I have the highest falling thunder DPS. Does that mean I'm the strongest user of falling thunder in game? Not quite. There are quite a few tricks that I used to inflate my PoB/Poeninja numbers.

[https://poe.ninja/poe2/builds/runesofaldur/character/RoyTheRoyalBoy-7823/Royalartist?i=0&search=skills%3DFalling%2BThunder%26sort%3Ddps](https://poe.ninja/poe2/builds/runesofaldur/character/RoyTheRoyalBoy-7823/Royalartist?i=0&search=skills%3DFalling%2BThunder%26sort%3Ddps)

Yes, I have a 2 socket voices with a lot of good jewels, and a perfectly-crafted quarterstaff (which cost me less than 2k divs to craft), but I can confidently say my gears were obtained cheaper than a mirror in total (probably 4k divs total?). In comparison, the gemling below me is far better geared than I am, with their mirror-tier adorned and 10+ jewels.

gemling: [https://gyazo.com/f3b90ffa20dd15b1fcdee62cff441af9](https://gyazo.com/f3b90ffa20dd15b1fcdee62cff441af9)

me: [https://gyazo.com/9e7f6f2a42ac68d009cb18d6300469f3](https://gyazo.com/9e7f6f2a42ac68d009cb18d6300469f3)

So how did I pad my numbers?

It turns out, PoB has configs and makes a lot of assumptions when calculating skills. See these damage calculation factors?

[https://gyazo.com/7894929388823ed6cf4ef73bb3e4ac4d](https://gyazo.com/7894929388823ed6cf4ef73bb3e4ac4d)

I don't actually use most of these skills, but they affect my falling thunder.

\- Hand of chayula with a bunch of random marks (each marks boost falling thunder damage, even though in game, you generally can't apply more than one mark at a time)

\- Berserk + elemental conflux (I don't have enough spirits, also, these skills low-key suck in practice, lol)

\- Into the breach (PoB just gives you a 40% damage boost just for having this, spec into chayula, allocate the skill, then put a support gem in it, then respect back to martial artist)

\- Eternal rage (I actually use this, but for some reason, if you just put a rage support gem or something, PoB doesn't give you rage in your config, eternal rage is the only way to get PoB to see that you have rage from my findings)

\- Augmented flesh annoint + unset ring to give me the skill slots for all of these, then I just take them off, PoB factors all of them when calculating falling thunder.

\- Pinnacle of power when putting adonia's ego wand in my second weapon set. This is almost a +161% damage boost, and I don't use it. (I would like to know how though, it might actually be a real damage boost for me)

There were however, some real techs that legitimately increased me damage that I would like to share:

\- Atziri's communion + pain attunement + direstrikes 1/2. These low-life tech can be used in almost any builds that uses crit, and will significantly increase your damage. Pain attunement can be obtained three main ways: legacy of crown of thorn, flesh crucible, just pathing there.

\- Very large radius time-lost with increased effects of notables and lots of good notable lines + nearby from nothing (typically resonance and conduit). This tech got much stronger this league due to the new very large radius allowing you to squeeze more notables in.

\- Megalomaniac diamond that also annoints something inside your time-lost. This is a really cheap way to massively boost your DPS since people don't really buy megalomaniacs, so you can find some sleeper diamonds.

This was a fun way to min-max my build and "beat" the Poeninja leader board, and I'm really satisfied with all the ways I've tricked PoB into making me look strong. However, I can't quite do this with flicker strike because those people legitimately have like 20 mirror builds with 20 jewels, lol.

Overall, don't be fooled by poeninja numbers, they could always just be people like me doing a bunch of tricky stuff to make the builds look stronger/tankier than they really are. 



How I gamified PoB/Poeninja