Need help understanding how best to scale Galvanic Shards
So been using this since it seem to be the best for aoe clear and want to try to understand how to optimize it's damage. From what I can tell a large part of it's damage comes just from the chaining lightning. So how do I maximize that damage? I'm still new to PoE didn't play the first much at all.
Does this chaining lightning act as a projectile? The whole skill has the projectile label but does that include this secondary effect? I assume the chaining lightning benefits from increased damage from crossbows and 2H weapons, but not sure for projectiles.
Also how does it determine the damage of the chaining lightning? Is it based off the shards that trigger it? Or does it use your weapon damage and ignore the damage of the trigger source? So like if you take fork or piercing the projectiles deal less damage after their fork/pierce. And if those reduce dmg projectiles trigger the beam does the beam also get reduced damage? I would assume not but I have no idea.
Comments
I'm not too far into the game (currently Act 3), but I've been running a pretty successful Galvanic Shards build myself and can pretty much wipe a whole screen in one clip.
As far as I know, the chain lightning beam is not considered a projectile. You can read the damage stats of the chain lightning beam by going to your skills panel (G), hovering over the Galvanic Shards skill and holding Left Alt. This will allow you to click on the 'beam' tab.
I believe that the beam's damage is calculated as a % of your weapon damage roll, I don't think it matters how much damage each shard does, nor how many shards hit an enemy.
The biggest thing to note about dps, is that Galvanic Shards basically does no damage unless there are multiple targets to chain lightning beams between. To help deal with this, I've been using the bow's Lightning Rod skill with Scattershot and +AoE support as it spawns multiple lightning rods that count as additional targets for your Galvanic Shards to chain to - thus allowing you to effectively proc the chain lightning effect whilst only fighting one enemy, or do more damage to smaller groups in general.
You should ensure that you have some kind of piercing effect going on (either through supports or passives), as this allows the shards to over-penetrate and cause more chain lightning beams for large groups of enemies. Because it doesn't really matter how much damage the shards do, you just want to spawn the beams.
Keeping the Herald of Thunder spirit skill active also goes a very long way to boosting damage, but this depends on how quickly you're able to build up shock ailments on enemies. I've been able to massively boost my shock chance through a number of nodes on the passive skill tree, and Herald of Thunder is doing bonkers damage and procs often. I highly recommend putting the Conduction support on your Galvanic Shards for this reason.
Notable passive skills include:
-Nodes that increase lightning damage.
-Lightning Rod (for advantage on lightning damage rolls).
-Flash Storm (+ shock chance & lightning pen).
-Advanced Munitions (increase chance to inflict ailments with xbow attacks).
-Shrapnel (unless you're happy using a piercing support gem).
-Coursing Energy is extremely strong if you're using Voltaic Grenades in your build. I can electrocute bosses and rares very frequently with this combo, and they are a great segway into grenade gameplay. Because enemies can't move, your other grenades can't miss.
There are a couple more passives that I'm interested in that I think could be good, but my level isn't high enough to grab them all yet.
I'm still experimenting with this build myself, but hopefully this helps.