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

Outside of Dominus I haven't had that much issues with deaths. And I haven't specced CI yet and even played 2 chars on this build to lvl 80. I haven't been able to afford a dream fragments so until I do I don't spec CI, and it hasn't proven to be too big of an issue. I do run spell totem, skeletons, minion life and faster cast (and zombies) so I don't progress as quickly as I would with proper gear. My gear isn't exceptional either - I run 1k hp, 3.7k ES with buffs. Just a bit under 4k fireball dps (with 4L). It could be a lot better but it hasn't been limiting me too much outside of slower play.

Lol i like you Manly :D Btw also using flammability/elemental weakess is a really good idea, especially before you have quality critical weakness/any fair crit chance/damage. It also works really well with a powercharge instead of faster casting leveling version since i think critical weakness only does more damage when you have either throatseeker or a Increased Critical Damage, so it is kinda endgame. It does however give you solid crit stability when using faster casting, which is essencial to maintain a high clearing speed.

About enfeeble, the reason i don't use that with CwDT personally is that i consider it crucial to completely control curses with this build, so autocasted overwriting curses i don't fancy playing with. Really its only decoy totem + summon skeletons that is good, the other is just to use the gem slot for something. I would like a spectre there though if they fix the bug so it doesnt crash you, tried it for a bit it was powerful.

About the 7% mana reduction point and +40 mana. It is hard to say exactly how good they are, it really depends how your mana pool handles a 6L. Maybe you don't even need the 7% reduction, or maybe you don't need a 20% regen one. Only time will reveal and still my chest refuse to 6L so i can only wait. + mana is probably like 75 mana with 88% boost (68% build + dream fragments). Maybe it is not needed as well. I have an idea i want to try pushing out sovereignty or other aura points at which point i think both points become much more interesting. Try out what you need and just use that i'd say.

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/668675/page/1 Is a good source of info on what applies to burning damage.

With adjustments, now i find that:

there is a 5.6% loss of ignite damage, and if you have 30% fire damage on the weapon, then you would have gained 4.3% instead.

EDIT: Also, Fire penetration does not apply to ignite.

Well, having played this a fair bit I am more and more unsure about CwDT. I think what I truly hate is how much when it procs it feels like casting the decoy totem makes my guy unable to cast due to decoy totem casting time. I could be wrong on that but its definitely the impression I am getting. I am considering doing CwDT + decoy totem + skeletons + faster casting to resolve this. And yes, having enfeeble overwrite another random curse is very annoying. Not to mention I always kind of hate having to recast skeleton totem. Mostly, CwDT seems to be an hindrance to clear speed for a hard-to-quantify benefit.

I admit I tried both flammability/elemental weakness and elemental weakness/critical weakness and both have benefits. The former is really sweet for proccing a (non-crit) ignite. It pretty much ensures that all mobs you didnt hit will die. It works particularly well on low-hp mobs, such as any catacombs (lvl 67) mobs/skeletons. Much to my surprise, the latter (elemental/critical weakness) works far far better against those 'crabs' that seem to resist fire like hell. I'm not sure I understand how it makes sense but maybe they just have a lot of HP.

I'm still never quite sure which curses are best. I do run throatseeker so maybe my views are distorted. Mostly though, the gem choices are never quite clear. I know I love fire penetration particularly on curse immune mobs (basically, its good against your worst-case scenario). The quality bonus is also very nice. Which of theses feel like the best priority with the recent patch? Those are all up-to-date numbers for lvl 1 - lvl 20 gems with 20% quality:


fireball -
concentrated effect - 50-69% area dmg, 15% reduced mana cost [160% mana]
elemental proliferation - 12-31 radius, 15% burn duration [140% mana]


fire penetration - 16-35% fire penetration, 10% fire dmg [140% mana]
increased burning damage - 40-59% burning damage, 10% chance to ignite [120% mana]
reduced mana - 90-71% mana cost, 10% reduced mana cost [---% mana]
faster casting - 20-39% cast speed, 10% cast speed [120% mana]
increased critical damage - 53-109% crit dmg, 40% crit dmg [130% mana]

