To correct myself here, Brimstone is both a buff to FS (the flat damage) aswell as a “standalone” skill (the projectiles), afaik.
Indeed, depends a lot on the build and its conversion.
It’s a buff for melee builds, projectile for range builds. The main target doesn’t get hit by it with range weapons. And can’t lifesteal from it because it has no WD. That I’m sure 
Hmmm, you sure about that?
Yeah I asked Z a while ago in a thread that I couldn’t find right now. And also I leveled a Purifier with range weapons recently and didn’t saw it’s affect on main target. But in these topics I can never be %100 sure because I never made a controlled environment test with grim internals, gdstash or mods etc.
Panetti Proliferation hits main target, pretty sure Brimstone does too.
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found it!
just tested it again with a 1 - 0 - 0 - 0 fire strike compared to a 1 - 0 - 0 - 12 firestrike. Second one deals like 3 times the damage vs dummy (main target).
The buff part of Brimstone works just like Static Strike and it works the same way for melee and ranged. The projectiles that come on top do not hit the first target and only work on ranged.
edit: Brimstone *and Proliferation are a little unique (and confusing) in this regard as they are a buff and a proc skill on top in one single node
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not unique, Proliferation is the same 
and for both the damage is converted by skill modifiers only for the main target. For additional projectiles you need global conversion. Also additional projectiles don’t change their look / colors by skill modifiers 
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‘‘Brimstone is a secondary effect that launches fragments at nearby enemies. It has no interaction with the base damage of Fire Strike. Each fragment only deals the damage listed on the tooltip. As it has no % Weapon damage, it does not leech.’’
This is the Z’s sentence. And since I never really played range I thought brimstone only launches off from main target and hits nearby enemies. I just leveled range FS for a while to experiment with purifier and didn’t really see brimstone flat added to single target damage but If you tested it, then I’m clearly mistaken and I trust your judgment.
Zantai is only referring to the projectile part of brimstone here, not the buff part. Brimstone has both parts.
There’s a reason every FS demo tries to rush and max brimstone like asap as it provides both insane single target aswell as aoe dmg.
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i think stupid dragon goes over this in his deep explanation of secondary effects and projectile fragmentation (or whatever it was called)
tho seems like he too is only talking about the actual projectile spawns and not the main hit 
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