Ball Lightning

Can BL shock whites reliably? with slower projectiles + lmp, non crit build.

Aaand... does duration increase it's range? or BL always travels up to max distance? (I heard disparity of opinions)

Holds key features of the strongest utility abilities: has some of the largest aoe in the game, has a "duration", doesn't absolutely require the supports most projectile skills need.

I played Ball Lightning on multiple characters not long after it was released and loved it. I've played it on multiple characters recently and didn't like it at all. A series of incidental nerfs really hurt the skill.

The massive shock duration nerf was brutal. You used to be able to consistently shock enemies with non-crit Ball Lightning by taking the shock nodes. Now you can barely shock anything even with those. You can completely forget about shocking map bosses once you get good damage. That's just not going to happen anymore. This was an absolutely massive damage nerf to the skill (ignored to some degree by going crit, but going crit should not be the solution to all of POE's problems (and I'd argue that crit is one of POE's major problems)).

The AOE nerf was another kick in the junk. 40-52% increased AOE (depending on if you took Scion AOE nodes, which I did) is now 30-40% plus some completely irrelevant AOE damage (increased damage with AOE skills instead of increased area damage would be amazing). Increased AOE from the gem is also smaller, though only once the old quality is incorporated. Overall, you end up with a rather significant reduction in AOE. This hurts both clear speed and damage, since it can cost you a hit on enemies.

Ball Lightning did not receive buffs to make up for these nerfs. It was not overpowered before, and seems to be roughly half as effective now as it used to be. It feels bad to play now.

I'm not sure what would make up for these losses aside from an obvious damage boost and AOE boost. I'd like to see something done, though. It'd be nice to play it again and have it actually feel good to use.

wasnt the BL's damage increased two times since the release? they also buffed the AOE after the AOE nodes nerf. BL is stronger than ever right now

it is not an easy mode bladefall/blade vortes etc but it is a good solid gem with a very interesting scaling and great utility

Anyone knows if ball lightning needs actual %pierce numbers to be affected by drillneck's damage mod? Please and thank you

That's weird, I remember using a pierce gem with ball lightning with a drillneck and the damage increased substantially (more than the 25% or so damage multiplier).

So in my response, ball lightning needs actual %pierce numbers to be affected by drillneck's damage.

And just in case something had changed, I just went on and checked again:
Ball lightning with projectile pierce gem average damage (50% projectile pierce chance): 315.3 or 24 to 433 damage. Equip a a Drillneck and it became 380.8 or 29 to 523 damage.

Isn't arrow pierce chance a subset of projectile pierce chance or something which includes pierce chance + something else?

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biyte wrote:

That's weird, I remember using a pierce gem with ball lightning with a drillneck and the damage increased substantially (more than the 25% or so damage multiplier).

So in my response, ball lightning needs actual %pierce numbers to be affected by drillneck's damage.

And just in case something had changed, I just went on and checked again:
Ball lightning with projectile pierce gem average damage (50% projectile pierce chance): 315.3 or 24 to 433 damage. Equip a a Drillneck and it became 380.8 or 29 to 523 damage.

Isn't arrow pierce chance a subset of projectile pierce chance or something which includes pierce chance + something else?

same tests i made, but then someone told me that the tooltip isnt reliable if there are hidden numbers (like BL's hidden pierce mechanic) so i reasearched about it and was lead to this


from this thread

so does this tells us BL automatically gets 100% inc proj dmg when equipped with drillneck, just not calculated on tooltip?

ps. asking this because im theorycrafting an edgy chaos BL build

Suggestion: make BL work like Orb of Storm when it comes to critical strikes. Give every proc an individual chance to crit rather than if the ball rolls crit every proc is crit.

This would make it more viable with non-crit as well as maintaining it's crit viability.

As someone who probably spent most time out of all players using this skill as main dmg dealer, it's terrible. Well actually no, it's not terrible, it's just in the bottom 25% of skills. As long as you never played other skill, you think it's fine and balanced, because it is. But when my 75 lvl Whisperer did similar dmg that my 91 BL char does, this skill died for me. Occultist here (out of meta class I know). Added warlords mark to curse on hit for better survivability, but dmg is even lesser now. With vaal pact and shavs it could arguably work as low dmg facetank everything alternative to Whispering Ice, but it would be still inferior to it by a significant amount. Never got into crit (thought my 15 ex of offensive items will do without crit).
Possible solutions:
-20% more initial area of effect
-30% more travel speed but with ticks 30% more often too (would make slower projectiles not that annoying to use)
-increased basic damage by at least 60% (yes damage is that bad).
Any two of those three (one is not enough) will do

Gotta try crit version when I'll learn more about best ratios of crit dmg , crit chance to spell dmg

This build however is quite decent as support, assuming you forgo damage and spec into tanking with curses. Aura bot devastates it though.