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

i dont think that curse on hit with firestorm is good. the low procchance maybe countered with multiple hits, but you only curse monsters you hit, you dont cast the curse on hit. the curses at level 20 and increased area from passives are huge. even linked with faster casting you should be able to spam them. fireball is mana intensive too so you should have high mana regeneration either.

Anybody tried Carcass Jack unique chest with this build? 20% more area radius is nothing to sneeze at! Or even Divinarius

"

manly_ wrote:

Anybody tried Carcass Jack unique chest with this build? 20% more area radius is nothing to sneeze at! Or even Divinarius

That might be interesting, but you're sacrificing a lot of ES for that dmg increase. Max ES is 203 for the base ES, although it has upwards of 600 evasion. Im not sure how good that would be though.

...
On another note, since I swapped to low life and capped my resists (except for chaos, which sits around -14% interestingly enough), I have been able facetanking most content. I played some 74-75 maps last night and surprised the whole group who were in their 80s. I was extremely aggressive and never died - even on 18% elemental reflect + curse immune maps. I'm digging this low life playstyle. My crit chance isn't that high right now though. Once I've gained several more levels and spec more for crit, I imagine reflect maps may be more dangerous.

Using a life leech gem tied to fireball really helps me plow through most areas without dying. I was able to tank and kill piety alone, which I definitely couldn't have done before. I may try to quality the life leech gem so that the return is even faster. When some mob groups rapidly crit me it is difficult to maintain the leech before my ES runs out. Buffing my ES would be helpful too as I'm only at 3k with discipline. Getting better gloves and a wand would be helpful.

This guide gave me some very useful tips - thank you! I'm now at a lowly level 53 and find that I don't do as much damage and as much critical strikes as expected. I haven't gone for the curse passives at all (yet), having put more points into spell damage + energy shield + elemental damage, which should boost my DPS. I'm running Fireball + Ele Proliferation + Conc Effect + Faster Casting (still dreaming of a good five-link) for a not-so-impressive 832 DPS and 26.2 percent crit chance. Is this to be expected (and a balance for being able to kill from a distance and with burning spread) or would you expect it to be higher? I just know that a simple Cruel Dock run seems to take forever and can be a bit dangerous since I need too many fireballs to kill stuff or even trigger a burning effect.

For reference, my passive tree:
- a bit of a mess right now as I planned to go CI by respeccing the life nodes but haven't been able to get the currency for Eye of Chayula or Dream Fragments yet.

"

scrooge999 wrote:

This guide gave me some very useful tips - thank you! I'm now at a lowly level 53 and find that I don't do as much damage and as much critical strikes as expected. I haven't gone for the curse passives at all (yet), having put more points ...

I would head for these nodes soon. The increased burning dmg + buffs to auras are helpful. Addtionally, the +AOE range nodes are helpful as it increases your blast radius.

Are you using blood rage? That is helpful as well. Try and get some gear too as this build seemed somewhat gear dependent for me. You could also try using the chance to ignite gem to see if that buffs you at all.

Thanks for your reply! These nodes (AOE + spell damage) would help quite a bit, but I'm unsure whether to take them first or go for these Critical Strike chance nodes first to improve the chance to ignite mobs...anyway, Aura buffs will be very much needed as I can only run Clarity (not even Discipline) at the moment.

As for gear, well I don't have much currency to buy it with since this is my first character, though I just got a nice 160 percent crit chance increase dagger for just one Chaos. I got maybe 8 Chaos all in all and that's not even enough to go CI, which I'm saving for at the moment.

I'm unsure about what Blood Rage would do for me. Neither the life leech nor the attack speed would be of use, so are the Frenzy Charges on their own really that powerful?

blood rage without ci is out of question. you take only use of frenzy charges like you said but without ci you take lot of chaos damage.

Lvl 42 Witch here. Right now I have these support gems:

Added Lightning damage. (2-34 dmg)
Chance to ignite. (32%)
Fire penetration. (-19% fire resistance)

Which of the 2 should I link to my Fireball? I use Flammability curse, Fireball and Firestorm. Only the Added Lightning dmg gem shows as additional dps on character sheet so it's a bit confusing as to which one is the best for me.

I rly cant feel the gain from increased crit dmg/conc effect and crit weakness.
I always ran something like fire pen / PCoC and flammability+ele weakness. I rly cant recognize a real dmg difference.

Conc effect seems nice, if it works the way i think it does, aka increasing the ignite causing hit. Didnt see any proof for that though, else than ppl trying it but well, not a real proof for me.

Imo reducing the resistances of mobs via fire pen ( quality is also nice 10% fire dmg) + 20q ele weakness + flammability is just insane. Every mob without fire res, has like - 150% aka 150% more dmg on impact + more burn dmg + reflect is never an issue (since u dont have stack highly inefficient amounts of crit mult aka Throatseeker, rly shit nodes). On a side note, fire pen is far superior vs curse immune mobs.

Your new build looks pretty unrealistic, how can u even play a character that doesnt even use life leech/LGoH(just saying). It looks incredibly dangerous to me. Id just go Life+armor base, without all the CI shit, it doesnt increase your dmg by that much afterall, since u cant wear a good crit neck ( like 40% chance 70% mult mb even +cast speed,) and - 1 ring, mb getting hard for some ppl to cap resistances.

With all that - res and a PCoC i have around 50% crit chance with 6 charges, and ~ 440 crit multi.

Cant back that up with any math, just my xp from like 40 maps with both setups.

Like i said, reflect will never be an issue and your dmg is still insane, even after the nerf.



PS: FB costs way less mana withouth the crit mult conc effect stuff.

"

aGnosticc wrote:

I rly cant feel the gain from increased crit dmg/conc effect and crit weakness.
I always ran something like fire pen / PCoC and flammability+ele weakness. I rly cant recognize a real dmg difference.

Conc effect seems nice, if it works the way i think it does, aka increasing the ignite causing hit. Didnt see any proof for that though, else than ppl trying it but well, not a real proof for me.

Imo reducing the resistances of mobs via fire pen ( quality is also nice 10% fire dmg) + 20q ele weakness + flammability is just insane. Every mob without fire res, has like - 150% aka 150% more dmg on impact + more burn dmg + reflect is never an issue (since u dont have stack highly inefficient amounts of crit mult aka Throatseeker, rly shit nodes). On a side note, fire pen is far superior vs curse immune mobs.

Your new build looks pretty unrealistic, how can u even play a character that doesnt even use life leech/LGoH(just saying). It looks incredibly dangerous to me. Id just go Life+armor base, without all the CI shit, it doesnt increase your dmg by that much afterall, since u cant wear a good crit neck ( like 40% chance 70% mult mb even +cast speed,) and - 1 ring, mb getting hard for some ppl to cap . Z

PS: FB costs way less mana withouth the crit mult conc effect stuff.

Care to post your build? Mine sounds similar to yours. (Current build at 79). I'm still fairly vulnerable at lvl 79, but I am able to run 74/75 maps without issue as long as I am cautious. This is the lvl 85 version,which is what I would eventually head towards, picking up another power charge and gaining more ES/armor. Note that I'm not CI, but rather a low life version of this witch build. Any feedback is appreciated.

I'm still using the following gems in my 6L: Fireball -> fire pen -> elem prolif -> life leech -> conc. effect -> incr crit. damage. However, I may swap out the incr crit dmg for PCoC to see how that works out.