Need to:
- increase projectiles speed for skills, especially for Grenado;
- make projectiles speed constant, no matter of distance;
- make BWC and Grenado detonate on hit without delay;
- introduce different mines placement (triangle or another).
Can you please elaborate on exactly why the Melee Fire Strike is bad? The Brimstone should probably function as Blood Burst in melee(just release those shards as mini bombs as opposed to crimson PRMs), but apart from that…? Though I think they should just cut Static Strike out and make it end at ~32 pts into the tree. That make it cost 71pts as opposed to current 90(!). But then again, maxed Cadence is 80 pts too. And if we disregard the mastery progression, it’s 39 pts for FS vs 40 pts for Cad and 43 pts for Savage.
The biggest problem is that dead skill(Static) which serves nothing except to elongate the FS tree length.
edit: With that said, Demo doesn’t really need efficiency buffs, he needs comfort / ease of life buffs. Basically, he needs to get modernized.
Melee FS is just bad because the damage is just not there. Even with Nightblade’s WPS. Fire Strike is great with Inquisitor’s WPS procing Brimstone and shotgunning the whole screen, but in melee is just a weak-ish auto-attack, not much better than Beronath Strikes.
Though, is it really weak? And what can be done about it? Cadence is meh outside the third strike and Savage is meh until you attack three times. I fully agree that Brimstone should act differently than it does right now in melee, but it’s fine. You’ll just need to use it as a Single Target skill and trust AoE to some other skill.
Melee fire strike is weak because essentially you get a ~120% weapon damage basic attack with some bonus flat damage. If you try it and cadence on the same character like I did once, the difference is like night and day. Fire strike should be used in all ranged builds, but for melee I honestly prefer a shard of beronath, it’s barely weaker and it doesn’t cost a ton of skill points.
The only Demolitionist active skill that reliably starts doing something within 1 second of the cast is Fire Strike. Flashbang, BWC, Grenado and Canister Bomb do so only in close quarters, and Bomb doesn’t do the bulk of it’s damage until about 1.5 seconds after the 1st impact…
My biggest gripe with Demo is using the Mines. Feels like the only way to use them reliably is to cast them at least 2 seconds prior to the fight, aggro the target and position yourself so that the enemy will hopefully be standing on one of the mines. And even when you get them to work they are subject to incoming enemy damage and may need to be recast sooner than much more reliable skills need to be.
Having to (re)cast in melee usually means you have to cast them a little to the side and then reposition in front. If you don’t, chances are the mines will bounce off the enemy you want to apply RR on. Every time you need to reposition you would need to cast the mines again if the RR is needed.
I’d really like to see projectile velocity increases, mainly the deployment speed of the mines, so that Demolitionist feels more reliable. More radius on the mines or a guaranteed deployment pattern would also be welcome, I doubt that a bit more than a 10% increase in radius will make them feel comfortable to use.
The largest problems with the Demolitionist are IMO:
- Usability: While Termite Mines takes the dishonorable place as the worst -rr skill that still works on bosses, other skill such as Grenado and BWC are also rather awkward to use due being projectile based.
Suggested Fixes:
For termite Mines Increase its initial projectile speed and either:
a) Make the Mines Invulnerable to damage + increase the radius to 3(or even 4)
b) Make them explode on contact(for a small amount of damage) and release burning cloud that debuffs mobs that are in it + make it lingers for like 3-5 sec.
For other skills simply increasing the projectile speed of all projectile based skills by a large amount should do much to fix the problems.
- A lack of passives: the Demolitionist has the least amount of passive/buff skills (for this I count wps as passives) of any mastery by far. Due to this many demolitionist builds are lacking stats and synergy compared to other masteries.
The BWC and Flashbang OA/DA debuffs are also of the variety that does not stack, which with the introduction of the rune augments makes them lose a fair bit of their value.
Suggested Fixes: change the Flashbang and BWC OA/DA debuffs to the stackable variety. In addition add more stats to the passives it has. Such as health, stun res, pierce or physical resistance to Temper/vindictive flame.
Increase weapon damage or make Brimstone act like it acts with ranged FS (not sure if it’s possible). Savagery gets 4-5 charges in 1,5 seconds, Cadence hits like a truck every second and charges your char with mad flat. Melee Fire Strike does neither of those things and requires metric tonn of points to be on the level of beronath strikes.
Can we make a beronath & sacred strikes demolitionst build? 
I agree on the weaknesses of melee fire strike, but I doubt much if anything will be done. It’s already the best auto attack for ranged builds, increasing the values will make it too strong I fear. It’s probably by design, this melee weakness. Just like ranged cadence isn’t the best. If one skill does both, what’s the point of having the other(s)?
I don’t quite understand why armor was removed either. Reducing the potency of the armor boost because of the large DA addition would have been acceptable but total removal greatly undermines the intended buff. I guess it is situational whether armor is more valuable than DA but I don’t like the change as it is.
Remember the thread about giving Angrim competition? A thread like this will only result in nerfing Beronath Shard to the ground! Thread carefully! :eek:
I am still angry with you because of that!!
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Better solution is to summon mines just like totems.
Beronath strikes are CRAP they need buff!!!
I just realized that crate only increase mines radius by a measly 0.2 m.
My God. This skill may as well be omitted from the game if crate doesn’t even want to fix it.
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Yeah I thoguth it was 2meters and thought WOW finally useful… but then I put on my goggles :rolleyes:
The area of effect is clearly not going to change by much more and I don’t mind this. What severely limits thermite mines usefulness is the targeting; they rebound off bosses you target so they don’t even get affected by the mines. I’ve also heard the mines get destroyed by AoE quite easily. If those two things are fixed I would have no problem with thermite mines.
Just make them like Widow Mines from starcraft and have them move and stuff 
Moving and firing mines,that sound cool.:DI mean there are rocks in one hidden area, which are following you and attacking,on top of that can’t be targeted,so no problem.But still feel they should explode on contact and affect all enemies in certain radius,similar effect to inq runes.