Explosive Concoction Damage Calculation Question.

Explosive Concoction (from here on named EC) is according to the preview classified as "Attack, AOE, Fire, Cold, Lightning, Projectile" and the text states, that it "Deals Unarmed Damage", and the Skill gem itself adds a flat amount (scaling with skill gem level) of fire damage, as well as extra damage for flask charges used.

My question is: Is the unarmed Damage dealt physical, as in it gets counted as a ranged unarmed attack, or does it inherently convert the physical damage into elemental one?

Or in other words: Do Face breakers/ Hollow Palm Technique apply their damage bonus to the skill as Physical damage, is it lost/Doesn't apply, or is it converted into elemental one??

I am specifically asking, because it is missing the "Physical" tag, but states it deals "Unarmed" damage which is usually Physical by nature, and it doesn't talk about any conversions.

TY in advance,

Glaringsoul

PS:
Yes, I know, wait for release, and test it out, but I am really hyped about EC and would like to know a bit more beforehand, so that i can start theorycrafting...

The gem say's nothing about damage conversion so presumably it does base physical damage, it just isnt a physical skill so it doesn't have that tag witch is completdly normal and in line with tons of other attacks in the game.

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Glaringsoul wrote:

My question is: Is the unarmed Damage dealt physical, as in it gets counted as a ranged unarmed attack, or does it inherently convert the physical damage into elemental one?

Unarmed is not a Damage Type, so it is not Physical, and EC does no conversion either based on its current description. It just mentions a Base Fire Damage value which will be used in place of any Base Attack Damage that would come from a weapon if you were using one.

It then adds Base Cold Damage, or Base Lightning Damage, or both, if it can consume flask charges the moment you use the Skill.

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Glaringsoul wrote:

Or in other words: Do Face breakers/ Hollow Palm Technique apply their damage bonus to the skill as Physical damage, is it lost/Doesn't apply, or is it converted into elemental one??

Facebreaker increases Physical Damage with Unarmed Attacks, which every class has a bit of when unarmed and only for Melee Attacks (because you can't use a Ranged Attack, even a basic one, without any weapon, unless you could throw your fists... which would be somewhat cool). EC has the Projectile tag but no Melee tag, so it's probably safe to assume that Facebreaker will do ~700% more Physical Damage of 0, so... nothing.

Now, if you somehow add some Base Physical Damage to your Attacks (whether using Hollow Palm Technique, or an Abyssus, or whatever), Facebreaker could work based on its current modifiers. We will have to wait until Patch Notes to be sure (something like "#x% more Physical Damage with Unarmed Attacks" -> "#x% more Physical Damage with Unarmed Melee Attacks" would ruin its use with EC).

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Foxpound wrote:

Unarmed is not a Damage Type, so it is not Physical, and EC does no conversion either based on its current description.

Yeah, I maybe have phrased that bad, I meant that unarmed damage is usually physical damage (without any conversions), and therefore "damage from the unarmed attack dealt AS physical damage, or as elemental damage" would be a better way of phrasing it; Because it says "Deal Unarmed Attack Damage (In an Area)", and it adds the flat fire, and that sounds to me, like it deals the x-x unarmed damage for each class and then adds the flat fire on top of that.

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Foxpound wrote:

EC has the Projectile tag but no Melee tag, so it's probably safe to assume that Facebreaker will do ~700% more Physical Damage of 0, so... nothing.

Counterpoint, it doesn't have the "Ranged" attribute either, HP works with a lot of melee skills that also have the projectile tag (although they don't use it for the unarmed attack), and this is a new skill gem, so it might not necessarily behave like the ones before, because before now we just never had a skill gem that gave us the ability to attack at range while unarmed.

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Foxpound wrote:

We will have to wait until Patch Notes to be sure (something like "#x% more Physical Damage with Unarmed Attacks" -> "#x% more Physical Damage with Unarmed Melee Attacks" would ruin its use with EC).

