Why limit desecrate and not Det Dead?

If they allowed scaling with party hp, you would suddenly die to reflect when you play with more then 1 person :').

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shroudb wrote:

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Natharias wrote:

However, DD only uses the regular health of mobs, not the increased life from party increases, which makes DD less and less effective the more players you have.

this is the main problem, and it's hard to balance.

DD is a "threshold" spell. It works wonders when you reach a certain threshold, in between thresholds it doesn't make a differance.

p.e. going from 33% max health to 49% doesn't quite alters clear speed, going from 49% to 50% is a huge increase in it, and etc.

allowing DD to scale from party bonus to health would be insane, since you would oneshot eversingle mob in party maps. On the other hand, going from 100% kill to needing to blow up 4-5corpses is quite the hurdle.

a middleway solution that i think may work (and i'm actually slowly working towards it, if i even find enough time to play for a bit) is going for burn damage in parties.

sure, you don't 1hit ko everything, but killing packs in 3-4secs isn't bad imo.

Yes. Because it's based on percentage damage of a chosen target, it can easily be overpowered or underpowered.

The problem is basing it on the life of the corpse in question. If the idea was a percentage based damage via a corpse that did "balanced" damage to all targets, then it should be based on either the caster or the average of the caster and the corpse.

But it's meant to be OP and UP as you play.

I find dd to be an amazing utility spell. I found a 16Q one with my viper strike ranger, started messing around with it on spell totem and never stopped using it. I can't tell if the 18% corpse life damage is scaled by totem but it doesn't seem to be. For a solo char it is perfect for corpse disposal and finishing off mobs that are poisoned. Once the totem starts going off it attracts a lot of attention from monsters too.

^^
totem dmg penalty applies to DD. probably you see crits

"

Natharias wrote:

I have no doubt that DD can do that. But what I do doubt and debate is that it is weaker...oh, I already posted why. Perhaps you should read it.

However, DD only uses the regular health of mobs, not the increased life from party increases, which makes DD less and less effective the more players you have.

all your explanation 'why it doesnt work and is weak' compared with someone doing 6man HP mobs SOLO simply show that youve missed some ways of making DD work better. have you seen that video? it was very fast run, fast as in: run, cast 1-2 times, run, next pack.. it wouldnt be any faster when playing normal piety with lvl80 char..

DD is very good, with all these drawbacks youve mentioned etc it still can roflstomp maps as fast as with any other OP build. sadly nerf to desecrate reduces that 'first corpse' source and makes this build what it was pre-desecrate: nice powerful build, party.

A level 1 desecrate is still very strong when combined with DD if your spec is DD-oriented. Those 3 corpses are enough to start chaining dd around and everywhere. As you level desecrate, it'll just get stronger. I have no doubt that the fix to desecrate was the right thing to do, especially since it doesn't really affect those builds oriented around DD to begin with

-source: bob the builder (I mean, detonator)

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Natharias wrote:

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Zoroch wrote:

Detonate Dead is really quite strong, strong enough that it was viable before desecrate. Before desecrate you still had to kill something first before you could use it which made it a bit clunky and situational. Now... well it's actually quite good. A properly built one will one shot whole rooms from afar in complete safety against everything but reflect.

Reflect is by the way about the only notable weakness to the skill. Sure it requires some setting up with curses to oneshot resistant mobs. But considering you could just cast it more than once this isn't really a problem.

Now one thing it has as an advantage over pretty much any other skill (at least spells) is that you don't need to level it up. This makes a potential 5/6l really cheap to use not to mention you usually only have to cast it once.

Sure I wouldn't put it on the level of flicker crit dagger or similary extreme dps builds, but it should be much easier to make, while also being more safe than most builds.

Whatever you may else say about DD, calling it weak or useless is wrong. Check it up on youtube or something if you are still in doubt.

Perhaps you should read some of the posts, mine specifically, to see why it is weak. I consider all possible scenarios, which includes you having trouble with bodies or not having any. This means that Fireball is going to completely ROFLSTOMP your Detonate Dead.

I suggest that you consider the advantages and disadvantages of all skills. Sure, Detonate Dead does percent based damage and doesn't need to level to do the damage it needs, but it requires corpses and if someone is running a Devouring Totem or constantly resummons minions, then you become quite useless.

