Melee Damage on Full Life

I'm currently using this support on my melee chaos inoculation shadow.

Basically my build consists of focusing on physical damage and then converting that damage to elemental damage with hatred aura and added fire damage. With a 4 link I've found myself looking at this support gem and comparing it to weapon elemental damage.

With hatred aura activated, using Flicker strike:

with added fire damage and melee physical damage supports the mana cost of flicker strike is 25 and it does 5361 dps.

with added fire damage, melee physical damage and melee damage on full life supports the mana cost of flicker strike is 33 and it does 7381 dps.

with added fire damage, melee physical damage and weapon elemental damage supports the mana cost of flicker strike is 43 and it does 8202 dps.

Although weapon elemental damage does more dps it also costs more mana. Melee damage on full life adds physical damage to my attacks that makes flicker strike sustainable with mana leech mods. With weapon elemental damage I need to use mana flasks, with melee damage on full life I don't. I guess it depends on the gear you have.

Another thing to consider is that the quality on this gem gives ''more'' melee damage, compared to the quality on melee physical damage which gives ''increased'' melee damage, which makes this gem better in my opinion, if you have to choose between the two.

I can also think of a couple other builds which could use this support, but I don't have the gear to try and make them yet. I think it's fine as it is.

I have Blood Magic, use Lightning Strike and have a boatload of Life on Hit. How does this gem interact in this situation? Would my first hit, when I am on full life get the bonus? I then gain back all the life and then some from the Life On Hit and the projectiles giving me life.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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Jozen wrote:

I have Blood Magic, use Lightning Strike and have a boatload of Life on Hit. How does this gem interact in this situation? Would my first hit, when I am on full life get the bonus?

You won't be on full life for your first hit, because you will have paid the cost of the spell, which with blood magic means you've lost some life.

Thanks for the response. I was wondering about blood magic with this.

As a support gem this ability is quite useless, taking up socket space. Full life health in this game is something quite hard to maintain, especially for melee and tank like characters.

This ability should have been in the passive skill tree as a keystone or milestone (namely for the Marauder or the ranger class).
To me, unless you are ranged class this gem will hardly have any bearing on game-play.

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Fartfinder wrote:

As a support gem this ability is quite useless, taking up socket space. Full life health in this game is something quite hard to maintain, especially for melee and tank like characters.

This ability should have been in the passive skill tree as a keystone or milestone (namely for the Marauder or the ranger class).
To me, unless you are ranged class this gem will hardly have any bearing on game-play.

No this gem is great for Melee CI users. You either have full life or your dead. It is much easier to come by than the general melee damage support as well.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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Jozen wrote:

I have Blood Magic, use Lightning Strike and have a boatload of Life on Hit. How does this gem interact in this situation? Would my first hit, when I am on full life get the bonus?

You won't be on full life for your first hit, because you will have paid the cost of the spell, which with blood magic means you've lost some life.

So the extra damage calculates when the attack lands? If my regen is high enough to reach max when the attack lands, will it count?

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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Whoaness wrote:

So the extra damage calculates when the attack lands? If my regen is high enough to reach max when the attack lands, will it count?

No, in most cases the damage is calculated when the attack starts (this is because doing so allows time for the damage package to reach the client before the hit lands, so it can be displayed correctly).

Oh, so if I'm at full life when I use a skill with blood magic, +damage@full life should apply?