Infernal Blow

Good visual, but once I got the +extra fire damage support gem combined with heavy strike it didn't really seem worth it.

Its utility seemed to be covered by Heavy strike + cleave + sweep better.

I am currently running a Fire Marauder and Infernal Blow is my finisher move. Saying this, I do have some thoughts on Infernal Blow, mainly the staple corpse explosion.

1. The corpse explosion damage is small. Killing a creep early game does minimal damage to a nearby creep, if it is even near enough to hit. I have made it to cruel and since the damage isn't much different with 24% fire damage nodes. I don't understand why the % damage isn't increased per level.

2. The corpse explosion area of effect, even with my 13% quality seems small.

3. The explosion duration is short enough that if forces the final blow to kill the enemy to get the explosion. This duration needs to increase per level to allow chain explosions (ie getting multiple units low and finish one off that kills the rest of them).

4. The melee single target damage is nice. I have no complaints and it hits hard with Fire Lash + % Fire nodes.

The main problem with this skill is that corpse explosion is completely stagnant towards leveling the skill, which is a huge turn off. If the corpse explosion gets buffed slightly, I could see this becoming a much more viable skill.

I like the animation for infernal blow, but I think when you first raise your weapon that it should be flaming. The fire effect isn't very explicit or compelling.

"

Lmaoboat wrote:

I was thinking, what if this skill caused a similar explosion in any enemies killed by an explosion from with it. It's still only 20 of the enemies health, so it wouldn't be too OP, but I think it would lead to some really cool-feeling moments.

The description implies that's how it works.

"

Masters of the Infernal Blow delight in watching enormous chain reactions of detonating victims.

Is that part of the description not true?

"

I like the animation for infernal blow, but I think when you first raise your weapon that it should be flaming. The fire effect isn't very explicit or compelling.

I agree. It doesn't look like a fire skill.

Infernal blow is bugged. There is no other explanation for why it doesn't get affected by +fire passives. I have Lava Lash, Immolation and Fire Walker (as well as normal ele templar elemental passives). I use same level, same quality Infernal Blow & Glacial Hammer skills. Even though GH is 125% of Base and IB is 112% of Base, I would expect the passives to MORE THAN make up the difference. Let's whip out the calculator!

Let's say for giggles, that I'm using a white mace with NO elemental and base physical dps of 100 (they both increase physical by 42%, so we can ignore that).

With NO pasives, GH should be 125, 62.5 physical and 62.5 cold. Infernal blow would then be 112, 56 physical and 56 fire. at this point, GH is 10% better than IB (in theory the corpse explosion effect makes up this difference).

I have NO cold passives, and my fire passives are Immolation (+18% Fire) Fire Walker (+12% Fire) and Lava Lash, (+36% fire w/weapons), plus three 6% fire points for +18% more. Let's say those are additive, and not multiplicative, so a bonus of 78% to fire damage (if multiplicative, it would be almost +113.5% bonus, so this is the conservative approach).
78 * 56 = 43.7, making my total IB damage 100 + 56 + 43.7 or 199.7, MUCH higher than the 125 from GH.

Of course, I am simplifying by hand-waving over the increase in ele passives that "apply to both." But they aren't coming off the same base, so let's add those in. I have catalyze, plus its three sisters for +105% weapon damage and Elementalist + Celestial Walker and its two prereqs (+33% ele damage).

So, both GH and IB get (again, additive) get a +138% boost to the elemental part of their damage. Let's be conservative & pretend the elemental happens seperate from the fire passives.
IB: 56* 1.36 = 76
GH: 62.5 * 1.36 = 85
____Base___Skill___ElePsv_____FirePsv___Total
GH: 125 + + 62.5 + + 85 = = = = = = = = = 272.5
IB: 112 + + + 56 + + 76 + + + + 43.7 = = = 287.7.

Notice that I am calculating the elemental and Fire damages separately, but they SHOULD affect each other (the order doesn't matter).
So we start with

Base __ Ele +138% ___ Fire +78%
56 * * * 2.38 * * * * * * 1.78 = 237.2 dps Fire damage (plus 56 physical, for a total of 293 dps to GH's 272).

Basing that on real weapons, I should see between 5-10% GREATER performance from IB than from GH (and this is with a white non-elemental mace, which I assure you I am not using). But that's not what I'm seeing. IB has always been about the same percent (or more) LOWER than GH.