You are very very wrong about fireball being better. How much HP do level 65 corpses have? I would guess they have something like 5-6k HP? maybe a little bit less? But the reality is that all DD needs to be as good as fireball is a corpse with at least 3677 life (662 / .18). The 662 figure is fireballs TOP base damage at level 22 (level 20 gem + searing touch), and it can't go any higher than that without empower shenanigans which there just aren't slots for on a caster build. How high is the "base" damage on DD once you get to 70+ maps? They get a lot of HP and DD scales up nicely.

The biggest advantage of DD over fireball is that if you can one-shot a white pack in normal mode, you can one-shot a white pack in maps with no additional investment. Also, once ignite is taken into account DD far surpasses anything fireball can accomplish. The one caveat to that is you need a body to start it all off.

I actually think they should change DD a little bit, I mean, why is it not considered a spell? It's not very intuitive in that sense. IMO they should drop the base to 15% monster health and then allow spell modifiers to affect it. It should also scale with parties. Currently it caps at 2-player party health which makes it pretty annoying for 5/6-man parties.

Here's a link to my tree, I do somewhere around 200% mob health with DD, although I'm built for fire-trap. The two skills use similar trees and nodes, so it's pretty relevant:

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Z3roSh0t wrote:

You are very very wrong about fireball being better. How much HP do level 65 corpses have? I would guess they have something like 5-6k HP? maybe a little bit less? But the reality is that all DD needs to be as good as fireball is a corpse with at least 3677 life (662 / .18). The 662 figure is fireballs TOP base damage at level 22 (level 20 gem + searing touch), and it can't go any higher than that without empower shenanigans which there just aren't slots for on a caster build. How high is the "base" damage on DD once you get to 70+ maps? They get a lot of HP and DD scales up nicely.

The biggest advantage of DD over fireball is that if you can one-shot a white pack in normal mode, you can one-shot a white pack in maps with no additional investment. Also, once ignite is taken into account DD far surpasses anything fireball can accomplish. The one caveat to that is you need a body to start it all off.

except fireball can have ~150%+ increase from spell damage which DD can't. comparing fireball to DD though is like comparing apples to oranges.

"

Z3roSh0t wrote:

I actually think they should change DD a little bit, I mean, why is it not considered a spell? It's not very intuitive in that sense. IMO they should drop the base to 15% monster health and then allow spell modifiers to affect it. It should also scale with parties. Currently it caps at 2-player party health which makes it pretty annoying for 5/6-man parties.

Here's a link to my tree, I do somewhere around 200% mob health with DD, although I'm built for fire-trap. The two skills use similar trees and nodes, so it's pretty relevant:

Spoiler

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMAAnEEswVbB2MI9BJpFE0VUBZvFxwZhRpsHwIkPCSqJ6ko-ilPKo0snC0fMYgxnjWSNsU22DbpOuE8BT1fQYdFnUbXSRtJUU3jUlNVrlXGVytabV3GZ71odG0ZcXl5A3qqfll_xoIegpuCx4M4h2WIG4jxi4yOvo9Gj6aSwZSgl4WXlZf0muCboZwtna6f36IAoqOmV6cIp1ysWa-3tQS3PriTwFTB889l0NDYJNpi2t3bC9-w4XPjauQi5oHnY-vu7FXtIO5v73zvhfAf8kX56P4K_o8=

i can't see how you would do 200% of their life even with mine+trap shenanigans, which is troublesome, and even more troublesome for DD since it also requires a body.

a "normal" DD build can reach ~120% of mobs life but it requires much more investment in pure fire nodes than what you have (i can see only 41%elemental +20%area + 66% fire, even with perfect searing that would be 167% increase, add another lets say 30% from jewelry it's 197%, so 18%*1.69(conc)*2,97=~ 90% even with trap 121%, and with both trap+mine 179%)

making it scale for full party would be completly broken:

how many builds have you seen that get a passive boost to their damage the more pplayers are with them?


edit:
i do believe that DD is in a good place atm, the ONLY thing that i believe this skill DESERVES atm is an actual GAIN when you level it up. The physical damage portion of the gem is a joke, and since it scales from something else than the gem it should follow the progression of attack gems: i.e. remove the physical damage portion and give it a 1-3% increase fire damage/lvl (similar to attacks' 3% increase physical damage)

in lvl 78 map white mobs have (an estimate done by someone else) ~50k HP. how many fireball supports and +spell% and or stuff like PA/redbeak etc you need to one shoot said white mob with fireball with ~650 unsupported fire dmg?

