Does splitting steal explosion benefit from projectile damage?

Does splitting steal explosion benefit from projectile damage?

Anyone know for sure if yes or no it applies to the explosion damage?

Ive seen many builds on poeninja that uses eye to eye and repeater cluster passives. Those give increased projectile damage. And those builds are hella expensive so i wonder if that really applies to the aoe overlap of splitting steel or are all those guys just using useless passives?