3.15 Comprehensive Guide to Mana Miner Scion (Mom + Agnostic + Indigon)

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In this game, flat damage is super strong (flat damage as in adds # to # lightning damage to spells, not #% increase). Due to flat damage being the first line of the equation, it is one of the stats that decides your damage. So here is a quick example of why flat damage are strong.

Assuming you deal 5 lightning damage, and have 2 wands with these stats
Wand 1 : Adds 10 lightning damage to spells, 50% increase spell damage
Wand 2 : 100% Increase spell damage

On paper, wand 2 looks stronger, but with the calculations going on
Wand 1 : (5 + 10) * 0.5 = 7.5
Wand 2 : 5 * 1 = 5

So this is the main reason why flat is super strong, hopefully this will explains why :).

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Ball Lightning is a Lightning Spell skill gem. This game we have 4 major categories of skill gem, here we will only focus on the majority 2 of them, one is Spell and another one is Attack. To put this in a nutshell, a Spell is an ability that is casted with magic, while Attack is a skill that requires the user to perform an attack. So, almost all Attack modifiers does not interact with Spell skills.

Now back to Ball Lightning. Since Ball Lightning is a Spell, this means we can scale our damage with these common stats found in weapons.
> #% Increased Spell Damage
> Adds # to # (elemental) damage to spells
> +#% Critical Strike Chance for Spells
> +#% Global Critical Strike Multiplier

Do note that these similar stats does not scale our damage
> #% Adds # to # (elemental) damage
> +#% Critical Strike Chance

The reason why these stats can't scale our damage is, these mods are considered "Local mods". To put it into nutshell and simplify it, Local mods only applies to Attack skill gems. Due to Ball Lightning being a Spell, those 2 stats above does not apply, thus it does not increase our damage.

On default, using Ball Lightning will cast small lightning bolt projectile, piercing all targets on its way, then disappear after a short amount of time. Supporting Ball Lightning with Blastchain Mine support will make you throw mines that cast Ball Lightning instead of casting it by yourself. In short, this means that you are a "miner". Supporting a skill with mines opens a new way to scale your damage, and that is through a stat called "Mine Damage". Any modifiers to mines also applies to our Ball Lightning Mines.

There are multiple benefit on making a skill into a mine. Here are some of the reasons
> Canceling the need of cast speed
> Opening a new way to scale damage
> You can no longer take reflected damage

This also brings on some downsides, it includes

> Unable to leech life and mana
> Need to self detonate the mines

When you throw mines, the skill inside the mines doesn't activate by itself, you must manually activate it with your Detonate Key (Default D key).

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Mechanics

Think of Ball Lightning is a small orb of projectile orb that strikes out arcing lighting bolts on enemies. The damage of Ball Lightning only comes from the arcing lightning bolts, not the Ball Lightning itself.

A single cast of Ball Lightning is able to hit the same target multiple times. BUT, the Ball Lightning must not went too far away from the target or else it will not hit the target anymore. Because of this, we will be using Slower Projectile support, not grabbing any projectile speed anywhere (unless it is totally inevitable), to allow Ball Lightning stay close to the target as long as possible, not straying too far away to deal more damage as it hits more. This means that Slower Projectile support almost doubles our damage dealt to a single mob because it hits approximately twice as much as without the support gem.

Ball Lightning CANNOT shotgun. So if you support Ball Lightning with support gems like Lesser Multiple Projectile, Greater Multiple Projectile or Dying Sun, those projectile will not shotgun. This is due to the restriction each Ball Lightning is only able to hit the same target every 0.15 second from the same entity. But, Ball Lightning generated from different mines does shotgun because they are different entities. But do not that multiple projectile fired from the same mine does not shotgun because they fall into the category of same entity.

So here is an example, a single mine fire 3 Ball Lightning, if the monster is caught in between 2 Ball Lightning, only 1 of the Ball Lightning will be able to hit the target.

Ball Lightning does have an AoE gem tag. Although the area of the Ball Lightning strikes radius can be increased by
AoE modifiers, they do not increase the damage provided from it because Ball Lightning does not deal any AoE damage because the main source of damage is the arcing lightning bolt. So, supporting Concentrated Effect does not increase the damage on Ball Lightning, only reduce the area of it.

Ball Lightning also have the projectile tag, however it does not deal any projectile damage, it only deals the arcing lightning bolt. So supporting any projectile behavior gems like Chain does not make Ball Lightning chain.