nice abuse of vaal molten shell :)

Penetration reduces the current Resistance (after Max Resist is determined) of the target, be it 0% or over-capped, it will ALWAYS have an effect.

Curses on the other hand, subtract from the targets total Resistances (before Max Resist is determined), doing nothing if the mob is significantly over-capped, while still being able to lower a targets Resistance below 0%, and even potentially stacking with Penetration in some cases.


35% Penetration vs a Mob with 75% Resistance, makes their Resistance treated as 40%, be they over-capped or not.
A Mob with 0% Resistance, -35%.


That's the way it has always been, and the Wiki is correct.
Or you can wait for Vipermagi to confirm it, but he will say the same thing. :P

And the word of Vipermagi, is gospel. ~.^


Penetration, in the worst case, is a 1.35x multiplier, and potentially a lot more in the best case, and unlike Concentrated Effect it doesn't have the downside of reducing the AoE by a significant amount, thus REQUIRING the use of IncAoE on most Skills if you don't want a loss of quality of life..

<3 Penetration. (inb4 "That's what she said!" :P)

do vaal gems replenish souls when in off set of weapons? If so that'd be nice to have 6link there for mobs; map running. Then main set for single target boss killing. Would increase efficiency. Would be neat

Explain your strategy, original poster. Do you just keep casting molten shell and run around until it price? I recently vaal orbed a bunch of level 20 gems and one of them turned into a level 20 vaal molten shell.

Post your build etc so the rest of us can try it out.

Well you can't just think about pure damage when it comes to using a vaal skill as your main skill.

Here's what I'd do if i wanted to attempt to maintain 100% vaal shell uptime:

1. vaal molten shell
2. increased duration
3. Chance to ignite
4. Ele proliferation
5. Fire Penetration
6. Increased AoE


you need ignite/ele proliferation/increased AoE in order to kill mobs reliablly, This is because it can sometimes be a challenge to get hit by mobs when you're whizzing by at top speed. this also takes advantage of 20% quality molten shell's innate 30% chance to ignite...

Without burn proliferation and inc AoE your molten shell would be too small to kill mobs outside of your immediate area. This is bad because it forces you to run to each individual mob and stand there until they hit you (and die). You'd lose too much time and would not kill enough mobs to refesh molten shell.

I use vaal molten shell all the time btw, it is already amazing damage without conc.effect or fire penetration

You can have Molten Shell and Vaal Molten Shell up at the same time, no?

And I still think Life Leech is an amazing Support on Vaal Molten Shell. You get hit, you get healed.

Question: Does Vaal Molten Shell proc when you Block an attack?

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Agashi a écrit :

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Natharias a écrit :

I just posted that Fire Penetration would come second in that list, just after Concentrated Effect.

As to the chance to ignite, any fire damage has a chance to ignite a target, and if even one target caught fire then the rest would too. This is why you have Elemental Proliferation in place instead of Chance to Ignite or Critical Strikes. So what if half of them catch fire? It only takes one to light the entire room up with EP.

The problem is Vaal Molten Shell is very unlikely to ignite(unless you have chance to ignite passive/support or a very high crit chance) it only has 1 chance to crit every time you cast it, it does not roll crit every time it deals damage, but only once right when you cast it. I have never seen it crit in the weeks I have been using it. So unless you have passive ignite/are also using the chance to ignite support gem, Ele Prolif is a complete waste.

I never mentioned crit nor intended to.

Either way, if you want to truly take advantage of Vaal Molten Shell, you would use Flammability. This has a 10-14% chance to ignite each individual target.

10-14% chance for the entire room to catch fire.

or...

25-44%, or 35-68% chance for each individual target to catch fire. The higher chance includes Flammability.

Assuming there is one target, the Chance to Ignite gem will be much better, but that wastes a lot of the gem's built in AoE, since Molten Shell does much better against groups of monsters.

However, if there are three or more monsters, Elemental Proliferation is infinitely better than Chance to Ignite. I'd like to hear your thought process on why Elemental Proliferation is a "complete waste".

Chance to Ignite is the gem that is wasteful, especially if you're using Flammability.

