Detonate Dead

I rather just have the 18% fire damage back by lvl 20...

Yeah, I don't understand why the ability got gutted so much. I mean, you still have to have something die before you can even use it, right? It's not like you can just one-shot everything without something dying first. The damage is completely mediocre now.

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Avelice wrote:

Yeah, I don't understand why the ability got gutted so much. I mean, you still have to have something die before you can even use it, right? It's not like you can just one-shot everything without something dying first. The damage is completely mediocre now.

You can detonate corpses from desecrate. Quality on both gems and cast speed would help you a lot.

So I've been out for a while, come back to a character I used to have a lot of fun with. Had DD linked to Reave with Cast On Melee Kill. Once the first row of baddies in a pack die, the rest quickly follow suit in a glorious explosion of giblets that fills half the screen. (I know about the alternative, but Infernal Blow doesn't have anywhere near the range that Reave does.)



No longer. The giblets are still there, but the explosions just don't hurt much anymore. The skill seems to have been nerfed into the ground with no redeeming value at all. I can't even grab some spell passives to increase the damage.

This is one of the hardest to apply skills in the game. You need to 1: generate corpses in some fashion, and 2: explode them while the enemy is in the right location. By linking it to a melee gem, I always know that the corpses I make will be in position to be useful, so it's perfect - but it requires a limited resource and two gem sockets. With desecrate, it's a two step process which no other skill has. And it doesn't scale for multiplayer games, either.

DD is awesomely cool but also fabulously crap. If the damage is going to be so weak, give it a big enough AOE to hit everything. If it's going to be so narrow, make it hit like a truck. Right now, this skill is all negatives and no positives.

Well, except for the giblets. Those are still fun.

@Rhyse DD is my all time favourite skill too. This change to the skill was uncalled for, really. Such a shame

FB is stronger than DD at 2-3 charges in most cases already.

FB > DD. DD is dead.

I tried making a build focused on this skill in 1.2, it's horrible, other skills out damage DD even though they are single slot and DD is 4-linked. It's impossible to keep up with the mana cost at high level since the support gems required to actually make it almost paired with other skills put its cost through the roof.

DD should be powerful, it should be the most damaging skill in the game (beside Vaal skills) since it requires a corps in combat at the right position. The only time it is useful now is if there happened to be laying a slain boss around when fighting another boss.

If I were to fix this skill I would either make it blow up all corpses at once and keep its stats as is
or I'd increased the hp % to at least 15% and keep its mana cost flat at 12 mana then instead of adding fire damage I'd lower its cast time with the interval 1,5s at level 1 to 0,5s at level 20.

Is there a point in complaining about the unfair nerf of DD? Nope. GGG does not balance, they only cycle. DDs OPness was due to prolif, which was left unchainged. DD was merely replaced by HoA as the new flavour of the "month".

I am currently using DD in Bloodlines league and its been working out pretty well. Since the 8% is gimped i wanted max hits possible. So I am playing a DD trapper / elemental dmg build.

I use the DD the following way:

Links:

5L
--------------------
Detonate Dead
Trap
Multiple traps
Fire penetration
Increased Aoe

3L
----------
Desecrate
Trap
Multiple traps

Here is link to my tree :
https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgUABAcI9A5IEZYWbxo4Gmwe8B8CJKomlScvKU8qjS0fMjQ2PTbFNtg26TpYPAU9X0PIRtdJG0yzTwRSU1VLVcZXKVugXfJh4mjyakNsjG0ZcYV8Dn5Zf8aCm4Pbh2WLjIw2kFWVIJeVl_SaO51jnaqdrp_fogCio6SxpwinVayYr7exQrd1wBrAVMHz2CTaudrd4XPjauOE5CLlGeWO7DjsVe988B_xbPnd

Mind you i am not optimized gear / passive tree yet but stats not too bad :
+127% Fire Dmg
+128 Elemental dmg
+20 area dmg
+20 trap dmg

+134% increased life
+ 85% mana regen
+40 radius of AOE skills

I have been using it since around lvl 31 or so and I am currently 67. Here is my rotation:
0) Curse with flammability
1) Drop 2 series of desecrate traps (6 traps total)
2) Mobs hit and spawn corpses
3) drop 2 series of detonate dead traps (6 traps total)
4) Multiple corpses explode

Pretty decent dmg output so far. I use fire trap as supplemental dmg. With my passive tree I will be moving towards EE to get more negative fire resistance.

With gear I am sitting at 4300 HP and max resists. So not a power house build but doing pretty well. Just my spin on how detonate dead is still usable. Also since i am using traps in (HardCore) I have 0 reflect worries !