There doesn't seem to be a reasonable benefit for leveling up the Detonate Dead gem

The base mana cost of Detonate Dead increases from 6 to 38. At every level of this gem, it deals 18% of the detonated corpses max health. That means that a level 20 Detonate Dead gem is dealing the same amount of fire damage per corpse as a level 1 gem, but at over 6x the base mana cost.

Detonate Dead also deals physical damage which scales with the gem level; it starts at 2-4 damage and ends at 82-123 by level 20. As most of you may be able to tell right off the bat, this damage is obscenely trivial relative to the gem level, to the %health damage, and most of all to the relative content where this damage is being applied.

For example, I use Detonate Dead + Cast on Melee Kill + Cyclone. While swapping around my gear, I accidentally placed a level 1 Detonate Dead gem in my gear instead of my level 15 Detonate Dead gem. There was no apparent difference as I played with the level 1 gem. If not for the rapid leveling of the gem, I would have never noticed that I was using the level 1 gem.

Then I thought, what am I gaining by using the level 15 gem over the level 1 gem? I'm not dealing more %health as damage. I'm not getting a larger blast radius. I'm not detonating multiple corpses. I'm not getting anything except scraps of physical damage that, frankly, did not matter. The most disappointing answer is that I was getting to pay over 5x the mana for the same desired effect. Paying out 5x more mana for no reason is HUGE. I now use the level 1 gem for the much, much cheaper mana cost.

Simply put, the scaling of Detonate Dead isn't good enough to incentivize leveling it up. It is in desperate need of a buff to something.

You know, I've never really used Detonate Dead as anything other than an anti-necromancer spell. I must say that your analysis seems spot on, which makes me glad I read this before making the Cast on Melee Kill / Melee Splash / Detonate Dead character I'd been thinking about.

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Archwizard wrote:

You know, I've never really used Detonate Dead as anything other than an anti-necromancer spell. I must say that your analysis seems spot on, which makes me glad I read this before making the Cast on Melee Kill / Melee Splash / Detonate Dead character I'd been thinking about.

It's still pretty effective as the 18% corpse health will scale with bigger baddies. I just want there to be a good reason to spend more and more mana using the skill as it levels up.

Even it was something small, like scaling from 18% to 25% over 20 levels (.35% per level), I'd be sold on that.

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Archwizard wrote:

You know, I've never really used Detonate Dead as anything other than an anti-necromancer spell. I must say that your analysis seems spot on, which makes me glad I read this before making the Cast on Melee Kill / Melee Splash / Detonate Dead character I'd been thinking about.

Hopefully you read this reply too, and find out that Detonate dead doesn't consume mana when used with trigger gems.

Hopefully also you read this second part of my post and discover that what you are suggesting, while cool, is just a less cool version of infernal blow.

I agree that there isn't a reason to level it.

The mana cost increase is not in line with the physical damage increase (which does exist but is far too low) or the (lack of) enemy corpse damage increase.

Right, no reason to level it whatsoever, which can be kinda useful, you can put fire penetration, increased area and conc effect on it without breaking the mana bank. Probably a good support spell for summoners with extra corpses lying around, to put some D2 flavor in the cake.

it is like this from the very begining

sad. there are some similar forgotten gem issues

- detonate dead leveling
- knockback / chance to flee not having place in current meta
- punishment curse being total.. wasted slot
- animate guardian

sad

It is pretty sad, but the saddest part is some wouldn't be too hard to fix.

Animate guardian just needs a huge base life pool and resistance/defense bonus per level, it's supposed to be a tank, after all.

Knockback is probably working right, it's useful on some skills but the problem is we usually got much more appealing options. Chance to flee might be better if stuns didn't interrupt it but it's pretty much the same problem as kb.

Punishment curse suffers the fate of all similar skills in arpgs, players have way too big damage/health ratio and monsters too small. There's just no place for reflect skills in that scenario if you got any form of pvp in the game also. D&D games are probably the only ones with any common sense here (which is surprising), monsters and you follow exactly the same set of rules, a dragon has level*(constitution+healthroll), just as you do but with much higher stats. A very tough mercenary captain has similar stats to you, what makes him hard is perhaps good gear, perhaps buffs that his henchmen cast on him, perhaps henchmen themselves.

... drat, derailed again.

I don't remember if I ever posted about it before, but DD is one of the worst designed skills in the game.

It is not a skill gem. It is a cookie cutter / universal gem swap that has (virtually) no mana cost, no attribute requirements, and does nothing in the game except counter enemy necromancers. It has no mana cost or attribute requirements because you don't level it unless you're a noob, because leveling it does nothing. At all. Anybody can use it with absolutely no restrictions, and it trivializes one of the only actual challenges in the game (packs of multiple rare necros).

And yet phase run was somehow bad design and needed to be removed for rebalancing.... Lol

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sidtherat wrote:

it is like this from the very begining

sad. there are some similar forgotten gem issues

- detonate dead leveling
- knockback / chance to flee not having place in current meta
- punishment curse being total.. wasted slot
- animate guardian

sad

Searing Bond is also a complete joke.With all the burning damage nodes and using Searing Touch,the damage is still a joke.

Hell even with 3 totems its still barely worth using.