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Natharias a écrit :

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Agashi a écrit :

"

Natharias a écrit :

I just posted that Fire Penetration would come second in that list, just after Concentrated Effect.

As to the chance to ignite, any fire damage has a chance to ignite a target, and if even one target caught fire then the rest would too. This is why you have Elemental Proliferation in place instead of Chance to Ignite or Critical Strikes. So what if half of them catch fire? It only takes one to light the entire room up with EP.

The problem is Vaal Molten Shell is very unlikely to ignite(unless you have chance to ignite passive/support or a very high crit chance) it only has 1 chance to crit every time you cast it, it does not roll crit every time it deals damage, but only once right when you cast it. I have never seen it crit in the weeks I have been using it. So unless you have passive ignite/are also using the chance to ignite support gem, Ele Prolif is a complete waste.

I never mentioned crit nor intended to.

Either way, if you want to truly take advantage of Vaal Molten Shell, you would use Flammability. This has a 10-14% chance to ignite each individual target.

10-14% chance for the entire room to catch fire.

or...

25-44%, or 35-68% chance for each individual target to catch fire. The higher chance includes Flammability.

Assuming there is one target, the Chance to Ignite gem will be much better, but that wastes a lot of the gem's built in AoE, since Molten Shell does much better against groups of monsters.

However, if there are three or more monsters, Elemental Proliferation is infinitely better than Chance to Ignite. I'd like to hear your thought process on why Elemental Proliferation is a "complete waste".

Chance to Ignite is the gem that is wasteful, especially if you're using Flammability.

I didn't say Chance to Ignite was better than EP, I said, EP needs a chance to ignite (passive or from the support yes I left out Flammability on accident). The whole point I've been trying to make is that Fire Penetration is better than EP.

Of course if you are using flammability you'll have a chance to ignite, I miss worded my statement slightly "passive ignite" should have just been "ignite chance".

So some quick math to show why I say Fire Pen is better than Ele Prolif for Vaal Molten Shell.

Both cases using Flammability, because if you're going to use it for one you'd be silly not to use it for the other.

10000 base damage per proc vs 75 resist (flammability -49% res) (fire pen -35% resist)

EP(vs 26% res) 7400 + 1480 damage per second over 4 seconds(5920 damage)

FP(vs -9% res) 10900 (+ possible ignite damage)

EP 1 proc = 13,320 damage (total over 4 seconds)
FP 1 proc = 10,900 damage
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Lets say you get 4 procs a second (this is a really low number)
EP 4 procs = 37000 damage (over 5 seconds if you get 5 ticks of ignite)
FP 4 procs = 43600 damage (+ possible ignite damage)

For each proc after the first FP will add more damage to Vaal Molten shell over the duration.

And I'll let you do the math for curse immune targets.
The above numbers also assume that with EP you proc ignite every time VMS deals damage, which the less targets available the less often that will happen.


That's how I see it, and that's why I say Fire Pen is better, I may have exaggerated about EP being "useless" but I was making that statement assuming no ignite chance. With ignite chance, EP does add damage, however, FP adds more, in any situation where VMS procs more than 1 time.

In any situation where, ignite is being spread to targets that are somehow not taking the initial damage, simply moving and allowing VMS with FP to hit those targets as well is going to do more damage. Also I find that most targets are dead in under 4 seconds as it is, so you're losing a lot of ignite damage.

Also as other people have mentioned, Fire Pen is better than conc effect as well.

Anyway now I'm rambling.

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Agashi a écrit :

In any situation where, ignite is being spread to targets that are somehow not taking the initial damage, simply moving and allowing VMS with FP to hit those targets as well is going to do more damage. Also I find that most targets are dead in under 4 seconds as it is, so you're losing a lot of ignite damage.

Also as other people have mentioned, Fire Pen is better than conc effect as well.

Anyway now I'm rambling.

of course damage is important, but if you have to move near every target you want to kill you will not get enough kills within the duration of one vaal molten shell to proc it again. EP+chance to ignite spreading burn is essential to using it as a main skill which is the whole reason of putting it in a 6L in the first place.

If you were just putting it in a 4L to use occasionally then you would be more concerned about the damage to individual targets and could argue one vs the other.