[2.0] Flameblast Solo Map MF'er (20 IIQ, 230-330 IIR)

Yes, elemental proliferation got nerfed by ~90% but I dont understand why you would use ele prolif with flameblast anyway?
If your AOE is big enough you can ignite directly. In my opinion flameblast is the best skill to apply burn, because of the stack mechanic. No other fire skill has such a high potential base firedamage(except explosive arrow maybe)

My flame blast Templar(only end of cruel) oneshots rares with a 3 link(faster Casting and chance to ignite) flameblast with ~7 charges.

Also burn has a very nice scaling as "increased fire/elemental/etc damage" will scale burn damage twofold.(initial hit AND burn damage)

So a 6 link flameblast can have high AOE and good single target capability if it triggers a burn.

doing this on a templar. how to do the passive tree with it being a witch start?

never mind just looked up ;-) see how now.

"

ExiledRenor wrote:

Yes, elemental proliferation got nerfed by ~90% but I dont understand why you would use ele prolif with flameblast anyway?
If your AOE is big enough you can ignite directly. In my opinion flameblast is the best skill to apply burn, because of the stack mechanic. No other fire skill has such a high potential base firedamage(except explosive arrow maybe)

My flame blast Templar(only end of cruel) oneshots rares with a 3 link(faster Casting and chance to ignite) flameblast with ~7 charges.

Also burn has a very nice scaling as "increased fire/elemental/etc damage" will scale burn damage twofold.(initial hit AND burn damage)

So a 6 link flameblast can have high AOE and good single target capability if it triggers a burn.

With the 1.3 Proliferation, you could literally just tap a blue or white mob with a 1-channel (conc effect) FB and it would melt half a screen, instead of having to sit there and get up to 5+ channels while taking a sip of coffee.

I tested both. Anybody who was not proliferating in 1.3, was doing it wrong imho (non-crit setups, that is). And everyone always argued with me: well, Spell Echo. Except that 10% less damage was the difference between one-shotting the Shipyard boss, and echo'ing up 2 or 4 times to get the kill.

In 2.0 now, the Proliferation radius is about as far as you can throw a horse, so you'd be relegated to playing more slowly and stacking channels anyway. You can still go ignite based if you want, but when you're hitting 10 channels most of the time anyway simply to get the AoE coverage.... meh. Only really makes a difference for bosses and the occasional tanky rare.

I've been playing this build and greatly enjoying it. Or was, until zana gave me a timed mission in the village and in my ignorance and haste i got one-shot by Gnar. I was Level 77 with 4320 life and 673 mana unreserved running clarity and AA.

Between flameblast's loss of ignite on quality and the nerf to proliferation I decided to go pure damage. With that in mind my math says that two rare wands with very high +fire damage to spells will give better results. The real benefit here is that the rares can have cast speed on them. With 20% on each you can hit 100% faster casting which really makes a difference.

Here are some numbers. They're a multiple increase compared to having no weapon equipped.
The rares each have 70% spell damage, 22 faster cast, and +36-76 fire to spells

.........searing touch..rares * 1....rares *2
initial...1.393..........1.592........2.372
burn....2.3681.........1.288........1.8976
total....3.7611.........2.88.........4.2696

It's really front loaded damage which makes reflect scary, but that seems really rare nowadays. For reference, my unsupported damage with a level 18 flameblast was listed at 1535 and 2706 with conc effect. No quality on either.

I think i'm going to remake the character. This time i'll use a cloak of flame and drop AA for purity of fire. But only because i'm on hardcore. Carcass jack is expensive!

The build:

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patrick32123 wrote:

.........searing touch..rares * 1....rares *2
initial...1.393..........1.592........2.372
burn....2.3681.........1.288........1.8976
total....3.7611.........2.88.........4.2696

Possible problem with this. Maybe the flat damage with spells is what's making the difference, but I just loaded two 65-70% spell damage rares with 18%+ cast speed.

Searing Touch (FB 21, no supports) - 1923.5

2 Rares - 1867.3

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think you forgot to put your Flameblast back in the Searing Touch. Because the +2 gem levels is huge.

