Cremation damage is absurd

Yo dawg...I heard you like totems. So we put a totem on a spell...but its not a totem you see...

The damage on cremation is simply absurd for its mechanics.



look at this garbage item. look at two huge less multipliers

and it just fucks and destroys all [story] content like rocco in his prime. and I dont see why it wouldnt destroy map single targets

it doesnt have a limit of 1 totems or require unique items that bypass the limit
it doesnt require any investment in totem placement speed
it doesnt get attacked by monsters or monster aoe, at all
you can place 2 at a time via spell echo or 3 at a time via spell cascade
oh and you can LEECH

it scales both off projectiles and aoe and cast speed. unlike magma orb projectiles from GMP can hit the same target. unlike fireball you dont need aoe explosions to overlap

the downside is you need some corpses. sure, it wont be a fast clearspeed choice because of that.

the other downside is that mobile bosses will move away from the affected area if you try to kite. still not a huge issue imo as its not a clearspeed skill, its a ST monster.

seriously this thing is ridiculous. I like the mechanics, but its damage and damage effectiveness should be worse than storm burst for the type of mechanical advantages it provides.

seriously, 80% damage effectiveness is overboard for this type of skill

Uhm... GMP is a more multiplier, not a less, Spell Cascade technically is a less, because you can only have 3 Cremations active.

The thing with it is, it is not even remotely as good in AoE situations, which is the big deal, not to mention that many skills are quite impressive single target.

Cremation is insanely good for big immobile bosses, but there aren't too many of those. It propably is good at killing Shaper, but the Volcano provides no target, so fast enemies like Chimera will chase the player and unless you have the movespeed to make insanely small circles such bosses will chase the player away from the volcano.

The issue I see with Cremation is that with the current items it is very easy to use it in addition to other powerful spells. If you place your 3 Volcanos you have a lot of free time to do other things. It isn't any more powerful than Firestorm in the same situations, but Firestorm is more about overlapping Firestorms on top of each other, which Cremation is not. Cremation is pretty much a fire and forget skill while you either try to stay alive or use another skill.

I mean Desecrate easily provides 15 Corpses, which means you can use Cascade Cremation and 4 Volatile Dead casts, and repeat that.

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Emphasy wrote:

Uhm... GMP is a more multiplier, not a less

the damage is less multiplier.
its like molten strike, really. pretty similar in what they do. GMP adds more projectiles per time slice, but with less damage.

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Spell Cascade technically is a less, because you can only have 3 Cremations active.

The thing with it is, it is not even remotely as good in AoE situations, which is the big deal, not to mention that many skills are quite impressive single target.

I dont know of any fire and forget 3x strong ST skills that can leech. warchief is maybe one, but it doesnt leech without chieftain passive/unique shield and to get 3 you really have to invest into it.

maybe ballista is another one but you need to use the unique bow and still cast totems.

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The issue I see with Cremation is that with the current items it is very easy to use it in addition to other powerful spells. If you place your 3 Volcanos you have a lot of free time to do other things. It isn't any more powerful than Firestorm in the same situations, but Firestorm is more about overlapping Firestorms on top of each other, which Cremation is not. Cremation is pretty much a fire and forget skill while you either try to stay alive or use another skill.

exactly. its a fire and forget warchief with less aoe, except 3 at a time for no real cost.

Im using incinerate cwc firestorm and I can cast 3 volcanoes really fast for any ST situation. but the thing is, for bosses I can just not cast incinerate/firestorm and cremation will still melt them.

Im barely using shit for gear too, I have a life shield with 5% cast speed in offhand and nyctas which includes the CWC setup. thats it.

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I dont know of any fire and forget 3x strong ST skills that can leech.

Uhm... Firestorm. I would use Spell Echo instead of Spell Cascade though in that case, since spellcascade won't work too well on smaller targets like boss totems, which are otherwise nice. If you can combine Spell Echo and Spell Cascade Firestorm will destroy bigger immobile bosses even more though, considering there is no limit on the amount of Firestorms, but there is a limit on the amount of Cremations. Kitava as one example propably doesn't like someone showing up with Firestorm, Spellcascade and Spellecho, exspecially since Conc. Effect and Elemental Focus provide to more very powerful modifiers for it.

The thing with Cremation is pretty much the same as with Firestorm, it used to be hard to run 2 6ls or switch equally. Cremation can easily be switched with Detonate Dead or Volatile and considering how easy it is to get a well linked helmet it is much easier to run such secondary skills, which again also applies to Firestorm.

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the damage is less multiplier.

Well... you did speak about how fast it kills a boss and in terms of DPS it is a more multiplier much like Multistrike or GMP on Barrage or Molten Strike. So if you complain about how fast it kills bosses you can't view GMP has a less multiplier. Spellcascade is, unless you use the saved time to do something else that deals damage.

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Im using incinerate cwc firestorm and I can cast 3 volcanoes really fast for any ST situation. but the thing is, for bosses I can just not cast incinerate/firestorm and cremation will still melt them.

The thing is Firestorm is already insanely good against bosses that don't move and provides, at least with CwC better clear. The thing I'm really concerned is that even as a non trapper you can also just throw a cremation trap for good damage, trap throwing speed is far higher and you can actually store 3 charges anyway, which fits perfectly.

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Emphasy wrote:

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I dont know of any fire and forget 3x strong ST skills that can leech.

