Detonate Dead

im lvling my DD in hopes its buffed on release; its now 19, 20% qual.

that said i do noticed some (minor) damage buff, especialy on lower lvl instances, like docks. Something like 10% damage increase.

Too bad the damage doesnt scale up in higher lvl areas.

Detonate Dead is quite decent and the quality helps out a lot. It's nearly a standalone skill but noticingly stronger when combined with the right support gems.

So I was recently using a detonate dead + fire trap build, synergizing very well because both
skills utilize fire damage.

My 5l setup (on carcass jack) was as follows: DD + Life Leech + Increased Area + Conc Effect + Fire Pen
--> I think this is a top notch setup, considering that the base crit of DD is only 4.5.

Having 3 curses (Ele Weakness + Flammability + Temp Chains) makes this build shine.

And people show regognition for you while using detonate dead :)

Skill needs work. Wonky useless scaling for massive increase in mana cost, and gets totally screwed by partying to the point of uselessness.

Infernal blow continues to be completely relevant, cheap, and high dps, and detonate dead continues to be a useless bastard child wishing it were its Diablo II inspiration.

Sure, it cleans up corpses, and that has uses. You know where it's not used? As a skill for anyone besides a joke.

A few suggestions:
-All corpses are usable (including from fallen minion zombies/specters/whatever)

Gives this skill some actual synergy and potential, doesn't necessarily break anything too hard because the best minion builds are running minion instability in the first place

-Massive increase in one of the following, or increased minion % life scaling per level:
Physical damage, crit chance, crit multiplier

It flatly doesn't do enough, and it certainly doesn't do enough to warrant the mana cost at higher levels. No amount of skill tree + unique fire damage modifiers makes you need less than four corpses to be relevant. It's outright weak, and scales badly. It needs some form of buff. It needs to -scale- into the game in a way that makes it relevant instead of useless.

-Party HP mob bonus scales

I haven't read the reasoning on this but I find it a little odd that somehow needing ten corpses instead of four is a good idea and a "cool, useful skill." That's accounting for a heavily +fire damage skilled tree what's more.

-

Look, other skills in this game disintegrate entire mob waves with about the difficulty of click three times. To cripple a skill that's inspiration had so heavily to do with scaling off the strength of the kill and slap on a mediocre amount of damage to the point it's almost offensive... It's not balancing, it's effectively removing what is a bundle of potential from the game entirely, lest you be laughed out of any groups and find yourself moaning about whatever awkward reason possessed you to clog a skill slot with this.

Many skills are pretty much in the category of "never used" tier because of some unknown factor that keeps them doing pitiful damage while you just introduced a skill that is now ultimately the premier, properly-scaling leveling tool (and from what you showed in your build of the week video, found itself potent enough for endgame.) Please don't make the oversight of homogenizing the game into the "good skills" while we're stuck with a bunch of awesome but overbalanced gems collecting dust.

I've experimented with this skill on my 63 fire templar and I just couldn't get this skill to compete with anything else. I need to check again, but I think I'd like it much better if the area was increased or the damaged increased. As it was, It took many corpses to kill 1 and most explosions didn't hit very many enemies (thinned out because I had to kill some of them first).

"

Vipermagi wrote:

That's a problem with your build, not the skill. DD is plenty powerful with a good setup.

It's a generic fire damage build. I did not make the character specifically for detonate dead (originally for incinerate). When I tried to use detonate dead, I had better results with just about every other fire skill. I understand that my feedback is very vague, but it was a couple of weeks ago when I was trying it out. I don't remember even what supports I had tried. This character doesn't have any increased AOE nodes, but has about as many elemental and fire damage nodes as you can grab.

Curious if the damage from remote mine and the new mine passives will effect the fire portion of DD or only the physical portion?

I just noticed deto dead is no longer a spell.

"Fire, Cast, AoE"

does this mean it no longer receives change to crit from "spells have a chance to crit"?
tooltip ignores chance to crit on spells.

if so, it's a major nerf that should have been in the patch notes.

"

R33T4RD wrote:

I just noticed deto dead is no longer a spell.

"Fire, Cast, AoE"

does this mean it no longer receives change to crit from "spells have a chance to crit"?
tooltip ignores chance to crit on spells.

if so, it's a major nerf that should have been in the patch notes.

It actualy is a fix, because DD never did received bonus from spell modifiers.

"

Spell damage modifiers don't affect Detonate Dead. However, modifiers such as x% increased Critical Strike Chance for Spells do affect the skill, in the same way that they affect Bear Trap or Shockwave Totem.

from the wiki.

ur wrong. its a nerf, it used to work.