Guide: Fireball CI Curser - Proliferated Burning Critical Fire Damage | In-depth | SC |

Hey,

I checked out your path to power, it looks pretty good :) There isn't much to say coz i didn't find any problem. I think its a good idea to go for some crit earlier on like you have, because your crit chance without is dreadful.

the last around 10 levels for me, lets say lvl 86-100 are all dps crit points and such, since i think you need some of the basic surviveability before all dps points and the highest damage is as an endgame reward for being high-level. What i mean is you may have to remove some of those crit points to cover the basic surviveability/functionality at some point.

You may also have to consider your mana points, the fireballer plays best when it has a decent mana pool to burst from, since it will move around a lot and regen it up ready for emptying it again.

I did some calculations, and found i needed those points from my build to have all 4 auras, assuming decent +mana on gear, and still have some 3-500 free mana for curse spamming and unloading fireballs. I guess you don't have to have grace so it shouldn't be as bad.

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Narxifar wrote:

I'm kinda new but I wonder why you didn't go for power charge and mana on kill nodes...

I'm happy to see such a great fire build rather than the typical ice crit ones. Keep it up!

Those mana on kill nodes are straight garbage end game :D Maybe they are good early game i don't know, but later on i will drain over 200 mana/sec while casting, and i need that without having to get constant kills to secure me regen.

Crit nodes can work but you need to use power charges on crit support gem with a spell, and it makes fireball worse if you use it on that plus you don't need a new spell to keep charges, it works well in it's current simplicity.

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Crackmonster wrote:

Hey,

I checked out your path to power, it looks pretty good :) There isn't much to say coz i didn't find any problem. I think its a good idea to go for some crit earlier on like you have, because your crit chance without is dreadful.

the last around 10 levels for me, lets say lvl 86-100 are all dps crit points and such, since i think you need some of the basic surviveability before all dps points and the highest damage is as an endgame reward for being high-level. What i mean is you may have to remove some of those crit points to cover the basic surviveability/functionality at some point.

You may also have to consider your mana points, the fireballer plays best when it has a decent mana pool to burst from, since it will move around a lot and regen it up ready for emptying it again.

I did some calculations, and found i needed those points from my build to have all 4 auras, assuming decent +mana on gear, and still have some 3-500 free mana for curse spamming and unloading fireballs. I guess you don't have to have grace so it shouldn't be as bad.

You appear to be right about mana and survability issues, though I somehow managed to tweak things around :

- Found out that aside from "elemental proliferation", no damage mods are necessary atm - I replaced them with iiq and iir support gem, for greater profit. This prevents my fireball from being too expensive (35 mana for 735 dps level 46).
- I could purchase for a few chaos (luckily it's the cheapest of the three). This allows me to use Temporal Chains as a 2nd curse, and I have to say it really helps a lot, considering I only have 400 hp and 650 ES - don't ask about my elemental res :D
- Also purchased a (alt'ed it a bit to get the iron skin modifier) : it brings me from 0 to 75+% physical damage reduction which saved me countless times already.

Only downside for the moment is the number of auras - I'm levelling as many as I can but I can only afford to use clarity. I'll have to swap around elemental flasks too, hopefully I already got one of each available.

I usually party for the last act anyway as I prefer farming the 1st act of the next difficulty rather than staying stuck on docks / sewers (undying alchemists w/o CI are a real pain).

Why is most of the people in this thread aint using conc. effect on fireball, it gives firball (initial explosion that works on first mob aswell) more damage modifier thats like almost doubling your fireball damage which is way more than any of the support gems...

"

NagiSoi wrote:

Why is most of the people in this thread aint using conc. effect on fireball, it gives firball (initial explosion that works on first mob aswell) more damage modifier thats like almost doubling your fireball damage which is way more than any of the support gems...

It's not that clear imo.
Concentrated effect has a huge downside as it decreases the AoE by 30%, for all skills linked to fireball including Elemental Proliferation. OP's build gives 40% increased radius, which means with all the AoE nodes, we barely keep Elemental Proliferation's radius unharmed (1.4 * 0.7 = 0.98). Also keep in mind said radius is critical and takes a while to actually get huge, so cutting it by a third early on is out of the question.

Now about other support gems, i'll simply stick to Fire Penetration.
Against high resistance mobs, it is as good as C. Effect (if not even better). This becomes less and less true as the resistances decreases.

