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

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Crackmonster wrote:

The instant damage of the fireball crit = 459% * 199% = 913%

The burning damage of the Fireball Crit = 459% * 199% * 4/3 * 2 * 1.15 * 250% = 7003%

Instant damage plus burning damage = 7916%

In other words: a critical strike does 17.24 times as much damage as a non-critical strike. And that's single-target; we're not factoring in the AoE of elemental proliferation, which could make a critical on a tight group literally a hundred times more powerful than a non-critical. Which means: non-critical strikes are all but wasted. Fireball builds are crit builds, first and foremost.

Although your build utilizes this power, I don't think that you've really embraced this concept.

• Support gems: Power Charge on Critical is optimal. Even with perfect crit chance on gear and a heavy passive tree dedication to critical strike chance, you'll get about 400% increased critical strike, which is about 35% critical strike chance with Critical Weakness factored in. This means that Faster Casting is better than Increased Critical Strikes: with pre-existing cast speed, 50% increase cast speed will probably mean slinging spells 40% faster, which is equivalent to a 14% crit chance increase, greater than the about 8% that ICS would give you... but it doesn't hold a candle to the 21% equivalent that 7 power charges would give you. This makes the best supports Proliferation, Conc Effect, ICD, Fire Pen, and PCoC. It might be too late to unkill Alira, but it's actually pretty key to pick up as many power charges as possible, and when you feel up to it you might want to reroll. Of course, that would mean "spending" 5 passive points on +3 power charges, which would mean changes to the...
• Passive tree: You can skimp a bit on fire damage. Between increased spell damage on wands/shields and a few passives that you end up picking up anyway, the increased fire damage nodes, especially the 6% ones, don't really do enough to justify expenditure. Also, picking up Power Charges actually allows a lot of shortcuts that are otherwise blocked off; they don't really cost 5 passive points, they just change what paths you use. For reference: Scrotie's Fireball build

If you really don't like power charges, I think you'd honestly be better off using the same core but with Fire Trap and Detonate Dead, rather than Fireball. The FT/DD combo is astonishingly powerful, with the pseudo-cooldown FT getting the first corpse on the ground while DD has clean-up duty for the stragglers. It also has the advantage of Trap being totally immune to reflected damage.

Even though I agree with some points you made (at least mathematically speaking), I don't really see how the tree you suggested is that much better than the last one suggested by the OP - and its variations.

You basically loose :
- 36% increased ES
- 30% ES cooldown recovery
- 10% all resistances
- 15% fire resistance
- 10% elemental damage
- 36% fire damage
- 30 str
- 20 max mana

To gain :

- 135% Increased critical strike chance (8.1% crit chance)
- 3 power charges (and mere buffs that come along)
- 10 str
- 4% ms
- few max % mana

(apologies if I missed something while comparing the trees, i'm not used to this exercise)

So even though your higher % crit chance seduces me, I feel the loss in survability (particularly the ES cooldown which seems pretty vital to me) is a bit too much of a trade off. You also seem to be kinda "stuck" with the mana nodes around (and including) "Deep thoughts" - which I don't seem to need even though I don't have a Dream's Frament yet.
Also, since the build tends to 1-hit every pack with a critical strike, I don't really understand how the power charges are going to add anything relevant - and if they are worth a lot of investment anyway. I could use some more knowledge about their mechanics though, as the wiki doesn't taught me much.

Here's what I currently use (level 58) :



And what I plan to / may use, with as many points as you both used in your builds :


This is an interesting take you have here though - will definitely put more thoughts into it.

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lordchopf wrote:

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

bandits?

and:

what lv do you keep your auras? especially clarity

Hey :D

I keep my auras the highest level i can, especially clarity. If i for some reason didn't have enough dexterity then i would keep grace and haste underleved, they require up to 152 i think.

Well i would kill all the bandits myself, but if you want a power charge build then you could spare that one. I will talk about power charge in the next post :D

EDIT: If you do not have enough mana nodes on the tree or enough + mana on gear, you may feel you don't have mana enough to run them all. I would take out the one you feel best about removing then. I didn't use purity until endgame because i didn't have mana, but that may be a risky one to remove.

