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

Hey, currently lvl 35 hardcore with this build. It's fun to play but I changed the skill tree a little. I picked some damage then curse then went for the ES nodes to be able to get CI around lvl 50-55ish. Can't wait to run maps with the build!

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Mazvoca wrote:

Hey, currently lvl 35 hardcore with this build. It's fun to play but I changed the skill tree a little. I picked some damage then curse then went for the ES nodes to be able to get CI around lvl 50-55ish. Can't wait to run maps with the build!

Sounds like a good plan :)

I am really interested in hearing how it works out in hardcore, keep us updated! :D

Hi,

burning looks really cool... didnt think that this is so good.
But it doesnt look really safe.

And I wonder why you choose fireball for a ignite build:

- The base dmg of firetrap is almost 3 times as high as fireball, it has in-built additional! burn, has burning dmg as qual bonus and doesnt have a much lower crit chance.

- The base dmg of a full stack of Exploding Arrow charges can be up to 10 times higher than a fireball.

- With burning arrow, blackgleam, added fire gem, 25% phys to cold unique gloves, nice fire+cold dmg dmg gear and cold to fire support gem you could do more base fire dmg than fireball and you have some phys dmg and cold dmg left too (and a higher attack speed than cast speed)

- A melee 2H mace or staff infernal blow build with "added fire" "cold to fire" should do a lot more fire base dmg than fireball because of high dmg per hit, low attack speed (Marohi Erqui would be perfect I think - high dmg inbuilt concentrated effect)

Hands down the best Witch spec I played !
Nothing beats one-shooting yourself with fire :D

One quick note:
I found at low levels (20ish onwards) Chance to Ignite helps a lot with clearing packs, as even though the damage from ignites you get this way is low, you will have far fewer aoe ignites without it since your crit chance is a joke until much higher levels. It works OK in combination with Elemental Proliferation, and the ignites you get this way are sufficient to one-shot most if not all normal/strong mob packs.

Without Chance to Ignite, I found myself shooting fireballs at mobs one by one (if they are at distance), as I just cant seem to get the aoe ignites going. With the high cost of a 4 linked Fireball (Elemental Proliferation, Fire Penetration, Concentrated Effect) it was quite common to go OOM in the middle of fighting, albeit I had VERY crappy gear on. So i replaced Concentrated Effect (160% mana cost multiplier) with Chance to Ignite (110% mana cost multiplier) and things got a lot more manageable in terms of mana cost and aoe damage.
However at higher levels Concentrated Effect is getting ahead in terms of damage by so much is not funny!

Currently making a second character with this spec and going for a low life variant :)
Thank you for the guide!

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azraelb wrote:

- The base dmg of firetrap is almost 3 times as high as fireball, it has in-built additional! burn, has burning dmg as qual bonus and doesnt have a much lower crit chance.

this is what intrigued me as well. Fire Trap seems to be perfect for this kind of playstyle if I'm not mistaken. The only downside I could see is that Traps are not for everyone and it requires more skill than a projectile spell like FB.

Nice video, that's what i'm talking about! Going to make a fireball girl, thx for the great guide.

Thanks for your feedback guys, appreciate it :)

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azraelb wrote:

Hi,

burning looks really cool... didnt think that this is so good.
But it doesnt look really safe.

And I wonder why you choose fireball for a ignite build:

- The base dmg of firetrap is almost 3 times as high as fireball, it has in-built additional! burn, has burning dmg as qual bonus and doesnt have a much lower crit chance.

- The base dmg of a full stack of Exploding Arrow charges can be up to 10 times higher than a fireball.

- With burning arrow, blackgleam, added fire gem, 25% phys to cold unique gloves, nice fire+cold dmg dmg gear and cold to fire support gem you could do more base fire dmg than fireball and you have some phys dmg and cold dmg left too (and a higher attack speed than cast speed)

- A melee 2H mace or staff infernal blow build with "added fire" "cold to fire" should do a lot more fire base dmg than fireball because of high dmg per hit, low attack speed (Marohi Erqui would be perfect I think - high dmg inbuilt concentrated effect)

It is just as safe as you play it. You can stay a whatever range you choose to stay absolutely safe and play it cool, or you can move in to almost melee for better burn positions and faster clearing speeds if you chose to. Everything depends on your focus and your patience. You can play this exceptionally safe killing things offscreen if you chose to. Faster casting really helps your mobility, damage and frequency of stuns, i wasn't using that in the video.

