Molten Shell

To be honest, I believe the skill's shield should take into account all damage *post* mitigation, not before mitigation.
It explodes too quickly. I want this to be a survival boost tool, not something I have to cast each 2-3 seconds. And yes, I did level it up to maximum possible level(~I'm level 50 myself)
To compensate, the damage could be increased.

My "no idiot barbarian can kill a Witch" setup for molten shell. Comes out and satisfies the hatred for Jay and the buffed up barbarian abilities in D3.
Barbs are idiots. They're only good for sex toys.


Molten shell, lvl 16
+ Fire penetration lvl 16
+ Concentrated effect gem lvl 16
+ Fire penetration gem lvl 16
Added:
Extra flammability curse lvl 14+
+ Increased area of effect gem lvl 14+

What this does is:
Click on the Fraps hotkey, to record the instance to a video file (his is VERY rare fun in any game PvP).
You wait for the marauder or any melee to attack.
Cast the flammability curse.
You use the witch dance animation you purchased from the shop.
See the barbarian dash you, as you are dancing, in the air.
In the 3rd-6th hit, the molten shell explodes, doing (depending on the equipment and the fire damage passive skills, from 7k-11k damage, with at least 65% fire penetration --gem and curse).
The marauder is exploded to outer space.
If he has an IQ, which is rare for barbs to have such a thing, he may think it over and not directly attack, but try to break the shell from distance.
In this case, what you do is add an Increased area of effect gem in the molten shell (beware of the mana multiplier here). Shell explosion will reach him, no matter what.
Meanwhile, you can use your firestorm, and not just depend on the shell dps, because, well, there are people who stack up many thousands of HP:
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/13708/page/21

To make such a witch setup, you will need at least 130 strength, some from items, some from skills, which mean this is intended for very specific witch builds.
Can also be used from Templars.

Stats for:
lvl16 molten, concentrated gem, fire pen gem
and using fire damage passives and reduced mana cost passives, together with a very decent wand, are:
- Mana cost 137 (some may argue is is too little for such a setup, but, well, it is something you have to use TACTICALLY and cast every 9 seconds).
- 9095.1 DPS with a total of 73& fire penetration (penetration gem + curse).


Now to my proposed change of mechanics for this skill:
- Final shell explosion to have at least 30% reduced damage.
- Instead, give to the opponent a damage, with every hit the opponent makes. This damage should be proportional to the actual DPS the opponent makes with each hit (you hit molten, spash!, liquid fire comes on your face), added the fire damage you have (from wand + passives) also taking into consideration your fire penetration. This should also apply to remote casters.
Else, all molten witch builds are ditched.
- Increase the skill duration at least x2.
- Add skill cool-down, at least equal or greater than the skill duration. This will give opponent the incentive to try to break the shell before it wears out, instead of playing mouse and cat with the molten character.
- Perhaps apply these changes for PvP only.

Taking however a decision to nerf the skill should also come with nerfing op skills in PvP, such as dual totemers and off-screen, instant hit and auto-aim lightning witches.
I will propose these elsewhere. First things first, the totems MUST have cool-down. It's no use destroying one and having another re-spawned in 0.6 secs. You can just surrender.

I would also like to report something which seems like a bug.
At one point I blew up a marauder, while actually having no Molten Shell active (he was lucky enough to have the molten shell wear out while it was almost ready to blow), WHILE the marauder was hitting me at at the same time me casting a new Molten Shell. The synchronization (marauder hitting, me casting, was absolutely something unlikely to happen in combat however, it's microseconds). Maybe it is related to the fact that the previous Molten Shell needed just one more hit to blow (I can say this very accurately, as I counted the number of attacks, before the blow). Which could indicate that the shield is not reset, after a fast new cast, right after the previous Molten Shell wears out.
This seems like a bug, as the new Molten Shell should just activate. Also reporting this at the bug section.

BUG REPORT
I have 3 energy shield on my char. Then i cast Molten shell, damage goes to energy shield and hp, not to Molten shell.This occurs only when i have move than 0 energy shield.Maybe damage(in game mechanics) firstly goes to energy shield, then to hp(so mobs can kill you with molten shell and without breaking it) and if you have 0 energy shield it goes to molten shell.

EDIT: this happens ever without energy shield:)

I(without energy shield) cast molten shell, then about after 2 sec mob hit me with physical damage, damage goes to hp(i dont khow why, it happens every second or third strike).And it is not server lagging.It happens about 3 times while Molten shell is active.
MAYBE this skill have internal cooldown on absorbing damage.


P.S I am duelist(lev 24), so this may occur besause of block or evasion.

Aha, I see. Therefore it is absolutely legitimate (I actually thought I was exploiting the skill) and the issue is that I don't see it blow up (whereas the blow up has already occured on server-side) and have already started casting on the client and only receive the blowup sync after I have casted locally. Great blow up animations btw, I have reached down to 10+ yards of blowing corpses away. It amazed me to see that the blow distance takes into consideration even the speed with which the opponent moves towardsyou.

Another "issue" is that it will blow up a little after I flee, but I believe it falls down to the same server<-->client syncing latency. Which is ok, we 're talking about few microseconds here and the way the syncing takes place I must say is one of the most impressive I have seen, even with 200-300+ ms of lag. You seem to prioritize the user input commands<--->server response / battle processing, in favor of animation syncing (which only makes sense, even though other games don't do this) which is absolutely excellent, because the worst thing that can happen when playing with high lag is that you will see some animations delayed, like in this case.

Vadik, you obviously have very low base defence , block and stun recovery as well, so the added defence from the Molten is absolutely negligible, it is like not using it at all. Molten does not absorb damage, it adds to yout armour. But when you have so low armour, it adds little. Using this skill usually has a meaning only after lvl 20-30, using a chestpiece or shield with good armour stats.

I have 45% reducing physical damage (587 armor).With molten i have 59% reducing physical damage (1059 armor).So this skill "arsorb"(=this skill has it's internal counter of absorbed damage) damage, which if absorbed by my armor?

"

Vadik wrote:

I have 45% reducing physical damage (587 armor).With molten i have 59% reducing physical damage (1059 armor).So this skill "arsorb"(=this skill has it's internal counter of absorbed damage) damage, which if absorbed by my armor?

It doesn't really absorb anything, it reduces damage taken. Still armor isn't very good against large hits so it won't necessarily have a visible impact.