True, but I found something that maybe they missed as a specific interaction for this gem, and I need to scale flat physical (could also be elemental, but it's way less effective like that) damage to an extreme.

And HP seemed like the prime contender, due to it scaling off of DEX, meaning I can take the few cluttered nodes and not lose out on too much DPS...

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Foxpound wrote:

Unarmed is not a Damage Type, so it is not Physical, and EC does no conversion either based on its current description. It just mentions a Base Fire Damage value which will be used in place of any Base Attack Damage that would come from a weapon if you were using one.

The skill clearly say's it does "unarmed attack damage" so the base damage of the skill will be 2-5,6 or 8 physical damage depending on with class you play.

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Existing unarmed unique items will be updated to state that they don’t work with Explosive Concoction.

Explosive Concoction would've still been useless with the unarmed uniques, and GGG pre-nerfed it to ensure that the skill can't be used with them. Nice. From the wording it seems Explosive Concoction might get its own unique to make it viable at least.

The skill is so terrible that it HAS to shotgun. I don't see what this skill is for if it doesn't.

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Glaringsoul wrote:

Counterpoint, it doesn't have the "Ranged" attribute either, HP works with a lot of melee skills that also have the projectile tag (although they don't use it for the unarmed attack)

There is no "Ranged" keyword on any Skill Gem AFAIK, only "Projectile". When combined with the Melee tag, it usually means it can be used as either a Melee or a Ranged attack (like EleHit, or Frenzy), or that it produces projectiles as a byproduct of its effect (like Molten Strike).

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Glaringsoul wrote:

(...) this is a new skill gem, so it might not necessarily behave like the ones before, because before now we just never had a skill gem that gave us the ability to attack at range while unarmed.

You are totally correct, this is all new, Patch Notes will reveal everything.

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Torguemada wrote:

The skill clearly say's it does "unarmed attack damage" so the base damage of the skill will be 2-5,6 or 8 physical damage depending on with class you play.

And yet, Unarmed Damage is not a Damage Type as only five of those currently exist: Physical, Fire, Cold, Lightning, and Chaos. As per the wiki, "Unarmed damage is a subcategory of Melee Damage and therefore inherits damage modifiers from the Melee and Attack keywords.": EC not having the Melee one, it probably won't make use of the base Physical Unarmed Attack Damage of each class, unless Patch Notes say otherwise.

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DiabloImmoral wrote:

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Existing unarmed unique items will be updated to state that they don’t work with Explosive Concoction.

Do you have a link to that quote? Thanks.

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Foxpound wrote:

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DiabloImmoral wrote:

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Existing unarmed unique items will be updated to state that they don’t work with Explosive Concoction.

Do you have a link to that quote? Thanks.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/omh21e/explosive_concoction_and_unarmed_uniques/h5l1hpf/?context=3

Can you imagine, though? A skill balanced around 100% of base damage, and you can boost it to 800% of base damage just by slapping on a Facebreaker. Or grant it ridiculous scaling with Hollow Palm.

Thanks a lot for the link!

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adghar wrote:

Can you imagine, though? A skill balanced around 100% of base damage, and you can boost it to 800% of base damage just by slapping on a Facebreaker. Or grant it ridiculous scaling with Hollow Palm.

Yup, definitely makes sense.

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adghar wrote:

Can you imagine, though? A skill balanced around 100% of base damage, and you can boost it to 800% of base damage just by slapping on a Facebreaker. Or grant it ridiculous scaling with Hollow Palm.

So, basically Every Single unarmed skill in the game? We are talking about a minimum amount of physical damage, on a skill that primarily deals Elemental ones and has no inherent physical scaling.

Admittedly, I would have attempted full phys conversion to elemental, but even then I don't think it would have been broken (Or more broken than any of the other Unarmed Skills).

At least we can still use shields (since they are not Main Hand), and gloves to maybe scale it a bit;

But I honestly find that disappointing, because they are going to (overall) cut damage by 40% and the new skill gem they release won’t even get the niche interaction for the class it was designed upon...