Where do you get that 17.24? The damage of a critical strike, the instant damage plus the burn that comes from any critical strike, will do 79 times as much damage as a noncrit would do, if you allow the burn to happen over 9.2 seconds. It is to showcase how much of your dps comes from critical burn damage.

Fireball is indeed a crit build, but it is about critical damage, and not critical strike chance. The main proportion of your aoe damage is caused by burn, and burn does not stack. There is a limit to how much crit will benefit you, since you just need enough crit stability to cause reliable burns. Therefore, much critical strike chance above a needed level, related to your cast speed, will not benefit you that much outside of single target(fireball regular aoe) damage.

Don't get me wrong, critical strike chance is extremely important to have any good clearing speed, but the real problem is that you need a gem to make it all work, and Faster Casting is a perfect synergy to this build.

The build uses temporal chains as its "passive" defense, Fireball is your active. Fireball is both your offense and your defense, that is why you must get fireball damage and cast speed, and also why traps will never touch it. The fireball will stun groups due to sheer hitsize, and it needs to hit hard enough even on noncrit to stun most.

Mobility is king for this queen, and that is why faster casting wins hands down, and also why temporal chains made this build possible without using defenses such as minions or totems etc. Faster Casting gives you:

Less time you stand still to cast
More casts/sec and through that a very respectable amount of crits
More time to move
Quicker casts which allows you to land better fireballs
Additional reliable stuns

I also think it is better to play with plus it matches the theme of this build. All power, all times, you are not reliant on having power charges up. I think that a build such as yours might be better at low character and gear levels, because critical strike chance is a luxury for my version, and those weapons with the right stats and crit are very expensive and rare.

There are also no other gems that are worth replacing coz you would then be reducing your crit and burn damage significantly.

I am working on a build at the moment, but there are so many good alternative choices that are hard to predict before i get my 6L, but for now it looks like this:




This is at the unrealistic 100, but it is to have an idea what is best and what to pick first. It goes for shield cooldown recovery. At first i didn't like it, but i think i will end up realizing that it is made for a which like this. This witch is a mobility freak kiter that relies on burn to take care of things while she avoids taking damage.

I also had a look at your build, and well, you could be using something to defend you, but if you are just using temporal chains you will need more energy shield unless you remain absolutely focused at all times. There were also a few things that could be optimized. Since you have so much free crit, you really want that 9% casting speed instead of those 55% crit chance at the witch beginning. You also could do what you did in 5 points in just 3-4 of them, coming down to the shadow area. One point is missing and that's the 30 dex node, but you can use your next or replace another point to place it in the 30 dex node i made available near CI. You also might want to grab arcane focus with 2 points for 26% energy shield.


I must admit i have not yet optimized my own current level build that much, its still a mess because i have been testing some different paths, and still have a few to go, but when i find out what the best build in my opinion is, then i will focus on optimizing the leveling route.

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Crackmonster wrote:

Fireball is indeed a crit build, but it is about critical damage, and not critical strike chance. The main proportion of your aoe damage is caused by burn, and burn does not stack. There is a limit to how much crit will benefit you, since you just need enough crit stability to cause reliable burns. Therefore, much critical strike chance above a needed level, related to your cast speed, will not benefit you that much outside of single target(fireball regular aoe) damage.

Don't get me wrong, critical strike chance is extremely important to have any good clearing speed, but the real problem is that you need a gem to make it all work, and Faster Casting is a perfect synergy to this build.

Actually, Faster Casting and Power Charge on Crit are attacking the same problem from different angles -- what we care about here is critical strikes per unit time. Increasing your critical chance improves this by increasing the chance per cast; Faster Casting improves this by increasing the casts per unit time (and this is as far as that synergy goes). As I pointed out earlier, Faster Casting is more efficient than Increased Critical Strikes, so I understand how you came to that conclusion; however, Faster Casts is simply not as powerful as PCoC once you get it going.

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Crackmonster wrote:

The build uses temporal chains as its "passive" defense, Fireball is your active. Fireball is both your offense and your defense, that is why you must get fireball damage and cast speed, and also why traps will never touch it. The fireball will stun groups due to sheer hitsize, and it needs to hit hard enough even on noncrit to stun most.

