Elemental Hit

Having built a character around this skill, I have to agree that it costs too much mana. Reduce its cost by 40-50%, add some sort of graphic effect to it, and it could be a thing. Currently it's more economical (and more fun) to use a specific elemental attack like Infernal Blow or Lightning Arrow.

I had an idea about making this skill a bit more interesting. Rather than ONLY adding the damage it currently does of the three elements. Have it also have additional effects for each element.

Such as Lightning would cause the damage to chain to x additional target(s). Fire damage would splash and Cold damage could spawn a small patch of chilled ground or something.

Just saying, something to make it worth the mana cost. It's currently a single target non-spell that costs 9 more mana at level 20 than Freezing Pulse does and costs the same amount of mana as Fireball does yet both of those skills are "AoE".

Really seems to be pretty underpowered and at the same time overpriced.
No wonder I havent seen a build based on elemental hit.

@GGG Can we have here some adjustment please?

Actually despite of others I like the %age of crit, most of the melee builds include Resolute Techniques which make crit unimportant, what is rather sad.

What I wanted is to make a build using crit and elemental damage, for aoe damage i like infernal blow, but I dont see any viable single target skill based on elemental damage.


Heavy Strike is by far superior, damage, mana consumption and damage effectiveness makes it inevitable, what is sad.

I already have a cold witch and a ground slam marauder, that templar would round it up perfectly!

When I hover through the skills infernal blow + melee splash and elemental hit seem to be nice combo, but since elemental hit is not viable, i see no alternative and so I think my templar needs to wait until this is worked over :(

PS: At gamepedia the adjustments are very funny, first mana needs and damage are increased, for 1.0 again raised. Hm.

Your spoiler shows the patch notes for Dominating Blow.

Here's Elemental Hit's:


What an awful skill.

And... no balance change in 1.1.0.

Fuck that.

Alrighty, freespec and the balance twiddling (elemental up, crit multiplier down) made me finally get around to punching in the nodes and seeing the real numbers on wand guy.

Here's the damage scaffolding. The Scion multiplier would be a decent take to increase it further. Starting as a Scion puts more Projectile%, Mana Regen%, and Weapon Elemental Damage% within your reach, but that might be overkill. Maybe put one or two points into Vit instead.

The gems are at the same level you'd expect from a fresh 68 character; lv. 16.

Used in the test: Elemental Hit, Faster Attacks, Mana Leech, Weapon Elemental Damage. Anger and Wrath with Reduced Mana. Nuthin' else of note to report. Maybe +15 lightning damage from a ring. As basic as it gets.

Here is the wand I had sitting in my stash, ready for testing duty.



It's wandtastic. Behold its wandesty.

Tooltip DPS with nothing on: 476.8

Wrath + Anger Tooltip: 4343
Swapping Mana Leech for lv.16 Added Cold Damage: 5488.3

But we all know that's not the real dps. Because computers don't know how to average numbers, we have to figure out how much damage Elemental Hit is adding ourselves. By hand. Like, in the dirt. Like animals.

My fingers say lv.16 Elemental Hit adds 147 damage. We'll go with that. Doing the calculation the lazy man's way, by seeing how much Added Cold Damage's base damage was modified, it's +2200.77.

So the final, lying character screen approved official dps number on my elite ranger girl, is 6543.7 with leech, 7689 without it.

This number can be substantially improved past 10k at this point. Increased Critical Damage an obvious one, it's worth +30% overall odd something damage. Quality on EH can boost the crit chance by quite a wad; 80% crit is +8 crit (add that to 47.7% chance and 353 multiplier, and that's another 10% more damage alone). Elemental Weakness (which is flat out necessary imo; the entirety of Act 3 will cut your damage to a 1/4th otherwise). Added Lightning is another. Using a wand that isn't completely embarrassing, is another. And Accuracy? Don't talk to me about accuracy. The LCS says I have 78% accuracy effectiveness. It can go to hell.

And obviously having a few of those +3 gem lv Empowers laying around wouldn't hurt any.

At some threshold Power Siphon's 125% effectiveness becomes strictly better; when your base non-EA elemental damage crosses the +800-1000 range. L.20 Wrath and Anger grant around 361 of that. A perfect tri-elemental wand is 170, right? So another +269 damage on bling and you're there.

... Realistically I don't think many of us will ever get there. When it comes to raw elemental damage, Elemental Hit will outperform Power Siphon for us poverty brahs. And it's a decent single target DPS for people who can't roll a square weapon (double physical affix) for the life of us.

You will of course only be able to swing it two times in a row though. With your mana swallowed by two auras. Power Siphon will give you power charges while farming trash, so I'm sure it's better overall non-boss damage anyway. 75% crit chance and all that.

I've tried for 4 days straight to make a balanced build based off this and the numbers just don't add up. I've tried EB, BM, Crit, Melee, Projectile, Dual wield, etc. and nothing seems to be viable to me.

It seems that with the current iteration of the skill, you can choose to be either a waste of a party slot with it's hilariously inefficient dps (resource vs dps scaling with equip+auras+passives is terrible when you look at any other attack skill) or so squishy that you spend more time staring at the death screen than playing the game.

Elemental hit could use some tweaks. A buff to mana costs (32 mana @ 20, wtf why?) to give more flexibility to builds would help bring this back towards the realm of viability without pushing into OP. Honestly you could keep the dmg the same. That issue can be mitigated by using crit or raw attack speed.

As it stands now though, after spending your points to get your base survivability, you have to spend too many points just countering the resource costs to get any dmg, or you bite the bullet and grab the dmg/crit/attack speed nodes you need to remain relevant and suffer crippling resource shortages.

There's no way to make it viable for use as it currently stands. The damage is too low, the mana is too high, and it's boooring.

Letting it percolate a few days, I want to repeal my "at least it's more elemental damage than Power Siphon" avocation.

I wasn't thinking things through. You need an elemental penetration support gem to do any elemental damage. You can't rely on curses - there are immune rares and bosses secretly have resistance to curses, rendering offensive ones virtually useless. To not use a penetration support is to cut your damage to a third very often.

There is no general purpose Elemental Penetration support. It's fire, cold, or lightning. Power Siphon allows you to pick any of the three, and get +25% more damage from it. Elemental Hit plays russian roulette with what it adds.

It's stronger to use Power Siphon and one element. Wrath + Added Lightning, Hatred + Added Cold, or Anger + Added Fire. Lightning is the obvious choice if you don't have a square wand with fast attack speed and increased crit. Permanent shock, permanent freeze, or permanent ignite.

For what you lose from dual damage auras, you gain from reduced mana cost and more applicable damage nodes. You're not locked into Elemental and Weapon Elemental damage nodes, you can get the Lightning Ones as well.

Of course it is.