Spectral Throw

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soul4hdwn wrote:

EVERYTHING related to the weapon (except melee specific damage boosts) apply to spectral throw. spectral throw is an attack and stun modifiers and knockback modifiers both work as normal. however that bow passive is for bows... so no.

I think u didnt understand me.
I asked for Blut Trauma (staff passive) and i compared it with "King of the hill" (bow one).
Ofc Spectral throw wont work with bows.. i have no sense since its not a melee weapon. :S

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Gaaruda wrote:

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soul4hdwn wrote:

EVERYTHING related to the weapon (except melee specific damage boosts) apply to spectral throw. spectral throw is an attack and stun modifiers and knockback modifiers both work as normal. however that bow passive is for bows... so no.

I think u didnt understand me.
I asked for Blut Trauma (staff passive) and i compared it with "King of the hill" (bow one).
Ofc Spectral throw wont work with bows.. i have no sense since its not a melee weapon. :S

the answer was yes blunt trauma would work though. so you/we didn't understand me/each-other either?

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hoya wrote:

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Xapti wrote:

The shotgun effect is nice and makes for potentially very high single target DPS if you get all 3 projectiles hitting twice; it's cool with GMP, but I think LMP would be more effective.

This skill has good theoretical DPS, but it's a bit lacking in overall fast killing power due to the slow projectiles. Your character can't move around too much to use this effectively, and it usually takes time before any monster gets hit twice by the same attack.
Reminds me a little of incinerate; although it's obviously quite different.

I think overall it's a really nice diverse skill that doesn't particularly seem too overpowered or underpowered right now.

It seemed like crit chance might be evaluated another time on the return trip, but I'd bet what I saw was just it missing on it's way out before critting on it's way back (or something else mistaken).

it doesnt shotgun yo

It seemed to for me when I tested, but I suppose it's a little bit hard to tell considering the very variable damage the character deals, and that my testing methods weren't very good. I think I was just interpreting the regular multiple hits it could get as the fact it could shotgun.

It makes sense that it doesn't shotgun since attacks traditionally don't shotgun.

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werezompire wrote:

After playing around with it some more, I really think that Spectral Throw needs to be weakened. As it is now, it's extremely powerful with next to no investment at all. If you aren't using a bow or wand, there's really no reason why you shouldn't be using Spectral Throw in its current state.

Yeah I'm playing with people and they are just melting Vaal and even Dominus with not much difficulty. Unless the scaling gets noticeably worse, this skill is going to dominate IMO.

So far the skill is awesome, not got a slow projectiles support gem yet, so am using fast projectiles and is working wonders to clean the screen off monsters!

One question I got though, I tried to test it with Fork, but apparently it does not affect Spectral Throw's projectiles to fork upon hit, is this an intended behaviour or is there anything blocking it's sinergy that I fail to see?

Knockback seem to work very well tested with the gem....

Tempted to get fending passive ... 3 points .... hmmmmm

Is it intentional that spectral throw cannot be blocked?
Tested it on LLD with a friend and i couldnt block his spt (bc 50%+).

Seems like a bug to me..

can anybody confirm with further testing?

In my opinion, Spectral Throw needs to cost a little bit more mana in order to be balanced.

My Double Strike and Spectral Throw both have base 9 mana cost.

Double Strike has 70% damage effectiveness; Throw has 60%.

This means that DS has 140% real damage effectiveness while Throw has ... well, let's think about it.

In theory, if you move incorrectly, it's just 60% damage effectiveness.

In practice, however, it's incredibly easy to get one throw to hit an enemy twice. So Throw usually has 120% real damage effectiveness.

However, at a "Sweet spot" distance, Throw easily gets in 3+ hits. So that's 180% to 240% real damage effectiveness vs. a single target. It's not difficult to hit the sweet spot, either. If you're out of range and Thrower right clicks an enemy, Thrower automatically moves into sweet spot range for 180%+ real damage effectiveness.

Did I mention that Spectral has 100% chance to pierce? The only other skills that have this, to my knowledge, are Freezing Pulse and Ice Spear 1st form. These both have limited ranges. They also don't do insane damage without supports and/or damage-based specs. However, Spectral, when used properly, i.e. kiting backwards, has bow-like range (it can reach the edges of the screen, and deal 120% to 240% real damage effectiveness at that range). That is bow-like range and it hits every single monster in between, no matter how many there are. That is insane AoE, matched only by perhaps Reave at full stacks.

Compare all that to Double Strike, which is... 2 melee hits. Okay. Yeah. And?

The ONLY reasons I could imagine Double Strike being used over Spectral is against a fast melee weak monster, in which case it would be faster to have front-loaded damage and 20% additional real damage effectiveness; or against one of the gimmicky (I like gimmicks, don't get me wrong) anti-range monsters in A3X. That is not sufficiently comparable in power to ONE HUNDRED PERCENT PIERCE CHANCE, a long range for safer fighting, AND returning projectiles.

Compare Spectral to Cleave, too. 70% damage effectiveness, small-medium arc AoE, vs. 120% damage effectiveness vs. medium-long line AoE. The choice is obvious, especially if you know how to kite - lines form more naturally than arcs when kiting. In the same vein, trying to corral monsters into an arc configuration increases their DPS on you, meaning Cleave gives you less damage and less survivability all for the huge benefit of costing exactly 1 less mana. What?

EDIT: Okay, I lied. I forgot about the whole "MPD gem doesn't work with Spectral Throw" thing and also the whole "Strength gives no IPD to Throw without Iron Grip" thing. STILL. It's trivial to get 180% real damage effectiveness on a single target and 120% real damage effectiveness AoE, and that more than makes up for a lack of Strength/MPD IPD.

I don't think any of Spectral's incredibly powerful characteristics (100% pierce chance, 240%+ real damage effectiveness at optimal range) should be nerfed, but it should have a higher base mana cost to compensate. 12 at the minimum, I would say.

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Funcrusher wrote:

Is it intentional that spectral throw cannot be blocked?
Tested it on LLD with a friend and i couldnt block his spt (bc 50%+).

Seems like a bug to me..

can anybody confirm with further testing?

Could be a PvP-specific bug? I noticed my Spectral Throws were "missing" a lot more of the time vs. Blackguard Elites, but maybe I was just unlucky with my game synchronization.

This skill is disgusting.

It's severely overpowered and underplays the value of other possible decisions I can make. It does 10 times the damage of every other option available to me and mows through everything with ease as a result.

Any chance of getting some official words on how the skill works with point blank, particularly regarding the return part of the attack.

Also, people generally seem to think the skill can't shotgun, yet you can line up all 3 parts of the attack on the return path and have them each hit a target. If all parts of the attack can hit on the way back, why not on the way out?

I'd test further but it's really finicky and I get annoyed easily. Some official words on this too would be nice.


edit: You will also notice using lmp ST on corrupted blood monsters, you will accumulate charges way faster than you normally would.