Infernal Blow

So after reading a lot about Infernal blow, here are my conclusions about the explosion, it is NOT a spell, and NOT an Attack, it is an AOE .

1) Explosion damage is only affected by Fire Damage and Elemental Damage Passives and AoE damage/area passives. The following nodes do not contribute to the damage:
- Fire Damage with weapons (e.g. Lava Lash)
- Elemental Damage with weapons (e.g. Catalyse)
- Spell damage nodes.

2) Explosion Crit is only affected by (Global) Critical chance and (Global) Crit multiplier. Any crit mods or crit passives that relate either to the weapon or spell does NOT contribute to the crit chance of the explosion.

3) Some useful facts:
- Explosion is fire damage thus can ignite on crit.
- Base crit chance of the explosion is 7%.
- Base AoE area is 15
- Base Damage is 20% of the corpse's life


4) Support gems that affect IB explosion ( ? = likely but not 100% sure)
- Elemental Proliferation
- Fire Penetration
- Concentrated effect
- Increased Area
- Chance to Ignite (?)
- Added Lightning / Added Cold (?)
- Culling Strike (?)
- Others ...?


Is my understanding correct ? I tried to be exhaustive in part 4) but there are so many support gems, if you know of any, please let me know and I will add it to the list. Nothing is confirmed here, it is just my understanding of the mechanics.
Now I question I still had is if Anger/Hatred/Wrath auras adds to the explosion damage and if the Life on Hit and Life leech are triggered by the explosion. Anyone?

Edit: Edited to correct some parts.

Some feedback on this skill, I actually leveled a character specifically to use this skill, it is level 51 in hardcore league now, so it is starting to show some effects.

First of all, The single target dps hits the spot good and doesn't need tweaking. The issue really comes from the aoe part, while I understand that this is probably not supposed to be a full out AoE skill, still, some sacrifice to the single target dps has been made in order to "buy" this feature and hence it should deliver. This pattern is seen for example on the Glacial hammer where the sacrifice buys the freezing feature which is amazing.

So here is my take on the aoe part:

- Damage:
20% base damage is ok, would benefit from being slightly higher but I am not too greedy. The issue is really how this scales off. It is practically impossible or too costly for some classes to reach fire damage or elemental damage nodes. The explosion doesn't benefit from anything else. This is in contrast to almost all skills available in game which can scale of gear or weapon or support skill, here there is nothing else that scales this damage and it is quite a pity. I would have been nice to have this scale of spell damage or weapon elemental damage (even at 50% would have been nice).

- Explosion Radius:
This is by far the most underwhelming aspect of the skill. The explosion can barely touch another mob in melee unless they are practically on top of each other. The explosion should at least cover the immediate melee range. It barely damages one mob, sometimes none if you are surrounded.

This combined with the low base damage, just makes the whole explosion quite underwhelming, albeit visually quite pleasing and satisfying, can't wait to get my hands on a "more gore" unique to see how this scales :-).

- Quality:
I don't know if this is buggy or what, but I aquired a 20% quality gem to perform this experimentation, basically same setting this was act I normal, I was happy that a 20% increase in radius would perhaps fix the explosion radius. Frankly, I was bitterly disappointed! partly because of the price it cost me, but also, and to my surprise the absolute identical effect I get using the skill with 0% and 20% quality. Is this a known bug? Quality on a gem should provide something extra and noticeable, what is the point of having 20 times of quality for a similar result? If this is not a bug, then the base radius of 15 (which I initially though was large enough) is too small to warrant spending quality on this gem.


All in all, the combined effect of 20% on a very small (tiny?) radius is doubly underwhelming, while I understand that this skill was not meant as a replacement to AoE specialized skills, it should nonetheless with proper passive nodes and adequate support skills (i.e. an investment in a build) compete with AoE skills. This is however not achievable, partly because of the low base damage (20%) or should I say the fact that it doesn't scale up very well as well as the radius of the explosion which even with a 20% increase (quality on gem) is still sub-par to most if not all AoE skills out there.

Suggestions:
- While the damage can be kept as it is, the radius need really to be increased if this skill is to be considered effective.

aoe radius definitely needs a boost. too often you are covered and the explosion doesnt touch anything. Even with +quality you dont notice much difference at all.

I, for one, love this ability because of its immense synergy with facebreaker. Using phys dmg from mods on my rings and amy, increased by the %phys dmg from strength and melee phys support gem on top of extra fire dmg from added fire and chance to ignite I'm looking at around 3k dps. White mobs tremble at my feet, minus some bigger mobs like rock golems and gorillas; I'm capable of handling champion and rare packs with relative ease as most die within four to five hits. I've pretty much maxed out my single target potential at this point and am working towards buffing the aoe portion of this ability. I'm going to increase my fire and burning dmg using the mara and witch nodes, as well as the burn dmg node from my templar starting area, then link this up with elemental proliferation and see how fast packs drop. Overall I like where this spell is currently at and can't wait to see how it develops. Thanks for all the hard work GGG!

So is it by design that this lackluster and very underused skill doesn't get any buff because it's overpowered when used in combination with ONE unique item? So hand fulls of builds get thrown away because of one build?

Why is the aoe so small?
Why doesn't fire dmg with weapons or elem damage with weapons effect the explosion when this is a MELEE skill?
Why doesn't melee crit effect the explosion when this is a MELEE skill?

What is the design goal of the skill? Is it supposed to be a single target big hitter, or an aoe?

Bummer dude.

"

Orrus wrote:

What is the design goal of the skill? Is it supposed to be a single target big hitter, or an aoe?

By trying to be both it has failed...still I have high hopes for this skill if my experiment goes well (so far lvl 68 HC, and using exclusively infernal blow and playing solo). I have a bit better aoe radius by picking up quite a handful of passives +area% and using a 20% quality gem, still does not cut it. I am trying to get an increased are support, but as of now can't since I don't have a 5-link and replacing a dps support gem will gimp my dps significantly.

There are situations where infernal blow really blows everything, when it crits, trying to increase my global crit is however quite challenging if starting in the marauder tree. Might consider another crit based build by rerolling shadow...some ideas for a future build :-).

Please create new animation for this skill. It should match lightning strike and glacial hammer. Im talking a huge flaming staff effect similar to how glacial strike looks on staffs and so on with all weapons.

Can we get an answer from a dev on whether the explosion triggers life leech? It works with molten shell, and this seems rather similar, but I honestly have no idea how it pans out.

"

Orrus wrote:

So is it by design that this lackluster and very underused skill doesn't get any buff because it's overpowered when used in combination with ONE unique item? So hand fulls of builds get thrown away because of one build?

How are you coming to this conclusion? What makes you think builds are being thrown away?