A Major Discovery With Corpse Explosion

[Doc]

It occured to me not to long ago, after I completed the Trang's Set, that Necro had access to fire mastery. I sought to maximize this potential, at first, to make fire skill stronger. I wanted to make a functional fire mage that would actually put the fireball, meteor, and firewall to good use. So I started doing all I could to boost my fire skill damage. I socketed a fire facet into Trang's armor.

It also occured to me that Corpse Explosion is a fire skill. And it does fire damage. And it seemed safe to assume, at the time, that a single fire facet would improve that damage. It did. I noticed a needed fewer clicks to blow apart nightmare mobs with lower resist and CE. I waited patiently to achieve the level I needed to have fire mastery. When you have played the game as long as I have, you gain a "feel" for how you are doing in terms of damage. CE was getting stronger as I dumped more points into lower resist. Just the single facet alone made a somewhat noticeable difference in play.

With fire mastery, and lower resist brought up to -61%, the point where it stops dropping resists with every level added, I can say, people have gone about using CE as a damage application the wrong way.

With fire mastery from Trang's set, some fire skill boosters like Rising Sun ammy and a Spirit sword, CE has gone from being just plain deadly to down right disturbing. Anything not fire immune usually dies instantly from a single CE. In a game where I was testing my theory against Hell Andariel, I popped a corpse at her feet and took off 7/8ths of her life in a single click, dropping her all the way down to the "A" in the beginning of her name.

Sadly, I do not have the very best in gear. I have no Stones of Jordan to boost my fire skills even higher, I don't have every armor slot stuffed with fire facets, and I don't have a nice Heart of the Oak flail. I have made do on less. That said, what I do have provides just enough of boost to become truly deadly.

But why look into this you ask? Summoners are already way to strong, and CE is already a top notch skill... A little amp and CE will clear anything in a few clicks... This is true. I guess I did it to see what would happen. I was actually shocked when my idea actually worked, and worked a little to good. CE went from being swatting flies with a hammer to killing flies with a tactical nuke.

But Trang's full set is painfully slow while casting... Yes, yes it is. But I don't need to chain cast CE to clear the screen. Now, I only need to cast it once or maybe twice. So fast cast no longer as issue. When something is instantly fatal, you don't need fast cast. So the slow casting animation is not an issue you need to worry about.

[lfd]

Sadly, I do not have the very best in gear. I have no Stones of Jordan to boost my fire skills even higher, I don't have every armor slot stuffed with fire facets, and I don't have a nice Heart of the Oak flail.
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But you do have the full Trang-Oul set, which isn't exactly low-end. I don't see why this is either a major discovery or potentially game-changing; there's plenty of ways to deal large amounts of damage to one group of enemies whilst another group remain completely immune. Slap an infinity polearm on a mercenary for even more cheese.

[Occhidiangela]

It occured to me not to long ago, after I completed the Trang's Set, that Necro had access to fire mastery. I sought to maximize this potential, at first, to make fire skill stronger. I wanted to make a functional fire mage that would actually put the fireball, meteor, and firewall to good use. So I started doing all I could to boost my fire skill damage. I socketed a fire facet into Trang's armor.

It also occured to me that Corpse Explosion is a fire skill. And it does fire damage. And it seemed safe to assume, at the time, that a single fire facet would improve that damage. It did. I noticed a needed fewer clicks to blow apart nightmare mobs with lower resist and CE. I waited patiently to achieve the level I needed to have fire mastery. When you have played the game as long as I have, you gain a "feel" for how you are doing in terms of damage. CE was getting stronger as I dumped more points into lower resist. Just the single facet alone made a somewhat noticeable difference in play.

With fire mastery, and lower resist brought up to -61%, the point where it stops dropping resists with every level added, I can say, people have gone about using CE as a damage application the wrong way.

With fire mastery from Trang's set, some fire skill boosters like Rising Sun ammy and a Spirit sword, CE has gone from being just plain deadly to down right disturbing. Anything not fire immune usually dies instantly from a single CE. In a game where I was testing my theory against Hell Andariel, I popped a corpse at her feet and took off 7/8ths of her life in a single click, dropping her all the way down to the "A" in the beginning of her name.

Sadly, I do not have the very best in gear. I have no Stones of Jordan to boost my fire skills even higher, I don't have every armor slot stuffed with fire facets, and I don't have a nice Heart of the Oak flail. I have made do on less. That said, what I do have provides just enough of boost to become truly deadly.

But why look into this you ask? Summoners are already way to strong, and CE is already a top notch skill... A little amp and CE will clear anything in a few clicks... This is true. I guess I did it to see what would happen. I was actually shocked when my idea actually worked, and worked a little to good. CE went from being swatting flies with a hammer to killing flies with a tactical nuke.

But Trang's full set is painfully slow while casting... Yes, yes it is. But I don't need to chain cast CE to clear the screen. Now, I only need to cast it once or maybe twice. So fast cast no longer as issue. When something is instantly fatal, you don't need fast cast. So the slow casting animation is not an issue you need to worry about.
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Was this accomplished in high player count games, Doc? IIRC, Corpse Explosion does not scale up linearly in higher player count games, but my memory might not be clear on that.

Occhi

[bigeyedbug]

IIRC, Corpse Explosion does not scale up linearly in higher player count games, but my memory might not be clear on that. 

That's correct--the damage of CE does not scale up as #players increases.

[Zingydex]

Which in theory would make the case for taking advantage of the damage boost from Fire Mastery et al stronger in multiplayer games. The added wallop would reduce the discrepancy between monster life and your damage output, helping you kill more efficiently.

Of course in SP this same trick could make CE a tactical nuke instead of a land mine.