Infernal Blow

Just a question... passives that increase the area of effect and the support gem that does should apply to the explosion, right?

The skill, as mentioned before, feels underpowered, but is lovely and usable. What I'd like to be changed is the visual of exploding skeletons. I don't think skeletons tend to explode into bloody guts.

This skill would be one hell of a lot of fun to use with wands.

When i use infernal blow and the monster dies from the hit, the explosion sounds like a very short burst, like it is interrupted by something and it is not allowed to finish (the sound play). The explosion sound should clearly play for a longer time (about 1 second, now it's like 1/4 of a second).

I have a Sound Blaster X-FI audio card.

The main suggestion that I have for this skill is the same one several others have already stated, the Skeleton explosions. Having chunks of meat explode from a fleshless skeleton is a little off-putting. Perhaps when a skeleton explodes, have bones fly through the air instead of meat chunks.

btw, I am having a blast playing this game! Amazing work GGG!

I feel like this skill is a little too situational. I take it merely for the fire damage against physical reflects and it certainly does significant damage but the explosion effect is underwhelming.

As an example lets look at the monkeys and apes at the beginning of act 2. It seems like the perfect use for this skill as the ape will have more life than the monkeys so exploding the ape would be an effective use for this skill. Unfortunately in this scenario when the ape is killed the splash hardly puts a dent in the monkeys and the AoE is too small to hit most of them. It is almost always more efficient to use any other AoE attack as the damage from infernal + 20% of the victims life(only when it's the final blow) is always less than an equal leveled AoE.

Other AoEs will also stun opponents where this AoE which only hits on the explosion doesn't stun them so you're leaving yourself very vulnerable.

Even against bosses with high HP pools you should have killed all the weaker mobs around with AoE's before the boss will do the massive infernal blow splash.

Perhaps this skill could be better suited to a melee corpse explosion where you hit dead bodies and explode corpses, perhaps even AoE corpse explosion. Or a charge build and discharge skill. Doesn't really take itself away from a situational skill though.

Anyway just my thoughts on a skill that sits on my bar but very rarely gets used.

i just don't use it. the aoe is forgettable and for single target other spells do more.

So I'm guessing you can no longer one shot a whole pack by killing one of it's members with this skill?

If so, that is disappointing.

I might give it a run again though, since the last time was so fun.

EDIT: Just ran some quick numbers. It should be trivial to one-shot whole packs off one mob with this skill. Even with zero percent added fire damage.

20% base x 2.5 crit = 50%. Then 4/3rds additional burning damage for a total of 117% of enemy HP.

Unless diamond doesn't make the explosion crit (and I don't see why it wouldn't).

If diamond didn't exist, it wouldn't be consistent, but you could stick on Chance to Ignite for a pretty decent chance at the one shot (with heavy fire passive investment). Again, assuming Chance to Ignite works with the explosion, which it should.

I certainly agree that it seems under powered compared to the rest of my skills at the moment.

However, this skill is so enjoyable to watch that I find myself looking for opportunities to use it, even when its not optimal (which seems to be most of the time).

Aside from a buff to either base damage or the corpse explosion effect, I would like to see the explosion radius listed in the skill stats if possible. :)