Cast on Melee Kill (Buff/rebalance)

Cast on Melee Kill is interesting, mainly because it has no internal cool down. And it does get pretty fun, and this is probably beating a dead horse, but I would like to discuss a possibility of making it independent of the melee skill involved.

I have been using this ability a little bit, and I found it to be fun when linked to a Vaal Cyclone / CoMK / Firestorm or Raging Spirit / Flame Surge. Now, it was fun, but not really viable. I could rework a build around it entirely, and do something with Increased Duration and probably stick with the Raging Spirit, but let's be honest here, if you're killing the mobs with your skill, why do you need to cast any more damage spells? The current function makes me think you really should only use it to cast curses or use Enduring Cry, Molten Shell, or Immortal Call. Now that might be fine, but Cast on Damage Taken or Cast when Stunned already do that more effectively, unless you aren't taking any damage.

So here's my suggestion; Cast on Melee Kill is not required to be linked to a Melee Skill at all, and will grant all melee hits a chance to cast a single damaging linked spell. One single spell? Yes, just one. If the spell doesn't deal damage with the cast, it won't be allowed to be cast by this support. Channeled spells would also not work, and you wouldn't be able to cast Molten Shell. The idea is to cast damaging spells, not allow for permanent buffs.

Not entirely sure if this is able to be coded, but if it is, this could apply something like "x% increased Mana Cost of Skills" from certain negative effects of Unique Items. As long as you have this gem in your active inventory slots, I.E., not in the second weapon set, you would be paying whatever amount extra in mana, for everything.

Why do this? Because now you do not have to worry about the potential for abuse with EC/IC. And you've given a way to create another niche build. It doesn't trivialize casting curses, and it while it does have similar potential as Cast on Critical Strike, you'd have to actually be killing the targets with one of the available Melee Skills for it to start casting the spells. I do not see potential for abuse, outside of extreme high end builds that wouldn't even need this to do retarded damage, simply due to the fact that you'd have to balance your character between Melee Damage, Spell Damage, and defenses.


I would make the negative; 30% increased Mana Cost of Skills. All skills. Effectively making the Reduced Mana cost nodes more appealing, and increasing the need for Reduced Mana Reserved if the character is using Auras. The Marauder and Duelist have the easiest access to equalizing the negatives. Which could make it interesting, as they do not necessarily have the easiest access to spell damage (outside Iron Will, which would combo well) or spell critical chance.

A few negatives could be Reduced Projectile Speed, so that the range is not sufficient to reach other packs. Greatly reduced area of effect, so that the player can't simply snowball from a single kill. Another negative that would make sense, would be that only kills made by single target melee attacks, or a limited set of melee attacks would work. Cleave, Cyclone and Ground Slam come to mind, Sweep would be fine. Reave would definitely need looked at for the balance, monsters killed by Inferal Blow's explosion wouldn't be able to proc the gem (I think that would already be the case?) Let's say Area of Effect melee skills, and those linked to Melee Splash, are limited to one skill cast per attack. Assuming something like Infinite flicker, or Reave in a large pack, and this skill linked to a Fireball/LMP or something similar, if it is not limited in frequency, this could get out of hand.

A key thing to make sure of, would be that Reduced Mana Gem can't affect the cost if it were linked to Cast on Melee Kill, obviously it could negate the increased cost if it were linked to each individual skill the character plans on using.

Thanks for the bump, I guess. I am going to assume you didn't read half of what I posted, because I go on to talk about possible limitations so you do not get an overpowered situation. I, in-fact, name specific events where it could be overpowered, and discuss ways around it. The idea I am trying to present would lead to promotion of a hybrid character. Spell Damage and Melee Damage. And not solely a Crown of Eyes, Low Life, Shavs character. They don't need something like this to be powerful, they're already pushing their paper damage over the display limits. This wouldn't make a difference to them at all.

I'm glad you use it on Leap Slam with Glacial cascade. I used this with Vaal Cyclone and Firestorm. My character was obviously built to deal damage with his melee attacks, and not the Firestorm, because I wanted to actually get some casts off. Your character likely doesn't care about the damage from Glacial Cascade either, like mine, I simply enjoy the Theatrics of thousands of fireballs falling from the sky. The only problem is, the damage is abysmal.

The only point at which Cast on Melee Kill (when casting damaging spells) becomes viable in it's current state, is when it no longer matters that you cast the damaging spells.

