Can we have a moment of silence in memory of molten strike

"

xMustard wrote:

how projectiles spread now it gets pretty good aoe to clear

Not sure what you've been clearing, but on the t14-15's I ran for dailies it was not pleasant at all. The projectiles were absolutely wrecked by the nerfs, both in number of projectiles and in damage. Multistrike was outright destroyed with regard to MS as well.

The projectiles being more uniform and predictable doesn't really make up for just how bad they are or how slow the attack is now.

I mean, you could probably compensate for some of the nerfs by boosting the melee portion more in the build. But at that point, there's about zero reason to run MS over "insert almost any melee skill + ele conversion here".

Which was kinda their goal, I think. Mission accomplished.

i should give it another run. maybe brutus lead sprinkler version of sorts, considering how much easier it is to stack str now

I honestly don't understand all this whining about Molten Strike.

I never had a Meta build so i don't know what kind of clear speed some of you might be used to but as a casual player with mostly selffound gear i can only say that MS still feels ridiculously powerful, even after 2 nerfs. It's still far above all the other skills i've tried so far. When mapping i literally just jump from mob to mob, click once or twice and everythings dead. Only some rares and map bosses require a few more clicks. Redtier Elder went down in no time as well.

People always complain that this game is just a walk in the park simulator and it still is even with a nerfed moltenstrike just a tiny bit slower but everyone immediately goes crying and moves on to the next most busted thing to have their walks in the park as fast as possible? Isn't that a little contradicting?

It's not just about the damage, it's the overall feel of the skill. It's a pale version of its former self in both aspects. Some damage nerfs were absolutely justified but they went pretty far beyond that.

It can still put out some good damage totals, but for a good number of leagues it was one of very, very few melee skills that had any kind of excitement factor to it. That factor has been removed outright, relegating it to the top of the pile of other meh-lee skills.

Damage, aside from being more difficult to scale than spells, has never really been the key issue with melee skills. The main issue is how they feel to play compared to other styles. 3.7 did very little to address that aspect, and with regard to quite a few skills they actually feel worse to play than before.

It's just not fun anymore.

Did this also ruin Ngamahu's Flame? If yes my whole Chieftain Cyclone Build is ruined now ...

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BatLB wrote:

Did this also ruin Ngamahu's Flame? If yes my whole Chieftain Cyclone Build is ruined now ...

No nagamamas is the same as always

Eventually anything "molten" will cool off. But as stated by many other players this will only be for awhile and sometime in a future challenge league after GGG analyses the build statistics will see the low % of players using it and buff it again.

On the whole I don't see why so many players are stuck in a rut on builds and thus when a once favorite build does get wrecked (nerfed) and is no longer playable (at our desired level because we don't like to play crap skills... at least most of us don't) want to jump up on their rant soapbox and bitch about how GGG foobar-ed my build (Molten Strike or whatever). One of the reasons I continue to play PoE (from CB time) is that there are 100s of skills to build around and I will never run out of new skill combos to play. Will they all be great... NO! Will I enjoy every build I make... NO! Do I care that I'm playing a league meta-skill that 40%+ of all Legion players are playing... HELL NO! But variety is the spice of PoE life. I've seen many a cyclone video but never tried that skill yet so now in Legion challenge league GGG has buffed it to be the best melee skill and so I am playing it and loving the play style. Will it get nerfed at league end... of course! But I'll mothball that build and move on and try another skill combo. Right now EDCON looks to be the go to skill combo for the legion battles so I'm going to work in a 2nd build with it.

I guess some players like to stay within the lines (don't try many skills) and when their favorite skill is not viable this league they just want to QQ/rant about it.

I believe GGG does all the buffs/nerfs deliberately to get the underused skills played more so going with a different skill for this league should be viewed as just a normal part of playing PoE (no QQing or ranting required).

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Baharoth15 wrote:

I honestly don't understand all this whining about Molten Strike.

Allow me to try and explain, then.

"

Baharoth15 wrote:

I never had a Meta build so i don't know what kind of clear speed some of you might be used to

It's not about clearspeed. Not unless you're I_NO or a streamer.

