Flame Surge

I love this skill because It truly feels like a long range melee weapon

In fact the sound effect sounds like a whip and it seems to have the same range a whip would have, I think that was intentional of GGG, regardless, when I use it, I feel like I'm using the flame whip from castlevania

It would be awesome if the animation was changed, so that instead of looking like you are casting a spell, it would like like you are whipping.

To top it off, A microtransaction that would make the skill look like a leather whip would be the cherry on the sundae

Hey guys!,

I wanted to know, if you use ancestral bonds, flame surge on your 2 totems and you self cast fire trap (with multiple traps), are the enemies burning even if your fire traps dont deal damage??

thought fire trap dealt damage as it isn't you anymore just like totems =p.
also ANY burning (searing bond, fire trap's ground, a critical strike) will count for flame surge.
of course, in your case, flame surges needs to be casted from a totem/trap/mine to deal any damage at all.

I'm curious if anyone has dived deep to see how well this skill works with righteous fire. It would seem to me that the auto burn at close range and two 50% "more" modifiers could lead to some serious dmg output.

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Camper wrote:

I'm curious if anyone has dived deep to see how well this skill works with righteous fire. It would seem to me that the auto burn at close range and two 50% "more" modifiers could lead to some serious dmg output.

I am trying to make a Righteous Fire Flame Surge build. I am currently level 56, so I am not able to run Righteous Fire yet, I will probably have to be around 75 for that.

My main problem with the build so far is the mana costs. Using Tabula Rasa for now, mana cost is 94 per cast. In order to get enough life, life regeneration and aura nodes, it is kind of impossible to get mana regeneration and increased mana nodes.

My passive tree has 140% mana regeneration, but only 28% increased mana. Clarity is level 14. I am going to get Eldritch Battery when I can, but that will take a while.

Damage should be very strong if i can get the build to work. Flame Surge Concentrated Effect + Righteous Fire spell damage multiplier + Ignited enemy multiplier.

I run Flame Surge with The Three Dragons helm. "What's that, Flame Surge can't ignite? I'll make it shock!" I use Arctic Breath (which will now ignite, but still chill due to the ground ice effect) + elem. prolif. to ignite the screen, and then go to town with flame surge. The damage it deals is pretty damn high and it's a fun build to play.

Range is still really bad.. Increase the base AOE by 20% should be fine then.

People complaining about AoE: this skill was created for using with concentrated effect. It gives a great boost and, yes, you have to be up in the face of the boss. It's not a map clearing skill, it's a boss fight skill. I love it so far, I use in 5 link and it is very effective. for clearing junk I use incinerate or flame totem and for bigger fights - flame surge. You need to be just a little tanky to use it.

Reflect: I use purity of fire and easily deal with reflect. You think it's not enough? Add arctic armor when facing reflect mob, you will deal with reflect just like with any other mob. I turn on arctic armor just in case and turn it off after dealing with reflect mob.

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Fatto wrote:

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Camper wrote:

I'm curious if anyone has dived deep to see how well this skill works with righteous fire. It would seem to me that the auto burn at close range and two 50% "more" modifiers could lead to some serious dmg output.

I am trying to make a Righteous Fire Flame Surge build. I am currently level 56, so I am not able to run Righteous Fire yet, I will probably have to be around 75 for that.

My main problem with the build so far is the mana costs. Using Tabula Rasa for now, mana cost is 94 per cast. In order to get enough life, life regeneration and aura nodes, it is kind of impossible to get mana regeneration and increased mana nodes.

My passive tree has 140% mana regeneration, but only 28% increased mana. Clarity is level 14. I am going to get Eldritch Battery when I can, but that will take a while.

Damage should be very strong if i can get the build to work. Flame Surge Concentrated Effect + Righteous Fire spell damage multiplier + Ignited enemy multiplier.

Currently level 77 on my (almost) max AoE RF Flamesurge Scion. Picking up all the AoE and life regen nodes at Scion/Templer/Marauder/Duelist (not going to Witch, so missing out on those AoE nodes) and leveling has been the most unique and fun experience so far. (I always try to run my builds as early as possible as opposed to using a leveling spec first). I was accompanied by a friend who is building a crit flamesurge Witch and we were clearing/leveling quite effectively. (He utilizes Fire Trap to get the burning going)

In my passive tree I'm only getting 1 fire damage cluster (Arsonist) and the spell damage and cast speed at Templar and Scion start - not all that much. And despite the lack of damage nodes, my damage output is respectable. Running Flamesurge with Faster Casting, Conc Effect and Fire Pen (5th link would be Spell Echo), I get about 12k tool tip dps when RF is activated - my Flamesurge Gem still being level 17. (And not counting the 50% more damage from hitting burning enemies)
Regarding the synergies between RF and Flamesurge: Fabulous! I'm supporting my RF with Inc. Aoe and Flamesurge with Conc Effect, so the radius of both comes somewhat closer together (so I can hit more burning enemies). Besides that I'm using a Carcass Jack and a Divinarius for even more AoE! A Doryani's Invitation offers some damage and fire life leech (awesome when you hit an enemy for 5k per hit!).
Reflect obviously is not an issue, as I'm dealing purely fire damage and Rise of the Phoenix is mandatory for running RF.
I'll see if I can find a screenshot or two when I get home.

