Puncture

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Targuil wrote:

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+400 str iron grip+point blank

As I said, I oneshot map bosses with it.

Pretty much what I'm about to start working on, having finally gotten frustrated enough with melee to return to my roots (bows, bows, bows, and more bows!)

Chin Sol + Point Blank (support) + Puncture + Increased Critical Damage. Projectile Weakness -> Diamond Flask -> Puncture -> Vulnerability. May tweak the use of curses a little bit depending upon just how effective the skill is in use.

try vulnerability first before puncture...

Why before? It doesn't provide as much increased damage as PW, and adds a chance to stun. PW also reduces chance to evade projectiles. Opening with PW increases initial damage dealt, to follow up with Vulnerability for the increased dot.

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CanHasPants wrote:

Why before? It doesn't provide as much increased damage as PW, and adds a chance to stun. PW also reduces chance to evade projectiles. Opening with PW increases initial damage dealt, to follow up with Vulnerability for the increased dot.

your vurn is stronger than any pw if you were aiming for damage. however, pw has piercing so if chance to hit more than one foe was your goal, then keep using that first.
sorry i'm a number grinder and that was a nit pick. info gotten from the wiki.

I'm a min/maxing number cruncher too :). Projectile Weakness has 32% increased projectile damage (includes all elemental and chaos damage as well) at level 15. It also reduces evasion against projectiles (more likely to hit) and provides additional chance to knockback which synergizes amazingly well with point blank. Vulnerability on the other hand, has 31% increased physical damage (only part that really counts for puncture anyways), and also increases chance to stun and reduces enemy stun recovery; not very synergistic with a skill that I want the target to move as much as possible after the hit.

According to the data available on the wiki, PW provides more initial physical damage for a greater base % per second, and makes pretty damn sure the attack will hit. But maybe Vulnerability scales better in the later levels, I don't know, the data is missing :)

Still, I'll probably drop PW if only because I want to keep skill slots open for other things like Grace, Discipline, and Clarity. The 40% dot is the important part, I sincerely doubt that little bit of initial extra damage will make the difference between a one-shot or a two-shot.

Question though.. Do multiple uses of Puncture stack their DoT like burn? If I pop a diamond flask and knock out three attacks, will all three DoT play out in order of highest to lowest damage? Or will only the highest damage DoT apply and the others ignored?

the DoT of this skill acts like all other DoT, strongest one takes effect but if there are weaker longer/new ones, those will continue where the strongest left off at.

well if you're going to still use poison arrow, keep projectile weakness for piercing multi hitting. vurn is more important for puncture because the dot is based on initial hit's physical damage (which you are also covering for via diamond flask). added fire support would be nice extra dot but would be kinda late for that build-wise.

Awesome, good to know I can still fit this into an ias crit build ^_^

And I don't think we disagree that Vulnerability is better for the 40% dot bonus, I was just arguing that Projectile Weakness is better to lead with, for slightly better initial damage and an all but guaranteed chance to hit, and then follow up with Vulnerability for the bonus dot. It's irrelevant now, though, as my new build uses Critical Weakness as a main cast. If I've done my maths properly, it actually improves the initial critical damage enough that it could altogether replace Vulnerability's dot buff.

one thing i'm confused about, is if vurnibilty curse triple boosts puncture. as in, players can reasonably understand that because it's a physical attack that the physical boost works on hit, and its a dot so that too is boosted. BUT the dot too is physical... so is that boosted again?

I'm pretty sure the more physical damage taken part only refers to damage dealt by attacks, although given the way it's worded I guess I could see it applying to the DoT as well. After all, it is still physical damage being taken by the cursed enemy!

Also, I definitely did my maths wrong last night XD drunken maths did not account for Vulnerability's initial phys buff when comparing it to Critical Weakness for final dot dps. Unfortunate because I don't think I have room for another curse on my skill allocations :-/ I guess I'll have to see if three crits and 15 seconds of dot is enough to slay bosses ;p

Prob one of the best spells to synergize with diamond flask and critical multiplier. Better served as a 1 hit K.O. for difficult act bossess. Not so great for mobs. Was trying to be cute by pairing it with Chance to Flee, but in the end you cant expect much when fighting mobs with a non-aoe skill.

Perhaps there is more to explore with chance to flee or knockback if someone wants. Frost walls also could get the ranged monsters to move around a bit more.