I’ve been thinking about melee builds using Fire Strike as the main attack and have generally come up short, which makes me wonder what the transmuters are really for.
While Fire Strike is really cool and (to my understanding) hits twice when dual wielding and proccing the ‘both’ attack, along with have a great proc chance for any devotions due to explosive strike AOE, that’s about where it ends.
It doesn’t work with WPS (since WPS replaces the default auto and therefore fire strike), it doesn’t do enough direct damage (Cadence will always outshine it), none of the other modifiers apply to the explosive strike radius, and brimstone is severely gimped for melee.
Really, the tree only looks good for dual wield ranged (focus on magic damage). Please correct me if I’m wrong on any of these or if I’m missing something.
Ok, so if that post is correct and Fire Strike stacks with WPS, doesn’t that lead to some potentially goofy scenarios like quintuple procs? Example:
Fire strike
Explosive strike + devotion = high chance to proc nearly any devotion due to AoE
WPS
WPS assigned devotion proc (yes it’s % x %) can still proc deceptively high if you assign it to an AoE WPS. Example - whirling death + tsunami. 20% x 35% = 7% but if you hit say 4 targets it’s 28% and gets even wonkier. Let’s say you’re at 3aps so that’s a 3 x .2 = 60% proc chance every second. Am I wrong/right? Or is it 3 x .2 x .28 (4 targets and individual checks)?
‘Chance on attack’ - anything on gear. To my knowledge only one of these can proc at a time? Or can we go even further and get potentially more than 5 procs in a single hit?
Ok, I can confirm 100% that WPS does not replace Fire Strike on proc (it doubles up, along with whatever Devotion is applied to FS). Easy way to test. Use low APS DW setup (~2aps) + 20% Belgothian’s + Bull Rush assigned to Fire Strike. The cast animation for WPS is pretty slow at this rate and it hits at exactly the same time as Bull Rush procs. This is sick - I’m giddy!
As far as i know wps do not replace Fire Strike. They actually stack upon each other.
Brimstone is not really gimped for melee since it still gets the full flat damage of the skill and melee doesn’t really need the splintering effect ranged gets from Brimstone because Explosive Strike already has aoe.
I do think they overnerfed it but at the same time i can see why. Fire Strike was the best LMB for both single target damage and aoe for a little while.
I made sure I wasn’t receiving any Fire damage from other sources on my DW Firestrike Saboteur and it sure looks to me like Fire damage is carrying over when Belgothian Shears strikes home. And even if it didn’t do that, DW melee Firestrike is a total beast.
Ok, so if that post is correct and Fire Strike stacks with WPS, doesn’t that lead to some potentially goofy scenarios like quintuple procs? Example:
Fire strike
Explosive strike + devotion = high chance to proc nearly any devotion due to AoE
WPS
WPS assigned devotion proc (yes it’s % x %) can still proc deceptively high if you assign it to an AoE WPS. Example - whirling death + tsunami. 20% x 35% = 7% but if you hit say 4 targets it’s 28% and gets even wonkier. Let’s say you’re at 3aps so that’s a 3 x .2 = 60% proc chance every second. Am I wrong/right? Or is it 3 x .2 x .28 (4 targets and individual checks)?
‘Chance on attack’ - anything on gear. To my knowledge only one of these can proc at a time? Or can we go even further and get potentially more than 5 procs in a single hit?
It’s possible but unlikely. Firing your quad-laser will happen every now and then, but it’ll hardly ever happen when you really need it to. Sure you can wipe out huge packs of white mobs, but who cares? White mobs are made of paper. Fighting a boss means one target for a few minutes (generally) and that means sad percentages.
Why does it mean sad percentages? If you extrapolate to at least 80% WPS + 3aps (both attainable by default), that’s a lot of procs. Or does it just not stand up to the Cadence overlord?
Cadence average to 270% weapon damage per hit after each 3 hits. Firestrike with Explosive strike deal 160% weapon damage per hit. There is a 110% weapon damage difference and that’s a lot.
