Molten Shell

Molten Shell is a guard spell that buffs the user with a shell that grants bonus armour and absorbs incoming hits. When the shell expires or absorbs enough damage, it explodes to deal fire damage around it, based on how much damage it absorbed. The amount of damage the shell can absorb increases with your armour value. Base duration is 3 seconds at all gem levels, followed by a 4 seconds cooldown.

Skill functions and interactions

 * Guard: Molten Shell shares a cooldown with other Guard skills (eg, ).


 * Buff Effect: Modifiers to Molten Shell's buff effect will only affect the armour granted by the skill, not the damage, duration, or absorbed damage required.


 * Duration: skill and buff/debuff duration will both increase the duration of Molten Shell. When the duration of Molten Shell expires, the buff and any accumulated damage toward an explosion is lost.


 * Spell Totem: a linked with Molten Shell can and will cast Molten Shell but is highly unlikely to ever detonate because of its lack of defense.


 * Vaal Molten Shell: casting Molten Shell while is active will terminate the Vaal Molten Shell buff and replace it for the cast Molten Shell and vice versa. This makes it unfavorable to use both skills in conjunction with one another.

All Guard skills
Below are the skill gems with the Guard gem tag:

Version history

 * Fixed a bug where Molten Shell's effect would linger indefinitely if the skill gem were replaced by a gem during the original gem's duration.


 * Now has a base duration of 3 seconds at all gem levels (from 10).
 * Now grants 50 additional armour at gem level 1 (from 17), up to 858 at gem level 20 (from 943)
 * Now creates a buff that can take damage equal to 20% of your armour.
 * Now causes 75% of damage from hits to be taken from the buff before your life or energy shield.
 * Updated: Now reflects 100% of damage taken from the buff as fire damage when the buff expires or is depleted at gem level 1, up to 3000% at gem level 20 (previously stated 1050% at gem level 20).
 * Now has a 4 second cooldown (from 1).
 * No longer has an added damage effectiveness multiplier or critical strike chance, as reflected damage cannot benefit from added damage, nor can it critically strike.
 * Shares its cooldown with other guard skills (Steelskin and Immortal Call).


 * Mana Cost at gem level 1 is now 7 (was 12).
 * Mana Cost at gem level 20 is now 26 (was 28).


 * Mana cost increased to 12 at gem level 1 (up from 8) up to 28 at gem level 20 (same as previously)
 * 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).


 * Changed the explosion effect. The new one has better performance.


 * When switching between regular and, the shield will now visually destroy and recreate itself.
 * Fixed a bug where buff effect bonuses did not apply to.


 * Cast time reduced from 1 sec to 500 ms.


 * Fixed a bug where Molten Shell could be applied multiple times via Spell Echo.


 * Greatly reduced the mana cost.
 * Now grants 1% chance to ignite per 1% quality (was 1.5% per 1% quality).


 * Fixed a bug with Molten Shell and mitigated physical damage reflection.


 * Fixed a bug where Molten Shell sometimes did no damage.


 * Fixed an instance crash with Molten Shell when linked with Cast when Damage Taken.


 * Armour and threshold values have been adjusted for new monster damage scaling.
 * Fixed a bug where Spell Totems casting Molten Shell would keep recasting the skill.


 * Now provides more armour and has had its detonation thresholds changed.
 * The Molten Shell used by Goatmen has been given new art.


 * Reduced the damage required to set it off in the first four levels.


 * Fixed a bug with level 19 and 20 had the wrong values.


 * Molten Shell has been added to the game.
 * }