Melee Splash

i'm using infernal blow and melee splash, at around level 35 i'm doing 700dps, which is pretty good, but with the aoe being so small, (i have +12%) it is a struggle to compete in groups. a FP /LA build can do more damage to more targets and stand far away from them. this is WRONG.

this is a similar story to what other have said.

my 2id scrolls.

Either increase the AOE

OR

increase the damage by reducing the penalties.

the reason i say increase the damage is that even with poor aoe, it then rewards people to get more aoe passives and use other methods of increasing it.

again i will say something that has been said time and time again, i hope you are listening.

stop treating melee(as in toe-to-toe combat rather than pseudo melee aoe ala ground slam/LS)
like second class players. if i'm fighting on the frontlines, with the enemy in my face i should do more damage than a fairy throwing ice cubes from the safety of the back line.

some kind of armor penetration for actual melee damage, that does not apply to ground slam etc and does not apply to ele damage.

PS i don't care about physical crit effects and it seems the dev manifesto was pulled out of your ass.

PPS ;

notice i have not spent a penny on this game, yet, the reason being i'm waiting to see if you can correct the glaring balance issues, if not then this game will die and no amount of $10 glowy shit is going to help.

Does anyone know how the skill works with Lightning strike, does the initial melee hit apply splash or do the projectiles also add splash damage?

Hi there GGG,

After spending some time with a 11% Quality Melee Splash Gem, here is what I have to report back.

The gem is placed into a 5-linked Marohi Erqi, linked along with Infernal Blow, Fire Penetration, Blood Magic, and Weapon Elemental Damage.

My gear has some % increased elemental damage with weapons and by no means perfect. I am a Templar character on the DEFAULT league that has gotten the increased-area nodes as well as certain elemental damage nodes along the way.

I have made a video on my results for those who enjoy a more visual approach:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPVT7PpW03k

My results were that it was relatively effective for solo-based play, doing around 5.3k tooltip@Level 8 Melee Splash Gem. The rest of the gems are anywhere between level 17-18. Unfortunately my Marohi has a relatively low roll of 227%IPD.


I don't really any 'radius' or 'area' issues that people mentioned in this thread, although this is because of the Marohi's special effect. I would say if mob density is lacking, this skill tends to suffer quite a bit.

If I take off Blood Magic, my skill would cost around 95 mana per cast, which would make it rather impractical as my mana recovers at a rate no where near the expenditure of this skill.

Therefore the hit I take to my life pool will be 136 per hit.

A danger this skill might present would be it's weakness to Lightning Thorns or Elemental Reflect mobs, although this character doesn't have any critical strike chance due to Resolute Technique, it still is VERY dangerous to approach such mobs.

There were instances in which my life went down to around 200hp@73 Fire Resist due to using this skill on an entire pack of mobs with the elemental reflect aura@Level 62 zone, and had I not spammed my potions I would have surely lost hours worth of experience. This, might I also add would be considered very high risk for those of you that play on the Hardcore League.

In group play, you would lose some effectiveness due to low damage, but it could be mentioned that Infernal Blow's mechanics are based off of a mob's HP, therefore more testing will be required to conclude whether or not this is a viable spec in group play.

The Tradeoff:

My previous single target Infernal Blow hits for more than 14,000 damage per hit. To have my damage essentially go down over 63% is relatively...questionable when I can easily use any other AoE skill and hit for around the same damage.

Although this is a flashy skill, I'd say it lacks the incentives for it to be a viable use, due to heavy mana costs, high spec into radius nodes/equipment and very dangerous when used with elemental attacks.

Thanks and I apologize for this being very long, but hopefully people over at GGG can find this post useful.

I have a feeling that the Glacial Shatter from Splash have a bug and lower the drop chance. If someone else is playing with that build say something about it please. I usually gather 2-3 packs and sometimes 80/90% of the monsters get shattered, i wonder why just drop like 3-4 items when that happens, even with the high quantity. I've been testing with lower packs and play without frostbite to decrease the freeze+shatter and the drop rates are better. Maybe its a pure coincidence but i've testing this buid since the Splash patch release.

Build:
(2H Mace) Glacial Hammer 15% + Melee Splash 20% + Fast Attacks + WED + Melee Phys and Frostbite curse.

Does Melee Splash work with Concentrated effect?

Ie using the skill dual strike, support with with concentrated effect and melee splash?

Would this work, and would it work the the single target being hit or only for all other targets?

The range is already small, reducing it more would make it single target again.

You need a very sophisticated build in order for Melee Splash to be effective. The way I see it, there's actually very little incentive to use it unless you can make the size of the splash AoE to be around the same size as Sweep or Ground Slam. I mean...think about it, what can this gem do that Ground Slam or Sweep don't already do? In fact I would argue that it is more dangerous if you're running Glacial Hammer or Infernal Blow due to reflect mobs in higher level maps/content. I have yet to test out how effective Glacial Hammer is, but in theory you get a very effective "Culling Strike" provided you implement a consistent freeze on mobs.

In a previous post, my findings for this gem were exemplified in a video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPVT7PpW03k if you are interested.

Problem here is that Marohi gives a level 15 Increased AoE gem effect on Infernal Blow, as well as on the Melee Splash. On top of which I've also invested into the passive skill nodes that increase AoE radius/damage. I do plan to get a Carcass Jack, and will report back later.

Concentrated Effect would be a very interesting attempt to increase the damage of a skill provided you have somewhere near the splash area to make it still viable.

The damage penalty is very apparent, as I stated that I went from 14,000 damage per hit(single target) to around 6-7000(melee splash). In addition to stacking Infernal Blow, I effectively lose a very consistent way of leeching back health.

This is because of the lack of physical damage in my current spec(moved from Sweep to Infernal Blow w/Melee Splash). Some may argue that maybe I should put a Life Leech gem on to my 5L Marohi.

This is a viable option, but I would effectively lose out on even more damage. Taking into account that I have Infernal Blow-Fire Penetration-Melee Splash-Weapon Elemental Damage-Blood Magic.
Until I get a 6L, this probably won't be an option as I'll lose out on even more damage. Chances are I'll add Increased Melee Damage.

Hope you guys find my response useful. I feel this thread actually addresses a lot of the problems that people running melee specs are running into. Hopefully GGG can take this into consideration when they are developing ideas in relation to their Development Manifesto.

I know you don't hate melee GGG but it sure seems so.

I tried out a lot of specs with Splash in the last weeks on 2 duelists.
To be honest, the better build is Glacial Hammer, with a little more safe gameplay from freeze/shatter. Looks like a melee small freezing pulse.

I've been testing Glacial Hammer Splash on the main Duelist lvl83, since day 1 of Splash patch.

2H Mace
Templar Area nodes
Glacial Hammer 15% + Melee Splash 20% + Fast Attacks + WED + Melee Phys
(Add Fire with 6L or BM gem for Hatred aura)
Frostbite curse, or Enfeeble/Time Chains for harder situations
Grace, Anger, Wrath

The build is pretty safe, did maps until lvl74 (didnt dropped any higher in the last weeks), mainly solo and was fairly easy overall.

Splash is really bad without any quality, should have at least 10%, including the templar area nodes.

"

kchow123 wrote:

I mean...think about it, what can this gem do that Ground Slam or Sweep don't already do?

It can deliver my 80% chance dual daggers crits to the whole group. shocking, freezing, stunning but usually just shattering them :)
Dagger/claw users were very happy to get a form of aoe that get damage from both weapons.