Fireball

I'm spec'ed for minions and fire damage (+60%) with no bonuses to lightning yet I find spark much more useful for creating corpses than fireball. Even with faster projectiles and faster casting supports (I don't have added projectiles yet) I find it doesn't deal damage fast enough or hit reliably enough to be useful and I typically resort to standing my ground dropping Firestorm then spamming spark. My impression is the only way to use it is with added projectiles and added damage as a minimum.

This skill could really use a new support "added fire damage" just like light/cold have. Rename the current added fire to "physical to fire".

Also the quality effect loses effectiveness the better your gear gets since only the strongest burn effect counts.

So chain casting at a boss mob for 10 seconds for example with 1.5 casts per second (every .75s), odds are your burns are up from crits for 1.5s-10.0 entirely, and you had a 20% extra chance for 1 tick of burn from 0.0-1.5

Pretty lackluster and not worth GCP really. Maybe it should be increases burn damage by 2-40%?

Playing through two witches with my girl (she's prototype multi-proj frost spear) and it's obvious how much worse a killer my my fire witch is, even though my gear is better and I've used most of my orbs on this character and i'm dual wielding instead of using a shield.

I use fireball with my new witch.

the original idea was to use Fireball with knockback and multiple prj. supports to always keep range from melee mobs while keeping them inside the Firestorm aoe area.

But since knockback doesn't actually knock things back, (it's more like a half-second stun?), the idea was scrapped.

Now I use increased projectile speed, faster cast rate and cold damage supports, which is very good. At least in Ruthless where I am currently playing at level 40.

I double curse with projectile weakness and elemental weakness for 65% extra damage.

Combat is fluent. Frost wall, double firestorm on ranged groups, pop diamond flask for the storm if there is a special character with them, and kill melee as they come around the corner.

Battle is usually done by the time the frost wall expires.


I should add that I currently have 48% increased cast speed, and 30% increased AoE radius.

I also use only a single mana flask, and don't have any mana issues at all. Very nice to play so far.

Edit: I should add that I ignore burn damage on fireball. You either don't have time to wait for it, or you don't bother to wait for it. It's completly useless in a build like mine without any crit passives.

Going to chime in here how bad fireball is. Having went 50+ ranks using fireball, I finally said screw the experiment and went back to discharge.

To give you some comparisons:

I had a 4-linked Searing Touch unique, with quality Fireball, Increased Critical Multi, Increased Critical, and Chance to Ignite. I didn't go Multiple Proj just because I didn't have the dexterity and I've killed myself with it (damn reflect)...and I was aiming for high crit with power charges to 1-shot anything. Multi Proj also usually lowers single hit DPS and I was aiming for the max burning possible. Using a diamond flask and having over a 550% crit multiplier (crit weakness curse) and 200% burning...the damage was still abysmal. I think with 6 power charges and crit flask on, I was around 3.75k dps (tried even Added Chaos, wasn't much help).

To give you an idea, I switched to Discharge after banging my head on the wall with fireball. An unleveled gem with 5 endurance charges did more damage! Now with a leveled gem and 7 charges, I'm breaking 12k - without any damage supports (using AoE, ignite and quantity)...and I hit the entire screen. It's also a lot more defensive because it's instant (don't have to wait for travel time or worry about elem reflect walking in), I can use Immortal Call and I can create a self-barricade with frost wall and still blast over it.

Fireball...is pretty lame as it stands now.

Can anyone pls confirm if the increased AOE support gem / passives work with fireball splash radius? I was testing it a few hours ago @ lvl 37 fire witch and did not notice any difference. Only the very close enemies seem to get hit by it..

Increased AoE radius passives and support gem absolutely work on Fireball. Check your character screen, click on Fireball, click on the 'miscellaneous' tab. I am currently at 40% increased AoE for Fireball on lvl 38 fire witch, and it splashes enemies well-away from the explosion.

I just got done trying fireball witch up to lvl 11 and I frankly gave up and deleted. Its just the worst of the 3 starting spells. The early level damage scaling is a bit low I think. Maybe raise it by a few points of dmg.

The enemies usually run at you 1 by 1 so the AoE exploding rarely hits more than 2 enemies unless in a big group but then only 1 guy runs at you.

I switched to Ice nova and it just can't be beat.