Hi, new player here trying to get to the bottom of the mechanics of the Forge Strike skill so I know how to gear around it, but have been running into inconsistencies/ambiguities with the tooltip information:
The scaling information in the skill’s tooltip doesn’t specify what is applied to the minion vs what is applied to the melee attack.
However, when I view a node in the specialization tree that affects the minions I get this tooltip with the minion information, like other secondary skills have:
This explains minion damage scaling, but then one still wonders if attunement (or minion affixes, for that matter) also scale the base skill’s melee hit damage. Added damage effectiveness and base damage/health for the minion is also missing, and the main skill’s tooltip currently shows fire as a minion tag while the minion tooltip does not.
My main suggestion would be to make all of this scaling information clear in the main skill’s tooltip, either by explaining which scaling tags apply to what (and add missing information), or by removing all minion related scaling/tag information from the main skill’s tooltip and showing the minion tooltip next to it by default, instead of only when viewing a relevant specialization node.
Secondly, it would be nice to add a better explanation of “is affected by the stats and attack rate of your weapon” in the alt clarification text many other skills seem to have. It leaves a lot of questions without it. I did some forum digging and think I have a handle on how it actually works, so unless I’m mistaken this might be a way to clear it up:
Inherits the base damage, attack rate and affixes of your equipped weapon.
Does not cast skills triggered by unique weapons.
When duel wielding, both weapon’s base damage and affixes are applied. Attack rate is averaged between the two.