Firestrike is much better at AOE but for single target it’s nothing close to Cadence
When it comes to default weapon attack for melee in this state of the game noting can beat cadence. Not just because of power of attack, % weapon dmg component, DM and flat dmg numbers, but also because Cadence is gear vise by far most supported, with proper gear you can easily get cadence on 26/16 with 5 pts investment. Almost every other piece of gear for every slot has + cadence on it.
Check your calculation I think you didn’t calculated it right.
Yes, Fire Strike (and the similar Savagery) can be an awesome melee skill if you build around it properly. I tend to attach Bull Rush to Fire Strike (or Savagery) on melee characters for some extra (AoE) damage early on. Seems to scale pretty well into later game but…I usually get bored by the time I get to snoretimate.
yes, though Fire Strike and Savagery aren’t procs…they just add damage to your basic attacks.
I don’t think devotions work that way. Could be wrong, but I think the game rolls when you attack, not roll the number of times equal to Explosive Strike’s hit count. (Someone correct me if this is wrong please / or confirm, either way)
yes
yes, but you’d have to be okay with the attached devotion skill being “just extra”. relying on a WPS is a bad idea, and relying on a proc within a proc is even worse.
yes, plus what Ceno said (so you can potentially activate a ton of procs at once with the right gear on)
Regarding #2 I’m 99.99% certain it works this way, i.e. proc chance scales per target. If you have a 25% chance on hit and you hit 4 targets, over time you will approach 100% proc rate on 4 targets. If someone can prove me wrong, please do. My evidence is purely anecdotal, but from many hours of using bull rush with blade arc + laceration it pops off nonstop.
Ok, I can confirm 100% that WPS does not replace Fire Strike on proc (it doubles up, along with whatever Devotion is applied to FS). Easy way to test. Use low APS DW setup (~2aps) + 20% Belgothian’s + Bull Rush assigned to Fire Strike. The cast animation for WPS is pretty slow at this rate and it hits at exactly the same time as Bull Rush procs. This is sick - I’m giddy!
You’re 99.99% sure with anecdotal evidence? :rolleyes:
Yeah, Bull Rush is going to activate frequently if you attach it to a spammable skill. It has a 25% chance to activate on a low cooldown (0.5s), so you should expect it to proc on ~ 1 out of every 4 attacks.
WPS skills should be able to activate more often since they’re not on a cooldown…
Theoretically when looking only cooldowns yes, but practically in vast majority of cases no because of different mechanic for WPS and most procs.
Most proc have per target chance to go off (if you hit more target for most procs chance to be activated will be basic chance per target, so two target two times chance to proc, 3 targets 3 times chance to proc, etc - Note: Im saying most procs cuz some do not work like that)
WPS have chance of activating per attack regardless of how many targets will be hit by that attack (because WPSs weight comes before attack is committed, in other words game decide weather will some WPS be used or not before that particular attack is committed).
I hope things I wrote are understandable, couldn’t find better words to try to explain :o
No, was perfectly understandable.
To be honest, I have read about that WPS mechanic before and forgot it somehow. Thanks for the mechanical insides again.
I guess the old DM Weapon procs w/o CD worked like the procs which are calculated by hitting enemies and that was one of the reasons why they procced all the time.
Ok I should clarify - Devotion procs ‘chance on attack’ scales with number of targets hit by the skill it’s bound to.
So if you assign Bull Rush to Fire Strike and you have Explosive Strike (which has AoE) and that attack hits 4 targets, it’s a near 100% chance to proc Bull Rush.
You’ll see a noticeable difference when whacking one target vs. several at a time.
You can also see this with a dot AoE + no cooldown proc. Example: Grasping Vines + Imp/Aetherfire (15% chance on attack, no cooldown). If you hit multiple targets (very easy with this skill due to its radius), you’ll notice Aetherfire going off several times from a single cast.
Check this out, around 1:58 you’ll see a single cast with multiple procs: https://youtu.be/lEXisyY37ns?t=1m55s (another example with PRM). Procs 3 times with a single cast (looks like the ‘attack check’ occurs with every target/pierce).
