Detonate Dead

In fact detonate dead with ''blow every corpse at once'' would make an interesting ''trap skill'', which would need first to prepare an area with corpses then lure mobs to it to deal maximum damage :)

Imo PoE lacks of ''situational/landscape use'' damage skills, which would be more powerfull than the ''normal'' damage skills but would need some intelligent preparations to reach their highest potential. These skills would not be use for every situation, but more to deal with those rare hard situation with ***-wiping mobs pack (such as chaos monkey swarm with speed and damage aura).

As a summoner corpses are a valuable resource for replacing fallen minions. Even with over 2900 life minions die quickly in the maelstrom. Detonating several corpses at once is therefore costly and should not be the default behaviour for this skill. The player should have control over how many corpses are detonated and how many are used for raising a horde. If you want to detonate multiple corpses, cast it multiple times.

It should be a single corpse per use with enough range at higher levels to compensate for the skill's targeting limitations and enough damage to make it worth while. Holding the button should cast repeatedly detonating the closest corpse provided it is within the skill's blast radius of the cursor or targeted mob.

Currently I'm playing a DoT/Curse Ranger, on Cruel difficulty at the moment, and unlike what most have stated(though I can't say for higher difficulties), this skill is working great for that added AoE dmg when my curses are up and I'm kiting waiting for Explosive Arrow to detonate and Poison Arrow to eat them up. I love this skill, even for the simple fact of killing what's already been killed :P

With the introduction of Elemental Proliferation I'm now really enjoying this skill and the tweeked effect is an improvement as it doesn't feel so much like Chinese firecrackers anymore.

This skill is alright, but I don't see any real reason to level it as the physical damage is negligible in comparison to the amount it otherwise deals via corpse % life. Especially for characters who have mana efficiency issues, it seems counterintuitive to level the skill past 1.

Furthermore, it would be nice if this was affected by the multiple projectiles support gems, as being able to detonate more than 1 corpse at a time would be a huge improvement to the skills damage (assuming you had enough corpses) and wouldn't impede the ability of a summoner to use the skill if he wanted to.

Currently I just use regular AoE abilities instead of detonate dead, unless it is very easy to visually target the corpse of a monster with high health like a unique mob recently slain, as my other abilities tend to do higher damage and are more easily controllable.

"

xenogfan43 wrote:

This skill is alright, but I don't see any real reason to level it as the physical damage is negligible in comparison to the amount it otherwise deals via corpse % life. Especially for characters who have mana efficiency issues, it seems counterintuitive to level the skill past 1.

Furthermore, it would be nice if this was affected by the multiple projectiles support gems, as being able to detonate more than 1 corpse at a time would be a huge improvement to the skills damage (assuming you had enough corpses) and wouldn't impede the ability of a summoner to use the skill if he wanted to.

Currently I just use regular AoE abilities instead of detonate dead, unless it is very easy to visually target the corpse of a monster with high health like a unique mob recently slain, as my other abilities tend to do higher damage and are more easily controllable.

Wow that's a good idea,if it detonated all corpses in an area making the explosion bigger, rather than having to kill a few corpses then explode each one, only to still finish off a few more.

I tried this skill on various classes. It feels to weak. even with a pile of mobs around one guy I am rarely able to kill any one with it, and using it on any one but a witch run out of mana. Considering you need a body for this spell to work and need to coordinate the enemy to the body for it to work the pay off should be greater.

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

The damage of this skill is not counted as spell damage and as such is not affected by spell damage increases.
Elemental/Fire/Physical damage increases affect the relevant parts of damage as always.

Not being a huge naysayer, but things like this seem like they would eventually be a huge shortcoming for this game. There are a couple of other situations that have particular nuances. What I am referring to is consistancy.

This skill gem seems highly unlikely to be an "attack" skill and seems to be a "spell" skill. But it's a spell that doesnt do spell damage. It would seem highly unlikely that it would benefit from +% weapon elemental damage, and we know it doesnt scale from spell damage, so we have a 3rd category of damage.

So it affected by spell crit? Can it even crit?
Could you use Elemental Proliferation with it?
Since it isnt spell damage is the explosion considered a "hit"? Do monsters that die from this explosion give benefit for "on killing blow" stuff?


I had thought to use this with my dagger witch until I read that quoted bit....now I r teh confused.

well it is a physical explosion, if you like just imagine you tucked a grenade into the corpse then ran away snickering while they get struck with the force of the explosion and chunks of bone.

Anywho, I think the levelup characteristics need to be changed. currrently its best at level 1 then gets progressively worse dmg/mana wise.

It already does quite a lot of damage so i dont think upping the physical fixed part is the way to go, but scaling the % somehow. Either scaling the fire damage from say 9% at lvl 1 up to 18% at level 20 for fire damage, or reduce the fire damage from 18% to 10% at lvl1 and instead of fixed physical dmg, scale that from 2% to 8% or something.

Just something that makes you want to level up the gem.

Also the ability listed above for a mass explosion sounds hilariously fun, maybe it should gain the ability to detonate nearby corpses by chance? when its linked to ignite or proliferation or something.