Here's why Molten strike is one of the best Skill Gems in the game.

molten strike is.. fine. it is in the same junkyard as cleave, dual strike, heavy strike and the likes. you can make it work but is going to suck massively without crutches

crutches like explody chest or weapons like this:


or 'the mathil's set' - abyssus/paradoxica/saviour (plus Soul Tether for 'survivability'). this setup works. but it works much better with any other skill


Hydrosphere helps a lot with single target damage - but still, clear without some sort of 'explody' is just garbage COMPARED to alternatives

in modern POE there is no place for this skill. alternatives do the same, but better, cheaper, faster, safer. it is like steam locos - they work, they are simple to fix, easy to run and break rarely. but.. diesel/electric are just better. thus - steam locos are no more

in a game you can argue that there is this 'fun' factor - but most of the garbage skills listed above kinda arent fun


edit: ive just ran a map with MS to see it (ive legacy pimped out char) - skill is dull and weak but the worst part are visuals. the new visuals are horrible

"

zzang wrote:

"

TorsteinTheFallen wrote:

First define "viable"?

Second i wanna bet you and Sid that if i make 30ex MS build that clears end-game by the end of the league both of you are going to pay me 30ex and if not ill pay you both. Deal? (Standard currency and gear is acceptable as bet compensation :P)

You know what im willing to take the bet i dont speak for Sid.
Just some legitimate restrictions as we will try to simulate league environment.
No legacy MS projectile threshold jewel. No legacy projectile helm enchant. No Explody Chest since "we are thinking out of the box" right? And last but not least no Transcendence as another bandaid fix.

But i want to ask another bet. I will check the gears market price you use and then i will make a spell or general ranged build for same budget which will be more "viable". If i succeed you owe me 60 exalted deal?

Goal: T19 100% Delirious with Beyond, Beast and Gilded Habinger, Gilded Elder, Gilded Breach, Gilded Tormented Scarab -no Headhunter.

I feel this is going to end up in two poison builds but so be it.

I have currency in league and gear in std, and i don't play std so no legacy gear was meant to be used.

It's really interesting how you tend to bend the reality of current PoE the way it suits you to support your claims.
First you negate Explody chest, then Transcendence, then throw in casters out of the blue, and for the cherry on top you set juiced t19 as a goal of viable.

Explody chest on FastAF's char is only good because of one thing, full phys to fire conversion. You don't need it but whatever. Explody chest is not a magic item that pops screen on any char or even significantly improves clear. I learned that the hard way.

Transcendence, well slap that on your average caster or pretty much any other build that's not stacking armour or having serious defenses and see how immortal it becomes, not...

In your definition of viable build you can count maybe 5 builds (no legacy, no HH, doing t19 juiced deli) including mine. Oh wait, Transcendence yeah, that's a no go. Have to shoot my self in the foot first to fit to your standards.

100% Deli is not a parameter of a endgame viable build by any means. It's absolute maximum build can achieve in maps and very few can do that without dying non stop.

Thread started as "skill is garbage". I'm saying it's not and I'm certain one can make a decent build with it that will clear end game questline.
Ill make one by the end of the league because why not. I enjoy it. And if it sucks, ill swallow what i've said.

If you are going to continue the thread MS vs everything else, pls don't. I'm not willing to participate in that discussion for the xy time.

"

sidtherat wrote:

molten strike is.. fine. it is in the same junkyard as cleave, dual strike, heavy strike and the likes. you can make it work but is going to suck massively without crutches

crutches like explody chest or weapons like this:

Spoiler

ive got 430pdps one somewhere, used to make MS good in the past

or 'the mathil's set' - abyssus/paradoxica/saviour (plus Soul Tether for 'survivability'). this setup works. but it works much better with any other skill


Hydrosphere helps a lot with single target damage - but still, clear without some sort of 'explody' is just garbage COMPARED to alternatives

in modern POE there is no place for this skill. alternatives do the same, but better, cheaper, faster, safer. it is like steam locos - they work, they are simple to fix, easy to run and break rarely. but.. diesel/electric are just better. thus - steam locos are no more

in a game you can argue that there is this 'fun' factor - but most of the garbage skills listed above kinda arent fun


edit: ive just ran a map with MS to see it (ive legacy pimped out char) - skill is dull and weak but the worst part are visuals. the new visuals are horrible

Crutches or no crutches, it is what it is. Either use it or don't, it's there.

