Updated: Frost Blades has many 'possible' unintentional mechanic malfunctions. Please fix.

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HeavyMetalGear wrote:

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

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HeavyMetalGear wrote:

No they do not.

I took a Screenshot of my Skill Tree before I un-allocated my Iron Grip Keystone and the Projectile nodes, and then when I did un-allocate those nodes, there were no changes in any number in my Character Window, which is a clear indication to me that those nodes do not work with Frost Blades.

thats what we are telling you, there is no numbers in your character window that display the damage of frostblades projectiles. Only numbers for its melee hit are given, so theres no way for you to see if the damage went up or down.

edit: and yes I find that amazingly frustrating too and I cant believe they havent gone in and made proper tooltip calculations and displays for all skills, esp dual wield reave, double strike etc.

Well that is B.S. then.

Why does this not seem the case for other Skill Gems I used that are categorized as both a Melee Attack and Projectile Attack? From what I recall (unlike Frost Blades), I was able to actually see changes in my Damage to both portions of those Skill Gems in the Character Window.

P.S. Now I am going to have to waste more Orbs of Regret on a mob or two just to see if there really is a change in damage that is not calculated in the Character Window.

There are just too many obscurities with Frost Blades to a very annoying degree. I do not ever recall having this many problems with any other Skill Gem of its 'type', and I have played through four Leagues.

EDIT: Unless someone tests this before I do, tomorrow (it is 4 AM for me now) I will test my DPS with and without my Iron Grip Keystone and Projectile nodes, and I will let you guys know whether or not I a see a behind-the-scenes increase in my DPS.

I too have (it's been gathering dust for a long time)a frost blade character. The nodes for projectiles work, the game is just dumb af and won't tell you what the secondary skill-effect is. Molten strike is something similar in that regard. Frost blades initial hit, the melee aspect, is what shows up when you look at the dps as it's a "first stage" in the skill, and the projectiles is the result of the "first stage".

To do a rough damage-calculation on the projectiles, just add the %-increase to either the base of the initial hit or the DPS. To test the skill itself, i suggest you kill Vaal. His spawning of adds make it easy to procc blades towards him, plus he's got a big hp pool.
I think that snorkle and myself were the ones using frost blades the most frequent when it was first released - he did a phys-converting GG-build in standard and i tried one in the templeague which was flat elemental-based. Listen to him :)

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mark1030 wrote:

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Why does this not seem the case for other Skill Gems I used that are categorized as both a Melee Attack and Projectile Attack? From what I recall (unlike Frost Blades), I was able to actually see changes in my Damage to both portions of those Skill Gems in the Character Window.

There are only 3 two-part melee/ranged skills I think - Lightning Strike, Molten Shell, and Frost Blades. Sounds like you haven't tried any of them before.

Excuse me, but my point still stands throughout this thread. It sounds like you never used any of those three Skill Gems you listed.

I have already verified long ago (and today, again, just to be sure) that at least with Lightning Strike (having an Elemental portion and Physical portion on the Skill Gem) it is affected by both Elemental Damage and Physical Damage nodes on the Skill Tree to which the DPS does show up in the tooltip itself and the Character Window.

Corrected text: Therefore, why is the same thing not the case for Frost Blades that has two portions in its attack: Physical and Projectile

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HeavyMetalGear wrote:

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mark1030 wrote:

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Why does this not seem the case for other Skill Gems I used that are categorized as both a Melee Attack and Projectile Attack? From what I recall (unlike Frost Blades), I was able to actually see changes in my Damage to both portions of those Skill Gems in the Character Window.

There are only 3 two-part melee/ranged skills I think - Lightning Strike, Molten Shell, and Frost Blades. Sounds like you haven't tried any of them before.

Excuse me, but my point still stands throughout this thread. It sounds like you never used any of those three Skill Gems you listed.

I have already verified long ago (and today, again, just to be sure) that at least with Lightning Strike (having an Elemental portion and Physical portion on the Skill Gem) it is affected by both Elemental Damage and Physical Damage nodes on the Skill Tree to which the DPS does show up in the tooltip itself and the Character Window.