At max level, Fire Trap deals over double the damage of Fireball over a larger radius, and has ground-based burning damage on top of that. Detonate Dead is also capable of absurd damage over a large area.

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Crackmonster wrote:

Mobility is king for this queen, and that is why faster casting wins hands down, and also why temporal chain made this build possible without using defenses such as minions or totems etc. Faster Casting gives you:

Less time you stand still to cast
More casts/sec and through that a very respectable amount of crits
More time to move
Quicker casts which allows you to land better fireballs
Additional stuns

I've already covered crits per unit time. In terms of time to move and time standing still, it's an illusion; time spent on a non-critical cast is wasted time, even if it stuns it's a net loss. The only real point you have is aiming, but practice can alleviate that concern.

I'll agree that cast speed is a nice quality-of-life thing, but it's not so important that you need to dedicate passives/supports to it. A little on gear is enough; and if I was going to "spend a passive" on it, that passive would be Cruel Alira.

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Actually, Faster Casting and Power Charge on Crit are attacking the same problem from different angles -- what we care about here is critical strikes per unit time. Increasing your critical chance improves this by increasing the chance per cast; Faster Casting improves this by increasing the casts per unit time (and this is as far as that synergy goes). As I pointed out earlier, Faster Casting is more efficient than Increased Critical Strikes, so I understand how you came to that conclusion; however, Faster Casts is simply not as powerful as PCoC once you get it going.

The problem is not crit chance, the problem is defense and mobility loss. There are enough crits.

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At max level, Fire Trap deals over double the damage of Fireball over a larger radius, and has ground-based burning damage on top of that. Detonate Dead is also capable of absurd damage over a large area.

Fire trap is everything but reliable. Fireball is your active defense, it comes @ 2 casts/sec into the face of those who would dare approach you. That is why fireball plays better than fire trap.

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I've already covered crits per unit time. In terms of time to move and time standing still, it's an illusion; time spent on a non-critical cast is wasted time, even if it stuns it's a net loss. The only real point you have is aiming, but practice can alleviate that concern.

Tell me, do you not use temporal chains to defend yourself? and if you do, have you tried taking it off to learn a quick lesson of why mobility rules?


EDIT:
Practice does not alleviate that concern much, for any amount of aiming skill you have will still only influence the time a gap is open, so if you are better at aiming you would just be able to use even tinier gaps. Overall, however, that is a small issue.

You cannot get enough mobility on this witch in my opinion, it will turn play from demanding a high level of attention and being potentially frustrating into a walk in the park.

You gotta understand it doesnt make a big change to get bigger single target fireball damage, which is what critical strike chance comes down to in the end, above a certain point. It will give you a very small increase by quicker procced burns, but if you are near a desireable crit stability level then it is not that much.

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I'll agree that cast speed is a nice quality-of-life thing, but it's not so important that you need to dedicate passives/supports to it. A little on gear is enough; and if I was going to "spend a passive" on it, that passive would be Cruel Alira.

I do not pick cast speed nodes, because i have faster casting, speed to the point it might cause me mana starvation. Do you have mana regen on wand and shield?

EDIT: I really have to go to bed, today was insane. I will check back in as soon as i rise.

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Crackmonster wrote:

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Actually, Faster Casting and Power Charge on Crit are attacking the same problem from different angles -- what we care about here is critical strikes per unit time. Increasing your critical chance improves this by increasing the chance per cast; Faster Casting improves this by increasing the casts per unit time (and this is as far as that synergy goes). As I pointed out earlier, Faster Casting is more efficient than Increased Critical Strikes, so I understand how you came to that conclusion; however, Faster Casts is simply not as powerful as PCoC once you get it going.

The problem is not crit chance, the problem is defense and mobility loss. There are enough crits.

I watched the video. There is a definite critical chance issue going on.

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Crackmonster wrote:

Tell me, do you not use temporal chains to defend yourself? and if you do, have you tried taking it off to learn a quick lesson of why mobility rules?

