Herald of Thunder

Herald of Thunder is a Herald skill. It reserves mana to grant added lightning damage to attacks and spells. Whenever you kill a shocked enemy, it will activate an effect where lightning bolts strike nearby enemies for a duration.

Mechanics
Similar to the and  skill gems, Herald of Thunder has two separate effects.

The first effect adds x-y lightning damage to both spells and attacks. Damage dealt by this effect can shock.

The second effect is triggered when a shocked enemy is killed. A Storm will strike enemies and destructible objects within Herald of Thunder's radius for its duration dealing lightning secondary damage. This storm remains centered on the character's location if the character moves. Damage dealt by the storm cannot inflict shock, and is not an area of effect.

The storm will strike an enemy or destructible object every 250ms, but will prioritise targets that have been struck fewer times.

The storm from Herald of Thunder applies to enemies killed by attacks as well as spells, but not if they are killed by minions, traps, mines, or totems.

Interactions

 * Elemental Damage: Elemental and lightning damage modifiers affect both the on-hit and on-kill effects of Herald of Thunder. Added damage from support gems such as and  only applies to Herald of Thunder's storm.


 * Casting and Spell Interactions: Because Herald of Thunder's lightning bolts is secondary damage and not spell damage it is not directly affected by items, support gems, or passive skills which specifically modify spells.


 * Area of Effect: AoE modifiers like and  affect the radius in which Herald of Thunder's storm can strike targets. Lightning bolts are not AoE damage, therefore Area Damage modifiers don't affect the storm's damage.


 * Duration: Duration modifiers like and  affect the duration of the storm.


 * Auras, Buffs and Mana Reservation: Like and, Herald of Thunder is not an aura and does not receive bonuses from aura nodes, items, or support gems. It does reserve mana however, and it therefore benefits from  modifiers.


 * Quality: Herald of Thunder's increased lightning damage quality bonus is global, meaning that it affects the character's lightning damage from all sources, not only Herald of Thunder.


 * Cannot Apply Shock: Herald of Thunder's on-kill effect cannot apply Shock. However, if is equipped, the storm can apply Freeze.

Related unique items
The following unique items are related to Herald of Thunder:

Related passive skills
The following passive skills are related to Herald of Thunder:

Version history

 * No longer has a 0.4 second cooldown on the storm repeatedly striking the same enemy. Now favours striking enemies that have been struck fewer times.
 * Now deals 1 to 31 Lightning Damage at gem level 1 (from 1 to 34), up to 23 to 1108 Lightning Damage at gem level 20 (from 27 to 1303).
 * Now has an added damage Effectiveness of 100% (from 120%).


 * Now instant by default and can therefore be used while moving.
 * All instant skills now have cooldown 1 second or less.
 * Instant skills cannot be supported by Spell Echo and will not be cast a second time by similar effects (such as from the Echoing Shrine).


 * Added Herald gem tag.


 * Reduced added damage at all levels.


 * and Herald of Thunder have been changed from Spell to Cast active skill types to indicate that they deal secondary damage and not spell damage.


 * Herald of Thunder has been added to the game.
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