[1.3]Fireball Witch guide for beginners

Hey. I'm new player and I'm trying to follow this guide. It looks pretty simple to understand (and I loved fire sorceresses when playing Diablo 2 a lifetime ago. :) Sorry about my english.

I'm confused with something. I'm planning to go with ES only, so I guess I'll pick CI passive. But there's recommed life leech gem for fireball? Should I replace it with something, if I only use energy shield?

-FT

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FuriousT1 wrote:

Hey. I'm new player and I'm trying to follow this guide. It looks pretty simple to understand (and I loved fire sorceresses when playing Diablo 2 a lifetime ago. :) Sorry about my english.

I'm confused with something. I'm planning to go with ES only, so I guess I'll pick CI passive. But there's recommed life leech gem for fireball? Should I replace it with something, if I only use energy shield?

-FT

If you go CI you should also take Ghost Reaver. With that the life leech will apply to your energy shield.

BTW even if you want to go CI i recommend doing that in act2 merciless. Until then take some life nodes and wear gear that has life on it. Go with full ES gear (that won't need any life on it) once you spec into CI.

Oh yeah, I thought I missed something. Makes sense now, thanks!

whats the DPS with this build at the end game ?

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mopzi wrote:

whats the DPS with this build at the end game ?

There can be no specific answer to that question as the damage depends on a large part on the gear you are wearing. Varying monster resistances are another reason.

The question on the amount of damage is therefore best answered by quoting Rolls Royce: "sufficient".

Do you have a recommendation for a 6th gem for fireball to increase DPS? I have been using Item rarity since I figured why not. I have used mana leech but since my mana regen is up to 100+ a second and my fireball is at 114 mana every .75 seconds I only have to use mana potions when I am really chain firing.

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Hawk_MN wrote:

Do you have a recommendation for a 6th gem for fireball to increase DPS? I have been using Item rarity since I figured why not. I have used mana leech but since my mana regen is up to 100+ a second and my fireball is at 114 mana every .75 seconds I only have to use mana potions when I am really chain firing.

I assume you have high enough crit so that you don't need chance to ignite.
To increase dps you could either use faster casting or increased critical damage. I personally would prefer icd for two reasons: with faster casting there is always a risk that you screw up your mmana pool; icd boost your damage per hit and thereby the burning damage, whereas faster casting leaves the damage per hit unaffected. You only have more hits, but the burning damage stays the same.
A third option would be elemental proliferation, but i doubt it would give a better clearing speed than icd or fc after the nerf to burning damage.

What % crit chance should you be looking for? I am at 20.7% spell critical plus another 5% additional chance to ignite enemies. My Critical strike multiplier is 320%.

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Hawk_MN wrote:

What % crit chance should you be looking for? I am at 20.7% spell critical plus another 5% additional chance to ignite enemies. My Critical strike multiplier is 320%.

Hard to give an exact number.
Basically you can have two strategies: 1) Get your base crit over 20% and link the fire trap with a chance to ignite. That way your burning damage comes from the fire trap. You can therefore use faster casting on your fireball as it is the dps not the damge per hit that matters for FB in that case. 2) You want your FB to be the source of burning damage. Get your crit over 30% in that case by also taking bloodthirst in the tree and most important using a dagger instead of a wand. Link an increased crit damage instead of an chance to ignite (or faster casting)


BTW I have 36.8% on my fireball. Aside from also having specced into bloodthirst (+60%), my weapon gives me an additional 169%:

How central is crit to this concept? Every fireball build I see is centered on the use of crit to get heavy burns going, but I was hoping more for consistent and constant hits and less big-boom. Also because I just generally find stacking crit to be a painful and tedious process though that's a personal matter.