Ah, and regarding the mana costs: Yes, they do ramp up quite harshly. To counteract that, I'm using Clarity (making use of all that mana regen I picked up on the tree) and specced into some nodes like Righteous Decree (Templar area) and Mana Flows (Duelist area). Currently with a 4-link it's quite manageable and I hope with Spell Echo in the 5th link it'll stay that way because of its better mana efficiency. Manageable in this context means: I'm slowing down after casting 5-6 continuous Flamesurges, which only happens at bosses, tough rares (fire res, +max life) or when I aim the wrong way too often. Usually, white mobs die after 1 cast when soloing or 1-2 casts when playing with my friend.

And a final note regarding the scalability of Flamesurge's AoE: When coming across the occasional Massive Shrine, while removing Conc. Effect or switching it out for Inc AoE, Flamesurge easily reaches beyond the borders of my screen... ;)

I really like Flame Surge because it offers unique build options and requires some thought to be used effectively. Sure, you could just throw it into a 5L item and it will work - just not very well. But once you make a build around it, it can become exceptionally powerful and fun to play.
I especially like the fact that it requires the use of a second skill to really shine as opposed to the "one-button-spam-all-the-aoe" builds that are becoming so popular, especially with the newer players. A one-button build can be fun to play once in a while if i am just looking for some casual fun but i believe that PoE needs more of these "mechanically rich" skills like Flame Surge for us PADDOE (Players Against Dumbing Down Of Exiles) ;).

A friend and i (see post above) started a project a couple weeks ago where we would both design builds around Flame Surge as a main skill. My more or less finished build is described in detail in this guide so instead of going over the build itself, i want to explain the thought process that went into making the build coupled with feedback on Flame Surges mechanic and balancing.


Why Flame Surge?
It basically comes down to three reasons:
a) because it looks awesome
b) because it has a huge damage potential
c) because i had to put in a lot of thought to unlock its potential and make it shine
Reason c) might be off putting for some but it ultimately was what got me hooked on the skill.


Thought process in designing the build:
My first thought was obviously "how do i get the burn status on enemies to get that juicy 50% more damage from Flame Surge?". After some thought it came down to three different approaches:
1. Righteous Fire to burn all nearby enemies
2. Fire Trap to create burning ground
3. ignite via another skill

The second idea i had was "since Flame Surge cannot ignite by itself, it might do something else as well!", which lead me into including the Three Dragons unique into thought process and ultimately into the final build. This meant then getting some chance to shock to make use of the changed mechanic, which in turn meant either getting chance to shock passives or going crit. Due to the decent 6% base critical strike chance of Flame Surge, the higher damage potential and reasons described below i decided to go crit.

This means that option 3. of the above mentioned approaches would have to be a cold spell like Ice Spear with Elemental Proliferation but that idea was too close to another build i already had tested before so i discarded that option.
Since option 1. has a limited radius and my friend already settled for something like a RF/selfcaster hybrid build, i decided to go for option 2. instead but designed the build in a way that it would be able to additionally use RF for extended amounts of time without having to build in the massive life regen investment that most RF builds have.
This meant getting a lot of increase to maximum fire resistance, some life leech from gear without the need to use a support gem slot and enough damage output to make that little leech sufficient for keeping up RF. With the high fire resistance stacking that made reflect bearable and the need for effective life leech, i decided to go crit.

At this point i had a basic concept of high crit, high AoE and high fire resistance. The AoE scaling is definitely necessary in my opinion since Flame Surge has a very small and narrow base AoE to compensate for its huge damage. This had the additional benefit of scaling up the radius and damage of Fire Trap and its burning ground effect as well as the efficiency of Righteous Fire and any curses used.
Since i planned to use Concentrated Effect to maximize Flame Surges damage output, i didn't want to just get the AoE passives but also additional AoE scaling from gear, which made me settle for the Carcass Jack and Divinarius uniques, which were both rather cheap in Torment.

The next thought was about what auras and buffs would be most beneficial to that basic concept. Purity of Fire and Clarity were obvious choices since i would also use a high level Arctic Armour to mitigate damage and reflect. That left some more mana free and i settled for Purity of Lightning to mitigate some of the most dangerous damage in endgame and Herald of Thunder which has great synergies with this build.
Due to using the Three Dragons and a high crit chance build (i calculated the final critchance to be ~60%), the added lightning damage from HoT will freeze and shatter enemies hit by Flame Surge, which adds additional utility and survivability. Since enemies will almost always be shocked from Flame Surge itself, HoT will also be active most of the time to destroy nearby crates and apply the blind status via the Blind support gem.

Just like this the build came together in an iterative process and i had a lot of fun during both the design process as well as playing and developing it while leveling. The extra damage against burning and shocked targets reliably boosts the damage output and made this build incredibly powerful against tough bosses. I still remember when i got to Merciless Brutus, underleveled and with too little hp for comfort - and then killed him in less than 1.5 seconds with a single firetrap and two shots from Flame Surge! This build had a lot of these moments when bosses would just fall over once poked and the clearspeed against large groups is good too due to the relatively strong crit Fire Traps that would also shock and freeze large groups of weak enemies while making them burn.


Conclusion and thoughts on balancing:
Flame Surge has almost unparalleled damage potential but it requires a lot of thought and tinkering to both unlock that potential and apply it to more than just a single target or a very small group of mobs, making it a very well designed skill that is interesting and fun to work around.
My only complaint is that, while the range is decent with a lot of AoE scaling, the AoE is just a little bit too narrow and susceptible to desync due to that. A maybe just 5-10° wider cone would considerable lessen that problem.