Flow/ Pulse with Decoy

[anbiuiwop]

I am trying to make a build that revolves around exploding Decoy. I wanted to try Flow + Pulse on Decoy, so build up 4 stacks and then throw Decoy, but nothing seems to happen if I do so. The Flow stacks are consumed, but Decoy does not do extra damage and does not crit. Is this intended and if so why? Furthermore, flow says that it only works when actively using a skill, I was/am under the impression that Decoy is actively used since you throw it. Please respond, since I really want to make this build work.

[Heavy]

Welcome to the LE Forums.

@anbiuiwop

The Flow stacks are consumed, but Decoy does not do extra damage and does not crit.

Depending on how many passive points you spend in all the relevant passives, “Flow” will give you up to 200% increased damage (which is additive with other sources of increased.
And the +100% Crit Chance from “Pulse” is not a guaranteed crit but just 100% increased crit chance.

So if you already have lets say 400% increased damage flow will only give you ~40% more damage (with 5/5 points invested). This might be hard to notice together with the +/-25% damage variation on hit damage.

I tested it briefly just to make sure everything is working and Decoy definitely gets extra damage from Flow. The only thing that does not work is the 100% bleed chance.
Maybe this one is bugged or doesn’t work in conjunction with Sonic Detonation, I don’t know for sure.

Would need some further investigations.

[anbiuiwop]

Thanks for your response!

Are you saying that the +100% crit chance of Pulse is something like: base_crit * (1 + 100%)?

I do understand that if Pulse gives flat 100% crit chance it will still mean that due to crit avoidance it wont always crit, but it should then at least sometimes crit which it wasn’t doing in my case.

I don’t use sonic detonation, and bleed was also not applied in my case.

@Heavy

So if you already have lets say 400% increased damage flow will only give you ~40% more damage (with 5/5 points invested). This might be hard to notice together with the +/-25% damage variation on hit damage.

Could you write down the math for this statement?

@Heavy

Would need some further investigations.

I wouldn’t mind investigating it further, since the idea of my build was the biggest boom of decoy and I want to try to squeze every bit of damage in that I can.

[Heavy]

@anbiuiwop

Are you saying that the +100% crit chance of Pulse is something like: base_crit * (1 + 100%)?

Yes that is how crit works in LE.

You have base crit chance and increased crit chance

One thing to note here is, that the tooltip of Pulse is very misleading, because it uses + 100%, usually the “plus (+)” is used in conjunction with base crit increases, for example in skill spec trees etc.
But from my personal experience if the summary of a tooltip at the bottom is misleading, the full descriptive text is more meaningful.

Just to demonstrate what I mean:
Here is a tooltip that gives %increased crit chance

Here is another tooltip from a skill spec tree, that gives flat base crit chance

So for the Pulse passive the descriptive text and the sumamry at the bottom are conflicting.

I would highly suggest reading about this in the In-Game Game Guide under Combat Mechanics → Critical Strikes.

Not related to this particular discussion:
If you want Decoy to do a lot of damage look at the two branches of Shift, that buff the next skill after using Shift. (They are in the middle right section fo the Shift skill spec tree) There is a ton of %inc. damage in it as well as a guaranteed crit.

@anbiuiwop

but it should then at least sometimes crit which it wasn’t doing in my case.

Assuming you only have the 5% base crit that is default in LE, 100% increased crit would only give decoy 10% crit chance.

@anbiuiwop

@Heavy

So if you already have lets say 400% increased damage flow will only give you ~40% more damage (with 5/5 points invested). This might be hard to notice together with the +/-25% damage variation on hit damage.

Could you write down the math for this statement?

For the sake of simplicity let’s assume decoy is dealing 100 base damage (ignoring the +/-25% damage variations for now), before any %increases.

With 400% increased damage decoy will do:
100 * (1 + 4,00) = 500 damage

With 600% increased damage (the previous 400% plus the 200% from Flow)
100 * (1 + 4,00 + 2,00) = 700 damage

700 damage is 40% more damage, than 500 damage (700 / 500 = 1,4)

But with the +/- 25% damage variations for hit damage in LE the difference might be hard to notice, if you don’t take enough samples.

500 Damage = 375 - 625 damage
700 damage = 525 - 875 damage

You can also read more about added, increased and more damge in the In Game Game Guide under Combat Mechnics → Increased, Added & More

Takeaway from all of this:
Try studying the game guide if you are really interested in learning mechanics on a deeper level
Lets bring some attention to the devs about the misleading tooltip if Pulse

[anbiuiwop]

Thanks!
This clarifies basically everything for me.

@Heavy

Not related to this particular discussion:
If you want Decoy to do a lot of damage look at the two branches of Shift, that buff the next skill after using Shift. (They are in the middle right section fo the Shift skill spec tree) There is a ton of %inc. damage in it as well as a guaranteed crit.

Yes I am already using it. In addition I am also using the oil stacks with cinder strike.

Thanks again!