Therefore, why is the same thing not the case for Frost Blades that also has an Elemental portion and Physical portion on the Skill Gem?

I have used those 3 skills. You seem to be confusing the difference between physical/elemental with melee/projectile. The elemental IS scaled with both physical and elemental increases in the tree - exactly as you describe. What does not scale is MELEE physical to PROJECTILE physical/elemental. Has nothing to do with physical or elemental damage. Has EVERYTHING to do with melee and projectile damage. The projectiles are completely independent of the melee hit. Their damage is based off your weapon damage, not your melee hit damage. Tooltip only shows the melee portion of the two prong hit. It has never shown what the projectiles do.

I questioned whether you tried those 3 skills before because you are comparing them to other skills. There are no other skills to compare them to. They are the only skills that have two independent attacks with one swing - a melee attacka and a projectile attack.

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mark1030 wrote:

I questioned whether you tried those 3 skills before because you are comparing them to other skills. There are no other skills to compare them to. They are the only skills that have two independent attacks with one swing - a melee attacka and a projectile attack.

Then the fact still remains the Projectile portion (somewhere) should also be included somewhere in the tooltip and the Character Window.

I always thought the Projectile portion on those other Skill Gems were calculated.

Mind you, I did not use those Skill Gems when I did long ago for a long period of time like am doing with Frost Blades, so that is why I did not see it as you guys have as a problem that was always there regarding the Projectile portion of these Skill Gems.

Furthermore, I mispoke at the end of my other reply. I meant to ask, "Therefore, why is the same thing not the case for Frost Blades that has two portions in its attack: Physical and Projectile, yet you already verified why that is.

P.S. I apologize for having a bit of an attitude. I just needed clarification on Frost Blades since there was a lot of uncertainty regarding numbers I did not see that should have been recorded and were not...

Thank you guys for clearing this stuff up. I can now allocate the nodes I want knowing they do affect Frost Blades.

The projectile part is not calculated on the tooltip because the tooltip only shows the damage of the very first hit. The first hit for Lightning Strike, Frost Blades, and Molten Strike (and Wild Strike, but that's a slightly different beast) is a melee hit and does not get any scaling from projectile mechanics.

Again, the very first hit does not scale with projectile stuff, and the very first hit is the only one that the tooltip shows numbers for.

Take a look at Lightning Strike's wiki page: http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Lightning_Strike

One of the parts on it is:

"An attack with Lightning Strike consists of two parts:

An initial melee hit with the keywords Lightning, Attack, Melee
A projectile attack with the keywords Lightning, Attack, Projectile"

And that pattern is exactly the same with Frost Blades and Molten Strike too.

The first hit with Frost Blades has the keywords: Cold, Attack, and Melee
The second part which is all the projectiles has these keywords: Cold, Attack, Projectile

Molten Strike follows the same way with an additional extra bit.

Molten Strike's melee hit has the keywords Fire, Attack, and Melee.
Molten Strike's projectile hits have the keywords Fire, Attack, Projectile, AoE.


Yes, it would be nice if the tooltip includes damage calculations for the second part of these attacks, but GGG hasn't gotten around to adding them in presumably because they think it would be too much clutter.

I half jokingly like to say GGG has continued the "Lying Character Screen" of Diablo 2 by not having the tooltips actually be functional for many skills.


As for the attitude, you could have saved yourself (and everyone who has replied so far) a lot of hassle by asking "How exactly do these skills work? I've done these changes and the tooltip hasn't changed at all." instead of assuming that there is an actual mechanical problem. When you ass/u/me it makes an ass out of u and me.


I've edited the Frost Blades wiki page to bring it more in line with the Lightning Strike and Molten Strike pages since a lot of people seem to be having problems with it.

I'm still confused over how that Skill functions with fucking Maces, Axes and Staves in the first place.

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Jackinthegreen wrote:

The projectile part is not calculated on the tooltip because the tooltip only shows the damage of the very first hit. The first hit for Lightning Strike, Frost Blades, and Molten Strike (and Wild Strike, but that's a slightly different beast) is a melee hit and does not get any scaling from projectile mechanics.

