[v1.7] 39k+ DPS with INFERNAL BLOW, +239% life, +6.8% regen, +145% armor, TRIPLE curses + blinds!

hey sry i tried to read a few pages, but its quite alot
i came up myself with some similiar build and wanted to compare it with some an more insight depth strat/guide
and urs helpd me out quite alot
i played a low lvl whitch and thought it might be better on a templar thats why iam here
u think melee splash/multistrike will be worth it?
it lookd pretty awesome when i tried it and iam asking cuz iam wanna try something like ur build in the 1 week hc race
u got any suggestions?
will read some more, pretty sure u answered the questions somwhere
thanks

Whether to use Multistrike or Melee Splash is a tough one to me.
It also depends, if you want to rely on inf blow as a single target or emphasize the explosion.

For the first option multistrike probably scales better.

The latter might even out. But it also relies on your playstyle.
I might favour melee splash, if you have some radius. This way you can get more AoE for IB explosion.

That said I must admit I didn't test it out and ultimately it also comes down to ones own preference I guess.

Yet again, I really cannot comment melee splash nor multistrike, as I've been away from the game since 14.3.

But I would definitely take +FIRE DAMAGE % above everything else. It's the only modifier to the AoE explosion and it also gives the effect to the 50% of Infernal Blow -base.


Fire %: 50% of IE base damage. 100% to IE AoE explosion.

Physical %: 50% of IE base damage.
Benefits most with high physical damage weapon.

Elemental %: 50% of IE base damage.
Benefits most from high elemental damage weapon. Easiest stat to stack.


Still, I'd focus getting high resists, life and armor over damage as a melee.

"

Simonsworld wrote:

That said I must admit I didn't test it out and ultimately it also comes down to ones own preference I guess.

No, it doesn't. Melee splash is better than multistrike. The question isn't one or the other, the question is whether you use just melee splash, or whether you use melee splash AND multistrike.

Quality melee splash gives +20% area of effect radius and that effects the corpse explosion. Quality infernal blow gives +20% area off effect radius, and that effects the melee splash! That kind of synergy is just way too good to pass up.

"

nocebo wrote:

But I would definitely take +FIRE DAMAGE % above everything else. It's the only modifier to the AoE explosion and it also gives the effect to the 50% of Infernal Blow -base.

Again the actual corpse explosion damage is much less important than it was before melee splash. There is also no need to do any kind of burning effects any longer. The corpse explosions will almost always end up chaining, regardless of having fire/elemental damage bonuses boosting it. The key is raising the damage dealt with the initial/splash hit. The corpse explosion chaining takes care of itself no problems. Since WED and melee physical nodes come with higher % numbers than fire/elemental nodes, they are preferable. That isn't to say you shouldn't get any fire/elemental nodes if they are convenient, and the %s add up well in comparison to wherever else you could put the points.

There's also the possibility you'll choose a build that uses elemental damage from weapons/jewelry in addition to the converted damage, which makes WED/elemental nodes better than fire and physical nodes. Generally that sort of build will be 1h+shield though, not 2h, since 2h are slow so they benefit less from +x-y element mods.

Coming back to the question of whether to use multistrike or not, lets assume you're a blood magic keystone build like the OP, and consider our 5L (and 6L) options.

4L is obviously completely determined: Infernal blow + Weapon Elemental + Life Leech + Melee Splash.

For our 5th and 6th links there's really 4 gems we need to consider:
Multistrike, Faster attacks, Melee Physical, increased AoE

Maths follow, TL;DR at bottom.

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Lets say we have the OP's final build, including 20% quality gems. We have:

340 strength = 68% melee physical
60% melee physical
38% 2H
50% WED
36% fire
30% W fire
10% WED (quality gem)

27% increased attack speed
3% increased 2h attack speed

So that's:
166% increased physical with IB
292% increased fire with IB
30% increased attack speed with IB

Lets call our "normalized" base IB damage then:
B = (1 + 1.66 + (1 + 2.92)*1.8 ) * (1 + 0.3) = 12.6308

The 1.8 is the weapon elemental support's "more" damage.