"

The rares each have 70% spell damage, 22 faster cast, and +36-76 fire to spells

The wiki doesn't say how much damage a lvl 22 flameblast does but the jump from 20 to 21 only saw a 16-23 damage increase. That doesn't even come close to the 36-76 that the wands are each adding.

I could be in error over the way flat spell damage is added to flameblast, but i'm almost positive the tooltip damage increased when i switched weapons.

And yes, flat damage has a tremendous impact on dps. After all, the spell has an attack speed of .2 . That means that a flat damage increase of 1 would turn into a dps increase of 5. This aspect of it was buffed in 2.0 as well.

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patrick32123 wrote:

"

The rares each have 70% spell damage, 22 faster cast, and +36-76 fire to spells

The wiki doesn't say how much damage a lvl 22 flameblast does but i'd be amazed if the +2 difference is larger than 72-152.

There could be an error in the way +spell damage is calculated with flameblast, but i'm almost positive the tooltip damage increased when i switched weapons.

Right, like I said, I don't know how much of that factors in from the flat damage for spells. But your values seem incredibly improved for just a bit of flat damage thrown in, moreso than reasonable, which is what led me to believe that you weren't throwing your FB back into Searing Touch.

I don't have anything like that on standard in order to do a proper comparison though. Might get around to it if I find myself bored in Warbands.

Regardless:

Flameblast's damage effectiveness is 50%, so really that's just 36-76 again. The effectiveness applies to flat damage from wands as well as auras and whatnot.

Flameblast Level 20: 200-300 + ((36-76)*2)/2 = 236-376 <-- (wand value base with flat fire added.

Flameblast Level 22: 234-351

So, your particular double wand in terms of flat damage added is marginally better than the base FB on its own in a Searing Touch.

Long story short something's wrong here, you shouldn't be seeing an average damage increase from 1.393 to 2.372 from Searing to two rares, even with a spell damage variation from 90% (assumes perfect Searing) to 140%. It should be more along the lines of 2.1 to 2.3, at most. Still an improvement but not as drastic as what your reported numbers would indicate.

I should have said this before, but my numbers were estimates based on my personal excel calculator. If you're right about the gem's listed damage being post 50% reduction and flat damage from a weapon being pre reduction then that would explain the damage differences. I'll definitely be looking into it.

Sadly, since the character's dead and moved to softcore his stash is effectively empty. If i see you on sometime i'll lend you the weapon he's using so you can compare.

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patrick32123 wrote:

I should have said this before, but my numbers were estimates based on my personal excel calculator. If you're right about the gem's listed damage being post 50% reduction and flat damage from a weapon being pre reduction then that would explain the damage differences. I'll definitely be looking into it.

Sadly, since the character's dead and moved to softcore his stash is effectively empty. If i see you on sometime i'll lend you the weapon he's using so you can compare.

Sure, feel free to add me-in game (IGN Puirlea) and I'll take the time to swap over to Standard and we can get a definitive answer on values which I can report back here and that way we can collaboratively make adjustments to the build based on the results.

"

.........searing touch..rares * 1....rares *2
initial...1.393..........1.592........2.372
burn....2.3681.........1.288........1.8976
total....3.7611.........2.88.........4.2696

So Serleth was kind enough to try on my two rare wands and he was right about their flat fire damage needing to be reduced by half to get the numbers to work out. My error was in thinking that the fireblast gem's listed values hadn't been reduced yet either.

Here are the actual gains he reported followed by the new math.

real values
nothing..1
staff.....1.356679362
rares.....1.536323882

no FCR (faster cast rate)
.........searing touch..rares * 1....rares *2
initial...1.393..........1.240........1.506
burn....2.3681..........1.240........1.506
total....3.7611.........2.480.........3.012

FCR
.........searing touch..rares * 1....rares *2
initial...1.393..........1.420........1.942
burn....2.3681..........1.240........1.506
total....3.7611.........2.660.........3.448

As you can see, the real values match up decently well to the no FCR initial hit values. With this you can see that the searing touch now out-damage the dual rares if you ignite. It won't have the benefit of 44% faster cast rate, though. Furthermore, the real numbers were found using a lvl 21 fireblast gem. The lower the gem level the bigger role the flat fire damage will play.

Deciding between the two weapons would have to be a personal call depending on ignite chance and cast speed preference. I can't say i've played enough of either to throw my weight behind one.