The guide to molten fissures no one asked for
I am a big fan of molten fissures, even if they aren't the played that often. I just love covering the floor in a sea of pulsating lava. This here is all I know about molten fissures for anyone who actually wants to play them.
Also I'm going to refer to molten fissures as MFs so I don't need to keep typing that.
The Basics
MFs are lines of lava on the ground. Everytime you use a slam skill on them, they create an aftershock that spreads to all other connected fissures. It doesn't matter where the slam is, as long as it hits one fissure that aftershock will spread to the entire web of connected MFs. This is an aftershock so it does function with aftershock related interactions. There is a hard cooldown to how often MFs can get an aftershock which is 0.2 sec. This cooldown is not modifiable by any method.
Something most people don't realize is that MFs can NOT SHOTGUN. This true for multiple fissures from the same cast, different casts of the same skill, or different skills. When you trigger an aftershock it will travel through the web of MFs and hit the enemies on it once. For the purpose of single target it doesn't matter if the enemy is standing on a 100 fissures or just one. Increasing the number of fissures just helps with coverage of the arena and clearing. For single target, what matters is the base damage and the rate of aftershocks. So you want to get as close to the 0.2s trigger cooldown as you can.
At this time I am unclear how different sources of MFs interact damage wise. The best I can guess is that the fissure a boss is directly standing on is what will damage it with all others ignored.
Since MFs have a small width, you will want to get additional fissures. Kaom's Madness is basically mandatory for clearing, though you can get away with Upheaval I.
Area of effect seems to only affect the length of the fissures.
Triggering
Although MFs can be triggered by any slam skill most slams are not good options as they are too slow. Often slower than the skill that created fissures in the first place meaning you would be better off just spamming that. Of the skills here are the better options.
- Stampede - although one of the slower slam skills the multiple footsteps each trigger an aftershock. The recovery and big slam at the end slows it down though
- Shockwave totems - probably the easiest option. Since you can have multiple totems you don't need to scale attack speed as much(but still want lots). They will also automatically slam while you walk around and create fissures.
- Ancestral Cry - this grants volcanic footsteps. So every time your character takes a step it creates a little slam that can trigger MFs. This footsteps are not activated while you are dodge rolling. This can trigger MFs very frequently and ideally you would want to just set them down and keep walking around to maximise the trigger rate rather than do other things. Of course, to use this you need to generate glory by frequently igniting enemies, and again endurance charge investment to extend it.
- Rolling Magma - not a slam but it can trigger MFs everytime the projectile hits the ground. Multiple projectiles will hit the ground at the same time so for the sake of triggering additional projectiles does not help. You would want lots of attack speed to continuously spit them out and trigger the fissures faster. The benefit of this skill is being able to freely move while you spam it.
Note that if a trigger slam gets its own aftershock, those aftershocks can also proc the MF aftershocks.
Snapshotting
MFs have a duration so the skills which create them will snapshot the weapon set you use them in. So you can use a high damage 2-hander for to set down the fissures, then switch to a faster 1-handed weapon to trigger them, and they will still retain the damage of the 2-hander. You can also optimize your weapon set passive points for the different weapons.
As MFs are created by slam skills, bonuses to the slam itself will benefit every aftershock of the MF. Ancestral boost will give its damage bonus to all the aftershock. Infernal cry is also good. The added fire damage will apply to every pulse.
Dual-Wielding
This is only relevant for maces. Most mace skills have the property when dual wielding to combine the damage of both weapons in a single hit with some downside. Volcanic Fissure will use the full damage of both weapons but with 30% less attack speed. Forge Hammer instead has 30% less damage. This will of course always be more damage than using a single weapon. If you are using 2 one-handed maces, this can get the damage more comparable to a 2-hander, but ideally you would be using 2 two-handers to snapshot a lot of extra damage in your fissure. This would of course require Giant's Blood which has its well known downsides.
Skill specific advice
For a mace build focused around MFs you would want to use both volcanic fissure and forge hammer. Volcanic fissure is your clear skill since it has no cooldown. You put Kaom's Madness on it and cover most of the screen with fissures. Build it for ease and speed. Forge hammer is your single target with its higher base damage. It creates multiple fissures by default so you don't need to reduce its damage with upheaval support. Instead you try to snapshot as much damage as you can. Dual wielding again an be useful. I also recommend Rageforged and Fist of War III supports. Get some skill effect duration so the forge hammer fissures lasts 14 seconds. This way you can get 100% uptime on the Fist of War III double ancestral boost during bossfights.