Lets consider adding multistrike.
At level 20 we get 57% increased melee physical + 10% increased melee physical for quality, 107% more attack speed, and 40% less damage:

M = (1 + 1.66 + 0.57 + 0.1 + (1 + 2.92+ 0.57 + 0.1)*1.8 ) * (1 + 0.3) * (1 - 0.4) * (1 + 1.07) = 18.7164

That's a 48.2% DPS boost.


Lets consider adding faster attacks.
At level 20 we get 54% increased attack speed (including quality):

F = (1 + 1.66 + (1 + 2.92)*1.8 ) * (1 + 0.3 + 0.54) = 17.8774

That's a 41.5% DPS boost.


Lets consider adding melee physical.
At level 20 we get 49% more melee physical damage, and 10% increased melee physical damage:

L = (1 + 1.66 + 0.1 + (1 + 2.92 + 0.1)*1.8 ) * (1 + 0.3) * (1 + 0.49) = 19.3623

That's a 53.3% DPS boost.


Increased AoE is the odd duck.
We can't compare directly. 43% increased area of effect with quality. Assuming again the OP's spec, 12% increased AoE from nodes, 20% increased AoE from quality IB and 20% from quality MS.

(1 + 0.43 + 0.2 + 0.2 + 0.12) / (1 + 0.2 + 0.2 + 0.12) = 1.28289

That's 28.3% more radius, but we're interested in area, so:

1.28289^2 = 1.64580 = 64.6% more area of effect = 64.6% more guys hit, in a sufficiently large pack.

So, if the packs are large enough, increased AoE actually gives the most damage of any of them - but only if the packs are large enough. So the "large pack" ranking of the gems is:

AoE > melee physical > multistrike > faster attacks

For smaller pack sizes AoE could land anywhere in there from first to last (obviously last against single targets).


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TL;DR:

4L is Infernal blow + Weapon Elemental + Life Leech + Melee Splash

Choice of gems for the last 1 or 2 slots ranks:

AoE > melee physical > multistrike > faster attacks

for large pack clearing or

melee physical > multistrike > faster attacks > AoE

for small packs.

There's also something to be said for multistrike. Multistrike's damage isn't too much worse than melee physical's (48.2% vs 53.3%), and it does bring something fairly interesting to the table: auto-targeting. Auto-targeting is pretty great if you are a little on the laggy side, or if you're in a party and have a hard time finding the guys to click on with all the shiny crap going on.

Hitting 3 times (potentially 3 targets) also reduces overkill damage, which is good. However, with multistrike it takes longer to knock over the first domino. With melee splash infernal blow, generally as soon as one guy in the pack detonates, they all detonate. This may more than counterbalance the overkill damage issue.

If you're in a position of having to choose between multistrike and melee physical (as opposed to being able to use both in a 6L) I suggest simply trying both out a bit, as they're the same color and easily swapped. My personal preference is for multistrike, because of the lazy targeting.

Hey!
Im also playing this build, atm level 38 with 4link infernal - ib, splash, wed, aoe.
Are you sure the qualities effect each other?? If they are its fucking op! With both at 20 and the templar+witch aoe passives you will have huge explosions and huge range.

My planned 5link is: ib, wed, splash, life leech, faster attacks.
I went for faster attacks becaus i chose going sword and board and stacking elemental damage from gear. This way i can invest in elemental nodes and mods to boost both my attack and explosion.
Also, i went over to the witch area and took aoe passives and eldrich battery. This way i can stack auras and use arctic armor.

The build im going for is super synergetic. Altho it has quite low life (only +200% at 92 points), i believe it will have great defence - 85% resistance thanks to purity and inner force, and its super easy to cap thanks to +20% from build, +24% from shield and +30% from purity. For physical, the build has +50% armor and uses determination, and most importantly arctic armor.
The fact that resistances are easy to cap boosts both defence and offence. Because you dont need resistance on every piece of gear, you can invest heavily into life, armor and energy shield for mana. Also, its easier to find good ele dmg jewelery without resistances.

