Spectral Throw Skill Gem

I'm liking the look of this, it seems like a fun gem, the biggest thing im curious about is if the bonus damage based on armor/evasion is scaled up by passives that increase the defenses of equipped shields.. if so this ability could hit reeeeeeal hard I think.

Confirmed not to.

"2 to 3" Added Physical Damage per 15 Armour or Evasion Rating on shield."

Thinking the skill only takes base shield rating into account. Things like shield quality or local AR/EV modifiers would count, but not AR/EV modifiers in the tree. Instead, SST will scale with normal weapon modifiers since the shield is being used as an attack. All the "While Holding a Shield" modifiers will work because you kinda have to be holding a shield for it, generic melee damage will work, as will generic phys damage from stuff like the Shadow start.

Note, also, that the gem is level 1 in the teaser. its base damage will doubtlessly go up as it levels, and in this case it'll scale like Elemental Hit in that gem level would be important.

The real kicker is that SST would theoretically allow you to stat-stick with your mainhand, since it completely disregards MH weapon damage for its own attacks. You could Brightbeak with it, or do something else with a powerful benefit on a weak weapon, and basically just be Captain America. You need to get a really high AR/EV shield for Maximum Deeps, methinks, since the hybrid shields have higher overall raw stats. Alternately, get an ES shield or ES hybrid shield for super-high base crit chance and scale crit with it. That could be tricky given the lack of "crit with shield" nodes, but there's enough generic crit in the tree to make it work. You can (theoretically) craft a hybrid EV/ES shield with over a thousand evasion and 250 ES, so ~170 extra base damage from Evasion and 2.5 extra base crit, total 7.5 base crit, and that's with retaining the life roll.

Heh. Could definitely be a lot of fun, yeppers!

That's too bad that it doesen't work with, but I still see this being fun, the idea of your mainhand weapon being a stat stick, maybe that sword that came out in Abyss(80% armor while standing still, point blank Iron Reflexes and added projectiles? I know added projectiles just add more to the amount of shards). Will this ability work with Fork or Chain? Can't wait to see some of the ascendancy changes, I think i'm def going to be trying this ability out next league.

Could be just as good to use with the Beltimber Blade as with the Grelwood Shank. Get Far Shot instead of Point Blank, use in combination with Shield Charge to get the extra stuff, run it with Queen of the Forest for mad movespeed.

Alternatively, run with literally anything on the Gladiator.

Anyways. The skill doesn't inherently do anything in particular, so Fork and Chain and such works on it. I'd almost figure a small number of Pierce chances would work better, though. Pierce the first critter or two, shield explodes in the middle of the pack, the subpros pierce through the rest of the pack and wipe it out. Chain could work but you'd lose at least half your subpros on any given blast since they fire nova-style and the shield explodes on the first hit. Digging into a pack and blasting it from the inside seems the way to go.

Also interesting in that there's not a ton of pressure to pump the projectile count, so no LMP/GMP tax. Could be possible to set it up as a semi-decent bossing skill with some aim while still clearing with it. Will definitely be fun to investigate, and make high-defense shields pretty valuable.

I dont believe Pierce works with it, I think it mentions that in the skill description. I'm loving the skill it's got so many little quirks and effects that are very different then normal. I'm new to this stuff but how do you think it would interact with Facebreakers, if you have no main hand do you technically have no weapon and would it get the massive multiplyer? I don't think it works that way with this skill though because it deals a flat value damage more like a spell than an attack.

The skill specifically tags itself as an Offhand Weapon. So stuff like Outmatch and Outlast in the (current) Gladiator Ascendancy would gain Offhand perks with SST, but Facebreakers would not. THAT SAID, you could use SST as a clearing skill and then configure Ice Crash or something else Facebreaker-y to Facebreak with, since the FB only attacks mainhand with a shield and would indeed consider you to be unarmed.

That could honestly be a super cool combo. Get some redonk Shaped/Elder 5L/6L/9L gloves or boots or whatever, put SST in that, then use your chest 6L for a Facebreaker single-target whammy.

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1453R wrote:

All the "While Holding a Shield" modifiers will work because you kinda have to be holding a shield for it, generic melee damage will work, as will generic phys damage from stuff like the Shadow start.

im not sure melee will work, cause its tagged projectile attack. I think proj damage, phys damage, phys attack damage,

I dunno, I messed with some trees and its rly hard to say how it will pan out because you cant take 1h weapon nodes right? You cant take anything weapon specific, a lot of crit is tied into either 1h, dual wield, with x weapon etc.

I think maybe going ele conversion with phys to lightning and the cold conversion in the ranger area might be the way to go in order to enable some more scaling and properly use some broken stat sticking nonsense



gonna have to finish crafting these things incase the nerf comes in, and rly they need the nerf tbh. I kind of fancy a dagger because of the lack of crit chance.

either way




were prepared for war, gonna try life raider (maybe, tbc changes i guess) and a ci crit evasion thing, see if we can push about 12k es with 18k evasion, go ham.

Maybe if they fix deadeye that could be a thing? Hard to say.

...derp. I feel like a complete nard now. Of course it wouldn't scale with melee junk. Ugghhh I'm such a dipstick.

Oh well. New plans, then!

I think that gem can be used while unarmed like shield charge, sooo facebreaker works (i hope so).