[1.2] The CI Crit Fireballer (Same in 1.3)

"

Tommie_Sjukskriven wrote:

Going crit for you is a total waste, that's for sure. Having 330multi with a solid 7.9% is just absurd

Did you mistaken the 7.9% life leech for the crit chance? Because I have 37% crit chance and if I go get a 6l, an option would be to respec into power charges, possible six total (two on tree, one from Alira), giving me 55% crit chance.

"

meest wrote:

"

Tommie_Sjukskriven wrote:

Going crit for you is a total waste, that's for sure. Having 330multi with a solid 7.9% is just absurd

Did you mistaken the 7.9% life leech for the crit chance? Because I have 37% crit chance and if I go get a 6l, an option would be to respec into power charges, possible six total (two on tree, one from Alira), giving me 55% crit chance.

Hehe, my bad

I've done something similar last league and you might consider trying an Infernal Mantle provided you have enough:

- Mana/reduce to stay above 35% mana
- Enough ES as it only has around 400-500 ES

I haven't done the math yet but I'm currently running Voidbringer gloves on my life-based Fireballer and found the additional crit chance to be well worth it but I guess it's not really feasible without EB as it pushes the mana costs of a 6L Fireball up to 200 mana per cast :>

"

HeavensRejected wrote:

I've done something similar last league and you might consider trying an Infernal Mantle provided you have enough:

- Mana/reduce to stay above 35% mana
- Enough ES as it only has around 400-500 ES

I haven't done the math yet but I'm currently running Voidbringer gloves on my life-based Fireballer and found the additional crit chance to be well worth it but I guess it's not really feasible without EB as it pushes the mana costs of a 6L Fireball up to 200 mana per cast :>

I hate you for making me want to test this out. I am pretty beat from PoE and testing out so much already with Fireball. But now I want to come back and waste all my currency trying out respeccing into power charges and also try making some other changes to make Infernal Mantle + Voidbringers work with this. Maybe in a week or so, but for now...

I've tried Infernal Mantle much earlier on and its problem was the extra spell damage. You're right, I may have enough ES to support dropping Discipline now. But before we go further, this is only to be done with fairly expensive gear. I first tried Infernal when I had about 3900-4500 ES with Discipline and it was destroying me. Just could not survive any spells. I tailored the current tree and my gear around surviving facetanking almost everything this game has to offer. Nothing is really a problem except Uber is way too expensive for my bank so I have no idea about that. Even without Vaal Discipline, my current build can kite around and survive almost anything. If I crit enough, I can take Megaera down within two Ruby flask charges and two Rumi charges. Switching to Infernal and removing Discipline would give me around 5000-5200 ES, down from 7400. I would be working with about 60% of total mana, which is around 450 mana. Should be plenty to keep above the threshold.

Switching to Voidbringers (would need to spend a lot of currency on better res gear - basically only helm and one ring) would push the total ES to around 5400-5600. My 5l costs 98 mana per spell echo cast and with this build, the 6th link would have to be PCoC, pushing it to 108 mana. Voidbringers would bring that total to maybe 195 mana per spell echo at 3.1 casts per second, which is about 146 mana a second with Lvl 22 Arctic Armour's 41.5 mana drain per second comes to let's say 190 mana per second. Still sustainable.

My current tree is not specced for Power Charges, but I can change it to this and respec Merc Alira to get six power charges again. 37% crit from my current gear, plus 18% from six power charges, plus 13.5-15% from Infernal and Voidbringers would be 68.5-70% total crit. The extra two points in str and dex at shadow are just to cover attribute requirements because I would not have enough.

I'm not great at calculating all of that, but I think tooltip would be around 18-21k for LMP, pushing the shotgun damage to 90k+ with a 6l for just the AoE explosion, not including the initial hit that also does damage. Maybe more with the +1 to fire on Infernal.

BUT - I know if I respecced into power charges and got a 6l with PCoC added in, I would be at 15.5k tooltip with six power charges at 55% crit. That's 78.5k LMP shotgun. I'm pretty sure I underestimated the damage with Infernal and Voidbringers, so it could maybe go up to 110k shotgun. So the decision is a possible up to 1.5x the damage for around 25-35% less ES.

Somebody can do the math, I'm certain about the ES values, but I may have completely butchered the damage because I was only guesstimating. Regardless, I will eventually go waste all my currency trying this out - eventually. Unfortunately, I won't be able to test the 6l ideas. Maybe somebody else who is rich could test it out.

