Vaal Molten Shell

Any chance we could have this stack with the normal molten shell? Or at least dont overwrite it?

Forgot my build:

High strength, Iron Will, Righteous Fire Incinerator, using Vaal Molten Shell in a Doon Cuebiyari linked to Life Leech and increased Duration.

Using regular Molten Shell in my (max level) CWDT setup

Looks like there's actually a bug with this skill:
Increased Area Effect seems to have no effect.
I've got +60% radius and it's still a tiny zone, moreover I grabbed once an increased AoE Shrine (the one that makes you giant and where you gain something like 40% radius) and the Vaal Molten Shell explosion wasn't bigger at all, it did not changed.

does vaal molten shell triggers if u evade an attack ?

Okay, so in combination with the unique helm "Scold's Bridle", you can trigger this gem yourself, as quickly as you can cast/attack. For skills like Cyclone and Incinerate, which attack/cast much more quickly than normal, this means you can create an absurd number of explosions without relying on enemy attacks at all. An incinerate build can easily cast 8 times per second.

It's been like this since the unique was first introduced in Torment league.

It's unclear if this behavior is intended: Vaal Molten Shell is supposed to require a "hit" and it doesn't appear that Scold's Bridle generates a hit: it's worth noting that Scold's Bridle doesn't appear to trigger the attack skill "Vengeance", for example.

So, either:
1. This is unintended and will be fixed
2. This is unintended but won't be fixed (It's a legacy item now, perhaps they aren't too worried about it because Scold's is now very hard to get)
3. This is intended, in which case the skill "Vengeance" might be bugged

Can you activate this skill by taking reflect damage?

If so you could curse yourself with punishment and attack very quickly and proc this very quickly.

It seems that currently this skill rolls crit once per activation. So for the duration of the skill, either all the explosions are critical hits or none of them are.

I think it would feel better to use, and make more sense, if it rolled crit once per activation, similar to how Tempest Shield behaves. (Also, does Lightning Thorns roll crit just once per cast as well? I really think the Tempest Shield way ought to be the standard for skills like these)

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Mokihiki wrote:

It seems that currently this skill rolls crit once per activation. So for the duration of the skill, either all the explosions are critical hits or none of them are.

I think it would feel better to use, and make more sense, if it rolled crit once per activation, similar to how Tempest Shield behaves. (Also, does Lightning Thorns roll crit just once per cast as well? I really think the Tempest Shield way ought to be the standard for skills like these)

I second this. It makes it really pointless to use crit chance the way it works now. I think if this changed it'd open up a lot of possibilities. Can any staff comment on whether this was intended in the first place?

I was testing VMS with the Heartbound Loop ring, which deals you 350 damage per minion death, and either VMS or the ring are not working as I'd expect.

These tests were doing by activing the shell onto Merc Hillock.

A single shell activation with 1 ring caused by summoning a zombie while at zombie cap did 1/3rd of his HP.

Equipping 2 rings increased the amount of damage I took from a minion death. However, the explosion still only damaged Hillock for 1/3rd of his HP, indicating it did not proc VMS twice.

Summon skeletons is similar. Using 1 ring, and summoning 2 skellies for a double minion death, I take 2x as much damage as from a single zombie death. However, VMS only damages Hillock for 1/3rd his HP. Same story for 2 rings and summon skeletons, instead of the expected 4 VMS activations, only one.

So either VMS cannot trigger multiple times at the same instant, or Heartbound Loop activations that happen at the same instant are somehow combined into a single larger damage hit (I can test this by comparing expected armor mitigation vs actual, as if it was combining damage it would do much higher than expected damage vs my armor, but that's a pain).

EDIT: It seems BOTH of these things might be happening.

2 heartbound loops might combine activation damage, first off. Was testing with 6876 armor + chaos golem and arctic armor, for a total expected mitigation of 70% armor vs 350 damage then 12% multiplicative AA. Expected damage for a summon skeleton was 92 per skelly, total 184. Summon skelly at skelly cap dealt me 182 damage. Perfect. So it does proc 2x seperately for two skellies dying.

Now try with 2 HBL, for a total expected damage of 368 (4 activations). Took ~550 dmg. So that's off. But what's the expected damage if we assume 2 activations of 700 each? That's right, 560.

So 2 HBLs combine damage per minion death, but one HBL still procs two seperate times for instantaneous double skelly death. However this does NOT proc VMS twice as far as I can tell from the Hillock testing.