I understand the initial Melee hit before the Projectiles come about from Frost Blades is a Melee hit and not a Projectile hit....

It seems you missed the point of my entire OP, because my OP does not talk about the 'initial Melee hit' being the problem, neither does my OP suggest the Projectile portion has anything to do with the 'initial Melee hit'.

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Jackinthegreen wrote:

Again, the very first hit does not scale with projectile stuff, and the very first hit is the only one that the tooltip shows numbers for.

I never said or insinuated the initial Melee hit was affected by Projectile-based stuff, yet that the secondary portion is Projectile-based and is affected by Projectile-based stuff (I verified in-game when my clear speed was faster with Projectile nodes allocated) after I was told Projectile-related stuff does affect the Projectile portion of Frost Blades and Skill Gems like it.

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Jackinthegreen wrote:

Take a look at Lightning Strike's wiki page: http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Lightning_Strike

And everything you said thereon in the above quoted, I already understood to begin wtih...

P.S.

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Jackinthegreen wrote:

As for the attitude, you could have saved yourself (and everyone who has replied so far) a lot of hassle by asking "How exactly do these skills work? I've done these changes and the tooltip hasn't changed at all." instead of assuming that there is an actual mechanical problem. When you ass/u/me it makes an ass out of u and me.

If I just went with the approach, "How does this Skill work?" my OP would not have been considered a suggestion to include the Projectile portion of Frost Blades and Skill Gems like it in the tooltip and the Character Window. It would have been considered a question (big difference) that would have went against the whole purpose of this thread to begin with.

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HeavyMetalGear wrote:

If I just went with the approach, "How does this Skill work?" my OP would not have been considered a suggestion to include the Projectile portion of Frost Blades and Skill Gems like it in the tooltip and the Character Window. It would have been considered a question (big difference) that would have went against the whole purpose of this thread to begin with.

But you would have saved yourself the exposure of a lot of attitude and ignorance in the process. You would have had people explain it to you, and could have voiced your secondary concern with the non-listing of the information without having to tell other people they're wrong and reading things wrong when you just don't understand exactly what's happening (and finally do, apparently).

This is not a productive post but I'll make a point of saying that reading this thread frustrated me.

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SybilCut wrote:

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HeavyMetalGear wrote:

If I just went with the approach, "How does this Skill work?" my OP would not have been considered a suggestion to include the Projectile portion of Frost Blades and Skill Gems like it in the tooltip and the Character Window. It would have been considered a question (big difference) that would have went against the whole purpose of this thread to begin with.

But you would have saved yourself the exposure of a lot of attitude and ignorance in the process. You would have had people explain it to you, and could have voiced your secondary concern with the non-listing of the information without having to tell other people they're wrong and reading things wrong when you just don't understand exactly what's happening (and finally do, apparently).

This is not a productive post but I'll make a point of saying that reading this thread frustrated me.

I am sorry you are frustrated reading this thread as much I was frustrated trying to get my original point across since Wiki failed to address the Projectile portion of Frost Blades, Lightning Strike and Molten Strike at the time. However, the Wiki on those Skill Gems has now been updated to explain the mechanics better as a result of this thread, it seems (Thank you!)

Therefore, had I not made this thread the way I approached it, the Wiki would remain the way it was with poor information on those three Skill Gems, so I have no regrets with my approach.

EDIT: However (notice I underlined better in the above stated), the only thing the updated Wiki fails to explain is the relationship between Projectile-related nodes and the Iron Grip Keystone regarding how they do affect Frost Blade's Projectile DPS (behind the scenes that is not recorded).

Those things should be explained and they are still not explained, not even on the Lightning Strike and Molten Strike Wiki pages.

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Jackinthegreen wrote:

I've edited the Frost Blades wiki page to bring it more in line with the Lightning Strike and Molten Strike pages since a lot of people seem to be having problems with it.

Thank you for updating the Wiki, yet you may want to edit it again for reasons my updated OP explains regarding crucial information that is still missing.