Craters support is useless. No damage and tiny fissures. This is basically there if you want to play stampede or leap slam with the flavor of MFs.
Fury of the Mountain being a channeled skill is clunkier to use. Again you would want Kaom's Madness to use it for clearing. Mostly the same advice as for volcanic fissure. Bear skills often consume rage and this skill is a great way to generate it especially with Rage III support.
Molten Crash comes from the unique Fury of the King talisman. Honestly the fissure component of this skill isn't that meaningful since the jump has high base damage and there's no cooldown. It's more effective to just spam the jump, but you could invest into triggering the aftershocks for additional damage. Also the jump itself is a slam and will trigger an aftershock on the previously created fissures.
Totems
Some more information on using shockwave totems as your trigger. Totem placement speed is very important because it controls how far apart your totems attack when you summon a bunch at once. You want enough placement speed to get that gap close to 0.2 sec, so the next totem attacks right when the MF is off cooldown. On the other hand you can't have too much, because then the totems will attack before the cooldown ends, and you will miss triggers reducing dps. Shockwave totems have 0.6 sec base placement time. Thus I recommend getting a little under 200% increased placement speed, easily satisfied with Urgent Totems III support and some passive nodes. Do not go over this value.
Attack speed is of course also important. We want enough attack speed so that when our multiple totems have each slammed, the first one is ready to attack again when the MF goes off cooldown, so we don't miss our triggers. The amount of attack speed to achieve this depends on how many totems you have. With 4 totems, I recommend getting down to about 0.8 sec attack time, or 1.25 aps. If it was 3 totems, you would want like 0.6 sec attack time.
One important note is to avoid all conditional modifiers to attack speed like "increased attack speed if you summoned a totem" or "increased attack speed per totem". You see totems, being duration skills, snapshot your stats when summoned. So totems summoned earlier will not benefit from these conditional modifiers. What ends up happening is that your first totem has is stuck with x% increased attack speed but your last one has say x+14% increased attack speed. Since the later totems are faster, then will eventually "catch up" with the first totems, eventually they will fire almost simultaneously, which is awful as you miss triggers and your dps goes into the trash. Make sure your totems always have a constant attack speed.
I recommend casting fissures in your set 1 and the devoting your 2nd set to the totems, taking totem specific stats on the passive tree. If you don't care about the totem damage or don't want to kill your fps with jagged ground, you can use a fast weapon like a quarterstaff or a one handed mace for that 2nd set. This saves a lot of investment for attack speed and maximum totems. Fortified hammers are a great option since they will make your totems daze enemies for added stun buildup. One handed maces aloso have a desecrated mod for an additional totem.
Additional Interactions
Echoing Cry Tech
This comes from Dreamcore. You tend to cast fissure skills more often than other slams wtih their limited area and warcries are of course meant for single big slams with their cooldown and limited exerts. However we can greatly increased the number of exerted attacks.
You put echoing cry support on your warcry. This makes it repeat twice allowing for more exerts per cast but it counts half power. On the passive tree you take the nodes Roaring Cries and Vocal Empowerment. This gives us minimum power for warcries so we can use it without any enemies nearby, and the minimum power is not affected by the echoing cry power penalty. Vocal empowerment will grant an additional exerted attack and this triggers with every repeat from echoing cry. Thus for one single cast you can get 6 exerts without any enemies nearby. It's very useful for skills like volcanic fissure.
Echoing cry does have the additional downside that you have to move 8 metres before you can use it again, but it's unlikely you will use up all 6 exerts without moving that far.
Jagged Ground
Jagged Ground II support creates jagged ground when the supported slam does an aftershocks. This works great with MF skills as everytime you trigger them it will also create jagged ground. This opens up some combos.
Stampede - The final slam of stampede will detonate all jagged ground patches in the area. So if you stampede over a MF, each step will trigger it and create jagged ground and then the final slam will blow all of them what in a continuous chain of explosions lasting seconds. The explosions have low based damage but it adds up with how many you can create.
Shockwave totems - Most of the damage from shockwave totems comes from it detonating jagged ground. MFs are the easiest way to take advantage of this. Just place your totems on a fissure, and every slam will trigger it creating jagged ground for itself which the next slam can hit. Unlike the fissures these detonations can shotgun doing lots of single target damage, but not as much as the damage to your fps. Even if you don't want to make a fissure build this is the easiest way to play with shockwave totems.