Flameblast

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ShacoFinder wrote:

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SEXYSUPERSATAN wrote:

Playing flameblast myself and it is quite annoying having to glance to the left top of the screen to see the amount of flameblast stacks. Typically you will also want to keep an eye on your life bar as you're standing still channeling so your eyes are zipping around the place, this causes a slight headache after a few hours of playing. GGG, any ideas to improve the flameblast experience?

all you to move the buff bar?

Make the character blink a colour per stage or under their feet a small coloured shockwave comes out per stage.

rainbows? in living hell world? blasphemy =p

Just wanted to say I love that skill. Just hit lvl 80 on my flameblaster and it was pretty fun ride. People that complain about cast time and stages flameblast is in need to learn the skill, use it for a while and you don't have to look at the stages at all. You can even simple judge by its current area. Currently aiming at 116% increaased cast speed which will reach the 0.13 cast time treshold (From what I calculated that is).

Skill has very good AoE and does pretty good damage. Clears the screen pretty effectively when combined with burning proliferation, no surprise there. I would actually compare it to Explosive Arrow. Good job GGG.

But how to handles bosses? It's hard to kite when the skill requires you to stand still. With incinerate at least I can leech life. Normal mobs can be frozen, but map bosses?

Desynch kills this gem. Build up a massive ring around yourself as you are taking huge damage from a pile of monsters - BAM - it goes off on the other side of the room and you die. Sigh, time to sell my searing touch. What a waste of exalts.

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Spandex_Warrior wrote:

Desynch kills this gem. Build up a massive ring around yourself as you are taking huge damage from a pile of monsters - BAM - it goes off on the other side of the room and you die. Sigh, time to sell my searing touch. What a waste of exalts.

Cant say the skill hasnt "desynched" for me a few times but if you die to it you're doing it wrong :< Either you're too squishy or you're pulling too many mobs at a time and not using any CC (like Ele Prof Cold Snap).

I'm liking the skill so far at level 84.... The damage is pretty insane though it is to be expected with the cast time and clunkiness of the spell. Especially good now that I've got 95% Chance to Ignite without a Curse and a 6-link Searing Touch... Could drop Ele Prof for more damage/cast speed.

If they had to fix something I'd say they should fix the way it scales with cast-speed.... Meaning they should improve the coefficient so that if you actually stack a lot of cast-speed it would be more noticeable.

My gem is only level 17 (soon 18) so the damage will just keep growing as the levels go up :)

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gripen wrote:

But how to handles bosses? It's hard to kite when the skill requires you to stand still. With incinerate at least I can leech life. Normal mobs can be frozen, but map bosses?

Slow/not moving Bosses are pretty easy. For those fast moving/jumping you can run to the other side of screen and start channelling. Boss enters the range and BOOM. Drop a totem for distraction if you have to. Use Arctic Armor (great when they trying to follow you) or Cold Snap for chilling.

Desynch is just slight annoyance, doesn't happen that often with that skill but yeah explosions in different places happen. Also sometimes you just stop channelling midway causing a little burp of fire.

If you build up flameblast them cast Lightning warp, does the flameblast go off at the start or end of the warp?

My feedback and tips for any players

General Description
You lever the delay of Storm Call to buy you time to charge. So whenever you cast Flameblast the mobs will be weak to Fire and Cold. Effectively giving you Fire Pen on your link. Instead of moving to trigger the blast you cast a quick Storm Call to make them prone to Fire and Cold. Storm Call will proliferate the shock furthering your damage.

Tough mobs can be distracted by a Spell Totem + Summon Skele. While giving you time to cast large blasts over and over. You could link a Spell Totem to Storm Call and Ele Equilibrium will still trigger. But it doesn't distract the mobs as well as Skeles.

I stopped playing this character at about lvl 60ish. It was getting more fun to play with 90% cast speed and I think 30% radius. I had another build in mind.

Possible Variants I have in mind
A CI crit burning focus build with a quality Added Cold Damage gem + Shadows passives. So the mobs are frozen while taking large burning damage.

Status duration should be based off the large cold damage so the duration will be huge.

Skills
Searing Touch would be the best for damage but a wand/sceptre with spell/ele damage is good too.

Curse Flammability/Ele Weakness
Storm Call > Lit Pen > Ele Prolif > Faster Casting > Conc Effect

Flameblast > Faster Casting > Ele Prolif >
Chance to Ignite > Conc Effect/Increased Burning Damage > Increased AoE/Added Chaos Damage

Summon Skele > Spell Totem > Minion&Totem Resist

Lit Warp > Reduce Duration

Haste > Determination > Reduced Mana

Reflect Mobs
No one says you have to do a 10 stage blast every time. Cast a skele totem and test out what happens with a 1-2 stage blast. Keep repeating the smaller blasts that you can handle. You can make it even safer by not casting Storm Call. A burn focus build is good for reflect but should have a quality Flameblast gem.

Soloing
You can do a forward kiting play style with small blasts and let the burning damage do the rest as you kite forward but it is a little bit cumbersome. Also leapers and Western Forest is very annoying.

Fun Factor
Cast speed, Cast speed, Cast speed + Radius, Radius, Radius.
You need a little patience but get into the Life wheel while traveling to Elderith Battery on the passive tree. Add life and Cast speed as needed. Radius ups the fun because you can settle for smaller charges to get the coverage.

Progression
Better than a lot of other spells like EK. While I am at it I have to say having to progress as melee or spectral throw for other spells is boring and doesn't make the game design seamless. For the first 50-60 levels I am playing another melee build again. I've been through a lot of builds and when I was a noob I was so frustrated at trying to progress certain builds because I didn't know you should level as one build then change over. I think the earlier levels of spells should get a little buffs and have spell damage be on rings/gloves early in the game or something so there is some gear dependency.

Bug
Seems to be related to desync. When your cursor is near a wall it doesn't always cast. It's like the server/client thinks you tried to cast inside the wall.

Suggestion
Make the charge time dynamic. So the early stages can be quickly cast while a larger charge takes longer. Here's a suggested formula.

N=Number of Charge stages, K=base time (maybe 0.01-0.02) , T=Cast Time (0.3 right now)
T=N*K + 0.2

I am recommending this because you need to kill white mobs quickly and as mentioned in the Reflect Mobs section there needs to be a flexibility to this skill otherwise this skill will always have to be complimented with a Skele Totem.

I was reluctant to give this skill a chance because the video showed it to be slow. Although it can be fun it doesn't seem to be completely polished and to over come the speed you're restricted to the top of the tree for all the cast speed.

The character name is HavocAndDestruction for GGG reference.

you have the right idea, but still think the best way to overcome the speed is to build crit, not cast speed.

you can get super strong burn proliferate off of stage 1-2

added cold with crit build is dumb cause you just explode the corpses that could have continued proliferating.. added lit is better. just use coldsnaptrap for CC