Earthshatter is a slam-based melee attack that causes the ground beneath you to POE2 Currency rupture, summoning earth spikes in the area. These spikes remain on the battlefield for a short time, allowing for additional strategic plays, but they’re not particularly damaging on their own.
The true power of Earthshatter comes from the ability to detonate these spikes with other slam attacks. The synergy between Earthshatter and other skills that can trigger explosions (like Ground Slam or Earthquake) creates an explosive AoE effect that can deal massive damage to enemies in the vicinity.
This mechanic allows Earthshatter to scale better with AoE damage and provides high burst potential when used in combination with additional skills that trigger the detonations.
How Earthshatter and Exploding Earth Spikes Work
When you use Earthshatter, the ground will rupture, summoning earth spikes in a given area. These spikes persist for a short duration and deal physical damage to enemies standing near them. However, the damage from these spikes is modest compared to the potential damage they can trigger with other skills.
Here’s the game-changing part: Other slam skills (such as Ground Slam, Earthquake, or other splash damage abilities) can trigger explosions that cause all the earth spikes in the area to detonate. This triggers a massive AoE burst, causing all the spikes to deal their explosive damage in one go.
The more spikes you have on the field when detonated, the larger the area of effect and the greater the damage output. This creates a unique combo playstyle, where you use Earthshatter to summon spikes and then follow up with a slam attack to trigger the explosions, clearing large groups of enemies or dealing massive damage to bosses.
Scaling Earthshatter’s Damage
Like any other Path of Exile 2 skill, Earthshatter benefits greatly from several damage-scaling factors, especially when focusing on slam-based builds. Here’s how to scale the damage of Earthshatter with Exploding Earth Spikes:
Physical Damage Scaling: As Earthshatter is primarily a physical damage skill, boosting your character’s physical damage through strength, weapon damage, and attack speed is crucial. The more physical damage you deal with Earthshatter, the higher the potential damage from the exploding earth spikes will be.
AoE and Slam Damage Scaling: Increasing the area of effect of Earthshatter will increase the number of spikes generated, which will in turn allow for larger explosions. Support gems that increase AoE damage or slam damage will directly impact the effectiveness of Exploding Earth Spikes.
Attack Speed: Faster attack speeds mean more spikes are summoned over time, increasing the number of potential detonations and thus increasing the damage output from your exploding earth spikes. Support gems like Faster Attacks and Multistrike can dramatically boost your ability to deal damage more frequently.
Slam Skill Support: Using other slam skills to trigger explosions is one of the primary ways to increase your damage with Earthshatter. Combining Earthshatter with skills like Ground Slam (for its wide coverage) or Earthquake can result in massive AoE bursts of damage that clear entire packs of enemies.
Best Synergies with Earthshatter and Exploding Earth Spikes
To maximize the damage output and efficiency of Earthshatter and Exploding Earth Spikes, here are some of the best synergies to consider for POE2 Currency for sale your build.