Ice Spear and Added Lightning Damage Question

If I link added light to my ice spear everytime ice spear crits (whether it be first or second form), added light will also crit correct?

Yes, there's no reason to use added lightning damage to any skill on any build whatsoever, however.

What? Why no reason?

Surely if ice spear crits (with it's 600% more chance in form 2) with added lightning damage it'll give the mob(s) a shock stack which increases all damage you so to them by 40%?

@Fluttershypony I will bite.

I use a 5L in my chest to cast ice spear. Currently I run Spear-GMP-totem-FastCast-Cold pen. I run elemental equlibrium and my main dmg dealer is Fireball. If I switch to added light over cold pen, everytime it crits with the massive ice spear crit rate I get 40% more dmg on my fireball. It's possible in a spell totem I will not do enough damage for 1% of total health in which case you would be correct. With -59% lower rez from elemental weakness, and a -50% from elemental equilibrium on my fireball hits, plus 20% shock duration from 20% gem...and 45% from static shocks (up there for serpent stance)...I think I will be able to pull off the 1% for the 40% buff on my FB.

I'm theorycrafting for more damage...If I'm wrong you'll save me a couple exalts.

If mobs(non map boss) actually live long enough to get shocked, your killing speed is beyond atrocious.

The only exception is lightning arrow, due to MP and chain(plus being innately lightning based) 1 "cast" of this spell will hit 9 times with maybe .01 second intervals, so you actually stack shock up before your first attack even ends it's damage calculation.

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Fluttershypony a écrit :

If mobs(non map boss) actually live long enough to get shocked, your killing speed is beyond atrocious.

Translation: You're supposed to one hit everything, nubcake! LOLz

Now, one logical reason the added lightning damage may not be worthwhile is that the debuff length for the shock is based on the damage done when the debuff was applied. In this case, if it *only* calculates the lightning part of the damage done and not the skill's damage as a whole, it may add the shock debuff but for a VERY short timeframe.

I'm playing with added lightning damage on my frost nova on a high cast speed/crit chance witch, in the hopes that even if the shock debuff lasts less than a second I should have landed a second frost nova in that time frame.

I did not post to argue relavancy of gems so I'll steer away from that. Also thanks for answering my question Flutter.

@poster above me
To add to leonvision's post, with that "Chance to Shock", the game will roll for shock every time that supported skill deals lightning damage (a.k.a. every time it hits). However, as the added lightning damage gem has a low amount of damage, you will not shock every time that rolls (because you have to deal 1.087% of the creature's max health). So to make that actually work, they added the "added shock duration" which increases the time your shock is potentially on the enemy, also reducing the amount of damage you need to deal to hit the shock threshold.

Example: you hit with an attack/spell supported by this, but you get a low roll, and you only deal 3 lightning damage. The creature has 330 HP. You only dealt 0.91% of its max health, not enough to actually get that shock to stick. However, if you have 20% increased Shock duration, your shock duration comes to over 300 ms, because you "count" as if you dealt 1.09% of its max health.

So both parts of that quality are important.

I found this very informative while looking around the forums. I talked myself into going with added light, when all is said and done I'll only have to deal ~.66 total health percent on crit to shock which will be hard not to do with -110% rez and 500% crit multiplier.

P.S. I already 1shot rares, I'm theorycraftin poppin Righteous Fire, Ruby Flask and 1shottin some bosses.

i'd like to add there are other ways to increase the reliability of shocking with added lightning damage gem. there's spell damage which overall increases the damage of the whole spell, thus increasing the shock duration (and the chance of passing the threshold of shocking). another way is to keep damage effectiveness at a reasonable range, ice spears with GMP arguable has much less chance of shocking that one with LMP, because of their reduced damage 70%(LMP) effectiveness vs 50%(GMP) effectiveness. also, in regard of LMP and GMP, it's possible to "shotgun" all 3 projectiles of LMP icespears IN 2ND FORM, while that's impossible for GMP.

as for people saying the damage done by added lightning damage is weak and will not reliably shock, let me lay some numbers on you. a lvl20 icespear does 157–235(avg 196), while a lvl20 added lightning damage gem does 5–101(avg 53) lightning damage. if we take the averages, added lightning damage adds roughly 25% damage, which is significant enough for shocking in most cases. but if we do not take avg and take extreme end of the spectrum, say if we roll lowest cold damage and highest lightning damage, that's roughly 66% additional damage of lightning. rolling lowest lightning damage will obviously be negligible.

but wait, we forgot about crits. since we're talking about icespear in this thread, lets say in the perfect(and pretty common) scenario of at the right range to shotgun all 3 projectile of 2nd form icespear. even without anything that boosts critchance/damage, we are rolling 49%critchance for 150%damage 3 times per cast, if any of those shocks, the other 2 projectile will get atleast 40%damage bonus. now imagine me doing this with a crit build with 90~100%critchance 2nd form icespear, a huge crit multiplier(500%is pretty achieveable, though risky for reflect mob). if done right, this will almost gurantee a 3shock stacked mob in one cast of LMP icespear. with that much crit multiplier(and most likely spell damage from gear) the shock will most likely last a considerable duration. if im applying 3shock stacks per cast and be able to maintain the 120% damage bonus, that sounds like reliable shocking with icespear+added lightning damage to me and a pretty good bonus from it. does that sound negligible to you?

edit: i would like to remind you stacking that much damage, critdamage, spell damage and shock stack will most likely kill white mobs in one hit or cast, the shock stacking is more useful for champion/bosses. as for keeping them at optimal range so you can shotgun 2nd form of icespear, the crit and freezing of icespear really helps.

The shock chance doesn't mean anything at all since ice spear should 2-3 shot most mobs anyway if you set your char up properly (not sure it will with the wasted gem slot for lightning damage instead of actually good gems).

You'll spend 5% of your time fighting bosses, what a waste.

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Fluttershypony a écrit :

The shock chance doesn't mean anything at all since ice spear should 2-3 shot most mobs anyway if you set your char up properly (not sure it will with the wasted gem slot for lightning damage instead of actually good gems).

You'll spend 5% of your time fighting bosses, what a waste.

take it as you will, but keep in mind, this game rewards experimentation, trying out different combos, maybe one day you will find a use for that gem as well. try not to be so conclusive about it.