Storm Burst

I made a character for this skill - a guardian with cwc glacial cascade. I cleared faster by removing the cwc and storm burst and just selfcasting GC, even with lightning damage nodes allocated.

It needs a cast speed buff - or a damage buff - and an AOE buff. Right now it loses to just about any other skill in the game.

The way I see storm burst, you want to play a class that can more easily obtain additional projectiles since this skill is clear made for AoE overlap. This means either deadeye (feels sort of bad not utilizing the 'attack' parts of the ascendencies) or scion, and I really dont ever want to play a scion again after nemesis league.

Lastly a pathfinder with dying suns, but there are probably better things you can do with that level of stuff. Maybe I am wrong though.

not sure if a +3 lightning gem bow with + damage quiver with +arrow would be better...

One of the most fun skills in the game. I was really hyped to play this skill once Fall of Oriath came along and liked it very much for the better part of my playtime with that character.

Problem is, you can't really play it though once you reach a certain point in the game because the damage just feels so weak, that kinda sucks away at the enjoyment of using it.

Likewise chiming in, damage seems a bit lackluster as a standalone skill, though I am having reasonable success with it as a CWC setup. In terms of related affects of the skill, does the increased area damage affect linked CWC skills? WIll the +quality increased area of affect apply to linked skills?

One thing I have noticed - with large numbers of effects going off (e.g. full party in maps) I have had consistent issues with the skill failing to cast - I literally get the one orb burst at the character, it's almost as if the skill is acting like I have no mana or am being permastunned. Mana isn't being consumed, and no damage being received when I have seen this occur. Has anyone else had that issue?

Further screwing about with this skill - I'm currently using this as a Cast While Channeling base with Ball Lightning.

Storm Burst -> Cast While Channeling -> Ball Lightning -> Life Leech -> Greater Multiple Projectiles -> Slower Projectiles.

When I added Slower Projectiles to this build, the detonations from the Storm Burst itself are now massively delayed. Is this working as intended, or a glitch?

As far as an actual feedback for this - Damage feels a bit difficult to apply, due to the detonation pattern of starting at my character and detonating outward, I feel that I have to time both range and velocity to actually apply Storm Burst's damage. I think that making this an instant detonation of all orbs would greatly enhance the skills damage applicability without drastic changes to the current damage curve.

Can't say I spent a whole lot of time with this skill, because it felt so clunky and underwhelming.
My initial impression is that the skill is garbage. Evidently I am not the only one with that impression.

I leveled a character (named PerpetusImpactant) in the Mayhem SC league from level 28 to around level 67 with Storm Burst as my main damaging skill. I started the league a few days late. I paired it with Inquisitor because it seemed like a simple choice that would work fine for softcore. I ended up basing my build around crit, crit damage, and generating power charges with a 4-link Orb of Storms. Late-game I worked my way towards Mind over Matter to bolster my defenses. I initially had planned to continue by allocating more life, crit-damage, and lightning damage nodes but late game provided me with enough challenge to consider other options.

My skill-tree mock-up was the following. Keep in mind that this would be the "finished" skill tree if I were to level up more. I currently have 91 points allocated. For the Bandits I helped Alira.

Path of Building code:


PoB pastebin:
https://pastebin.com/VSqCt7wf

Official passive skill-tree:


I tested a wide variety of skill-gem setups to see what I could make work effectively (and to simply test the skill):

Note: With a maximum of a 5-link I was unable to make this skill work effectively with any CwC setup (to my satisfaction at least). I tried a variety of gem setups at various points while leveling. I combined SB-GMP-FP-CwC (and SB-GMP-CwC) with all other lightning skills for even more damage and then even some cold skills for additional CC. In every scenario removing the CwC and instead adding more supports always felt significantly more powerful and satisfying (even after obtaining Inevitable Judgement).


In addition to Storm Burst I also used:
4L: Orb of Storms - Faster Casting - Inc. Crit. Strikes - PCoC)
2L: Conductivity - Arcane Surge
3L: Lightning Golem - M-Life - MaTER

Pre-MoM I also used Herald of Thunder and Arctic Armour. The AoE from HoT pairs nicely and I would consider using it again if I incorporated Reduced Mana Reservation nodes into my build.

I didn't bother using a CwDT setup and I learned to appreciate bubbling hybrid, stibnite, and basalt/granite flasks more. Also, I don't think I ended up with enough gem slots to even think about it because I went through the quests/acts without any farming. I did stop using my ample quicksilver of adrenaline sometimes to do unique strong boxes or if I couldn't run/lightning warp past some invasion bosses. Otherwise I just got by on what I found (buying a few skill-gems but no gear) and unfortunately I never did find a suitable party to join so all of my experience is from a solo perspective.


The progression of my Storm Burst gem-links went something like this (these are what I settled on after testing and ultimately progressed the most with):

Low-Mid level:
4L: SB - LMP - Lightning Penetration - Controlled destruction

Mid level before most crit nodes:
5L: SB - GMP - Faster Projectiles - Inc. Crit Strikes - Controlled destruction

Post ascendancy and post crit nodes from the tree + crit dagger + crit shield + VoidBringer gloves:
5L: SB - GMP - Faster Projectiles - Inc. Crit Strikes - Inc. Crit Damage

If I were to continue using the skill after ~lvl 67 I would consider replacing Inc. Crit. Strikes with Controlled Destruction or another damage support because nearly every cast at this point is a crit without power charges. The base 3 power charges easily covers the downside of Controlled Destruction so instead of allocating more power charges I could allocate more life, crit-damage, Static Blows, lightning damage, etc. Also, I considered removing lightning damage only nodes and allocating elemental nodes and then incorporating cold skills into the build because of the risky nature of using Storm Burst.

When I started mapping I was dismayed to discover that the damage against map bosses (Tier 1 and 2, blue and rare) suddenly became unbearable. Especially considering some of the boss mechanics when paired with a channeled skill that requires a minimum distance or a minimum time to reach the target.

To be fair my boss killing ability was relatively slow before mapping (Orb of Storms did some heavy lifting when I had to run around for the various, awesome new fights). Map bosses just seemed to exacerbate the issue to a point where I could no longer use the skill as my single target damage source. When I got to that point I realized that Storm Burst may not be designed as a single use/all-around skill. Unless it significantly changes, in the future in my Storm Burst builds I will use Storm Burst for "trash/AoE-clearing" and then my choice of an additional skill-gem setup for single target such as Storm Call. I suppose that I am so used to heavily supporting a single main damage skill that I initially didn't consider that this skill would be more suitable in a multi-skill build. For my play-style, that's a good thing.

I switched to using Spark in my setup since quite simply the league I am currently playing in is a race and my only goal is to gain levels and achievements as quickly as possible at this point. I plan to use Storm Burst more extensively in subsequent leagues and/or on one of my characters in Standard.

All in all I was excited to try this new skill and to me it was quite satisfying figuring out how to make it work for me. I had no trouble one or two shotting huge swaths of enemies within the span of 2 to 4 seconds (projectile speed is crucial if you want to go fast). For anything that does get close to me my trusty Stibnite flask usually lasts long enough with one charge for me to burst down any attack based enemy.

I am personally satisfied with the skill as-is except for one aspect. Sources of increased area of effect and conversely decreased area of effect seems to have very little to no impact on the size of the AoE explosion of Storm Burst. I didn't actually take screenshots and compare so I could be mistaken. It felt like Inc. Aoe/Conc. Effect were less efficient choices for supports to use with this particular skill. Instead, increasing the number of projectiles (LMP, GMP, GMP+LMP) seemed to have the largest impact on both damage and damage delivery. With that in mind, the only remaining optimization was to then deliver that damage quicker. And so, that's how I settled on Faster Projectiles.

Finally, I just want to sincerely give thanks for this new skill. I have thoroughly enjoyed all of the lightning based skills in the past few years. Storm Burst out of the gate joined those ranks. Causing me to play differently and think differently is just icing on the cake.

Edit: I forgot to mention that I had the most fun with Storm Burst -> Cast while Channeling -> Lightning Warp. Yes, it actually works and if your timing and aim are decent you can simultaneously deal damage and avoid damaging mechanics. Good stuff.

I really liked this skill before seeing the numbers. As soon as I did however, it just looked so garbage i couldnt bring myself to make a character with it in spite of detonation dealing 350% base damage. It seems likely to me that this skill was undertuned not to risk it being as OP as Barrage with sufficient scaling. The answer to me before reading this thread seemed easy, just give it more base projectiles and lower damage. However, reading this I get the feeling bugs might also be an issue.

I still think more base projectiles is a must for this skill however, if you want it to ever be possible to balance. If cast speed then needs to be lowered to reduce the impacts of bugs, I think that would most likely be worth it. Its possible that a long cast time would make the detonation hard to aim however, though i think this could be drastically alleviated by making the projectiles explode in the opposite order (further away first).

Another solution may be to just give it 50% less extra projectiles.

Another problem I didnt initially think of myself is that as a projectile skill this skill doesnt have a big AoE, but instead travels away from you. But the moment you stop channeling the skill, ALL projectiles disappear making clear speed likely low. I think some kind of aftermath could alleviate this is if it is indeed a problem. For example lower damage, bigger AoE, and more randomly spread projectiles remaining after they discharged.

Feedback/question on the reworked 3.6 Storm Burst tool tip/mechanic

Since I have not tested the skill I naturally can't say anything about its performance. But while trying to do some type of number crunching I realized, or at least I think I realized, that the spell description on the tool-tip may be short on some information or simply not being clear enough.

The spell description states the following in the initial sentence:

"

Unleash orbs of energy while you channel that repeatedly jump towards the targeted location until their duration expires, dealing damage in small area after each jump.

The way I spontaneously read this is that each orb does multiple jumps until they expire. If this is the case the rate of these jumps remains unspecified/unclear.

In the announcement post (https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2329382) it is also stated that the orbs will:

"

...last for a few seconds, but if you stop channelling then the orbs will detonate immediately in a large area, dealing a portion of their remaining damage. [...] ...while long casts have higher overall damage as more orbs are created and deal their damage over their full duration.

This also suggests that there is some kind of activation rate from each orb over their lifetime. Similar to how Storm Brand works. However, it's unclear what this rate is.

I'm kinda disappointed. 0.4sec tick rate and 1.2 sec base duration makes duration scaling so straight bad. Each 'duration scaling' chunk should be at least 35% or it's a waste of skillpoints. And we have only 10-10-25 x2 clusters.
Things just do not fit together. Maybe you plan to rework duration on the tree, someday 3 leagues later, but nowadays the skill feels like a newbtrap with shitty base damage and clunky scaling.