Iron Will

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Balance & Design
Last edited by Rory on Mar 29, 2012, 11:53:31 PM
Last bumped on Jul 21, 2016, 4:37:16 PM
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Planning a caster marauder using this
I can see this gem being very appealing to AoF melee builds who want some variety on their skills. Think I'll try one when the characters are moved
has 'for Templar' written all over it

don't like cast speed reduction though

What skills does this gem work with? It does not seem to affect Heavy Strike nor Lightning Strike on my Templar. This character is level 18 with 129 strength, so I would expect to see a 25% increase in damage on these spells?
First of all neither of those are spells, those are melee attacks. Because of that they're not affected by this gem. Because they're melee attacks they also already gain the bonus damage from strength. An ability from a skill gem is named as a skill in descriptions, spells are only the skill gems that have a cast time, rather than using your attack speed, and that benefit from things that benefit spells.

The way this skill works is that if you support something like firestorm, ice spear, spark etc that is a spell, and not an attack, it will gain the damage bonus that strength normally gives to melee attacks.

For future reference, if you support a skill and the icon doesn't appear in the upper right of the skill's icon, then the skill is not at all affected by it.
Last edited by Umbraal on Apr 13, 2012, 10:49:48 PM
Should be perfect for a melee firestorm setup.
"
Umbraal wrote:
First of all neither of those are spells, those are melee attacks. Because of that they're not affected by this gem. Because they're melee attacks they also already gain the bonus damage from strength. An ability from a skill gem is named as a skill in descriptions, spells are only the skill gems that have a cast time, rather than using your attack speed, and that benefit from things that benefit spells.

The way this skill works is that if you support something like firestorm, ice spear, spark etc that is a spell, and not an attack, it will gain the damage bonus that strength normally gives to melee attacks.

For future reference, if you support a skill and the icon doesn't appear in the upper right of the skill's icon, then the skill is not at all affected by it.


While I suspected this was the case when it did not work in game, the difference between an "attack" gem and a "spell" gem is not immediately clear - at least, not to this dummy over here. For example, this support gem does work with Tempest Shield, which "enchants" your shield, it does not work with Lightning Strike (as previous discussed) which "imbues" your weapon.

While it's understandable that this does not work on these abilities, as double dipping on the strength bonus would be pretty ridiculous (and obviously, that is why I was trying it!), I think the game would benefit from some clarity regarding which skill gems and which support gems work together.
Last edited by mesasone on Apr 15, 2012, 3:38:57 AM
Well, the feedback is in the letter that appears on the supported skill's icon. If it's there, the support gem works with that skill; if it's not, it doesn't.

However, an indication on each skill description whether it's a "spell" or not would be useful, for sure.

Anyway, I have a Molten Armor/Tempest Shield templar who uses Frost Nova as his main AOE (and the three elemental strike skills for single-target damage), and currently have Iron Will supporting Frost Nova. Very effective!
Last edited by Srkandi on Apr 19, 2012, 3:03:45 AM
On paper, this seems like a really weak gem.

If you have the int to level up your spell gems, then you don't have many points left to put into str, so you'll have less than 200 str. That's less than a 40% damage bonus, which is barely anything at all after you take the casting speed penalty into account. Especially since low casting speed also means you'll lose even more DPS from being interrupted before you can finish casting, or lose something else because you'll have to change your build to avoid being interrupted as much.

If you lack the int to level up spell gems properly but have a decent amount of str, then you might as well not bother with spells, because of how they scale exponentially with gem level. It doesn't make up for the gem level difference at all.
Last edited by Silty on May 4, 2012, 2:24:06 PM

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