Molten Shell - The build

Idea originating from reddit and Lapiz







Pros:

• Tanky (full anti-crit, can facetank Amazon or Shin)
• High damage (boombooms)
• Not an offscreener (less cancer)
• Melee-ish playstyle (FeelsGoodMan)
• It's not EA mkay? I hope I did something good in my life at least once.
• Good movement speed
• Relatively cheap

Cons:

• Not an offscreener (SRS hurts)
• Hard to chase down kiters and offscreeners
• YetAnotherZerphiAbuser

Videos:
1v1 vs Libri (EA): https://youtu.be/PEhEv88MUnk

Mechanics explanation, triggering the explosion, physical mitigation math:
You can read how Zerphi, Scold, and Mind over Matter work and interact with each other here.

In addition to those interactions this build focuses on utilising the physical damage taken from Scold to trigger the explosion of Molten Shell, at every single cast.



Molten Shell counts for all kinds of physical damage mitigation, calculating the difference between the initial hit and the actual physical damage taken, adding up multiple hits' mitigation, and when the threshold is reached it explodes. Recasting MS will not reset the threshold progress, so if you don't mitigate enough damage to reach the threshold in one cast, then it will counts toward the threshold of the next cast, and will eventually explode.
Different forms of physical mitigations that increase the threshold: Armour, Basalt Flask, Endurance Charges, certain passives, Chaos golem buff, Arctic Armour, Immortal Call, Block
The first 5 forms mentioned are additive with each other, and have a 90% cap in reduction (similar to resistance, but the rest of the mitigation forms can go beyond that, the last two can mitigate 100% if procced). Probably Fortify works too, didn't read or test anything about that.

The goal is to mitigate enough damage taken that MS explodes from one cast, triggering at each cast, that is the sweet spot.

There can be a lot of variables when calculating the physical mitigation, more specificly the armour required for it, but the most simple route is:
First choose your mitigation forms you can use and sustain. I use only Armour and AA because they can be sustained the easiest.

Take the threshold as a constant. It depends on the level of the gem, but once you know what level you use, it's a constant. Increasing the level too high is not optimal, because the threshold goes up too much, there are more efficient ways to increase damage instead of levels, at least with Empower. If you have a +1 chest or staff, you can use it.

Mine is level 21, so the threshold is 1664, which means that the physical damage taken from scolds must be mitigated by flat 1664 to trigger MS.

The initial physical hit depends on the mana cost of the skill. The lower you keep it the better, because you will hurt yourself less, which means higher effective HP.

Some theoretical examples:
If 1664 is the result of a 30% physical reduction, the initial hit is 5546.6, the mana cost is 1386, and you eat up 3882 damage, but only requires 23768 armour.
If 1664 is the result of a 50% physical reduction, the initial hit is 3328, the mana cost is 832, and you eat up 1664 damage, but requires 33280 armour.
If 1664 is the result of a 70% physical reduction, the initial hit is 2377, the mana cost is 594, and you eat up 713 damage, but requires 55463 armour.
If 1664 is the result of a 90% physical reduction, the initial hit is 1849, the mana cost is 463, and you eat up 185 damage, but requires 166410 armour. This is the lowest mana cost that can theoretically work, but it needs very high armour.

If you use other forms of mitigation too, then you will need less armour.

Just from these four examples you can easily see that around 70% phys reduction there is a sweet spot, where all numbers are kind of managable. Another optimum is coming from Zerphi, because if you heal more than your maximum life per cast, then the overflowing amount is lost. If you try to cast when below mana cost + damage taken amount, you will instantly kill yourself or not be able to cast at all, so the sum of that is removed from your EHP.

Didn't even have to click the skill tree to know it was a pathfinder ^^

This is basically...Shin.

Few subtle differences as in he dual wields Ichimonji. It's a pseudo melee build that literally does nothing melee at all but self casts trigger set ups via Scolds. This is the concept basically everything is going lately be it Mjolnir,Cospri's,Scold's,Hiltless,CoC.

why not juggernaut to counter bear traps?

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IceDeal wrote:

Didn't even have to click the skill tree to know it was a pathfinder ^^

Pathfinders in pvp??? Unheard of!

Other variant could be possible for pvp?
Without scold it s possible to use dual heartbound loop if go CI. The on death from skellies will trigger cwdt. If built correctly you can have infinite molten discharge with the minion and I guess if you go necro, you can spread poison when they die.

I guess it could play like hot: first cast skell, they die >boom boom> other cwdt also proc new skelies>boomboom>loop

Seen the skelly version 1 month ago on forum for pve.

Ice: yes, I even mentioned it before the tree :P

Mulla: yes, it's similar to Shin, but also different. My main setup doesn't need CWDT or any trigger support gem to work, so It can be as much similar to a self cast Discharger as to Shin. The concept you talk about is subjective, you just listed most of the things that deal spell damage but not self cast, Imo those are all somewhat different. I'm sure you laughed the same way when I mentioned ahfack's build in comparsion to yours, both are melee, they are the same concept!

Rup: they can easily convert to elemental, most of them are already ele based, but recently even sim gone more towards it. Btw I did meet sim in arena the other day, and I can reliably tank his single traps with brass, but if he swaps to cluster traps It oneshot me every time, that thing does so much bypass on the PvP formula. Also pathfinder is the best class for this, I did a demo on one of my scion before I made the real thing, and since I need to keep up two flasks all the time to operate the build, and not just to buff it, pathfinder is a really big deal.

Plexus: I did see, and even tried a heartbound build myself before, but I don't think it's really viable. It has limited trigger rate, 350 x 2 per 250 ms, so to reach the 1664 threshold they need to do 3 loops at least for molten, which takes twice as long as my cast time. Also you have to build into regen, and then sacrifice most of it just to sustain the damage taken, which the opponents can just remove with frost bomb, and the insane damages taken from opponents cannot be sustained at all. The skeleton loop requires a low level CWDT, and to actually take the damage, to trigger a lvl1 you need 528, so you can barely reduce the 700 taken from the rings to keep up the loow, and since it would be a low level skele gem you wouldn't have any significant base life, or could scale it at all if you want damage on your triggers.

"

Rup: they can easily convert to elemental, most of them are already ele based, but recently even sim gone more towards it. Btw I did meet sim in arena the other day, and I can reliably tank his single traps with brass, but if he swaps to cluster traps It oneshot me every time, that thing does so much bypass on the PvP formula. Also pathfinder is the best class for this, I did a demo on one of my scion before I made the real thing, and since I need to keep up two flasks all the time to operate the build, and not just to buff it, pathfinder is a really big deal.

bear traps can't stop you as jugg, thats what im talking about, also jugg is good for you i suppose with %armor and movespeed, cannot be stunned etc

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Rupenus wrote:

"

Rup: they can easily convert to elemental, most of them are already ele based, but recently even sim gone more towards it. Btw I did meet sim in arena the other day, and I can reliably tank his single traps with brass, but if he swaps to cluster traps It oneshot me every time, that thing does so much bypass on the PvP formula. Also pathfinder is the best class for this, I did a demo on one of my scion before I made the real thing, and since I need to keep up two flasks all the time to operate the build, and not just to buff it, pathfinder is a really big deal.

bear traps can't stop you as jugg, thats what im talking about, also jugg is good for you i suppose with %armor and movespeed, cannot be stunned etc

Yes, and endurance charge when hit is triggered by scolds, so it would be nice, but without the flask sustain, the build would struggle.