In the end, if one already has more damage than they need at a time, then why they bother using an overkill and rather mana-hungry support gem ?

I have just been testing a new version of the build, and thus far i think it is superior.

now at lvl 82 i am using:



The final version is not yet complete but how it looks atm is this:



It's basically about as good as the current, maybe slightly better, and it has slightly higher crit stability as well as crit multiplier. The old build has 4% increased aoe and slightly higher base damage of fireball.

The new build also has weaker last 10 points so it should be stronger at lower level and the old build then almost catches up if you could approach the unrealistic lvl 100.

-------

A small note about IIR/IIQ gems: They do not apply to anything killed by the burn, they only apply to the fireball itself, so i don't think they are the best match, though they surely will give you increased drops. IIR/IIQ from gear still applies normally, its just that the gem only applies to the fireball it is linked to. They said they hope to fix that later.

I use concentrated effect as my number one choice at any time. I also think that with it you will destroy anything at low levels due to sheer instant damage. I didn't mind losing 30% area, it wasn't that big of a deal to me, but each to their own.

"

Stakhanov wrote:

"

NagiSoi wrote:

Why is most of the people in this thread aint using conc. effect on fireball, it gives firball (initial explosion that works on first mob aswell) more damage modifier thats like almost doubling your fireball damage which is way more than any of the support gems...

It's not that clear imo.
Concentrated effect has a huge downside as it decreases the AoE by 30%, for all skills linked to fireball including Elemental Proliferation. OP's build gives 40% increased radius, which means with all the AoE nodes, we barely keep Elemental Proliferation's radius unharmed (1.4 * 0.7 = 0.98). Also keep in mind said radius is critical and takes a while to actually get huge, so cutting it by a third early on is out of the question.

Now about other support gems, i'll simply stick to Fire Penetration.
Against high resistance mobs, it is as good as C. Effect (if not even better). This becomes less and less true as the resistances decreases.

In the end, if one already has more damage than they need at a time, then why they bother using an overkill and rather mana-hungry support gem ?

Well the radius might be the problem, but sheer damage conc. effect gives at max lvl is 69% more damage which is more than all your increased damage nodes together combined, tho you will not profiliate stuff as much but your damage and burn damage is just sick compared to not using it. Well to each his own ofc.

I guess the radius is my main concern because I haven't invested in the AoE nodes already - the problem will solve itself in some levels. 100% agree on the fact that 1.7 total damage multiplier is insane though.

About the variation of the build, what exactly did you gain from swapping points around ? I think I missed it when comparing both trees.

The IIQ/IIR note makes me sad, I read it was working like a week ago, and now double checked it to see it doesn't :/ Still, I can sometimes manage to kill a rare/unique mob with a new fireball before the DoT finishes the job. I'll still try to level those if I happen to have empty slots : the exp is never wasted.

The old build:


6% fire damage
5% spell damage
4% aoe radius


The new build:

35% crit chance
10% crit multiplier
+1 power charge
2% increased spell damage per power charge

which in the end means, using my own current gear, that i will gain 3.14% damage to my fireball and 2.94% aoe radius with my old build, but instead i gain 2.22% damage on a crit, and 2.1% crit chance with the new build.

The crit damage and stability(from higher crit chance), means that the new route comes out slightly on top overall.

It also means i can pick up better nodes right around level 82 which gives me much higher power than i had before, and that i can work on crit chance and damage earlier than i would have been able to. It does get a little worse for the first 30-40 levels or so, but hey i guess that's the price.

"

The IIQ/IIR note makes me sad, I read it was working like a week ago, and now double checked it to see it doesn't :/ Still, I can sometimes manage to kill a rare/unique mob with a new fireball before the DoT finishes the job. I'll still try to level those if I happen to have empty slots : the exp is never wasted.

How did you double check it? It could theoretically have been fixed since, but i didn't notice any dev comments about it.

I went through some threads about IIQ/IIR support gems and earlier this month ppl still confirmed ignite and other DoT effects can't trigger them :( Now i'll have a closer look at your tree, hoping I can swap some points around (and hopefully save some in the process) to get better results.

i am currently leveling according to this build, just 2 questions...

bandits?

and:

what lv do you keep your auras? especially clarity