One of the reasons old MS was OP was lgoh from vulcano of balls. It still has that vs other skills.

I agree on visuals and i'll add sound. Old MS was miles better in that sense.

"

TorsteinTheFallen wrote:

I have currency in league and gear in std, and i don't play std so no legacy gear was meant to be used.

It's really interesting how you tend to bend the reality of current PoE the way it suits you to support your claims.
First you negate Explody chest, then Transcendence, then throw in casters out of the blue, and for the cherry on top you set juiced t19 as a goal of viable.

Explody chest on FastAF's char is only good because of one thing, full phys to fire conversion. You don't need it but whatever. Explody chest is not a magic item that pops screen on any char or even significantly improves clear. I learned that the hard way.

Transcendence, well slap that on your average caster or pretty much any other build that's not stacking armour or having serious defenses and see how immortal it becomes, not...

In your definition of viable build you can count maybe 5 builds (no legacy, no HH, doing t19 juiced deli) including mine. Oh wait, Transcendence yeah, that's a no go. Have to shoot my self in the foot first to fit to your standards.

100% Deli is not a parameter of a endgame viable build by any means. It's absolute maximum build can achieve in maps and very few can do that without dying non stop.

Thread started as "skill is garbage". I'm saying it's not and I'm certain one can make a decent build with it that will clear end game questline.
Ill make one by the end of the league because why not. I enjoy it. And if it sucks, ill swallow what i've said.

If you are going to continue the thread MS vs everything else, pls don't. I'm not willing to participate in that discussion for the xy time.

[Removed by Support]
T16 map clear isnt anything special to truly measure power.
Especially not after 3 years of power creep. It only makes sense to create a even playground where monsters can hit actually back to be able to tell the capabilities of a build.
I used my counterbet to put in your brain a picture that i will make something better non MS/non melee compared to whatever you will do with MS/melee. [Removed by Support]
Ruling out Trascendence is a no brainer when the logical step was to absue it in the first place with a poison pathfinder. I mean i know you doing meta builds but i dont fall for that trick. Hence why my guess was if you would have taken the bet that we end up with two poison builds.

And after all i was not the person tried to blend by linking a dual wield tempered 800 pdps foil video for t16 maps with elevated explody chest to say "look Molten Strike is actually good!" You just need this amount of gear to make it look like a 30 ex spellcaster build.

"

zzang wrote:

[Removed by Support]
T16 map clear isnt anything special to truly measure power.
Especially not after 3 years of power creep. It only makes sense to create a even playground where monsters can hit actually back to be able to tell the capabilities of a build.
I used my counterbet to put in your brain a picture that i will make something better non MS/non melee compared to whatever you will do with MS/melee. [Removed by Support]
Ruling out Trascendence is a no brainer when the logical step was to absue it in the first place with a poison pathfinder. I mean i know you doing meta builds but i dont fall for that trick. Hence why my guess was if you would have taken the bet that we end up with two poison builds.

I never claimed it's the best skill in the game. All i've said is that skill is VIABLE for the endgame.

Pls don't twist my words. You are the one that took discussion into whole another direction by comparing it with other skills, ruling out things that are not at your "ethical" list and setting the bar of viable at t19.

Transcendence has nothing to do with Poison Pathfinder specifically. If you think it's just that easy to make it good, everyone would use it.

Let's do an experiment, let's see if the 4 of us can actually agree on 3 simple points.

1) Normal endgame content (ie T16 Sirus and stuff) can be done with pretty much any skill even the "bad ones" using average gear (10+ EX investment). Let's define this as "viable".
2) With enough currency investment and a proper build any skill can destroy all content with ease. Skill balance is almost non existant when you can invest a dozen mirrors into a build.
3) "Bad skills" are considered that because there are other skills out there that can do the same things, just "better" i.e cheaper, safer, faster. Let's define the absence of "better" builds as "competitive".

So with those simple definitions we can say that MS is a viable skill, but not competitive since there are better alternatives.

I think this is something we can all agree on? I mean it's not like i don't enjoy our annual flamewars about these things but imo it's getting boring running in circles every time...