"

Baharoth15 wrote:

but as a casual player with mostly selffound gear i can only say that MS still feels ridiculously powerful, even after 2 nerfs. It's still far above all the other skills i've tried so far. When mapping i literally just jump from mob to mob, click once or twice and everythings dead. Only some rares and map bosses require a few more clicks. Redtier Elder went down in no time as well.

You can clear the game with anything. It was the foundation of the "Melee Is Fine" platform before 3.7; damage has never been an issue if you know how to build for damage.

Molten Strike was a smooth, delightful skill to use because it was flexible. Generating a shotgun spread of projectiles with every strike allowed you to engage more fluidly, without dealing with janky pre-3.7 melee namelock targeting, and those projectiles having their own hit chances smoothed out accuracy issues. The introduction of Ancestral Call allowed Molten Strike to become a far-reaching skill equivalent to Tectonic Slam or high-level Ground Slam, attacking a significant portion of the screen all at once. People enjoyed combining it with life-on-hit mechanics because LGoH is absolutely pointless save when it's overwhelmingly overpowered, and Molten Strike made LGoH actually good instead of a waste of time.

The new Molten Strike accomplishes exactly none of that. You are required to hit with the primary melee swing now, which makes Molten Strike no better than Heavy Strike, Literally The Worst Skill In Path of Exile History Forever, for targeting and engagement. The secondary projectiles may as well not exist - because unless you connect with that extremely weak, slow, and janky carrier strike, they don't. This eliminates Ancestral Call as a source of extra damage (which admittedly needed to happen anyways), but also eliminates Ancestral Call as a clearing tool because the ancestral ghosts do not, I believe, generate molten projectiles anymore. The initial melee strike needs to hit for MS to generate projectiles, and ancestral ghosts are not you delivering the initial melee hit.

Multistrike being turned into a weird combo gem with essentially no attack speed (and which DOESN'T WORK every other hotfix) also removes much of the LGoH synergy which allowed Molten Strike builds to sustain themselves. The secondary projectiles from Molten Strike do not benefit from Multistrike's combo multiplier thingus even when that combo multiplier thingus works, and the secondary projectiles' damage is the only component of a Molten Strike build that people care about. That damage was drastically sliced, is more difficult to build for, and is also not guaranteed because you need to hit with the carrier melee attack to get those projectiles now and the carrier melee attack is useless.

Molten Strike is still functional, yes. The issue is that there's no longer any real reason to use Molten Strike over other skills. If you want a big, punchy fire conversion skill that clears well, use Tectonic Slam. It doesn't rely on a janky carrier hit to generate its damage and it doesn't need Multistrike to work decently. If you're looking for a fast, smooth mobslaughter build with tons of projectiles everywhere, Frost Blades lets you shoot from half a screen away and fire homing missiles at everything the long-range melee strike doesn't hit. If you want something that lets you concentrate a bunch of heavy damage sources on a boss, any other melee skill in the game is now a better choice than Molten Strike.

Nobody is really whining about the skill being nerfed. Folks are simply sad that the Molten Strike 'adjustments' were far more severe than the Winter Orb adjustments and essentially relegated the skill to the forgotten tomes of history.

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Baharoth15 wrote:

People always complain that this game is just a walk in the park simulator and it still is even with a nerfed moltenstrike just a tiny bit slower but everyone immediately goes crying and moves on to the next most busted thing to have their walks in the park as fast as possible? Isn't that a little contradicting?

Molten strike is significantly slower and enormously less reliable. It's no longer great for on-hit triggers, and it doesn't flow the way it used to. It simply doesn't feel great to play anymore, regardless of its actual performance.

When Molten Strike cannot outperform bloody Heavy Strike, it is indeed time for a moment of silence.

F

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1453R wrote:

.....

Yep, yep, yep, yep, and yep!

Though there are, admittedly, even some complainers who think it's dead just because of the direct damage nerfs. That's really not it at all.

It's back to being just another dull and pointless to play meh-lee skill, but significantly moreso than it was prior to Ancestral really helping it become the go-to melee meta.