Molten Strike & Point Blank interaction

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ComradeSerge wrote:

Now that we've gotten more into MS mechanics, can someone explain how Physical Projectile Damage interacts with MS projectiles?

The usual way, you get a multiplier on the physical and converted elemental part of the projectile and the skill gets 10% less attack speed.

That's 1,49 * 0,9 = 1,34, which is 34% more dps at L20, I'd say it's worth the slot.

I'm confused, aren't the projectiles pure fire damage? :/ cause I thought they do 60% of the initial hit as fire damage. Or do they do the same amount of damage as the initial hit, whereby 60% is fire, 40% is physical?

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ComradeSerge wrote:

I'm confused, aren't the projectiles pure fire damage? :/ cause I thought they do 60% of the initial hit as fire damage. Or do they do the same amount of damage as the initial hit, whereby 60% is fire, 40% is physical?

Same as lightning strike.

You do 120 dps with initial attack, it does 40/60 physical/fire which is 48/72.
A projectile does 60% of initial attack which is 72 damage, of which 28 is physical and 43 is converted fire.

PPAD would make your projectiles do 96 dps in 39/57 ratio.

WED would multiply only the elemental part but initial attack would get affected too, so initial attack would do 169 dps in a 48/121 ratio, and projectiles would do 100 dps in 28/72 ratio.

Thanks, raics, that clarifies it!

So if you were to take a gem setup such as: WED - Multistrike - PPAD - Faster Attacks - Conc. Effect, you would effectively be using only gems to boost your projectile damage (I'm not counting FA and Multi, as I'm referring to gems like Melee Physical Damage which boost the damage of your initial hit). Would it be really worth it to invest all damage multiplier gems solely into the projectiles, and none into the initial hit? Wouldn't the projectiles also benefit from MPD since the initial hit would do more damage, and they scale off of it?

I'm trying to figure out the most optimal gem setup, and I just can't figure out what would be best.

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ComradeSerge wrote:

Would it be really worth it to invest all damage multiplier gems solely into the projectiles, and none into the initial hit? Wouldn't the projectiles also benefit from MPD since the initial hit would do more damage, and they scale off of it?

Depends what you use Molten for, if you already got a skill with more area like ground slam, you should pick up stuff that support initial attack or both. If you use it for AoE it's better to support projectiles or both, as with multistrike or faster attacks.

As Viper already told you they aren't 'based' on one another, they're completely separate damage instances. Even melee splash is separate, you got a direct hit and a donut-shaped AoE, if we had a hypothetical curse that has 'increased damage taken from single-target hits' direct hit would do more damage and AoE would do the same.
It's different from, say, puncture that bases its bleed effect on damage dealt.

Ok, I think I finally get it. So the projectiles (after browsing wiki) are based off of 72% WEAPON damage, not the damage of the initial hit, whereby 40% is physical, the rest is converted to fire.

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ComradeSerge wrote:

Ok, I think I finally get it. So the projectiles (after browsing wiki) are based off of 72% WEAPON damage, not the damage of the initial hit, whereby 40% is physical, the rest is converted to fire.

Yes, that's it, those flat numbers from my post are actually percentages of your normal attack damage and dps, it's easiest to manage if you assume your normal attack does 100 physical damage and has 1 attack per second.

So you can think of molten strike direct damage and projectiles as separate and both being based off your normal attack, it's easier that way. Although that's hardly the case, they're most likely all calculated directly off your character passives, gem bonuses and weapon damage, including normal attack as it also counts as a skill.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

The projectiles travel a random distance between 5 units and 20 units, with the latter distance being affected by AoE increases (the minimum distances is always 5). Point Blank gives a 50% damage bonus only until range 10, which would thus cover only a third of the projectiles with no AoE increase.

That's pretty interesting. So you get a 50% extra damage up to 10 range. Range can go for 5 to 20 so you have roughly a 33% chance to get the 50% more damage.

Now, if you apply a level 16 slower projectiles the MAX travel distance (you said the min speed of is always 5, so SP will not reduce it) will be reduced by 20*0,6 = 12. Then you're going to have a 5/7 = 71% chance to have the 50% more projectile damage from point blank.

After this analisys, imo slower projectile gem + iron grip is the way to go with this skill