The War for the Atlas expansion includes a plethora of new gems! These new skills and supports have interesting interactions with each other and with existing skills. All of the new Support Gems unlock new systems and mechanics for skills and our community members have asked many good questions about them! Today's news post focuses on talking in more depth about these new gems and their how they interact with others.

This skill fires a physical projectile into the ground where you target, creating a corpse you can use with other skills.

This skill can generate up to ten corpses and can only shoot one projectile at a time when it is not supported by other gems. To maximise the corpse output, you can combine it with Greater Multiple Projectiles and Spell Echo. This is a simple but reliable way to deploy a concentrated cluster of corpses, which is great for skills like Cremation.



The corpses are skeleton archers which are much stronger than most skeleton archers you'll find in the world. This means they're reliable ranged spectres if you're wanting to play a build that rapidly re-summons spectres. There may even be a new unique item on its way that would facilitate this!

Cremation explodes a corpse and replaces it with a fiery geyser. This geyser throws flaming shards all around it that deal damage in a large area. You can have up to three cremation effects active at once.

The skill has a special interaction with additional projectiles. The number of projectiles fired are spread out over each second the geyser is active, so Greater Multiple Projectiles and similar supports are a damage boost that also results in more hits and a greater likelihood of hitting an even area around the flaming geyser.



The Spell Cascade Support reduces the power and size of an area targeted spell, but performs the effect three times in a line as an outward-moving cascade

This support gem applies to area skills that take place where you target, like Bladefall, for example. It trades damage and total area for repeat applications, allowing for a high damage if you're able to strike enemies at the overlap point. Most area targeted skills can't overlap more than once, so positioning is important to maximise your damage on key enemies.



The support doesn't work on channelled skills and you have to cast it yourself, similar to the restrictions of the Spell Echo Support. It works with Corpse skills like the soon-to-be-improved version of Detonate Dead. Skills like this have the opportunity for more overlap than standard area skills if you have corpses clustered close together.



This skill turns up to three corpses into fiery orbs that chase down enemies and explode.

Volatile Dead usually only consumes three corpses with each cast but with Spell Cascade, you can consume a whole lot more, quickly creating a ball pit of fiery death or a wave of orbs that will rush at enemies.



Using Spell Cascade with Desecrate can create a perfectly arranged cluster of corpses to consume.



This support gem gives you a protective barrier while you cast supported channelling skills, while also being able to generate power charges when you're hit.

The support grants you a 13% less physical damage taken and 12% less lightning damage taken at gem level 20. It is worth using on your primary skill if you really want to mitigate as much damage as possible at the cost of other damage sources. It has a much more useful effect on utility channelling skill setups to keep you safer while you're not doing direct damage, and generating power charges as a bonus.



Bodyswap explodes your old body and recreates you from a nearby corpse, dealing damage where you were and where you appear.

In addition to being a satisfying repeatable movement skill for crossing the aftermath of a battle or for use with Desecrate, Bodyswap can be used with Totems and directed with corpse creation skills to create a teleporting team of totems. The fiery explosions will use Totem life to calculate the self-explode, letting you make tough totems that dish out decent damage whenever they swap bodies with your unearthed undead and fallen foes.



This support adds two extra projectiles, and lets a portion of your projectiles be fired from adjacent points.

The adjacent projectiles are fired from up to four adjacent points, creating a wide line of projectiles. This support is a great way to have access to extra projectiles at lower levels, and fires tighter clusters of projectiles at long range.

It's most interesting when used with Incinerate, Freezing Pulse or Flame Totem to create a wide swathe of destruction, drastically increasing the area they hit enemies up close.