Herald of Ash

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sidtherat wrote:

All my melee builds use it

When something is used by all builds there is a slight risk of this thing being broken as f..

You can say the same about Hatred, Multistrike, Life nodes...

Well, no, he has a point.
I'd say it's a very small matter, but it might be better off with 30% reservation or 12% added fire, aka, it would still be worth using in most cases.
The point there being, for a build that doesn't invest heavily in aura nodes, the Herald-Skills are more usable due to being low reservation, and at least on early levels actually provide a better mana/bonus ratio.
Maybe the best approach would be to start at 12% and add 1% every 5 Levels?
On High Levels, Hatred looks clearly better.

At higher levels herald of ash DESTROYS content. Build of the week shows that. I have a RT glacial hammer char with slooow 2h maul and it is ABSURD what kind of dmg this buff provides. The mere fact one can link ele prolif and aoe and inc burn dmg makes it absurd and waaay way better than hatred for such builds

Btw multistrike used by all? it inflates the dpa but for most builds it is actually not that great given the oportunity cost and mana cost increase compared to other options. But to each its own

Herald of ash should not be allowed to be augmented with supports. Or just fix ele prolif as it makes it sick..

The BotW is deliberately specced to make Herald work that way, devoting more than half of it's mana pool and running no other Auras to speak of, while using multiple uniques in a mediocre DPS combo primarily set on dealing as much damage as possible to a single target. It's just cleverly put together.
I wouldn't mind Elemental Proliferation not working on something that already proliferates fire, but aside that...
I'd say I've seen worse.

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sidtherat wrote:

At higher levels herald of ash DESTROYS content. Build of the week shows that. I have a RT glacial hammer char with slooow 2h maul and it is ABSURD what kind of dmg this buff provides. The mere fact one can link ele prolif and aoe and inc burn dmg makes it absurd and waaay way better than hatred for such builds=

Btw multistrike used by all? it inflates the dpa but for most builds it is actually not that great given the oportunity cost and mana cost increase compared to other options. But to each its own

Herald of ash should not be allowed to be augmented with supports. Or just fix ele prolif as it makes it sick..

Multistrike provides better damage output than Melee Physical damage and for LESS mana consumption. I know, you'll say "but 180% multiplier". But you know, mana cost applies only to 1-st hit, while 2-nd and 3-rd are free. With 100% more AS we have 180*3/2=120 mana multiplier - that's the "real" mana multiplier of multistrike.
Also, multistrike helps you to deal with desync, as it auto-targets enemies.

Be honest, bro, multistrike is №1 choice for (almost) any melee. At least, i cant imagine a working melee build without it.

Oh, and BTW, Tempest Shield is also used by almost any build, that stacks shield block. And i believe, almost any caster will use Herald of Ice.

Those skills (TS, HoA, HoI) are desighned so they are BETTER than auras, because they are NOT auras, and affect self only.

i know that MS makes mana cost go down and paper dps up (sometimes) but what i meant is: there are builds that CAN benefit more from stuff like better aoe, bigger/longer aliments, better resource-management (avoiding BM etc) or stuff like ele penetration instead of MS. but these options are not considered at all because 'MS is no1 choice'. i check these builds, laugh, replace one gem and have a way way better working character. but dps goes down and this is a no-no in this community

one of cases where MS is not best is the very skill we are talking about: Herald of Ash might as well be not used with MS-augmented attacks as the burns are mediocre and cause little damage but huge frustration (animals and humans run away). that 15% added as fire ofc inflates paper dps but means absolutely nothing compared to that burn carnage

Herald of Ash - if remains as is - will be abused to the extreme and nerfed. Its abuse potential with ele proliferation + aoe + inc burn is so huge mainly because one DOES NOT need to 'build for it'. my characters i respeced for this league were respeced without HoA in mind. and yet..

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sidtherat wrote:

Herald of Ash - if remains as is - will be abused to the extreme and nerfed. Its abuse potential with ele proliferation + aoe + inc burn is so huge mainly because one DOES NOT need to 'build for it'. my characters i respeced for this league were respeced without HoA in mind. and yet..

I should agree, probably. The innate AoE of HoA is very small, so it's pretty balanced. However, with Elemental Proliferation AoE can be boosted 10-20 times, which isnt OK.

I have a question not sure if it's been answered before.

the quality on herald of ash gives extra fire damage.

Does this extra fire damage applies to

1. the conversion of physical?
2. the burning dmg HOA causes?
3. all spell dmg?

For example, if I run discharge/incinerate, does quality on HOA applies to discharge/incinerate? even if I do no physical damage? is it like extra lightning dmg on tempest shield?

Wait.
If it applies only to the ignites, and not to the bonus damage it grants, then why isn't it burning damage? 0.o