What gives? I can come up with no rational explanation for this behavior. I'm pretty sure it's not a display bug in the character screen, because I'm seeing slightly better performance from GH on single targets than IB as the reported DPS would indicate.

Edit: I have 24% increased ele damage from equipment, I recalculated, and it makes very little difference, so I'm not changing the above to reflect it. The difference is (62.5 - 56)*(1.24) = 8 dps more for GH.
/Edit

My build:
http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAQUAAJbF5wDU5OYBzjiLB3e_bQqoMR0PSLviFl5YaReHlYcYum2EG85OTSKgHsIkWJ8tK3I55C2W5Ssxk0n3NuvFVDfEI39IM6ecSRB4xUsGJWtNZqDlWtVtV12tb69iEhoWZRFytWfuCepxt7nfcp9W1HfPAll4TQG6eOOzV3yGyhl8wCHefPbQmn-qyB6AyTPVhJgm84XKd62VhJIumS1ht5sdSUCbb0JKm_AqxaI3qHaoL3qJqgU6VqprrnarZVXSr5igjrHb0_a7ikAZwOZYb8MHMufL1RfPzRKsjs2xIFfTP_B71Hwxi9SLxKvYZqkl5E26SuSv3A7lY9BU6o7qmOtgC43udu7P8N1IdPta7Q78c7rC_ovirg==

Can't you just pull up my character? Rangnorok in Americas default league, lvl 61 Templar. I don't know how to link items into a post.

Rags uses an Abyssal scepter (15% ele) with 59% inc phys, 35-62 fire, 10% inc lit, +6-70 lit. Amulet adds 11-27 cold (I took it off and GH was still > IB). I get 9% inc ele from a ring, and that's it. No other equipment impacts any type of damage.

Since this is usually my boss skill, I am using item rarity and item quantity. The only damage mod is Weap ele Damage, lvl 15. IB and GH are both 15, no quality. I took out the Weap ele Dam support, and GH is still ahead of IB. I don't use both at the same time (they are basically the same use case).

With IB, my damage breakdown is:
Phys: 076-115
Fire: 527-861
Cold: 056-139
Ltng: 032-373

with GH, my damage reads as follows:
Phys: 085-129
Fire: 265-469
Cold: 326-555
Ltng: 036-417

If anything is the key to the puzzle, it's the increase in lit damage. Changing a fire skill to a cold skill should not have increased that lit damage, should it? I'm guessing the 12.5% difference in the "Deals x% of Base Damage" stat of the two skills is responsible for this increase in lit damage (since that's one of the mace's properties). However, I would think that would also apply to the large fire component of the mace's base damage, creating an even larger base for the fire passives to build on -- at least, that was the POINT of getting this mace :).

Jazmatik:

Click reply to bring up the post reply window.

Down at the bottom (very bottom) you'll see all your characters standing side by side. You may need to scroll left/right using the little arrows to find your character.

Once you've found you character, click on them, it will load their paperdoll/inventory.

First, on the side of the paperdoll is a link to your character's passive tree. Click that, copy the link, then come back to the reply page.

Paste the skill tree link into the reply.

Now open your character back up and click all of their items. It will do something like:
[linkItem location="Helm" character="Rangnorok" x="0" y="0"]

Do that for all the items, then click preview and make sure you didn't miss any. I can take a look at your setup over the weekend while Mark is busy enjoying his time away from work. :)

First of all TheRabbit303 +1 for trying to help.

I can't get the item linking to work using Chrome, but it works in IE. I'm copying the links from there to here (IE makes me feel like I'm at work).





I can't get the link to build working in IE, so this is from Chrome. :)

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAQUAAJbF5wDU5OYBzjiLB3e_bQqoMR0PSLviFl5YaReHlYcYum2EG85OTSKgHsIkWJ8tK3I55C2W5Ssxk0n3NuvFVDfEI39IM6ecSRB4xUsGJWtNZqDlWtVtV12tb69iEhoWZRFytWfuCepxt7nfcp9W1HfPAll4TQG6eOOzV3yGyhl8wCHefPbQmn-qyB6AyTPVhJgm84XKd62VhJIumS1ht5sdSUCbb0JKm_AqxaI3qHaoL3qJqgU6VqprrnarZVXSr5igjrHb0_a7ikAZwOZYb8MHMufL1RfPzRKsjs2xIFfTP_B71Hwxi9SLxKvYZqkl5E26SuSv3A7lY9BU6o7qmOtgC43udu7P8N1IdPta7Q78c7rC_ovirg==