Melee Damage on Full Life

So I like the idea of this gem coupled with Chaos inoculation, but while I was building passives and support gems around this I noticed it's vastly underwhelming compared to the regular Melee Physical Damage support gem. They are also both strength gems so no benefit there.

The difference (at least at gem level 1) is minimal and definitely doesn't make up for the very hard condition to meet. I realize the damage goes up for quality gems though and that's nice, but you're still building around a condition that is either only a "start of battle" condition or with the use of Chaos Inoculation. Maybe a full life regen build could also pull it off sometimes. All the while you're still in melee range to get anything out of this so good luck on maintaining the skill's effect.

I suggest increasing the percentage value on this by something like 8-9% at skill level 1 OR make it scale with health %. Like, "up to 50%" and it goes down as your health goes down, so you'd lose the effect at 50% health or if you want to keep the spirit of the gem, 2% per health % lost, if that makes sense, so you'd lose the effect completely at 75% health.

It could be that I'm missing something here or perhaps the values of this gem scale very well with gem level, but since I don't have access to it yet I can't comment on that.

You're forgetting that you can use BOTH of the gems at the same time, for a total of 60%.

Or pick AoF and just go Weapon Elemental Damage support for 60% :)

Seriously though, considering you need to be at full life...it's pretty lack-luster compared to the other supports. 10% less mana and lower level req for a pretty significant penalty (since this is melee damage). Basically it'll only be worthwhile on either an Immortal Call build or Energy Shield build.

At least make it 40%...

I'm not necessarily forgetting it, it's just that it doesn't really matter.

It's kind of binary. Either you have full health and it duplicates the regular gem or it does nothing. Kinda boring if it's meant to be used as an extra boost on top of the regular melee gem. But I see now how that could have been the intent, even though I feel the gem has more potential than to be a "cheap" knockoff with a condition attached to it.

This is a pretty neat gem altho i would have liked to see it have some more versatility such as damage scales down with lower hp / not only melee. atm the only reason i feel i would use this support gem would only be on a melee type heavily invested with shields otherwise I could only see this as a 1 hit gem at every mob fight unless i want to run around regenning the whole time. a melee support gem that might be more useful would be something like +damage every x swing or % to proc after damage taken/x dmg delt.

although with that said this gem makes me tempted to try out a chaos inoculation melee build

I like this gem partly because I am a fighting advocate of creating more niche for str+int armor. I always feel like it has the weekest combo: high energy shield works, obviously high armor works, energy shield + evasion works conceptually,(a couple extra misses can be enough to get your eshield to start regenerating right in the middle of combat). But armor works best when up close and physically getting hit whereas energy shield rewards hit and run tactics to regenerate, making the combo very awkward to use.

A gem like this adds a little bonus for melee utilizing an armor+energy shield armor.

It looks good with evasion/ frozen melee builds. Like fist witch?

Needs a buff if it's supposoed to be balanced with the support gems that gives damage 100% of the time.

I agree with the above posters, the benefit of 'stacking' this with the regular melee physical support gem is negligible for all but characters with chaos innoculation, and since there are no effective chaos innoc+melee builds it makes it fairly worthless.

The damage bonus from the gem should scale down with lost health below maximum. Something like 40% at full, down 2% per 1% of health lost to the effect of 2% bonus at 81%, and 0% at 80% and below. Then it would be useful, and even a possible alternative to the melee phys support as it'd provide more damage at 95+% health, widening the gap even further as it levelled (ideally, +2% per level).

Currently it is worthless, and that is disappointing, but at best its just another copy of the melee phys support gem and that is quite boring.