Uhm... Firestorm. I would use Spell Echo instead of Spell Cascade though in that case, since spellcascade won't work too well on smaller targets like boss totems, which are otherwise nice. If you can combine Spell Echo and Spell Cascade Firestorm will destroy bigger immobile bosses even more though, considering there is no limit on the amount of Firestorms, but there is a limit on the amount of Cremations. Kitava as one example propably doesn't like someone showing up with Firestorm, Spellcascade and Spellecho, exspecially since Conc. Effect and Elemental Focus provide to more very powerful modifiers for it.

hmmm, I never thought of firestorm that way (set and forget for ST)- I guess it makes some sense. but I did run FS in a 4L with cascade and ST was much worse than cremation. it covers the screen but its damage is worse. like, a lot worse - you're just clearing white trash and thats it. flat damage scales really well on cremation, however. and ST is so insane even with cascade it kills.

cascade does have weird casts when instead of targeting the nearest corpse it just goes halfway across the screen. so might switch it up and use cremation just for bosses

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Well... you did speak about how fast it kills a boss and in terms of DPS it is a more multiplier much like Multistrike or GMP on Barrage or Molten Strike. So if you complain about how fast it kills bosses you can't view GMP has a less multiplier. Spellcascade is, unless you use the saved time to do something else that deals damage.

fair enough

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The thing I'm really concerned is that even as a non trapper you can also just throw a cremation trap for good damage, trap throwing speed is far higher and you can actually store 3 charges anyway, which fits perfectly.

trapping has costs though. you lose leech, link and they can be destroyed

thats the thing-cremation kills as an auxilary skill. I can put the volcanoes up, and then just do damage with a fire skill. they will leech a lot and do damage.

hell, I wasnt even planning on using new skills- just played around with them on way to a incinerate+firestorm razor of the seventh sun build. and cremation is basically a 3 totem big damage boost on immobile targets. or, you can just channel and stand still and get those geysers around you

I know I'm being a meta-bitch for playing a GC miner (even if it's my own version that barely has anything in common with the builds it's based on except for mandatory nodes), and I haven't reached high maps yet (I'm 75 atm, highest map was t5), but stationary single target dps really strikes me as irrelevant.
I've recently tested swapping out minefield with a damage support and successfully onehitted (or well, 8) a map boss. Minefield is obviously a lot more suited for clearing, but this is just to emphasise how little HP bosses still have.

However, the point is, that the base duration of cremation is 8 seconds. That's a lot more than the 2 second Firestorm it was compared to earlier and thus probably does a reasonably larger amount of damage per cast. But until you get to red maps, bosses don't necessarily live that long, let alone stay in the same place if they do.
Still, getting Spell Cascade in a 4L to only cast it once every 8 seconds instead of three times doesn't seem like that much of a dps bonus to me. Either the damage is considerable, in which case it should be worth missing out on two more casting periods, or the damage is neglegible, not worth the 4L. That's just my opinion though, and perhaps I'm a little stressed on links since my own build could use 6-8 more sockets for its auxillary skills.

Also, I'd like to see PoB numbers on that. If I understand it correctly the skill casts 4 projectiles per second and 8 with GMP? How many of those projectiles actually hit an enemy (even if it's a stationary enemy, typically not all will hit due to random spread)?

And when you compare it to totems, compare it to RF totem + Searing Bond (both available at the same time and providing high dps against stationary targets, also work well with builds scaling fire damage, particularly Scorching Ray). While that does consume two 4Ls instead of one, their limit compares better to the 3 Geyser limit imo.
I have done a build like that recently, and it skipped over all non-mandatory boss phases due to high dps.

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DER_PSYCHOPATH wrote:

And when you compare it to totems, compare it to RF totem + Searing Bond (both available at the same time and providing high dps against stationary targets, also work well with builds scaling fire damage, particularly Scorching Ray). While that does consume two 4Ls instead of one, their limit compares better to the 3 Geyser limit imo.
I have done a build like that recently, and it skipped over all non-mandatory boss phases due to high dps.

totems have placement time. and they have life (which was nerfed in 3.0)

if you arent specced in totems, your totems get one-shot by aoe nukes from bosses. atziris FB will destroy all non-chieftain totems. also totems dont leech without the unique shield or chieftain

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grepman wrote:

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DER_PSYCHOPATH wrote:

And when you compare it to totems, compare it to RF totem + Searing Bond (both available at the same time and providing high dps against stationary targets, also work well with builds scaling fire damage, particularly Scorching Ray). While that does consume two 4Ls instead of one, their limit compares better to the 3 Geyser limit imo.
I have done a build like that recently, and it skipped over all non-mandatory boss phases due to high dps.

totems have placement time. and they have life (which was nerfed in 3.0)

if you arent specced in totems, your totems get one-shot by aoe nukes from bosses. atziris FB will destroy all non-chieftain totems. also totems dont leech without the unique shield or chieftain

Well actually traps are still better, because they cannot be destroyed before armed anymore (even without the notable, which just adds a few seconds). If you have corpses and you are throwing your traps under the boss you get your cremation, the boss cannot deny you them.

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However, the point is, that the base duration of cremation is 8 seconds. That's a lot more than the 2 second Firestorm it was compared to earlier and thus probably does a reasonably larger amount of damage per cast. But until you get to red maps, bosses don't necessarily live that long, let alone stay in the same place if they do.

Firestorm and Cremation work a bit different in that though. You wouldn't necessarily use Firestorm as a secondary skill, it works well enough as a primary one. And I'm fairly confident that due to the stackability and the limit on Cremation Firestorm beats Cremation, however the thing is there is no reason why you couldn't use Cremation and Firestorm, with a build for Firestorm you might even have some investment in Duration which makes Cremation even better for longer boss fights. The Similarity between both lies in the fact that both allow for movement without you dropping leech, because both skills have a duration over which they deal damage.

Also the reason why I mentioned Cremation Traps is that they do work with Ancestral Bond. So Cremation is an awesome option for Firetotem builds, just stick it in a trap and throw it at the boss or place a few before opening a strongbox (together with your totems^^). Cremation has good damage as soon as you have some investment into Spell or Firedamage and it doesn't even have to be that much.