You cannot get enough mobility on this witch in my opinion, it will turn play from demanding a high level of attention and being potentially frustrating into a walk in the park.

Temporal Chains kicks ass. I'm not suggesting removing it from the build, ever.

In terms of Faster Casting providing mobility, it's a false sense of mobility. You're going to cast until you get a crit off; whatever gets you that crit in the least amount of time gives you the best mobility. A full set of power charges provides the best mobility.

In the video im at 9% crit chance, and not using faster casting :)

It is possible to get 3-4 times as good crit stability, at which point crit on power charge becomes obsolete, the build remarkably more weak due to lack of faster casting, and you wonder why you didn't kill the bandit to get the skill point instead.

A new addition:

Arctic Armour, i suggest anyone to get themselves a quality low level arctic armour, keep it as high level as you can without having mana issues. It will give you movement speed from quality (up to 7%) and it will chill those melee monsters who try to chase you, including flicker strikers. Link it with increased duration.

And now to finally end this power charge argument, time for simple math.

A build like this



Will give you up to 48.5% crit without using power charges, not the imaginary 35% you mentioned. 109% on wand/shield each, 140% for spells and 200% for all crit chances from your build. You can get this as soon as level 85 or earlier if you sacrifice defenses.

9% + 6%(100% + 140% + 200% + 109% + 109%) = 48.48%

Consider i have not a single point of cast speed in the build, and there are other priorities that matter more than cast speed on the weapon, but lets take all cases just to get it cleared up why power charges are inferior in all ways unless under-geared and under-leveled. It will cost only 3 points, and not 5, to get all 7 power charges with the above build, and you could gain more than the 14% increased spell damage that power charges also grant, by placing those points elsewhere, so we just investigate the critical stability here.

Case A)

No other casting speed increases (the realistic), 48.5% * 1.49 = 72.25%, using faster casting gives you around 72% crit equivalent, over time, yet more stable than the pure critical strike chance, which is a plus. 7 power charges gives you 350% crit, base fireball is 6% crit which gives you 21% crit. 21% + 48.5% = 69.5%

Conclusion: With gear endgame you will benefit less in terms of crit stability and amount of crits from power charges than you will from faster casting, and you will not even gain the mobility and defensive bonuses from fireball as well as increased regular damage which helps a bit given that power charges only gives you more crits.

Case B)

You have managed to get your hands on the best wand in the game. It has all the most important things and on top of that an extra 10% cast speed! Faster casting gives you critical equivalent of: 48.5% * 159/110 = 70.1%.

That is slightly more than 7 power charges will give you, and power charges would give you none of the advantages of caster casting.

Case C)

Your wand is perfect. 22% increased cast speed on top of all the more important stats. I have not seen a wand even approaching this level yet. 48.5% * 171/122 = 68%

Here you find a gain in amount of critical strikes of 69.5%/68% - 1 = 2.2% by going with power charges, but at the same time suffer in crit stability since you have slower casts with a great chance to crit, rather than many with a slightly lower crit chance. You also lose out on all of the many advantages you gain by having faster casting. It is not even close.

Final conclusion:

Power charges are good for a leveling build or for casuals who never will see high gear levels. At endgame you will gain about the same amount of extra crits from faster casting, and you will gain a serious load of additional benefits. That makes Power charge on Critical Strike obsolete when you have enough gear, and that is why i will never suggest you pick a bandit reward that binds you to a power charge.

I didn't even mention yet that power charges can fall off, will reset between any map or if there are enough drops to catch your attention for a bit, and that power charges match badly with this build since it moves while burn kills, a good match would be only direct damage which results in better uptime on the charges due to no seconds wasted in transition. Also, if you decide to use maligaros, power charges fall even further behind.

There is no way you should use power charges once you have a very good wand and shield around level 85+, yet even before i would not suggest it, but it is an option if you like them, still it isn't ideal. My intuition tells me you do not have mana regen on shield and weapon, and is subconsciously seeking to justify not having it in someway, but hey, i could be wrong.

I have updated my current build to be a bit more competitive with critical strike chance at lower levels, and i now have 30% without any crit on wand nor shield yet.