TL;DR
Going Infernal Mantle and Voidbringers once you have sufficient ES and mana regen on other gear seems completely viable. It would result in maybe 1.3-1.5x damage on a 6l with a power charge version of the build at the expense of around 30% of ES.

Still a lot of misinformation in the OP, particularly in the links.

"

LMP gives more consistent damage on single targets than GMP because GMP's spread is too large to focus from distance, but GMP is very fun to use (especially if you have the dragon mtx) so give it a try just to have some fun. Life leech is mandatory and getting quality on life leech ups your sustain significantly. As of 9-28 update I am using GMP for most everything and switching in LMP for hard bosses I need to keep distance from.

As a 6l, Fire Pen would give the most damage. Using PCoC and respeccing into power charges (including Merc Alira) would give you a lot more crit and a damage increase on par with Fire Pen.

If you're playing this "from a distance", you're using the build wrong. The point of shotgun is to Warp on top of the target and proceed to 5 proj fireball them. There are only 2 bosses in the game for whom it would be a bad idea - Atziri triplets and Courtyard.

You're also not understanding how Penetration works. It will give you more consistent damage than CE, and always more damage than Echo or PCOC. Logic is simple - fireball is strong enough to clean through white/magic mobs in 1 crit. Only time you'll need to shoot more than once is against fire resist rares, exiles and bosses. What do they all have in common? 75% fire res. Fire penetration will give you significantly more DPS anything else.

Sample calcs:

Conc effect 69% more multi
Sample dmg: 100 * 1.69 = 169 base dmg
After resist = 169 * 0.75 = 42.25

Fire Pene: 35 penetration
Sample dmg = 100
After resist (100%-(75%-35%) = 100 * 6 = 60

"

j0zef wrote:

Still a lot of misinformation in the OP, particularly in the links.

"

LMP gives more consistent damage on single targets than GMP because GMP's spread is too large to focus from distance, but GMP is very fun to use (especially if you have the dragon mtx) so give it a try just to have some fun. Life leech is mandatory and getting quality on life leech ups your sustain significantly. As of 9-28 update I am using GMP for most everything and switching in LMP for hard bosses I need to keep distance from.

As a 6l, Fire Pen would give the most damage. Using PCoC and respeccing into power charges (including Merc Alira) would give you a lot more crit and a damage increase on par with Fire Pen.

If you're playing this "from a distance", you're using the build wrong. The point of shotgun is to Warp on top of the target and proceed to 5 proj fireball them. There are only 2 bosses in the game for whom it would be a bad idea - Atziri triplets and Courtyard.

You're also not understanding how Penetration works. It will give you more consistent damage than CE, and always more damage than Echo or PCOC. Logic is simple - fireball is strong enough to clean through white/magic mobs in 1 crit. Only time you'll need to shoot more than once is against fire resist rares, exiles and bosses. What do they all have in common? 75% fire res. Fire penetration will give you significantly more DPS anything else.

Sample calcs:

Conc effect 69% more multi
Sample dmg: 100 * 1.69 = 169 base dmg
After resist = 169 * 0.75 = 42.25

Fire Pene: 35 penetration
Sample dmg = 100
After resist (100%-(75%-35%) = 100 * 6 = 60

Playing from a distance with my gear is not a problem anymore, but not everybody can get to my cost of gear even if it's not that expensive. With less gear, you're not facetanking Residence Dom, Meg, Shock and Horror, and some others depending on gear even without rip mods like -max or multi proj. The additional reason you may want to use LMP is because desync causes some projectiles to miss even at point blank range. Clicking straight on them to avoid desync also does not guarantee all five projectiles of GMP will hit (does not guarantee for LMP either). Missing just one of the GMP projectiles gives you less damage than a full shotgun from LMP. Furthermore, Atziri trio and Courtyard are not a problem with this build. With Rumi's, granites, and AA they don't do as much damage to you as a boss like Meg or Shock and Horror's laser.

Furthermore, Fireball does not have the AoE to consistently clear large packs. If they're always laid out to you in a line then sure, GMP will easily clear it with one shot. But that's not always the case even if you Lightning Warp to a better position. There's a reason LiftingNerdBro's build is called the Carpet Bomber and that's because its Fireballs hit and kill one front at a time exposing the next front giving it a carpet bomb effect. I do address that taking the Piercing Shots notable instead of say Heart of Flame does give much more clear speed and in many cases does what you want in consistently clearing entire packs with one cast.

