General Discussion - Question: Ethereal Knifes & Detonate Dead - Forum

" Mark_GGG wrote: Ethereal Knives is a spell. It deals physical damage via projectiles. It is therefore affected by spell, projectile and physical damage modifiers. Detonate Dead is a spell, but since the spell does not deal damage directly (it explodes a corpse, causing it to deal damage), it is not considered spell damage, and is not affected by spell damage increases. The damage dealt is both fire and physical, so it's affected by modifiers to those damage types, as well as elemental damage (because fire is elemental). Okay. Go test my witch and see how she oneshots mobs in chaos without high fire resistance with level 1 detonate dead. And I only got 98% increased fire damage(including elemental damage). (108% if increased area damage is counted) and around 66% concentrated area. 18%2,081,66=62,1504% damage as monster hp. Even If I added my -45% elemental resist curse on 0% fire resist monster it would bring my damage to 90,11808% of monster hp. My empirical evidence leads me to conclusion of 2 possiblities: 1)Non fire resistant mobs have negative fire resistance even without curse. 2) Spell damage does affect detonate dead. I know this and I will abuse it to hell unless it's fixed.(Or at least until my witch died some time ago) I confirmed that I am still in HC league. Then I died. Last edited by Targuil#7640 on Jul 17, 2012, 1:51:05 AM	Posted by Targuil#7640 on Jul 17, 2012, 1:45:27 AM Quote this Post
Not sure how well these two will work together. I've played around with both on a shadow (which was more Dagger-Specced). EK works well with some support, but it's meant to be used at an intermediate range. Since it will only hit ONCE per target, it needs to be spammed (unless with a lot of passives it hurts much more) and its a bit costly. Detonate Dead pretty much needs the mobs to be bunched on the dead body, which means going into melee range or having some way to set them up. Its AoE is rather small. If you plan to kill with EK then DD the rest, not sure the positiooning will be very good.	Posted by Skjuld#7015 on Jul 17, 2012, 11:03:12 AM Quote this Post
" Targuil wrote: Okay. Go test my witch and see how she oneshots mobs in chaos without high fire resistance with level 1 detonate dead. And I only got 98% increased fire damage(including elemental damage). (108% if increased area damage is counted) and around 66% concentrated area. 18%2,081,66=62,1504% damage as monster hp. Even If I added my -45% elemental resist curse on 0% fire resist monster it would bring my damage to 90,11808% of monster hp. My empirical evidence leads me to conclusion of 2 possiblities: 1)Non fire resistant mobs have negative fire resistance even without curse. 2) Spell damage does affect detonate dead. I know this and I will abuse it to hell unless it's fixed.(Or at least until my witch died some time ago) Neither 1) nor 2) is the case. I have double and triple checked this just in case, and it is not possible for spell damage modifiers to apply to detonate dead (or other similar damage). Rory and I have tested your witch character - while you do indeed have a powerful detonate dead skill (and I congratulate you on it), it does not one-shot monsters with the same amount of maximum life as the corpse, unless you crit. The damage dealt, based on looking at their life bar, appears to be just under 2/3 of their maximum life, which matches your calculated value (I have not checked you added your passives up right - I'm assuming that's correct, and the calculated value certainly isn't off by enough to suggest otherwise). In every case, against any non-fire-immune monster, detonating the corpse of a monster of the same type and rarity will bring identical monsters from full life to around the 1/3 mark. I suspect the reason you saw detonate dead take out monsters is some combination of the following: You got lucky and got a critical strike with Detonate Dead - this will multiply the damage, and I should be enough to cause 100% life damage You were using one of your character's Diamond flasks (you seem to have two of them) at the time, thus getting a guaranteed crit, rather than a lucky one. You were (smartly) targeting more dangerous monsters first, and they have more life than the monsters around them - such as killing and exploding the chieftains, thus killing the much weaker small apes around them. You were (smartly) killing higher rarity monsters first. Magic and Rare monsters have notably more life than normal monsters of the same type. You had dealt those monsters some damage before using detonate dead - I noticed your witch's main spell is a multiple projectile fireball with a high chance to pierce - this is rather unlikely to leave any member of a group of monsters unscathed by the time one is killed. Or they might have been caught by stray fireballs while skill offscreen. On an unrelated note, it's worth pointing out that while spell-specific damage modifiers don't apply, currently due to a limitation in the system, spell specific crit modifiers will - this will be fixed in the future.	Posted by Mark_GGG on Jul 18, 2012, 12:32:20 AM Grinding Gear Games Quote this Post
" Mark_GGG wrote: I suspect the reason you saw detonate dead take out monsters is some combination of the following: You got lucky and got a critical strike with Detonate Dead - this will multiply the damage, and I should be enough to cause 100% life damage You were using one of your character's Diamond flasks (you seem to have two of them) at the time, thus getting a guaranteed crit, rather than a lucky one. You were (smartly) targeting more dangerous monsters first, and they have more life than the monsters around them - such as killing and exploding the chieftains, thus killing the much weaker small apes around them. You were (smartly) killing higher rarity monsters first. Magic and Rare monsters have notably more life than normal monsters of the same type. You had dealt those monsters some damage before using detonate dead - I noticed your witch's main spell is a multiple projectile fireball with a high chance to pierce - this is rather unlikely to leave any member of a group of monsters unscathed by the time one is killed. Or they might have been caught by stray fireballs while skill offscreen. 1) My critrate isn't that high though, but it does affect it I agree. 2) I never even remember I got my diamond flask. :( 3) This is certainly true 4) This is true too 5) It's possible. I agree though these, and the very fast cast speed give the illusion of oneshotting chainreaction against bigger groups of foes. I still could've swore I killed identical full hp enemies with noncrit detonates. Guess they were still hit by some stray fireball. In that case it's a bit less broken skill than I thought and It will help me make a truly 100% one in open beta. Hope I didn't delay the patch till monday. I confirmed that I am still in HC league. Then I died. Last edited by Targuil#7640 on Jul 18, 2012, 1:19:03 AM	Posted by Targuil#7640 on Jul 18, 2012, 1:18:36 AM Quote this Post
" Targuil wrote: In that case it's a bit less broken skill than I thought and It will help me make a truly 100% one in open beta. Hope I didn't delay the patch till monday. Good luck. I'm not the balance guy, but personally I think it'd be cool if that can be done, provided you have to devote enough of your spec to it that it's not broken to do so. And checking your character only took a few minutes - if the patch is late it's not on your conscience.	Posted by Mark_GGG on Jul 18, 2012, 1:28:07 AM Grinding Gear Games Quote this Post