Detonate Dead

Coming from a witch:

Leveling up this gem is not worth it under any situation. The (very low) increase in physical damage is not worth the mana cost increase. I know it is optional to level up your gems now, but I do not think this reflects good skill balance. My argument is that most skills get noticeably stronger as they level, thus justifying the increased mana cost. The damage of detonate dead does not scale (and fundamentally cannot) well with levels, and therefore neither should the mana cost. Considering the only requirement is dexterity and this is very popular on minion/int/fire builds, why not make the mana cost not scale with level (perhaps have it start higher and scale down)? This way players can pick up this skill the same way they do now. Int classes will buff it with +fire% damage and dex users will get +physical damage. Alternatively, why not make the AOE increase with level? this would provide incentive to level up the gem.

Good feedback crasedmonkey.


I find it strange ppl saying it's too weak. It feels like pre-nerf Corpse Explosion to me. I have 0% added fire damage. :P (10% increased elemental damage; 44% increased spell damage - this is a pure summoner and i don't focus on spell damage at all.)

Agree that there's no point levelling up this gem currently, the increase in physical damage is a joke. Not worth the increased dex requirement on intellect builds.

People are saying it's too weak because the AoE damage spells are generally tuned to kill most enemies 2-5 hits depending on gear for most of leveling.

This spell needs specific enemy group composition and the death of beefier targets first (which will almost never happen because most casters fight most enemies with an AoE spell and save single target stuff for cleaning up the slow beefies).

By the time you have enough fire/crit boosts to turn this spell into full imba mode, your other spells are sufficiently powerful to do the task on their own. Since ARPG player base isn't known for their love of tactical combat....

I'm seeing a pattern. Dex and str builds see no use for it. I can verify it on my lvl 50 frenzy ranger. Why would I stop mowing mobs down with arrows to hopefully get a nice corpse pop when I can't easily target corpses (the one with the most HP would do the best damage) and I would get no leech from it.
Witches see a use for it (just not if at a high mana cost).
Which begs the question... why is this a dex gem and not an int gem ???

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drewsbarr wrote:

I'm seeing a pattern. Dex and str builds see no use for it. I can verify it on my lvl 50 frenzy ranger. Why would I stop mowing mobs down with arrows to hopefully get a nice corpse pop when I can't easily target corpses (the one with the most HP would do the best damage) and I would get no leech from it.
Witches see a use for it (just not if at a high mana cost).
Which begs the question... why is this a dex gem and not an int gem ???

agreed. this really needs to be reworked as an int skill/gem IMO

0.9.5 feedback below this post

Have not read all replies. I just started using this skill with my archer and found it does not "target" dead bodies. Instead, the dead body nearest your mouse pops. This makes it difficulty to make precise or strategic attacks.

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Unforgiving wrote:

Have not read all replies. I just started using this skill with my archer and found it does not "target" dead bodies. Instead, the dead body nearest your mouse pops. This makes it difficulty to make precise or strategic attacks.

Hover your mouse over the corpse you want to detonate, it will pick one very close to that. If that's not good enough (it should be), you can turn on corpse highlighting through the options for corpse-specific targeting.

Made a templar this patch with detonate dead as my primary aoe, and flicker strike to make initial kills and to kill bosses.
Seems to be working pretty well, but as others have said, the skill itself has a bit of an issue. Leveling it up only hurts you... the mana cost hit nearly 100 with 2 supports at level 11, so I switched to a level 1 skill instead and got it back down to the 20's lol.
The mana increase needs to be scaled down a lot, and there actually needs to be some gain for leveling it up, not just some negligible amount of damage added.

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taekvideo wrote:

Made a templar this patch with detonate dead as my primary aoe, and flicker strike to make initial kills and to kill bosses.
Seems to be working pretty well, but as others have said, the skill itself has a bit of an issue. Leveling it up only hurts you... the mana cost hit nearly 100 with 2 supports at level 11, so I switched to a level 1 skill instead and got it back down to the 20's lol.
The mana increase needs to be scaled down a lot, and there actually needs to be some gain for leveling it up, not just some negligible amount of damage added.

Extremely tempted to min/max your build.