Against reflect i have 85 res + arctic for fire. I believe ill take very little damage.

Looking forward to level it to end game!

"

yoavzim wrote:

Are you sure the qualities effect each other?? If they are its fucking op! With both at 20 and the templar+witch aoe passives you will have huge explosions and huge range.

Yes, confirmed by Mark_GGG in this thread.

"

I went for faster attacks becaus i chose going sword and board and stacking elemental damage from gear. This way i can invest in elemental nodes and mods to boost both my attack and explosion.
Also, i went over to the witch area and took aoe passives and eldrich battery. This way i can stack auras and use arctic armor.

Yes, my above analysis is for 2h. For fast 1h that uses elemental damage obviously things are different. Melee physical drops out of the equation, and multistrike's physical damage component gets worse. Multistrike ends up being in the realm of a 30% damage increase (exact amount obviously depends on ratio of elemental to physical damage on your gears), putting it behind faster attacks.

You can see me doing almost exactly your planned build in this video. Sadly since it isn't my normal spec I didn't have the right colors in my 5L, so it is without WED support.

"

yoavzim wrote:

Against reflect i have 85 res + arctic for fire. I believe ill take very little damage.

You can see me kill a reflect pack at ~3:35 in the above video. It does very little to me. That's with 85% fire resist and level 15 arctic armor (woo eldritch battery).

Great to see some math there! :)

While life leech is certainly a "must have" for HC, I was playing on softcore as I was "forced" to play with tethered 3G connection, 2Mbit/2Mbit. Far from stable. This meant, that I didn't use life leech at all, at any point of the game.

My 5L choices were:

Infernal Blow
+Weapon Elemental Damage
+Melee Physical Damage
+Faster Attacks
+Added Fire Damage (since it effects the AoE as well, which rest won't)

Seeing the math there, I'd try MULTISTRIKE as the 6th gem.

Often, killing the highest HP target will kill every target around anyways. Melee creatures will rush close anyways, while the ranged ones stay back. The increased AoE would feel sort of a waste there.

Added fire is converted damage. The 10% increased fire damage from the quality bonus will increase the explosion damage, but the 39% bonus from the gem proper only applies to the hit, not the explosion. Given your options at the time, I can see why you used it (if you didn't have the dex for faster attacks), but with the addition of multistrike and melee splash I can't see a good reason to use added fire any longer, even in a 6L.

"

magicrectangle wrote:

Added fire is converted damage. The 10% increased fire damage from the quality bonus will increase the explosion damage, but the 39% bonus from the gem proper only applies to the hit, not the explosion. Given your options at the time, I can see why you used it (if you didn't have the dex for faster attacks), but with the addition of multistrike and melee splash I can't see a good reason to use added fire any longer, even in a 6L.

I mean I am, or was - when I last played the game early March - still using added fire damage. 20% quality gives +15% extra fire damage.

All our curses are focused on negative fire resistance, thus the effect is multiplied at that point.



"36% physical damage ADDED as fire damage"

I don't see how that only effects the single hit and not the AoE part. But even if it doesn't effect the AoE, this gives a massive damage increase via the curses. After all the build is focused around nuking the highest HP target down, exploding it - killing the weaker ones instantly.

I mean, one way of reading Added Fire Damage would be that:

1) Any source that deals physical damage, gets 1.36 multiplier which is turned to fire damage.

Other way would be:

2) Any source that deals fire damage, gets 1.36 multiplier from your physical damage of that skill.

Although I am also leaned towards #1, I haven't tested this out. Still, it wouldn't make that much of a difference, since it's the "mass hitpoints" of the original target, that deal the "bulk of the damage". Thus single target DPS is the most important.

Infernal Blow has damage efficiency of 125%. This means that modifiers that increase the damage, actually get 1,25 multiplier on them.


My Infernal Blow tooltip on L79

without Added Fire Damage: 12240 DPS
with Added Fire Damage: 17493 DPS

That's a huge difference, considering the added damage is all pure fire.