If you are too worried about surviveability you can always change it up a little, mix some totems in there, or summons.

There are several reasons I am using fireball over those. I wanted to create a proper spell caster and not a trapper. Fireball will also cast upwards 2 casts per second @ endgame, that crit stability is much better than fire traps, plus it will also be 6 linked which is different from fire trap, unless i only had 1 fire trap, and even with more it would not compare. Lack of crit stability = Drastically slowed clearing speed.

The burn may be sick, but at endgame the single target damage becomes severe as well since fireball does not have charges. The nature of the fireball spell will make this playstyle possible well before i would get crit stability with fire trap. Btw fire trap has lower crit chance.

About burning arrow, well, without having done the calculations myself i can only trust that you are right, but even then, it's an entirely different kind of character. I wanted to create a pure caster to show everyone that it could be done, while working very well, and without stacking all your points into defensive stats as well. I also think a proper burning arrow build would match it better than this witch build.

The melee may have its strength in great big hits, though i am not sure if it would even hurt as much. That aside, lets assume it would crit a good deal harder, then it would probably be better suited for a proper melee build, and this build is different in the way that mobility is absolute king for it. I can only imagine that a melee version of this will be worse for gameplay, though i am sure you can make it work very well too.

Both with melee and bow you would lose much critical strike chance if you were to attempt it would this build, plus block and ES from the shield.

The extreme end of the spectrum is using molten shell for insane blasts, but compare that to fireball and you will find that fireball will be superior to gameplay due to its reliability. @ 1.9 casts/sec its a real beast if you reach upwards of 45% crit.

Crit stability is really where it's at in endgame for a burning build, if you do not have it you will not kill efficiently.

But in the end, these considerations are overshadowed by the simple idea behind this build. I wanted to create a pure caster that went for a simple playstyle, didnt abuse lmp/gmp and chain, spent insane amounts of hard-regenned mana, and be living proof that you didnt need all those elemental weapon damage builds all over to succeed or to have fun. The most important factor in my builds is how fun they are to play.

"

vandaall wrote:

Hands down the best Witch spec I played !
Nothing beats one-shooting yourself with fire :D

One quick note:
I found at low levels (20ish onwards) Chance to Ignite helps a lot with clearing packs, as even though the damage from ignites you get this way is low, you will have far fewer aoe ignites without it since your crit chance is a joke until much higher levels. It works OK in combination with Elemental Proliferation, and the ignites you get this way are sufficient to one-shot most if not all normal/strong mob packs.

Without Chance to Ignite, I found myself shooting fireballs at mobs one by one (if they are at distance), as I just cant seem to get the aoe ignites going. With the high cost of a 4 linked Fireball (Elemental Proliferation, Fire Penetration, Concentrated Effect) it was quite common to go OOM in the middle of fighting, albeit I had VERY crappy gear on. So i replaced Concentrated Effect (160% mana cost multiplier) with Chance to Ignite (110% mana cost multiplier) and things got a lot more manageable in terms of mana cost and aoe damage.
However at higher levels Concentrated Effect is getting ahead in terms of damage by so much is not funny!

Currently making a second character with this spec and going for a low life variant :)
Thank you for the guide!

I absolutely agree with your observations here and i must confess I also used ignite for a limited period while lvling. I'm going through a similar experience now after having gotten a shield + weapon with mana regen. Now i can suddenly use faster casting without problems on my 5L instead of critical damage, and even though it sucks to lose some burn power, it actually clears faster due to better crit stability.

There are many small adjustments you can make to your gems depending on your regen and level of progression, i was lucky i had a dream fragments while lvling that helped me to have little issues.

I'm gathering all this feedback and will slowly improve some parts of the guide for greater clarity, it's a bit of a mess right now, i just wanted to write it in one go and then i can polish it later.

Right now i'm trying to figure out what needs to be done so that i can slack in maps without dying. At the moment if im not paying attention it can get lethal very quickly when teamplaying and they got annoying lightning all over the screen. I think just getting max casting speed and crit chance is gonna make the difference in my surviveability, but well see when i get gear later on.

