Fireball

Disappointing and severely underwhelming skill. Even with rolling flames fireball is abysmal.
Not only do fire skills have worst status ailment,but fire spels in general are inferior and bad.

have been trying Obliteration wand(s) and selected fireball as the 'kill' skill over the KB. wanted to test fireball + rolling flames (2x) anyway

my tree is heavily chaos focused so my fireball deals miniscule damage (19% crit and around 130total increased damage) and yet it still works great. in 6 link..

will try it out without the chaos damage (or with conversion) + crits etc to see its true potential but it is already obvious that rolling flames are mandatory. the difference 2 of these make is night and day. would like to use 3 or even 4 but the cost gets prohibitive. this mechanic should immediately merged with the gem itself.

short note: fireball's damage is low. very very low. it cannot be chained/forked/pierced effixiently (explosions only on final stage - unlike the Kinetic Blast..) its innate bonus is irrelevant - burn is ok but it is calculated from base hit and it is a weak hit. shotgunning pretty much killed this skill and this ignite gimmick isnt fooling anyone.

oh and bring the old animation back

"

sidtherat wrote:

have been trying Obliteration wand(s) and selected fireball as the 'kill' skill over the KB. wanted to test fireball + rolling flames (2x) anyway

my tree is heavily chaos focused so my fireball deals miniscule damage (19% crit and around 130total increased damage) and yet it still works great. in 6 link..

will try it out without the chaos damage (or with conversion) + crits etc to see its true potential but it is already obvious that rolling flames are mandatory. the difference 2 of these make is night and day. would like to use 3 or even 4 but the cost gets prohibitive. this mechanic should immediately merged with the gem itself.

short note: fireball's damage is low. very very low. it cannot be chained/forked/pierced effixiently (explosions only on final stage - unlike the Kinetic Blast..) its innate bonus is irrelevant - burn is ok but it is calculated from base hit and it is a weak hit. shotgunning pretty much killed this skill and this ignite gimmick isnt fooling anyone.

oh and bring the old animation back

Im currently playing a lv91 fireball. My tooltip with 5 frenzy is 32k, and im playing with 6l Infernal mantle (+1 to fire gems, fire damage and 100% crit chance). Not even saying that tooltip is crap. I think it should have a 120% damage effectiveness, in order to boost the damage and the slight damage bonus given by other buffs (like HoI o HoT).

I have to say this: the area of effect is crap without at least 3xrolling flames. This is not good at all, considering that you have to waste so many passive points to place that 150 intelligence around specific jewel sock (that you need to reach of course --> so other points wasted).
Because of this crappy area, it is really the worst skill for leveling (not even having a high single target dps), and this is something you should change.

But the worst problem i think it should fixed, is that the balls fired are very very tiny. They should be increased of size, in order to let 2+ projectile hit the same target: especially while using GMP, which reduces drastically the dps. Everyone that imagines a fireball, imagine a big ball fired from the hands.
Also, another bad problem about fireball that needs to be fixed as soon as possible: with lmp/gmp, if you have enemies very near to your character, the balls are fired with a larger angle.. and this is nonsens coz, especially with lmp (=while leveling) that you fire 3 proj, only one projectile will hit the mob on you, while the other two projectile are heading very far from the monsters.

I decided to play with fireball again. Tried 1-4 rolling flame build.
Normal fireball builds,chaos fireball builds.
Oculist fireball builds with tricurse. Elementalist fireball builds etc.

I came with the conclusion that in order for fireball to be viable they must:
For the love of god increase base aoe.
Rolling flames is way to expensive to activate. Either remove the int requirements for the gem to be active or implement it in the skill it self. For now the effect is not interesting enough to "waste" so many skill points to get the required intelligence to activate the gem. Implement the effect into the fireball skillgem itself. Increasing aoe by 100%?the further fireball travels(basically 2? rolling flames gem effect)Maybe change the effect that quality has on the gem so that it gives 10%? increased aoe the further it travels.

Damage Effectiveness of at least 120%. For a skill that has abysmal base aoe this is a must.

Increase projectile speed(animation speed maybe). Currently it`s just way to slow and clunky. Even with faster projectiles.

Increase base damage making it comparable to freeze pulse.

