Firestorm

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soul4hdwn wrote:

mobs hit by crit weakness will have a different threshold from whatever thier preset was randomly made. firestorm's crit chance is determined on cast (as everything else). the roll of firestorm's "chance" runs against the foe's roll (modified or not). also ALL hits of firestorm crits if it was but critical weakness makes things interesting. if some foes not affected by the curse is hit by firestorm with those that are, there is a chance that only those cursed will get crit.

I've tested it, all mobs get critical hits on critical spell cast and You cant get critical hit on some mobs and on some not. The only interaction there is, is critical strike multiplier amplifier on cursed enemies.

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Vipermagi wrote:

When you cast a skill, you roll a Crit value between-and-including 1 and 100.
Let's say you have a 30% Chance to Crit naturally. 1-30 would be Crits.

If you curse an enemy with Critical Weakness, which adds 5% Chance to Crit, you will have 35% Chance to Crit against these enemies. If you roll 31-35, you will Crit against Cursed enemies. Non-Cursed enemies will not receive Crits.

Your Crit Roll is determined on-activation, but whether you actually Crit or not is on a per-enemy base.

Similarly, Evasion can deny a Critical hit, and is not equal among all monsters.

Generally for most skills yes, but from test with Firestorm it doesnt work that way. It crits or not and it includes every npc in spell area. Just test it by Yourself.

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KKRT wrote:

Generally for most skills yes, but from test with Firestorm it doesnt work that way. It crits or not and it includes every npc in spell area. Just test it by Yourself.

He isn't saying the contrary. He's saying that's it's possible to roll a non crit firestorm and still crit mobs because they're cursed. Assuming there's like 2mobs getting hit within the firestorm and one is cursed, the other isn't and the firestorm did NOT base crit, then you could crit the one cursed and not crit the one not cursed. This is an extreme fringe case though but it seems quite possible. If your firestorm roll a crit you'll crit everything regardless.

I have a 6% quality Firestorm and I saw someone selling a 9% that had the same tooltip, word for word, number for number. I realize each quality point only changes the time by 0.0015s, but at what percent quality intervals does the tooltip update? Is anything actually changing between 6 and 9 percent, or is there a certain threshold one must reach to improve the quality of the gem?

0.0015 * 6 = 0.009

0.0015 * 9 = 0.0135

Are both of these getting rounded to 0.01? If so, are they being rounded purely for the tooltip's purposes or does a 6% have the same exact effect as a 9%?

0.0015 * 10 = 0.015, would this be rounded to 0.02 then? Meaning 10-16% quality gems all get rounded to 0.02 and have the same effectiveness? Would a 17% gem round up to 0.03 and have the same impact as a 20% Firestorm?

This skill is not very friendly versus fast mobs. The only way I could make use of it was to cast decoy totem then spam it. Could you change the spread from left to right to up to down please?

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I have a 6% quality Firestorm and I saw someone selling a 9% that had the same tooltip, word for word, number for number. I realize each quality point only changes the time by 0.0015s, but at what percent quality intervals does the tooltip update? Is anything actually changing between 6 and 9 percent, or is there a certain threshold one must reach to improve the quality of the gem?

0.0015 * 6 = 0.009

0.0015 * 9 = 0.0135

Are both of these getting rounded to 0.01? If so, are they being rounded purely for the tooltip's purposes or does a 6% have the same exact effect as a 9%?

0.0015 * 10 = 0.015, would this be rounded to 0.02 then? Meaning 10-16% quality gems all get rounded to 0.02 and have the same effectiveness? Would a 17% gem round up to 0.03 and have the same impact as a 20% Firestorm?

the values are exact and not rounded except for the limited display. a 20% quality firestorm sends out bolts exactly every 0.12 seconds (meaning 10 bolts via normal duration vs 8 from no quality) while a 19% quality won't get that extra bolt. a 12% quality is "breakpoint" for 9 bolts, 1.2/0.132 =9.09 (repeating decimal).

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soul4hdwn wrote:

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I have a 6% quality Firestorm and I saw someone selling a 9% that had the same tooltip, word for word, number for number. I realize each quality point only changes the time by 0.0015s, but at what percent quality intervals does the tooltip update? Is anything actually changing between 6 and 9 percent, or is there a certain threshold one must reach to improve the quality of the gem?

0.0015 * 6 = 0.009

0.0015 * 9 = 0.0135

Are both of these getting rounded to 0.01? If so, are they being rounded purely for the tooltip's purposes or does a 6% have the same exact effect as a 9%?

0.0015 * 10 = 0.015, would this be rounded to 0.02 then? Meaning 10-16% quality gems all get rounded to 0.02 and have the same effectiveness? Would a 17% gem round up to 0.03 and have the same impact as a 20% Firestorm?

the values are exact and not rounded except for the limited display. a 20% quality firestorm sends out bolts exactly every 0.12 seconds (meaning 10 bolts via normal duration vs 8 from no quality) while a 19% quality won't get that extra bolt. a 12% quality is "breakpoint" for 9 bolts, 1.2/0.132 =9.09 (repeating decimal).

That's all if we're not using Increased Duration though, correct? So I should do the math and figure out how long my cast lasts to see what quality of Firestorm I should aim for?