/flame on

this skill is completely overshadowed by infernal blow and detonate dead imo

your suggestion to make trigger gems global has already been made several times iirc, but I dont think its gonna happen cause they would become mandatory

Detonate dead is a skill in a weird position. It needs to be rebalanced on it's own accord. The negative I would like to see follow this gem would, hopefully, make it not mandatory.

1. You can only use it to cast damaging spells.

2. You can only use it to cast a single damaging spell.

3. You will pay 30% Increased Mana for every ability. Including your auras.

I can't see this as mandatory, because following those negatives, especially the third, would you want to pay 30% increased mana for everything, just to potentially cast an Arc on melee kill?

You would have to build specifically around setting up a four link to support this, as without any spell damage, you're looking at a very weak spell being cast half of the time you kill a monster with a melee kill.

It would be on a different level than CoC, because with CoC, you don't care about dealing damage with your Spectral Throw or Barrage/whatever you're using to cast the spells.

The only problem with the Cast on Melee Kill support gem is the Melee part.

It's not that the concept of casting on melee kill is bad or anything, it's just that, for the most part, active gems already handle the good combos. Want to take the corpse from the kill and blow it up for damage? Infernal Blow already has you covered. Thinking about using it with Raise Spectre? Dominating Blow already did it (and doesn't even care about spectre cap).

So right now CoMK is useful mostly to support pretty much the same spells (usually DD), but on funkier melee skills. Like if you want to have a Cyclone version of Infernal Blow or something. Which usually isn't as good as just putting Melee Splash on Infernal Blow.

On the other hand, if it was simply "Cast on Kill" and worked with any attacks, then you'd have a lot more uses. You'd have ranged builds trying to do the whole Detonate Dead thing. Somebody would figure out some ways to use it. It might not be OP or anything, but the support would at least get some recognition as usable.

No other changes are needed. The only way this gem should be changed is the removal of a single word.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

The only problem with the Cast on Melee Kill support gem is the Melee part.

It's not that the concept of casting on melee kill is bad or anything, it's just that, for the most part, active gems already handle the good combos. Want to take the corpse from the kill and blow it up for damage? Infernal Blow already has you covered. Thinking about using it with Raise Spectre? Dominating Blow already did it (and doesn't even care about spectre cap).

So right now CoMK is useful mostly to support pretty much the same spells (usually DD), but on funkier melee skills. Like if you want to have a Cyclone version of Infernal Blow or something. Which usually isn't as good as just putting Melee Splash on Infernal Blow.

On the other hand, if it was simply "Cast on Kill" and worked with any attacks, then you'd have a lot more uses. You'd have ranged builds trying to do the whole Detonate Dead thing. Somebody would figure out some ways to use it. It might not be OP or anything, but the support would at least get some recognition as usable.

No other changes are needed. The only way this gem should be changed is the removal of a single word.

Before I read this I thought it was bad for two reasons. But now there are three.

Cast on Melee Kill isn't useful because:

1. Most skills you'd likely use it for already exist as full skills. Infernal Blow, for example. Other things like curses don't work, and many other spells just aren't worth it because you'd end up doing much more damage with your attack than with the spells cast.

2. It's on kill. If you wait for something every time you kill an enemy, you'd be better off self-casting it especially if you use Spell Echo. If not that, then CWDT/CWS will do a better job.

In order for it to be useful:

1. It needs to be usable by ranged attacks.

2. It needs to be a separate setup. Linking it to an attack takes up a minimum of two sockets already, and that cannot be used even by a culling setup since two sockets are required for the culling setup. That's four required sockets to run this and that leaves only two for your skill and a usable support. This is ignoring IIQ, and just taking into account IIR. So instead of linking it to an attack it could simply be used in a separate piece of gear to provide more supports. This wouldn't stack insanely with CoC since an attack must make the kill, not a spell.

3. More skills need to be added, especially ones that would benefit well from being used on a CoMK setup. Enduring Cry cannot benefit well due to the cooldown, but a spell that has an effect that offers more effect from increased casts would benefit from this well.

If you want it balanced, then you need to include the separation between melee, ranged, and a general trigger.

So you could have:

~Cast on Melee Kill
- Linked spells do 60% More Damage
- Linked spells have a 50% Chance to cast on melee kill by linked skills

~Cast on Ranged Kill
- Linked spells do 20% More Damage
- Linked spells have a 20% Chance to cast on ranged kill by linked skills

~Cast on Kill
- Linked spells have a 5% Chance each to cast on killing an enemy


Those are examples. Still, I'm not sure why you'd use this over cast on crit? Lol, I'd use the last one though. ( CoK + CoC = ? )