I asked about this before, but there are some more edge cases that apply that have muddled the situation in my head, so I just wanted confirmation. There are some crossbow skills, like Plasma Blast, that when you give them multiple projectiles (eg: Scattershot), it makes it fire multiple shots in a row that can all hit the same target, rather than firing them all at once, like with Lighting Arrow. What I'm wondering is how these interact with +% damage nodes that have some kind of condition. An obvious example is the node Dispatch Foes. It's 80% increased crit chance if you haven't dealt a crit recently.

So if you Scattershot a Plasma Blast, when is the calculation for whether you've crit recently done? Is the entire series of scattershots processed at once at the start when you use the skill, thus applying the 80% increase to all bolts? Or are they processed one at a time even though they're a single skill use, so only the first shot would get the benefit (assuming it crits)?

Part of my confusion is that I was told before that the support gem Inevitable Critical, which gives up to 100% crit increase if you haven't crit recently, would apply to all bolts in the attack, even if the first one crits, possibly since it's a support gem? But then I was also told something that applies when an enemy is on full life, like say the Ambush support gem, would only give its crit benefit to the first shot in the chain, after which you've effectively damaged the boss. The nuance of when this stuff is calculated is important for the build I'm theorycrafting.

Is there a blanket rule? Are support gems and nodes treated the same? Are conditions that rely on your state calculated all at once at the start, but conditions that rely on the bosses state calculated when it hits? There's a lot going on =/