DD works in said maps perfectly fine if it worked in 66maps

that's the beauty of it. fireball will never win in higher maps as it scales flat dmg compared to flat rate of target/dmg.


while i agree that scaling for DD gem is needed it shouldnt be damage, it should not be 'level restriction' of any sorts too. making this 18% corpse life into 25% corpse life would make for some serious broken stuff. if anything id like radius increased by few %. other ideas i had like crit chance, fire pen or serious increase in phys dmg were just crazy good. a sad note: phys dmg of DD is comparable to Ice Nova ice dmg.. Ice Nova is such a bad gem currently

without Desecrate DD builds are in the same void these are since CB - you need that first corpse. and this is not so easy in fact so i dont expect DD builds boom anytime soon. those of us who used DD knew it before and know how big of a limitation it is. new eager players will soon find out and let it go

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shroudb wrote:

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Z3roSh0t wrote:

You are very very wrong about fireball being better. How much HP do level 65 corpses have? I would guess they have something like 5-6k HP? maybe a little bit less? But the reality is that all DD needs to be as good as fireball is a corpse with at least 3677 life (662 / .18). The 662 figure is fireballs TOP base damage at level 22 (level 20 gem + searing touch), and it can't go any higher than that without empower shenanigans which there just aren't slots for on a caster build. How high is the "base" damage on DD once you get to 70+ maps? They get a lot of HP and DD scales up nicely.

The biggest advantage of DD over fireball is that if you can one-shot a white pack in normal mode, you can one-shot a white pack in maps with no additional investment. Also, once ignite is taken into account DD far surpasses anything fireball can accomplish. The one caveat to that is you need a body to start it all off.

except fireball can have ~150%+ increase from spell damage which DD can't. comparing fireball to DD though is like comparing apples to oranges.

"

Z3roSh0t wrote:

I actually think they should change DD a little bit, I mean, why is it not considered a spell? It's not very intuitive in that sense. IMO they should drop the base to 15% monster health and then allow spell modifiers to affect it. It should also scale with parties. Currently it caps at 2-player party health which makes it pretty annoying for 5/6-man parties.

Here's a link to my tree, I do somewhere around 200% mob health with DD, although I'm built for fire-trap. The two skills use similar trees and nodes, so it's pretty relevant:

Spoiler

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMAAnEEswVbB2MI9BJpFE0VUBZvFxwZhRpsHwIkPCSqJ6ko-ilPKo0snC0fMYgxnjWSNsU22DbpOuE8BT1fQYdFnUbXSRtJUU3jUlNVrlXGVytabV3GZ71odG0ZcXl5A3qqfll_xoIegpuCx4M4h2WIG4jxi4yOvo9Gj6aSwZSgl4WXlZf0muCboZwtna6f36IAoqOmV6cIp1ysWa-3tQS3PriTwFTB889l0NDYJNpi2t3bC9-w4XPjauQi5oHnY-vu7FXtIO5v73zvhfAf8kX56P4K_o8=

i can't see how you would do 200% of their life even with mine+trap shenanigans, which is troublesome, and even more troublesome for DD since it also requires a body.

a "normal" DD build can reach ~120% of mobs life but it requires much more investment in pure fire nodes than what you have (i can see only 41%elemental +20%area + 66% fire, even with perfect searing that would be 167% increase, add another lets say 30% from jewelry it's 197%, so 18%*1.69(conc)*2,97=~ 90% even with trap 121%, and with both trap+mine 179%)

making it scale for full party would be completly broken:

how many builds have you seen that get a passive boost to their damage the more pplayers are with them?


edit:
i do believe that DD is in a good place atm, the ONLY thing that i believe this skill DESERVES atm is an actual GAIN when you level it up. The physical damage portion of the gem is a joke, and since it scales from something else than the gem it should follow the progression of attack gems: i.e. remove the physical damage portion and give it a 1-3% increase fire damage/lvl (similar to attacks' 3% increase physical damage)

You are correct about my increase. I was getting confused between my increased% and my mob HP%. I do roughly speaking about 105% or so I think, not sure, I haven't calc'd it in a while.