increased duration - assumed to not extend ignites?
chance to ignite - 25-44% chance to ignite, 30% burning duration [110% mana]
pierce - 40-59% chance to pierce, 15% chance to pierce [110% mana] (dont laugh! awesome for leveling!)
slower projectiles - 8-26% dmg (25-43% reduced speed), 10% dmg [140% mana]
faster projectiles - 10-19% dmg + 30-68% projectile speed, 10% cast speed [110% mana]
increased area of effect - 14-33% area, 10% area [150% mana]
increased critical strikes - 72-105% crit chance, 20% crit chance [115% mana]
power charge on critical - 30-49% apply chance, 20% apply chance [110% mana]

could firestorm linked to curse on hit + 2 curses be useful? there is no + mana multiplier on curse on hit and firestorm cost less mana than the curse itself.

How do you calculate your true approximate DPS? My fireball spell DPS is low as it doesn't account for the proliferated burning damage; it's ~1500 without using conc effect as I've yet to buy/find one. Also, will adding concentrated effect gem significantly spike my dmg? It seems like I am not hitting that hard and I'm lvl 73 with decent gear.

Current gem links: fireball-elem prolif-reduced mana/life leech-increased burning dmg-fire penetration.

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fireincairo wrote:

How do you calculate your true approximate DPS? My fireball spell DPS is low as it doesn't account for the proliferated burning damage; it's ~1500 without using conc effect as I've yet to buy/find one. Also, will adding concentrated effect gem significantly spike my dmg? It seems like I am not hitting that hard and I'm lvl 73 with decent gear.

Current gem links: fireball-elem prolif-reduced mana/life leech-increased burning dmg-fire penetration.

"Easiest" way to calculate that would be :

Avg = Average base damage per fireball (including spell/elemental/fire passives)
CC = Fireball total critical strike chance
CM = Total critical strike multiplier
CTI = Chance to ignite (quality fireball, support gems, flammability, etc...)
Br = Total burning damage (also including fire and Elemental nodes except Elemental dominion)


Average damage per cast (adpc) = [(Avg * CC * CM) + (Avg * (100-CC))] * 1.6

Or, in a more naïve way : (Tooltip DPS / Number of casts per second) * 1.6

Then,
Ignite damage = (Average critical damage + Average damage * chance to ignite) * 0.20 * Burning damage

Ignite damage = [((Avg * CC * CM) + (Avg * (100-CC) * CTI)) * 1.6] * 0.20 * (1 + Br)

Ignite damage is calculated per second.

^ This does not take into account monster resistance, which either increases or decreases the size of the initial hit, and the damage dealt by ignite (I know, i'm lazy).
^ The damage spikes a lot if you crit, so the "average ignite dealt by a fireball" isn't quite relevant. Considering you get enough cast speed and around 33% chance to crit, you'll land your critical strike in a time span that is short enough to completely disregard the non-crit ignite.
^ Fire penetration does not apply to burning damage.
^ Inb4 Searing touch is insanely great for this build.

Thanks for the reply Stak.

One thing I wondered is considering I have Shavronnes Wrappings (chaos dmg doesn't bypass ES), how viable would a low life pain attunement build be? Based off my current tree at level 73, it could look something like this: Proliferative burning PA.

Gear would include Prism Guardian or an equivalent way of attaining blood magic and low life gear (Honourhome, Araku Tiki, Lori's Lantern, Springleaf, etc. This would allow for a significant bump in dmg (30% more spell dmg via PA), 2 more auras to be used and I wouldn't have to worry about the no stun/freeze rares required by the CI build, which may open gear opportunities that benefit low life builds.

Current gear:



What are the cons of this? Is this feasible or not? I feel like it may open up unique opportunities based of the chest/low life benefits.

So I switched to a low life build which has been great so far. It allows for two more auras (vitality and haste right now) and pain attunement; now I have significantly more damage. My resists are much better with the gear and gear bonuses I got too, so I easily farm most areas. I'm 74 now.

Build at 74

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Coldust wrote:

could firestorm linked to curse on hit + 2 curses be useful? there is no + mana multiplier on curse on hit and firestorm cost less mana than the curse itself.

The curse on hit gem doesn't proc every time. There's a ~28 to 47% (when level 20) chance to curse each target you hit with firestorm. I am not sure it's worthwhile but I would test it to be sure.