It wouldn’t be the first time a skill node didn’t have any effect beyond the first point.
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Most of the answers remain rather vague.
→ HEAVY is probably the closest with the following statement:
That doesn’t seem complete enough to me, is that really all there is to say?
→ Does @EHG possibly still have one or the other little word to say about it? 
How is it incomplete?All of the player damage, be it flat, increased or more is added to the ballista at the relevant % (so if you had 100 flat damage & 3 points in the node, the ballista would get +45 flat damage).
When “Your damage also applies to your Ballista” means only “flat”, “increased” and “more” like Heavy stated it is ok. Thanks then. 
I would have guessed that at least attack speed (for example, from “Draining Arrows”?) could also be included.
Do “Lethal Cadence”, “Coated Blades”, “Concentration”, “Sharpshooter”, the damage of “Ethereal Arrows” and a few other, not yet mentioned passives also count?
EDIT: Such things are what i meant with “what exactly”. 
Stuff like “Conentration” and “Sharpshooter” does work, since it’s giving your character damage, which is shared. (But it is snapshotted when you summon the ballista)
“Coated Blades” and “Ethereal Arrows” is not working, since it’s not granting your character damage.
Well that’s another mystery solved.
Too bad it also means the scaling was 100% and now I’ll have to spend another 2 points just to get 45%.
I thought most people considered the Ballista to already be on the weak side and not worth using, so this is kind of a hard blow. But I still plan on trying to make it work, got some ideas.
I think the ballista is really powerfull, even with out that node.
The issue with ballista is IMO, you can just make it either a singletarget skill or a AoE clear skill.
Which basically removes it as a “main skill option”.
But it’s an excellent support skill.
The only way to fully utilize Ballista as a main dmg skill was a minion rogue, which worked waytoo good lolz. (Reach Of The Grave + Death Rattle + the 100% shared crit + 100% crit multi node is insane)
Ballista is also great for poison stacking, 100k dps per ballista, down to now 45000. not bad. But I dont think i’ll ever play rogue for a minion build again until Falconeer comes out.
I tried Reach of the Grave but it reduced their damage by a ridiculous amount compared to using a bow (~90%) and Death Rattle doesn’t fit because I need another amulet. It appears the player damage scaling only works when a bow is equipped, which is silly since it hinders throwing skill synergy.
There’s a node for applying Acid Flask, and Acid Flask’s bee summoning idol is pretty much the only other way of getting minions on a Rogue through skill usage (not counting uniques).
Something about slightly gimmicky/odd skills just makes me want to build around them for the sake of seeing how far they can be pushed.
But it’s probably far from ideal until Falconeer.
All of this with the Shared Enhancements Node i guess? it makes sense, since the Ballista is using Bow attacks, that’s why it doesn’t scale with your melee weapon damage, if you have one equipped.
As you pointed out, that node got fixed/nerfed, but if you don’t even use that noe Reach Of The Grave is still a decent item, especially with how early oyu can use it.
What other amulet did you used? I mean there are several ways to build a very simialr build. But my ballista minion hit build was insanely strong.
Death Rattle was also just nerfed for anyone but Necromancer.
Yes and no. It simply states “player damage”, and from my short testing not even global bonuses affected the player > Balista scaling unless you were wielding a bow. And again, it’s also an issue of needlessly pigeonholing the node in a certain direction when it already has some synergy with throwing skills.
I’ll tell you in a few days after testing the build some more (stopped after reaching monolith cause of impending update) since it’s probably going to get patched once I do.
Turqouise Rings do have up to 35% Minion Crit Multi now, so it’s just a slight nerf overall.
There are 3 different nodes that make your Ballista scale with different player stats.
Nodes like this should be specific, so you can build around them.
The nodes doesn’t only work if you wielding a bow, if you discovered a scenario like that that’s most likely a bug.
The main thing is probably because a bow gives your Ballsita tons of flat base dmg, so all the % increases have a greater effect.
Ah you’re right, I was happy upon seeing that specifically for this Ballista build.
I might be mistaken as the testing wasn’t super extensive, it was just quite the shock to see such a huge drop in damage when Reach of the Grave seemed very well suited for the build.
Thinking back, I also assumed the node was not bugged and granted the Ballista 15% of my damage, which should have made the base bow damage much less relevant.
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It’s still a nerf for a necro.
That’s because the Ballista uses a bow attack, so the 45% of your melee damage will do precisely nothing to the Ballista’s bow attack. I’m not sure I’d call it “needlessly pigeonholing” though since the only way to get bow damage is by equipping a bow. Would you expect to be able to do lots of damage with Detonating Arrow if you had a melee weapon equipped?
You can argue that the node should state that it applies player bow damage.
Going from up to 200% crit multi to up to 135% crit multi is a reduction of almost 1/3, that’s a fairly sizeable nerf. Though given the base is 200%, it’s “only” ~16% in real terms (less so if you have other sources of minion crit multi & I can’t see any of those on the Necro passive tree.
You can equip 2x that ring,(which many summoner probably do), so you end up with up to 170% Minion Crit Multi
My assumption was that it didn’t scale with any player damage if not wielding a bow because I did tests thinking that the node applied 15% of my damage, not 100%.
Knowing that, I think it’s more reasonable but it should absolutely state “bow and global damage”, or something to that effect.
10 int can go pretty far for boosting minion damage and an extra skill point is very valuable. Though it’s most definitely a nerf if you don’t intend on using Sacrifice.
But that’s a ring, not the unique amulet. The presence of the ring does go some way to offsetting the loss of crit multi but then you’d have to give up the up to 36% elemental resists from using 2 gold rings. If you ignore everything else, it’s a ~17% nerf in real terms.
It may well be adding 15% of your melee damage if you have a melee weapon equipped but since the Ballista doesn’t do melee damage that’s not going to do anything.
Yeah, though given Necros can easily get up to 80-90 Int & would probably have a good ~500-800% increased damage in total, that +40% increased isn’t a particularly big thing incrementally IMO.
Sorry for being a dick but now that I need to spend a total of 5 more skill points for 55% less PC scaling I just lost most of my motivation to (ab)use this peculiarity.
Gambler’s Falacy.
The Ballista is based on your current stats upon creation. Minion crits don’t count as your crits.
There you go, 100% crit chance Ballista with no other investment other than an amulet slot and the PC > Ballista crit chance/multi scaling.
Someone direct me towards the “voluntary tester” assistant so I can get a transfer of good boy points into my account. Thanks.
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I really mistook this thing for “increased”; and not “more”.
→ Who can read is mostly clearly at an advantage.
Thanks for that!
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