Here's my gear btw:


EDIT: Ignore my current gem setups, I'm alt farming normal merveil atm to rebuild my currency so the setups are a bit messed up.

My fireball doesn't clear anywhere near as fast as DD and neither clears anywhere near as fast as fire trap. The biggest thing with fire trap clearspeed vs fireball or DD is the radius. Fire trap's radius is huge, while DD and fireball are both pretty damn small (and this is coming from someone who has ~120% increased radius, well, 90% with conc.).

IMO fireball and DD both need their AOE radius increased. Fireball is just in an awkward place. The quality lends to wanting to ignite things, but it's just not a very good ignite spell due to the low radius and low damage compared to FT, flameblast, molten, DD.

Here's a quick video on an easy 71 map with lvl 7 desecrate (up to 8 in the video). So, given that it will be significantly better once leveled, it's in an okay spot. That being said I really wish they wouldn't have nerfed desecrate, it really didn't need it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIKxI06qR9M&feature=youtu.be

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sidtherat wrote:

^^
totem dmg penalty applies to DD. probably you see crits

"

Natharias wrote:

I have no doubt that DD can do that. But what I do doubt and debate is that it is weaker...oh, I already posted why. Perhaps you should read it.

However, DD only uses the regular health of mobs, not the increased life from party increases, which makes DD less and less effective the more players you have.

all your explanation 'why it doesnt work and is weak' compared with someone doing 6man HP mobs SOLO simply show that youve missed some ways of making DD work better. have you seen that video? it was very fast run, fast as in: run, cast 1-2 times, run, next pack.. it wouldnt be any faster when playing normal piety with lvl80 char..

DD is very good, with all these drawbacks youve mentioned etc it still can roflstomp maps as fast as with any other OP build. sadly nerf to desecrate reduces that 'first corpse' source and makes this build what it was pre-desecrate: nice powerful build, party.

LOL.

Read my posts again. I'm not posting the same stuff over and over for you to not read.

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Z3roSh0t wrote:

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Natharias wrote:

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Zoroch wrote:

Detonate Dead is really quite strong, strong enough that it was viable before desecrate. Before desecrate you still had to kill something first before you could use it which made it a bit clunky and situational. Now... well it's actually quite good. A properly built one will one shot whole rooms from afar in complete safety against everything but reflect.

Reflect is by the way about the only notable weakness to the skill. Sure it requires some setting up with curses to oneshot resistant mobs. But considering you could just cast it more than once this isn't really a problem.

Now one thing it has as an advantage over pretty much any other skill (at least spells) is that you don't need to level it up. This makes a potential 5/6l really cheap to use not to mention you usually only have to cast it once.

Sure I wouldn't put it on the level of flicker crit dagger or similary extreme dps builds, but it should be much easier to make, while also being more safe than most builds.

Whatever you may else say about DD, calling it weak or useless is wrong. Check it up on youtube or something if you are still in doubt.

Perhaps you should read some of the posts, mine specifically, to see why it is weak. I consider all possible scenarios, which includes you having trouble with bodies or not having any. This means that Fireball is going to completely ROFLSTOMP your Detonate Dead.

I suggest that you consider the advantages and disadvantages of all skills. Sure, Detonate Dead does percent based damage and doesn't need to level to do the damage it needs, but it requires corpses and if someone is running a Devouring Totem or constantly resummons minions, then you become quite useless.

You are very very wrong about fireball being better. How much HP do level 65 corpses have? I would guess they have something like 5-6k HP? maybe a little bit less? But the reality is that all DD needs to be as good as fireball is a corpse with at least 3677 life (662 / .18). The 662 figure is fireballs TOP base damage at level 22 (level 20 gem + searing touch), and it can't go any higher than that without empower shenanigans which there just aren't slots for on a caster build. How high is the "base" damage on DD once you get to 70+ maps? They get a lot of HP and DD scales up nicely.

