Explosive Concoction

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skill was require too many condition, consuming flask and unarm yet what provide in return was so little, invest 20-30 ex still have terrible dps, flask charge not enough in boss fight even charge regen 8-10 charge/sec.

Skill has a lot of potential and can be extremely fun. But its lacking a lot of QoL and scaling it is a pain since you need so much for it. I feel going Ignite is the easy path to success with this skill. Sadly i went the completely opposite path. Went Crit as pathfinder. First of all im not sure why the skill uses Accuracy when it doesn't have a Hit, you overshoot mobs which makes it incredibly painful to use once you're getting rushed by various things. It has odd interactions with stairs i.e exploding mid air. And the AoE is pretty horrible.

I feel an idea that is worth mentioning here, though it may not be doable this league or maybe it can be? Not sure but i'll post my thought anyway.

What if you were to remove the " cannot use / equip a main hand weapon " and replace with " can only equip "offensive flasks" in the main hand. This opens up a new base weapon type of " offensive flasks " which in turn could be dabbled with? Offering elemental types for the latter half of EC.

With something like this, it would niche the build a bit by offering a new weapon base type " offensive flasks " however it also opens up skill ideas like " Corrupting Concoction " which could be a chaos damage over time type skill. Or maybe something like " Poisonous Concoction " which has % chance to poison or just poisons mobs things like that, utilizing chaos resistance flasks or a new form of chaos flask, just some food for thought.

I feel this alone could help this skills QoL but maybe it is not doable? Just my 2 cents, hope to hear thoughts on this. ~ Nalwreath

Bug? Greater multiple projectile seem to bug when landing on ground i feel like only 3-4 projectile do damage instead of 5, Greater volley does single target and clear better, maybe i'm wrong.

Suggest give an option to turn on/off consuming flask, some flask it better to not comsume like ruby flask,taste of hate, no way flask charge on most uniq flask will be enough to use in boss fight.

how about give us have 6 flask slot with this skill?

Copy/paste of my post in General Discussion before you created this thread

I started the league with that skill and when I understood it wasn't up to par with other skills, I changed my build completely to use Shield abilities instead of Unarmed, because Spectral Shield Throw is much better.

Here are my notes on the skill during leveling and early mapping:

- The skill is thematically made for Pathfinder, let's get flask charges gained and reduced flask charges used and keep permanent uptime on these Topaz/Sapphire flasks
- The skill does great damage! I can kill act bosses quickly
- I love the sound design and visuals, it feels very cool to throw potions and shatter enemies!
- It's hard to play since I need to target specific pixels on the screen
- The skill is Unarmed but I don't see an upside to this, except thematically (and maybe the damage)
- (Now in maps) The skill clears very bad. I feel like I am wasting my time on each monster group.
- I should maybe try to go Ignite with proliferation
- Ruby flask is made for ignite, but the two other flasks would be wasted (damage types that can't ignite by default), the skill makes more sense for Elementalist at this point. But why use this skill when you can use Divine Ire that does the whole screen in a vertical line.
- Forget it, I can easily re-use the same tree for Spectral Shield throw (converted to elemental) and deal lower damage but actually clear enemy packs.

My main concern was clearing. The AoE of the skill is very small, and it only shoots an horizontal line where you targeted (Multiple Proj. or Volley), making many encounters very annoying (difficult to take down big groups of enemies or enemies that are moving). It is much harder to play than a regular projectile build, because instead of aiming a "general direction", you are aiming a specific pixel on the screen. I see no advantage for being much harder to play.

Rolling magma chains, which adds additional ways to build that skill and the necessary clearing, and removes the need to aim your cursor with high precision.

EDIT: I imagined the skill would have been better if additional projectiles were randomly spread in an AoE instead of the regular horizontal line. Like Firestorm / Rain of Arrow.

I'm having an increasingly difficult time achieving boss-capable DPS with Explosive Concoction.

