike

...if you neither want crit nor AoE nor elemental damage, that's about it.

But that's a pretty crazy self-restriction.

Would poison/added chaos/void manipulation be fine?
Rapid Decay if going for bleeds?

This !

you have many many options to scale your physical damage for single target.

you can go poison, voidheart ring and your gem link : dual strike + added chaos + void manipulation + multistrike + crit chance + crit damage

this translate into 200 000 ish dps with a lvl 90 assassin and decent poison stacking. still not a shaper killer skill but you should be able to clear everything under T16 easily

you can go full phys crit : dual strike + multistrike + mele physical damage + bloodlust + crit chance + crit damage

apply bleed with blade vortex or totem and you'll make you melee range foes bleed.

you can go phys without crit : dual strike + multistrike + mele physical damage + bloodlust + melee phys on full life (play vaal pact without bloodrage) + added fire


plenty of possibilities !!!

"

That is really it for reliable damage, unless you want crit or elemental. Lets go through the other significant physical damage boosters.

What is wrong with physical conversion and using elemental gems? Your gameplay will be the same, is there some sort 'physical' purity mindset that makes it uncool or un melee?

melee physical damage
multistrike
melee physical damage on full life

Physical2lightning
WED
ele focus

additional conversion factor.

I use melee damage on full life. Max block/spell block with surrender.

"

Nephalim wrote:

What is wrong with physical conversion and using elemental gems? Your gameplay will be the same, is there some sort 'physical' purity mindset that makes it uncool or un melee?

Gameplay is mildly impacted, as you then have to worry about elemental resistances and also you get less Bleeding and Poison scaling, but yeah, I believe for most people the uncool factor comes in the form of boringness. Want elemental scaling? Build elemental. Want physical scaling? Build elemental. Variety is the spice of life, and phys-scaling elemental being so much stronger than phys-scaling phys makes for less variety in feel.

Even Starforge feels like fake Lightning, to be honest. Maybe if GGG finds a good balance with player-inflicted Bleeding (like that'll happen on 3.0.0 patch...), pure phys might have a leg to stand on that actually feels different from phys-scaling elemental.

Melee on Full Life can now be active even with blood rage and such. as long as your regen is higher than degen

it is a HUGE buff for melee. namely ~50% more damage without the need to go into ele scaling. still terrible compared to spellcaster's scaling but better

You can also think about it from a different direction. I've used heavy strike with a fast weapon with stun and life leech. If you build around the concept with high life and solid mitigation, you can whack the crap out of most things.


Wolf

I like how OP rags on Bloodlust because it doesn't fit into the clearspeed meta.

When he's talking about trying to scale single target physical melee.

Like, wut? That build is already so far away from meta in literally every single way possible it's hilarious. But you're worried about a specific support not being meta? xD

But honestly, there is a few things you can do for ST Phys:

Melee Phys Damage - Obvs
Faster Attacks - Again, no brainer
Multistrike - Once again...

Melee damage on full life - Not a consistent bonus. Outside of CI. Or VP. Or good Block.

Bloodlust - Yeah, yeah "2 Skills". But really, get yourself a weapon with 100% bleed. Then use a mobility skill with Fortify on and as you refresh Fortify, you get a bleed. Then whack away with your main skill. (Alternatively, just whack a Vengeance/Reckoning into a socket... No link required as you don't care about the damage)

Critical Chance - Pretty good even for a non-crit build. It will give a tasty boost. (I'm currently using one on my RF build, giving me a 15% crit chance with my Shield Charge for EO procs. That's with no other investment other than a smidge of crit chance on my Doryani)

Critical Damage - For a crit build this is cool.

Culling Strike - So-so for actual tooltip DPS. However, if you account for everything having 10% less health... That's a nice chunk of "DPS" against bosses.

Life Leech - Now before you go "WTF you smoking? There's no damage on that!", I'll explain. If you were going to invest into Life Leech at all, either through passives or maybe from Blood Rage, this would free up that investment, to allow you to potentially get more damage output from alternative sources. Such as spending more passives on damage nodes or utilizing MDOFL as you won't have to worry about BR potentially messing with it (Most notably if you go VP)

Then you've got your Poison/Added Fire/Phys2Light which while not technically Physical damage, do pretty much just benefit from you stacking phys damage (PtL also offering WED as another support to use)