Molten Shell

Molten Shell's buff needs to 'reset' once I finish recasting the spell, not turn off when I start casting and then reapply the buff when I finish casting.

Since the spell doesn't absorb any damage and is just an armor buff spell, it would be nice to have the ability to keep it always up if I keep recasting it before it goes boom or timer expires.

Keep up = mana reserve.
NOT a good idea. Trust me, resetting it isn't such big a deal. You learn to do it, together with normal casting and in 1-2 days your fingers work automatically. Unconsciously, you learn to count the time it need to reset and hit the cast hotkey.
Furthermore, if it was an aura, it would be way to op on higher levels.
It "needs" to have some kind of disadvantage, so you have to use it in a tactical way.

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It doesn't really absorb anything, it reduces damage taken. Still armor isn't very good against large hits so it won't necessarily have a visible impact.

Unless the blow DPS is BIG. This is what it's intended for, since in Merciless it doesn't do that much of a work, reducing the damage. Sure, you can go up to 25-30% reduced damage, from 5-10% without the shell, but in fact it's mostly a last refuge for melee attack vs witches who have no armour. PLUS it IS possible for someone to kill you, by doing enough DPS, so as to kill you, before he makes the shell explode (if the shell has enough DPS to 1-shot him).
Seems I need to record some PvP or PvE video...

Since:
a) Few shells can be made with enough high DPS to 1-shot people and mob packs. For example a shell may explore, the attacker does not die and continues to hit/stun and kills the shell character.
b) It is possible to penetrate it and kill you before the shell explodes (and there are way too many tactics for it, which I will not describe here --puncture, stun, freeze+elemental, elemental arrows which ignore the shell and go directly to the HP/ES, chaos damage, if the shell holder is not CI, summoner builds, and so on).

and for a few other reasons I do not have the time to discuss now, this skill is a great one for melee defense, but not a holy grail. You have to be very lucky with equipment, to rely mostly on it for melee damage prevention. And given if you make it reach very high explosion DSP, there are at least tens of different character build which can kill you in matter of seconds. Therefore, it needs to be combined with tactics and other skills, which is one of the reasons I have gobe CI + tri-elemental. Kept my huge AoE Firestorm, but am also using freezing pulse with lightning + full crits, and various curses. Then again, I was lucky enough to have a few very good drops and had to spend at least 70% of my gaming session in trading and figuring out how to combine items.

My advice is play with this skill, learn how to use it but most of all do NOT rely on it, unless, at some point, you find out that it synergizes well with your other skills and enhances your survivability. And even if so, use it as a last time prevention measure for close melee combat.

This skill saved my life so many times in Normal Act 3. All those soldiers and Miscreations just swarming all over me caused crazy dps for this skill. Now though, I need to get some stun resistance, because I'm already noticing myself flinching a lot during battle.

A granite flask with 4000 armour and stun resistance is one of the best companions for this skill.

Molten Shell is a funny old skill. It has two uses which really favour quite different build types.

1. Molten Shell as a weapon. In this case you want it to pop regularly, which means being able to take physical hits without getting killed, so you get a huge stack of Life/ES, Armour and ideally blocking and run plenty of Endurance charges. To get the most out of the damage you need to spec for some fire/elemental/spell/AoE damage and AoE radius, and use Flammability or Elemental Weakness (although Molten Shell's damage is so high that you don't need to try very hard on this score). With the right setup the Molten Shell + Tempest Shield combo has absolutely amazing synergy.

2. Molten Shell as an Armour source. In this case you *don't* want it to pop. The best way of prolonging the life of the added Armour in combat is to use Enfeeble and have good Evasion (and/or Blind your enemies). While this approach doesn't work on an Acrobatics build, other Evasion users, especially those who have taken Leather and Steel nodes, get good mileage out of it. Inner Force is a good passive to get as well, as it increases both the Armour and the explosion threshold (AFAIK). It's particularly good at taking the edge off those occasional heavy hits that Evasion-heavy/Blind-reliant builds sometimes struggle with. Sure, it's not as effective as a Granite flask, but it's a lot more reusable in a boss fight, and nobody said you can't use both at once.


Of course, many characters will use it for something in between (and perhaps reach some Zen state where they're happy when it pops and happy when it doesn't), but I find it interesting that two completely different approaches are needed to maximise the two aspects of the skill.

I am currently a level 67 Marauder in Hardcore and I use Molten Shell (linked with Iron Will and Blood Magic) and Tempest Shield (linked with Iron Will, Elemental Proliferation and Added Lightning Damage) as my primary source of damage.

I have around 4.2k hp, 80/60/80/-60 res,around 6k armor,67% block chance and I always keep my 3 endurance charges up. I take high risks by standing next to a huge pack of mobs and taking hits after hits until the pack explodes. I rinse and repeat until all the physical damage dealers are dead.

However, I have a huge problem killing non-physical mobs because the Molten Shell never detonates. I feel like Molten Shell in the end game should give greater rewards since greater risks are taken. Molten Shell should somehow count the mitigated non-physical damage and detonate after a number of damage taken in that regard.

Another thing I feel that needs reworking is how the Elemental Reflect mobs interact with Molten Shell. I often have 20+ mobs around me when the Molten Shell explodes and when it explodes I fear I could get 1 shotted. I try to lure them separately but it's not that easy when "body luring" them compared to any ranged attack/spell. A big part of the pack will also follow me.

On a side note, I really enjoy Molten Shell + Tempest Shield but I feel it should also somehow work against every mob (I know I can block spells with items and 1 passive node, which I intend to do, but even blocking a spell won't trigger the Molten Shell absorbtion).

Just a suggestion. If molten shell was a reserve based skill such an aura, which I believe should be a flat value. If the shell is proc'd., then the aura enters a cd which then pops up when its off. It is quite annoying to constantly pop the shield on and off because it does slow down grinding and efficiency. The goal of the shell is to either proc for the damage or to mitigate as much damage as possible, however, on melees, the extra second spent results in loss of dps. Even though there are situations where MS is needed to solo a boss, constantly spamming it especially having to juke in and out just to cast a shell in a safe vicinity becomes costly.

wish they would make this work with totems. Really annoying to see totems recast the shell just to reset the detonation over and over again.

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ighnaz wrote:

wish they would make this work with totems. Really annoying to see totems recast the shell just to reset the detonation over and over again.

I saw someone report they tested level 1 Molten Shell on a spell totem in a high level area, so that monsters would do enough damage to trigger the explosion before totem could recast the spell. They said the explosion never happened though, and concluded that totem likely didn't have armor (despite small added amount from Molten Shell) to absord the damage required for trigger.

It might work if player was sharing endurance charges, assuming totem didn't recast of course.