Hold your breath for Inner Death

[Boeroer]

Hi,

while I was trying to do something different with Xoti this time (SC Priest all the time becomes boring at some point as does Whispers of the Wind for the umpteenth time) I experimented with Inner Death some more, combined with Empowered Strikes of course.
Main reason was initially that Xoti's Lantern gives +1 Mortification (and +1 Wound) per kill. That's the only way besides Brilliant to regain Mortification - and it also means that Inner Death is kind of cheap (-3+1 =2 ) if it kills (which it often does with Empowered Strikes to ensure a crit).

Now I tried to max the damage per empored crit with abilities and items so that the impact of one Inner Death punch is really, really impactful - so at first I went with Lightning Strikes instead of Swift Flurry because a +15% lash is a multiplicative damage bonus and is a great thing to have for such a high-dmg/single use combo. With the help of Lightning Strikes, Turning Wheel, Thunderous Blows and some items that add dmg bonuses and lashes I could often crit for ~500-700 dmg - which is pretty dope. If you have to take out an annoying enemy NOW I'd say that this is a very useful tool. 

But then, since I would will crit almost always with that combo anyway, I thought I'd give Swift Flurry and HBD a short try.
I knew that Empowered Strikes (+100 ACC and +100 PEN on empowered attacks) does NOT influence the additional attacks of SF/HBD, but I thought I'd try how it feels anyway.
I used Mohora Tanga to maximize the chance for procs and then I also put on Boltcatchers - because they work very well with Mohora Tanga*.

It is not guaranteed that Inner Death will trigger SF/HBD! It is a melee attack and it can trigger them, but it doesn't use your weapon - so any special sauce the weapon has that could help you with SF/HBD procs will only trigger as soon as Inner Death did trigger SF/HBD which then executed a weapon (in this canse spear-) attack**.
After a few tries I managed to trigger a crit cascade (for testing purposes it's helpful that the additonal attacks wil get executed and displayed BEFORE Inner Death impacts the target) - and I saw that the +300% crit damage bonus of Inner Death does apply TO ALL attacks that are done in the scope of the attack. So all damage rolls from SF/HBD and Boltcatchers got that sweet dmg bonus. Whoopsi!

Boltcatcher proc:

 

Heartbeat Drumming proc:

 

I mean this is still a gamble. It's much more reliable to just pick Lightning Strikes of course - especially if you want to kill the tough foes with an empowered Inner Death asap. Tough foes with high defenses usually make crit chains a lot less likely.
But with Swift Furry it's pretty awesome nontheless when it happens.  I one-shot Concelhaut and Menzago instantly - but with other bosses I tested I didn't have as much luck. But of course Inner Death - even without a juiced up SF/HBD crit chain - is still a very hard punch.

Anyway: thought I should share this info. Maybe somebody has better or just more fun ideas what to do with this.

Cheers!  

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)* Mohora Tanga's enchantment Red Flag Flying counts as melee weapon attack and can thus proc itself for and endless cycle as long as it crits. It can proc melee-related special attacks from other items such as Boltchatchers. It also procs Swift Flurry/HBD attacks that are then executed with the normal spear attack again - wich itself can proc Red Falg Flying again on crit and so on. This increases tha chance for crit chains happening a whole lot. 

)** Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming are always executed with the main hand weapon, no matter how they got triggered in the first place. 

Edited July 27 by Boeroer

[Constentin Lévine]

I already know that SF-hbd are also emporered when they proc from empowered attack (and so profit from Empowered Strikes on Whispers of the Wind chain) but with Inner Death it is monstruous too!

What about, added to SF- Mohora's cascade, does Crushing Blow, Accurate Wounding Shot, Hunter's Fang and of course Concussive Tranquilizer?

Some other abilities, if the effects also work on Red Flags attacks, should be interesting too : Confounding Blow, Devastating Blow, Flame of Devotion (Kind Wayfarers especially) etc.