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cocomoloco wrote:

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azraelb wrote:

- The base dmg of firetrap is almost 3 times as high as fireball, it has in-built additional! burn, has burning dmg as qual bonus and doesnt have a much lower crit chance.

this is what intrigued me as well. Fire Trap seems to be perfect for this kind of playstyle if I'm not mistaken. The only downside I could see is that Traps are not for everyone and it requires more skill than a projectile spell like FB.

I would say fireball takes greater skill. A trap you can just throw where you desire, fireball requires constant movement and repositioning to optimize. Monsters are chasing you and if you stand still you will just hit the frontal ones instead of the center of the pack.

EDIT: Im going to sleep now, been up 1½ day as usual... dang and i even have something to do in the morning :D

"

azraelb wrote:

Hi,

burning looks really cool... didnt think that this is so good.
But it doesnt look really safe.

And I wonder why you choose fireball for a ignite build:

- The base dmg of firetrap is almost 3 times as high as fireball, it has in-built additional! burn, has burning dmg as qual bonus and doesnt have a much lower crit chance.

- The base dmg of a full stack of Exploding Arrow charges can be up to 10 times higher than a fireball.

- With burning arrow, blackgleam, added fire gem, 25% phys to cold unique gloves, nice fire+cold dmg dmg gear and cold to fire support gem you could do more base fire dmg than fireball and you have some phys dmg and cold dmg left too (and a higher attack speed than cast speed)

- A melee 2H mace or staff infernal blow build with "added fire" "cold to fire" should do a lot more fire base dmg than fireball because of high dmg per hit, low attack speed (Marohi Erqui would be perfect I think - high dmg inbuilt concentrated effect)

You have really got me thinking about an exploding arrow build.. I have a lvl 30 shadow sitting there doing nothing, hmmm

Ok perhaps I am a little bit spoiled in terms of survivaebility. I just face-tanked the flicker strike/viperstrike spider boss in the lvl 68 map with my EK caster witch^^

But I think I will stop my planned low life fireball/detonatedead build and try a build with ignite. But I am pretty convinced, that firetrap or exploding arrow is even better than fireball.


Even though you can reach 5k base fire dmg with exploding arrow I tend to firetrap because you could use OP shavronne and crit wands/shields and you neither need cast speed nor attack speed on gear/passives

edit: Oh yeah got a superb idea.^^ triple curse, double remotemine-detonatedead totem + 2x firetrap
=> throw up to eight firetraps, plant 2x qual detonate dead totems and watch machine-gun-fast chain explosions while the whole world burns

Hrmm, I'm doing something similar (detonate dead/fire trap/fire storm/incinerate) but i hadn't taken into account how powerful fireball AOE+crit could be, maybe i'll re-equip and mess around with fireball as opposed to incinerate/fire storm since I do have a quality one I've been leveling and this might also be better for life leech which helps ghost reaver. I'd need to find a better 5 link then a 6 link to play further though. Firestorm is also pretty beastly at range against groups with its crit even though the DPS is much lower than fireball (but I guess with the overall AOE with ele prolif fireball might cover this as well... I'll definitely have to throw fireball + ele prolif back into my equipped gear and see how that works as opposed to incinerate/firestorm, thank you very much for this post as for the most part whenever I ask about fire based stuff the immediate response is 'fire sucks use freeze pulse instead' or something along those lines.

How long did you wait before replacing searing touch? I'm currently 68 and could certainly use the extra ES and losing the +2 to gems wont be that terrible (though you do lose a ton of fire trap DPS without searing touch), but right now my biggest issue is cost for upgrade items in SC as the economy has gone completly nuts and god knows I have yet to see an exalted drop (and haven't even had a gcp drop in a while). Id love to respec for Shavrones/rf/pain attunement just to see how it works out, but first Id need you know, currency, and a lot of it. And yeah, those damn flicker strike mobs. As one of those who does not have particularly great ES gear right now those things and frenzied ranged mobs are my current 2 worst enemies (I don't really play safe, thus why I don't play hardcore, I just like to set stuff on fire/blow up the corpses).

I have a feeling with some better ES gear (gloves/chest) I could solo 66 maps (my intention for the build and I'm currently 68 so im pretty happy with my results so far) if I did play safe (or at least safeish) and stayed away from +fire resist maps.