The biggest advantage of DD over fireball is that if you can one-shot a white pack in normal mode, you can one-shot a white pack in maps with no additional investment. Also, once ignite is taken into account DD far surpasses anything fireball can accomplish. The one caveat to that is you need a body to start it all off.

I actually think they should change DD a little bit, I mean, why is it not considered a spell? It's not very intuitive in that sense. IMO they should drop the base to 15% monster health and then allow spell modifiers to affect it. It should also scale with parties. Currently it caps at 2-player party health which makes it pretty annoying for 5/6-man parties.

Here's a link to my tree, I do somewhere around 200% mob health with DD, although I'm built for fire-trap. The two skills use similar trees and nodes, so it's pretty relevant:

Spoiler

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMAAnEEswVbB2MI9BJpFE0VUBZvFxwZhRpsHwIkPCSqJ6ko-ilPKo0snC0fMYgxnjWSNsU22DbpOuE8BT1fQYdFnUbXSRtJUU3jUlNVrlXGVytabV3GZ71odG0ZcXl5A3qqfll_xoIegpuCx4M4h2WIG4jxi4yOvo9Gj6aSwZSgl4WXlZf0muCboZwtna6f36IAoqOmV6cIp1ysWa-3tQS3PriTwFTB889l0NDYJNpi2t3bC9-w4XPjauQi5oHnY-vu7FXtIO5v73zvhfAf8kX56P4K_o8=

I'm not wrong about Fireball being better. Fireball does not require a corpse to be present, nor does it require a target to be over a certain area.

If you are playing solo, you MUST use another skill to create at least one corpse in order to use Detonate Dead. This means you need to use two or three sockets to use a skill strong enough to kill just one mob. That's quite a few sockets that could've been used for a proc combo, auras, utility skills, or simply a six-link if you use a weapon/shield. That's a huge disadvantage.

Let's say corpses have about 6,000 life. Detonate Dead does 1,080 base fire damage. Detonate Dead does not scale up with levels, except for the tiny bit of physical damage that it deals. So a level twenty Detonate Dead does a maximum of 1,080 fire damage and 123 physical damage. A level twenty Fireball does a maximum of 553. Another thing to note is that Fireball greatly increases in potential when you use weapons with gem level mods, and three levels can greatly increase it's damage potential. Using a Searing Touch staff is just about the best thing you can do, as ignite is the best thing fire spells can do, regardless of which spell you use.

Detonate Dead and Fireball have the exact same cast speed. DD requires a corpse and for the target(s) to be near the corpse. Fireball does not require any corpses and can be cast freely wherever the caster desires.

The advantages of DD is a massively overpowered blast that is based on a corpse. Link Concentrated Effect, Chance to Ignite, Increased Burning Damage, Increased Area of Effect, and Fire Penetration, and you can easily one-shot just about any mob, especially if you use a unique corpse. The disadvantage is that your damage can vary greatly based on the corpse, can be ZERO if you lack any corpses, and interferes with other builds. Devouring Totems will consume YOUR source of damage, along with the new summoner skills that bolster summons. If a summoner is running around with both Flesh and Bone Offering, then you are dealing much less damage, if any at all.

Now, Fireball can easily deal the same damage at all times without bothering any other builds unless they use EE, but that screws with any elemental build. Fireball can easily use Concentrated Effect, Chance to Ignite, Increased Burning Damage, Fire Penetration, Faster Casting, and either LMP or Chain to greatly increase their damage and melt a mob away with a few casts. Party members can freely use Devouring Totem and the Flesh and Bone Offering skills without interfering with your damage potential.

"

Currently it caps at 2-player party health which makes it pretty annoying for 5/6-man parties.

It caps at the original base health. The moment you get a second player, DD is losing damage potential.

Edit:

Fireball has a built in chance to ignite from quality, allowing you to get away with not using Chance to Ignite and using another gem to further increase its damage. Detonate Dead requires you to use Chance to Ignite in order to reliably ignite targets. Another reason why Fireball is much better.