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soul4hdwn wrote:

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I have a 6% quality Firestorm and I saw someone selling a 9% that had the same tooltip, word for word, number for number. I realize each quality point only changes the time by 0.0015s, but at what percent quality intervals does the tooltip update? Is anything actually changing between 6 and 9 percent, or is there a certain threshold one must reach to improve the quality of the gem?

0.0015 * 6 = 0.009

0.0015 * 9 = 0.0135

Are both of these getting rounded to 0.01? If so, are they being rounded purely for the tooltip's purposes or does a 6% have the same exact effect as a 9%?

0.0015 * 10 = 0.015, would this be rounded to 0.02 then? Meaning 10-16% quality gems all get rounded to 0.02 and have the same effectiveness? Would a 17% gem round up to 0.03 and have the same impact as a 20% Firestorm?

the values are exact and not rounded except for the limited display. a 20% quality firestorm sends out bolts exactly every 0.12 seconds (meaning 10 bolts via normal duration vs 8 from no quality) while a 19% quality won't get that extra bolt. a 12% quality is "breakpoint" for 9 bolts, 1.2/0.132 =9.09 (repeating decimal).

That's all if we're not using Increased Duration though, correct? So I should do the math and figure out how long my cast lasts to see what quality of Firestorm I should aim for?

Correct, Increased Duration levels and quality will also influence your results though, so take that into consideration. Overall you want to aim for a 20% firestorm regardless, you might get as many fireballs with less % at certain amounts of duration but that not's necessarily relevant. I guess you could calculate the maximum duration with 20% increased duration and then figure out how much % firestorm needs.

Iirc the Quality on Increased Duration is 1% per % quality, so 20% duration added to the 83% at lvl 20 it gives, that's +103%. Base duration of Firestorm is 1.2secs, that adds up to 2.436seconds. Base hit is 0.15secs intervals and each quality removes 0.0015secs. At 18% quality, you'd get 19 hits and at 19% and 20% you'd get 20hits. So technically, you don't need that last % on firestorm IF you have a 20% duration and assuming I'm not wrong on duration quality.

Oh also an interesting thing to note about Firestorm. While it's very far, there are +45%duration to skills in the passive tree, in the branch from the middle going toward the ranger area. It would require a serious investment to get there, but it'd increase the damage per cast by a substantial amount.

You don't want a super fast casting firestorm, because you will never have the mana regen, to support perma-casting with 2 and 3 firestorms area coverage at the same time, which increases the burn duration and crit chance. About 0.65 sec is good enough, added a gem to increase the duration of the skill. I am now using firestorm with fire pen gen, faster casting gem + increased skill duration gem (plus a fire penetration additionally in totem curse), in combination with some passives for *area damage:

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMAAW8C4wdjB6URLRFQFkAdFB8CKU8snCy_MtE2xTbYOtg74TyOPV9DY0SrRUdJG0myTdhSU1WuVytXyVj1XcZgbWaebRlxTXNTeqp65nyDfVOBb4IQgh6Cm4M4hEiFfYdliEKLeox2jmSOvo-mksGaz5wtnYCdxJ48pyuvt7UEtoa2-rcxuJO71sAawFTBxcHzw23N-tR83fPfsOL35CLmfOaB52rr7uwY7DjsVe988WzyHfem-tI=

I am casting about 17 firestorms consecutively, until the mana goes to 0 (then again, it refills pretty quickly, with around 95 mana regen / sec).
I am also using temporal chains, to slow down the mobs. I cannot be sure how it works (am not fast enough to see it), if the temporal chains curse works together with the fire penetration curse from the totem. You are supposed to be able to cast only one curse, but in case the 2nd is from the totem, I don't know how it works.

* This is another issue, because you want area coverage large enough to take down mob packs (or hunt down someone in PvP, from distance) but at the same time enough density of the fireballs, so to not miss one target. You have to be careful with these specific passives.
Another 5th gem addition which would be good would be added lightning damage, for stun and increase of the crits, but that might increase the mana cost a lot.

You can also use Elemental Equilibrium, fire some sparks on the mobs, then instantly use firestorm (after casting the fire pen totem) which will give a total of (sample numbers for 15-16 fire pen gems):
44 + 33 + 50 = -127% + (mob fire resistance %) fire penetration (-50% total, final fire penetration will double the DPS).
Provided the "density" combination of area damage versus area coverage is a good factor, this is absolutely devastating.

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This skill is not very friendly versus fast mobs. The only way I could make use of it was to cast decoy totem then spam it. Could you change the spread from left to right to up to down please?

Molten Shell + temporal chains + run away + cast firestorm.
Or use minions to tank you.

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Oh also an interesting thing to note about Firestorm. While it's very far, there are +45%duration to skills in the passive tree, in the branch from the middle going toward the ranger area. It would require a serious investment to get there, but it'd increase the damage per cast by a substantial amount.

You will need that for maybe just 1 skill of your build, so spending so many skill-points to go there is a very bad investment, when you can spend them to actually get +%fire and +%elemental passives. Instead, you can use an added duration gem to that one skill.


The figures you have posted about the +X% with quality gems (I suppose you can play the trader and get gcp to do the same thing) would create a tremendously op skill for AoE. Perhaps the stats to the +quality should be nerfed a little.