Oh and as it is tradition, someone has to bring that joke : "lul nebulich jugg"

1a)

define 'done'. because 10 minutes a map (and avoiding certain mechanics) vs 2 minutes a juiced map makes a f.. difference. clearing both generals in a legion spawn vs clearing 40% of it - stuff like that. where do you draw the line? white t16 with no content? if so - yep, you can 'do it' with anything

1b)

game story mode ends with maven fight. and while you can 'mechanic' the maven's fight, you cannot do the same with 'preceeding' fights. these are pure chaos, no scripting - they test the build in its purest form.

i bet significant part of garbo builds wont be able to do these fights deathless and/or rolled



some skills can do stuff but slow enough/risky enough that attempting it equals wasting ones time

luckily ggg toned down maven's healing so these builds/skills CAN do end-endgame but there is a MASSIVE difference between these

esp in fights where UNREMOVABLE no-entry zones are present and the lower your dps (real, not paper) the more risky the fight gets, to the point when you can actually brick the fight


also - no bs talk about 'with harvest you can do anything'. thats f.. bollocks. you can if you interact with that cesspool of all places. playing solo, collecting 4 maven writs on my way, 4 sirus rotas and in general not leaving two 'garden' regions ive found maybe 10 total remove/adds. aside from chaos spam-like (reforges) normal player is exactly at the same spot as before. you can ofc cheaply buy failed crafts from others but that was always the case


't16' means nothing. make it rare, add some juice, encounter It That Fled surrounded by 'cannot die' and suddenly thrash builds wont make it. molten strike has no range (that threshold jewel is pure garbage), deals barely enough damage (150% base.. like wtf? even with projectiles tectonic slam deals more and is a SLAM), sounds terrible and looks like orange puke.

sorry, anyone wasting their time playing this skill is just doing it for personal reasons, but that does not make it a valid choice. it is objectively crap

crap, that in 'modern poe' can be fixed with explody chest just like mathil solves the crackling lance nowadays. take the 'explody' effect and the build is gone. change the skill - it plays the same.. i kinda miss the old POE when we had very limited access to explody effect and noone could use it as a bandaid to hide glaring skill balance issues

I think most ppl will agree that explody chest makes all gameplay videos look very generic. I'm not bitter because I don't have it. It's not even that expensive nowadays, unless it comes with a secondary powerful influence mod. (Had one but deleted the character along with it by accident.) With the chest/weapon having that mod, players are no longer interacting with the skill gem's original mechanics.

It's actually too powerful. Unique chests needs to be buffed big time if they are ever going to stop people from using explode chests.

"

crap, that in 'modern poe' can be fixed with explody chest just like mathil solves the crackling lance nowadays. take the 'explody' effect and the build is gone. change the skill - it plays the same.. i kinda miss the old POE when we had very limited access to explody effect and noone could use it as a bandaid to hide glaring skill balance issues

Like Harvest crafted, double influenced, god tier mirrored rare? Or it's nerfed Inpulsa, chest that's in game like 4y now. I remember that old PoE with Elementalist and Inpulsa, blasting not one but 3 screens away where 30%+ of playerbase played just that. Arc/BV Inpulsa Elementalist.

[Removed by Support]

Just 1 button build without HH, only vanilla PoE 1.0 gear allowed that can t19 map in less than 2 mins? No?
Then pack your shit folks, your build ain't viable.

it turned into nothing like that.

molten strike [Removed by Support] has nothing going for it, you NEED explody chest to make it work and in fact that damn chest eclipses any and all aspects of molten strike

it is a horrible-looking explody proc skill with no redeeming features.

GGG introducing this explody mechanic, [Removed by Support] any build is better with HH, pretty much any build is better with explody chest

and some skills - molten strike included - are worthless (in comparison but it is the relative power that matters) without it

+1 strike is not a 'bonus'. it is a price you have to pay to reach parity with non-strike skills. you like to pay it and like the playstyle - cool. but objectively it is a con and should be treated like that. strike skills deal a lot less damage than their AOE counterparts without any compensation (ofc excluding outliers like wild strike etc that have potent AOE component).

and impulsa.. got nerfed by a lot and you start with lightning thus the conversion path and scaling are far less effective. it is still enough to carry crackling lance. sadly mathil's build is an explody build. replace CL with Arc and you have a build that plays the same, clears the same and even looks the same.. it is not his fault, it is just modern POE