I'm playing as a Pathfinder, scaling flask effect to 50%, scaling hit damage with all 3 flask types being consumed, and at T12 maps it feels like boss fights take far too long. I'm doing my best to scale AoE overlap between projectiles with Carcass Jack, The Dying Sun, and a few other sources of AoE, and it seems like I'll occasionally get an ok hit in before my flasks burn down to 0 charges.

This would be fine if the map clear was smooth enough, but it's honestly a darn sight slower clearing maps than any build I've played in the last 5 years, even investing heavily in AoE, attack speed, and projectile speed.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it just feels like this skill had its legs cut off along with the general damage nerfs leading into this league. It also really needs some way of generating charges vs bosses, where they actually matter.

PoB has me sitting at about 3mil DPS with flasks up, but once I do a single burst against a boss, I'm left basically doing chip damage, waiting out the rest of the fight so flask-boosted damage is available again.

I'm comparing this to a spectral shield throw build I'm rerolling to, and the difference in dps, map clear, and survivability are night and day. This skill has a long way to go to catch up to most other skills, and I feel like I've already pulled out all the stops, excepting maybe another 30% more damage from the more expensive end of the spectrum. And with the same investment, I'm pretty sure I could take most other skills to end game twice over :(

It feels good to throw a bunch of flasks out against enemies, but the map clear and bossing leave something to be desired once past yellow maps. I'm at level 91 and feel like there's nothing more I can do to squeeze reasonable improvements to dps into the build.

When it comes to explosive concoction, I LOVE this skill as a concept. I love the way it works, etc.

However, I can't justify using it in a build as it is currently. For one, the attack speed being base unarmed means the throw speed is abysmally slow. Damage effectiveness of 100% also doesn't offer any extra incentive to use it.

The overhead cost: The overhead cost as far as passive points required to make this skill "work" is too much. You have to do a lot of traveling to get flask nodes and specific flask nodes. If you want to sustain charges in your ruby,sapphire, and topaz flasks, you have to invest in critical stats for surgeons flasks. It costs too many passive points that need to be going to life.

Easily outclassed: At its base, it makes way more sense to just equip a bow or a wand and throw on elemental hit. Even using a weapon with a bit of +% attack speed with ele hit is already better than explosive concoction. Ele hit also gives you ailment chance, and you don't need to worry about the flask charges being pulled or even wear a ruby,sapphire,topaz flask. Additionally, you can slide over to elemental equilibrium and it works flawlessly with elemental hit. If you're using explosive concoction for ignites: fireball outclasses it, with armageddon brand coming in an easy second. If going the attack route, burning arrow also outclasses it.

Shoehorning: This skill seems very shoehorned towards ranger/pathfinder. It doesn't seem viable on any other ascendancy class. The only other ascendancy that might make sense is elementalist (with the shaper of fire/winter/storms ascendancies.) It feels like you'd end up being punished for trying to use it on anything else.

During leveling, I was going to use it on my assassin to try it out. Prior, I was using cobra lash. I thought "it's an attack projectile, it should be okay." The attack speed on it was the dealbreaker, as cobra lash had more reach and faster attack speed than explosive concoction, and the damage was comparable.

Gimped: The other part of this skill that I was looking forward to was being able to use things like the pugilist gems, facebreaker, one with nothing, etc. All of those items were changed to "melee attacks only" which directly excludes this skill. It gives me even less reason to use it.

In the end, when it comes to ranged weapon attacks: You're already at an advantage equipping a weapon with some attack speed on it alone. At a similar gem level, explosive concoction is outclassed.

I still love this skill and this concept of a skill, and I'd like to see it viable and worth using one day. Till that day comes, I will shelf it with winter orb until that patch comes where it gets resurrected.

Something I've noticed through testing, local (crafted in flasks) "reduced charges used" mod doesn't do anything for the flask consumption of Explosive Concotion.
On the other hand global (belt mod, Cereful Conservationist node) mods do do reduced the consumption to 2-3 per cast.

Is it a bug or working as intended?

Increase bonus damage by a LOT. Also increase charges used (too easy to sustain).

I think you should be able to use trinity with this... right now it's not possible and you still have to scale all ele dmg which is bs.

Also AOE is very bad.

The skill sucks.