Detonate Dead

Please, somebody pays attention to this ability !! She needs improvement.

Detonate Dead needs a buff. Especially with upcoming AoE changes that will kill Elemental Proliferation even more.

Detonate Dead should have its radius increased or at least gain extra radius as it levels.

Buffing the early level non-percentage damage (and possible lowering the later one) would make it usable before the end-game, which it should be considering it's one of the earliest skills.

Giving it a shorter cast time or giving it some threshold jewel for cast speed would make it a lot better because, when building around this skill or linking it to gems, you can't really afford cast speed. The slow cast time shouldn't be much of a limit to the skill, the corpses should be.
And Desecrate, which you have to use for monsters that don't leave corpses, also has really slow cast speed.

Giving it a slight buff in the percentage damage or granting it more of it as it levels would make it require less extreme scaling to be usable. Currently it's very limited in terms of Ascendancy choices and there's not much room for things like cast speed.

The mana cost at the later levels should be reduced a bit. Otherwise you might as well use a level 1 gem since the percentage damage and radius is currently the same throughout leveling the gem.


Obviously doing all of these changes could be too much but really it needs to be buffed somehow.

Detonate Dead has been forgotten for a long time and it was proven so after patch 2.6 release. While most AoE skill received some buffs to either radius per level or receive more AoE, DD remain unchanged. Pre patch DD need heavy investment to AoE (2 AoE wheel, Inc. AoE gem) to feel decent to play. After patch, AoE with the same amount of investment is gutted by ~30% according to http://poecraft.com/legacy/aoenerf.

I like the idea of this skill very much but in the current scheme, there is little justification to play it. I will try to list DD problems here so maybe someday, someone can change and make this skill better:

- It has worst bonus damage per level of all skills. Seriously, there is no way to play this skill from the get go since the bonus added fire is so low. It is not a spell so added elemental damage to spell cannot improve its damage.

- DD has the most punishing mana cost per cast of all skills. Couple with the 1st reason, there is no justification to level up this skill. Suggestion: balance mana cost, add incentive to level up this skill (i.e. radius per level, better damage scaling, etc.)

- One strength of DD is that it cannot be reflected. However, after patch 2.6, reflect damage is much less of a concern for almost all skills now. An elementalist can get 100% reflect immune by using Sibyl's Lament and grab 1 of 2 elemental damage wheel that has 10% reduced reflect damage. Non elementalist can reduce reflect by at least 50%. Uniques such as the wise oak, Ahn's Heritage, can further reduce damage taken. The point is that while almost every skills find buffs in the previous patches, DD stays unchanged and its strength faded. Give it another advantage or flavour (faster cast speed, better gem quality, more interesting enchantment like crit chance, dd explosion twice, etc.)

It is sad to see such an old skill idea (dating back from d2) forgotten. I'd rather see many existing skills like this get buff than new skills.

Here is a small idea to hopefully add a possible build/use for Detonate Dead. Staying in line with how GGG wanted to make combo skills (Icebolt/Vortex and Ice Nova). How about we have it so Detonate Dead can also target your own minions as well. This will allow for some minion bomb builds to be viable while using a trigger (Detonate Dead) that GGG can control; unlike the low life Mirror/Blink arrow build when it first came out.

This allows for more interaction with minion based builds instead of just sending them to the target and running around hoping not to be targeted yourself. You can also build in limitations to the skill gem such as can only target zombies (and maybe specters) much like the (not really viable) Umbilicus Immortalis and Coruscating Elixir bomb build.

Hello :D

Detonate dead is the most fun skill of the game, but it is below average because it does not have much customization.
Just think, it should be considered a spell, after all, you are blowing up a corpse with the force of the dead and mind.

-Please make detontate dead with spell damage.
-And increase the area of effect and decrease the mana cost.

Fortunately it seems that DD is indeed finally, after long last, getting a buff.
Although to what extent I am yet unsure. The video was remarkably unclear.
Let's hope it's actually a decent buff, and makes the skill half way usable.

From the 3.1.0 patch notes, spell damage modifiers are supposed to affect the base fire damage from DD. But when I tried to allocate a spell damage node, the tooltip damage did not increase. This needs to be looked at since it is confusing if it is a tooltip display bug, or it is a game mechanics issue.

How does the skill work now with spell critical chance and multiplier? Does it have two separate critical strike chances for explosion and spell damage? Is it possible to find critical chance for secondary damage?

Well, you definitely know how to buff a skill.

0.3sec case time, 24 units radius, Spell Cascade DD Herald of Ash is so satisfying.
it can detonate 2 screens of monsters in 2 casts. The skill worth to build around.
I can only guess how OP min maxed DD character would be.