Magma Orb shotguns

Quick question: Does anyone know if Magma Orb can shotgun with GMP, its additional bounces, or both?

Both. If a mob is within the area of effect of multiple hits, they'll take damage from all of them. It's different to the usual shotgunning rules because this is area damage, not damage caused by a projectile hitting the mob.

Magma orb will NOT shotgun with additional projectiles, like from GMP. Different bounces CAN shotgun though. So all 5 magma orbs bounce through a large boss 3 times. The boss will only be hit 3 times (1 orb hit per bounce).

"

varobun wrote:

Magma orb will NOT shotgun with additional projectiles, like from GMP. Different bounces CAN shotgun though. So all 5 magma orbs bounce through a large boss 3 times. The boss will only be hit 3 times (1 orb hit per bounce).

Can you please provide a source on this? Myself and a friend have both tested and found it to shotgun. Willing to be proven wrong - our testing was not exhaustive - but all I can see at first glance is the wiki, which doesn't list a source.

https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Version_2.0.0


Projectile skills no longer "shotgun". You can't hit the same target with more than one simultaneously-created projectile from the same source any more. They've been rebalanced around this.

Aside from the patch notes, my first character this league was a magma orb occultist (failed fireball ignite build). They dont overlap from the same bounce, only on different bounces. This still you means you can get 3 hits per cast on a single target provided your gem is leveled.

If you were getting more than 3 hits somehow you probably found a bug.

Yes, I'm aware of that. But that doesn't apply to area damage. Fireball and Arctic Breath can definitely still shotgun on their AoEs. Magma Orb is not exactly the same mechanically as those two, but is the same concept of being hit by an AoE created by the projectile rather than the projectile itself.

I'll test again tonight.

"

viperesque wrote:

Both. If a mob is within the area of effect of multiple hits, they'll take damage from all of them.

This is what I thought.

"

varobun wrote:

Magma orb will NOT shotgun with additional projectiles, like from GMP. Different bounces CAN shotgun though. So all 5 magma orbs bounce through a large boss 3 times. The boss will only be hit 3 times (1 orb hit per bounce).

This is what I've heard, and was afraid of.

Adding on to this; I've seen differing opinions on projectile speed and AoE. Some people say AoE still affects the distance between each bounce, whereas others say only projectile speed affects it.

"

viperesque wrote:

Yes, I'm aware of that. But that doesn't apply to area damage. Fireball and Arctic Breath can definitely still shotgun on their AoEs. Magma Orb is not exactly the same mechanically as those two, but is the same concept of being hit by an AoE created by the projectile rather than the projectile itself.

I'll test again tonight.

Fireball shotguns because it has an initial (impact) hit and also an area hit (explosion). You cannot land multiple projectiles on the same target but you can hit with multiple explosions. Magma orb has no initial hit and only area damage, probably why it doesnt shotgun like fireball does

Just tested all this.

Seems that extra Magma Orb projectiles do not shotgun, and increases/reductions to AoE no longer alter the distance that the orbs travel. However, each individual orb "chain line" can hit each enemy more than once. I'm not sure how it works if, say, the leftmost orb hits an enemy on the first bounce and then the next orb along hits the same enemy on the second, as that's very difficult to test.

So it's always beneficial to stack AoE now. However, for greater coverage with projectiles, I feel like this kind of places MO in FP territory now; you either have to decide between a much greater AoE with L/GMP, or go for less AoE but higher damage with a single projectile.

It's almost as if GGG intended for it to be this way huh. Just a bit of a shame that Fireball can still shotgun if two or more enemies are standing near each other, but Magma Orb can't at all.

Area damage has always been able to overlap and Im not aware of any change to that behavior.

Last league I played with Magma orb (you can see the video here if interested) with added projectiles (4 from sire of Shards, 2 from jewels) and area damage from one salvo were definitely able to overlap. It was perfectly noticeable against bosses.