So yes, GMP is theoretically better than LMP but we're not dealing with just the theoretical here. Many people will play this build with limited funds and not take it as far as Lvl 90 meaning they may simply have less. In play, LMP serves its purpose in ways GMP cannot.

I'm also using "consistency" not as something that gives more damage. I say consistent because Conc Effect always has a 1.69x multiplier at Lvl 20. Also, perhaps I should link to the wiki page on penetration like in Bada's build, but here it is for anybody. I'm assuming you're multiplying the 1.69x damage by .25, which is the amount you would be doing to a max fire res mob with Conc Effect. With Fire Penetration linked instead of Conc Effect on a 5l you would be doing varying multipliers of damage against different mobs. With a Lvl 20 Fire Penetration you would be getting 35% penetration. Against a max fire resist mob you would be lowering its resist to 40% fire resist on hit. So instead of the 25% (.25) multiplier you would be doing without penetration, you are doing 60% (.60) multiplier (75% fire resist minus 35% fire penetration). With a sample damage of 100, you would be doing 25 damage without penetration and 60 damage with penetration. That's 2.4x damage (60 damage divided by 25 damage) compared to Conc Effect 1.69x. We can then go to a 50% fire resist mob and see you would be doing 1.7x the damage (50% and 15% fire resist gives you 85/50). So at 50% it may be on par with Conc Effect. At 25% fire resist you would get 1.47x damage. At 0% fire resist you would be doing 1.35x damage. So that's what I meant by consistency. That Conc Effect always gives you its multiplier and Fire Pen gives varying. Not that Conc Effect always does more damage.

On PCoC, having six power charges with my 330% crit multi always gave me around 50-60% extra tooltip DPS. So not as great as Conc Effect and sometimes better sometimes worse than Fire Pen.

If you have time, please point out the other misinformation so I can try to address or fix them.

Updated 6l Gear and added new stats.
Changed shotgun calculation on offense screenshots to show initial hit plus AoE hit, not just the AoE hit.
Added Lvl 90 Power Charge tree.

Added Videos
Meg fight and Shrine
Sorry about the short Meg fight.

I have been using the 191k DPS link setup for only a day and after making these videos it's much much safer to use the Life Leech - Fire Pen combo instead of PCoC - Crit Dmg. The more DPS setup should hit the .2 threshold of life leech, but I guess the extra .04 per second you get from a Q20 Life Leech makes a huge difference. Plus, you will still be able to fire absent mindedly off screen and not die to reflect like I almost did in the Shrine video.

Hello, I am running a similar build to yours, and I was wondering if I could get some tips on how to improve/optimize my build.

My Gear


My Build


I am sitting at 7600 ES
My tooltip dps is roughly 6k without charges and 9.7k with charges
Crit chance is around 52% with charges and crit multi is 500%
60/59 block/spell block and 170 mana regen

Thanks!

"

lowres83 wrote:

Hello, I am running a similar build to yours, and I was wondering if I could get some tips on how to improve/optimize my build.

...

I am sitting at 7600 ES
My tooltip dps is roughly 6k without charges and 9.7k with charges
Crit chance is around 52% with charges and crit multi is 500%
60/59 block/spell block and 170 mana regen

Thanks!

Hi!

Your tree is similar to Bada_Bing's CI Block build but with more auras. The reason I did not go into the left side of the tree is because I found a way to get block with Rumi's. All I had to do was pick up Alchemist, which was only three nodes. I think Alchemist is essential for CI builds because all our flasks will benefit. +3% more max res from ele flasks, 10/6 more block/spell block from Rumi's, 900 more armor from granites - it's ridiculous. Picking up the crit multi nodes Throatseeker and at Doom Cast makes up for losing out on Arcane Potency. Also allowing me to pick up Heart of Flame fire damage cluster, Sniper, and some mana. This also allowed me to drop Rathpith. Rathpith gives more DPS than the shield I am using, but the crucial element is the mana regen.

I see what you're doing with Tempest Shield - Blind and also see your Arctic Armour is only at Lvl 14. This is because you do not have sufficient mana regen even with the additional aura nodes for Clarity. I am probably sitting at around 130% increased mana regen over your current regen %. This allows me to sustain a Lvl 22 AA, which mitigates almost three times as much fire and physical as a Lvl 14. That allows me to not have to use a Blind or Enfeeble in my setup.

Gear Changes:


Tree Changes:


Skills and Links: