[1.3]Fireball Witch guide for beginners

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Starke02 wrote:

What do you think about going Eb and using Cloak of Defiance? it would also help a little with reflect

It is a viable (actually not only viable, but good) option. Taking EB is something that always is just around the corner for a fireball life build as the mana cost of a fast fb + fire trap combo can be pretty high. Having a CoD would fit very nicely into such a build.

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Radagastt wrote:

Does the patch do anything to this build?

Life Leech is going to be drastically reduced. Since Life Leech won't que up anymore, so if you hit a boss with all 3 fireballs in an LMP you will effectively only leech from one of them instead of all 3.

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MartinDeShade wrote:

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Radagastt wrote:

Does the patch do anything to this build?

Life Leech is going to be drastically reduced. Since Life Leech won't que up anymore, so if you hit a boss with all 3 fireballs in an LMP you will effectively only leech from one of them instead of all 3.

How does life leech work? You will leech 20% of your life (or ES) pool per second. That means any leech you get will be scaled on the time axis, not the amount axis.
Example:
You have 4000 life and do 5000 damage with life leech rate of 8.8 (lvl 20 gem). You can leech 800 per second. The 440 leech you get (5000 x 8.8%) will then be scaled so that you leech the max amount possible: The 440 will be leeched over 0.55 seconds. If you would have gotten only 200 leech, this would have been leeched over 0.2 seconds.

With the new ll mechanics, leech packages will no longer be queued. Before 1.1 if you got another 440 leech within the 0.55 span that the first leech would still be active, it would be queued and become active once the first package finishes. That no longer is the case. Nothing gets queued any more, so there may be leech gaps while fighting.
Are they drastic?
In the above example you will leech over 0.55 seconds. With a realistic cast speed of 0.68 seconds per cast for fireball that means there could be a 0.13 gap if the first package ain't enough to fully heal you. That means over the span of 1 second you loose 13% leech compared to the old mechanics. Or to put it another way the effect is like leeching with 7.66% instead of 8.8%.
That may vary depending on the damage you deal of course. With only 4000 instead of 5k damage, the leech penalty would be around 20% (that's 7% effective leech rate).
Now is that drastic? I remember playing with 3% life leech before the gem got boosted and surviving. In most of the fights the difference won't be noticable and if an effective 7% ll rate ain't enough for the boss one shouldn't blame the gem mechanic.
It can be noticed in case one is burning or bleeding and the healing stops right after the fight instead of continuing like before.

pretty good guide


I'm guessing the only real changes after the current patch is more ele damage?

Is it possible to get life leech from items and not use the gem?

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LeftClickRightClick wrote:

Is it possible to get life leech from items and not use the gem?

No with the exception of

But it is useless for a fireball build. It might be helpful for an incinerate - GMP build that can generate a lot of hits per second.

Going to try out the fireball build, I got so ambivalent trying to decide on a build for the new league but this was so simple and proven to work as a first character so! Will get back with impressions and so on. Just finished Act 1 Normal Steamrolling with fire traps and Fireball.

Okay, I have some questions about the build, I'm using the Life-based version and I have about 2k Life at Level 59 at the start of Merciless. Sure enough I do Very high damage, but I also take high damage and need to run around alot.

1. What kind of armor am I aiming for as a Life build? Armor, ES (to get more mana for Eldritch battery), or Evasion Rating ? The guide doesn't really suggest going for a specific armour type, but something has to soak the phys damage?

2. Is there any kind of Uniqe Equipment I should be looking for other than the Searing touch?
(currently I'm using this:)

And it is pretty nice

As a life build you want to settle with armour and armour/ES hybrid gear.

The searing touch is great for leveling becuase the +2 to fire gems gives a huge damage boost to low level fire gems (53% more damage when looking at lvl 1 - lvl 3 fireball). By the time your gems hit upper levels, the damage bonus decreases (only 20% more when looking at lvl 18 - lvl 20 fireball). I would therefore no longer specifcally search for that staff but settle with a good wand/dagger - shield combo. It can give the same (or better) damage boost + some defense. I personlly prefer daggers with additional crit for spells and spell damage.

Can't you really post your gear ?

It may help some of us to improve ours, even if we understand there is no way to copy each other's build...that would off course make no sense !

Thanks.