Increase projectile size.

ive spent some more time testing this skill out and ive found what follows:

- ignite and burn damage is the key to making it work
- Elementalist's prolif is another key to making it work
- playing without 2 Rolling Flames is a waste of time. these jewels are not 'threshold' are 'mandatory' jewels. 3+ is overkill (unless playing non-Elementalist)

my tooltip currently says 10k. laughable? maybe. but even with 'plain' setup it makes for some nice clears. scaling is awkward but is like follows: fire damage -> elemental damage -> burn modifiers -> spell damage

chance to ignite from gem + some from tree + some from crit (i have like 11% for Elemental Overload, mostly from incidental pathing)

my current setup (lvl 87)


makes for very nice clears - EXTREMELY good pack clears and surprisingly good single target (note: for a normal build, it is not FOTM territory)

you see the wand? it is what makes this particular build even better (however it is not necessary, my normal wand is:


combination of Obliteration + Elementalist's proliferation + +AOE + burn/fire damage makes clears insanely fast - it is bordering FOTM territory


to sum it up:
- Rolling Flames are mandatory. at least 2 of them. it is a very bad design and should be looked into. FB without these jewels is VERY difficult to play
- burn/ignite is the way FB scales and delivers its damage - that means it is a late bloomer build because most of the %ignite and %burn/fire/ele nodes are taken late. but once it is all in place the burns take care of enemies quickly (and reflect free)
- the skill is ugly. old GFX might have been GPU heavy etc but current one is UGLY and the MTX is not only too flashy but smells of a cash grab (unlike other skill mtx'es)
- this gem has bad press. only partially deserved. Magma Orb 'looks' to be better in every way but while the coverage and feel is ok it is also pretty unwieldy and i found myself tired after just half a map
- vaal fireball is SICK. imho it is on the vaal spark level when build around.

- these above combined make FB very weak at early-mid game making people drop it and never give it another chance.


proposed changes:
- de-uglify the skill. current one is revolting
- de-threshold-jewel the AOE. currently this gem is pretty unplayable without at least 2 of these supposedly optional jewels. it is a terribad design
- add proximity-explosion (similar to trap trigger radius). this spell travels so slowly that it is very common to hit nothing.
- make explosions leave burning ground (impossible due to Cast on Cancer but still..)
- reduce the cast times with levels

damage is fine (because it should include the burning damage as well), mana cost etc are also in line with other spells.

the problem is not clearing. Every skill can clear easily. The problem is when u face those nasty modded bosses or mobs at high level gameplay. At tier 10+ fireball is shit. I think shit is even better,just crap in your hands and throw it at the mobs.

show me your build because i had 0 problems with bosses/rares in t10+ with my now L88 fireballer.

and if one needs single target setup - Flame Surge fits any FB build PERFECTLY. i have a 3 link setup but i rarely even use it.

im not saying FB is very strong - no, it is not comparable with blade vortex or blade fall. but can be made into an end game build with very solid performance

I did a completely different build, as you can see from my gear. I dont go for burn, i decided to try the syngery between consuming dark and infernal mantle since i had 6l it with some fuses.



Playing like this requires absolutely the GMP, which take you down 40%. Though i think damage is fine against packs (maybe not very good for single target, but frost wall helps a lot).

Also, im not elementalist. I am a trickster, using 3 rolling flames. 3 jewels are the MINIMUM to use fireball. Linking Increase AoE is totally useless: adding 35% aoe to a shitful base doesn't improve anything, it is a gem slot wasted. This is terrible.

my passive tree:


I think that projectile size and speed is terrible. If they are so slow, they cant be so tiny.

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sidtherat wrote:

can be made into an end game build with very solid performance

Nope. Sure it`s easy on blank maps. But on maps with mods ,fireball is trash. Have you tried atziri with fireball? Upload a solid atziri run with fireball on youtube and maybe i`ll change my mind about fireball.

I`ll list one of the builds i tried.

I tried full chaos conversion with

Burn damage is absolutely abysmal. I ignored it completely.
My witch is a tri-curse occultist. Killing tricursed enemies gives a whopping 12%more chaos damage.It`s like a small frenzy buff. Profane bloom gives +10% dmg against cursed enemies. Void-beacon reduces chaos resist by 20%

I tried various gem combination and the best that worked for me was:
Fireball>lmp(gmp)>void manipulation>spell echo>controlled destruction>concentrated effect.

This was with 4 rolling flames.

Concentrated Effect is not a viable support gem for Fireball, unless you play for burning damage with elementalist proliferation, or you manage to put 5 rolling flames jewel (Which is totally insane, the number of passive points wasted for this is huge).