Need Help with Scorching Ray

what are good support gems that work with scorching ray?
Controlled destruction seems to work pretty good but added lightning damage I cant tell if it is adding anything to scorching rays damage or not as it never sets off Herald of Thunder.

the burn damage from ignites is really stellar and I love that I dont get reflected damage with scorching ray but for the life of me I cant seem to figure out what supports work well with it.

GGG likes a complicated game.

Scorching Ray only deals Damage over Time instead of hitting, which means that no flat added damage can ever be added to the ray. Added Lightning Damage Support is doing nothing for Scorching Ray.

Scorching Ray deals Burning damage, but does not Ignite. These are two different terms in Path of Exile; Ignite is the elemental status ailment based on Fire hits. It deals Burning Damage, but not all Burning Damage is Ignite.

As for supports, I haven't really thought much about it.

Elemental Focus practically has a flashing neon sign saying "use me for SR" assuming it's allowed to link up - there's no downside, since we just cleared up that SR isn't Ignite.

Empower is almost always a solid choice for Spell gems.

Increased Burning Damage will give you a modest damage boost. Its strength, relative to other Supports, tends to get lower as you build more increased damage from other sources.

Iron Will works similarly to IBD mechanically here, but really scales more with your Strength, so it depends.

Rapid Decay is an intuitive choice, but I'm not sure it's actually a DPS increase? Let's take it out for a quick spin: at level 20, 1.39 * 0.85 = 18.15% more damage. So.... not actually that good? However, we might be able to compensate with...

Increased Duration. This will actually give you a huge long-term DPS boost if we assume stacks are unlimited. Specifically, 64% more damage assuming no other sources of increased skill duration. The less cast speed you have (or the less duration, mostly thinking of Rapid Decay), the more likely you can get full benefit from this gem.

Faster Casting, if nothing else, would be a QoL gem allowing you to reach max stacks faster and turn faster.

Cast while Channeling is what I've seen most other people use. Scorching Ray is usually not the DPS focus here, I believe. Any fire skill would work, methinks.

.........

So, with the disclaimer that I have never tested any of this, if I were in your shoes, my preferred Supports, in order of preference:

1. Elemental Focus
2. Controlled Destruction
3. Increased Duration
4. Faster Casting
5. Rapid Decay

I don't usually seek cast speed in tree, so it's less likely for me to hit the "soft cap" where too much cast speed lowers the DPS benefit of Increased Duration. If you do, you may want to sub in something else instead of Faster Casting, like switching the order of 4 and 5?

EDIT: So, it just occurs to me that EF, CD, and ID are all intuitive Supports for Firestorm as well. So you might try CwC Firestorm if you happen to have 6 links, or if you have 5 links and don't really like waiting for ramp up damage, you could drop Increased Duration for the CwC Firestorm pair.

EDIT2: Nearly forgot to share my calculations for the "soft cap" going for duration will incur. I think of this as a limit on how much cast speed I want for full efficiency, that is, how fast can I cast before I'm stuck attempting to stack SR on an enemy that already has max stacks.

Normal time required for max stacks: 8 stacks / 2 casts per second = 4 seconds
Normal duration of SR: 1.5 seconds

Scenario 1:
Hence, level 20 ID buffed duration: 1.64 × 1.5 = 2.46
Hence, cast speed needed for max stacks: 4/2.46 = 1.626, or anything above 62% is "wasted" on long term DPS

Scenario 2:
Hence, level 20 ID and any level RD net duration: 1.5 ×1.64×0.85 = 2.091
Hence, cast speed needed for max stacks: 4/2.091 = 1.913, or anything above 91% is "wasted" on long term DPS

Skill effect duration on tree amd/or ID quality/extra levels will squish the soft cap down by some amount. Let me know if you want me to calculate it out, but I would guess you start wanting to use Rapid Decay if you stack duration beyond just a level 20 ID.

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Vipermagi wrote:

With the duration resetting on each successive application, there's no reason to use Increased Duration imo.

Oh shoot, I did NOT realize the duration resets. I assumed it was like Poison, where each stack had its own duration :p

This is what happens when you try to theory craft things you haven't experienced in game, people!!!

Skill it self scales moslty on increased damage nodes and mods, maybe going righteous fire is also an option, since pushing it over the top with single damage multiplier is difficult (crit, cast speed doesnt really add up to dps).

"

Vipermagi wrote:

"This will actually give you a huge long-term DPS boost if we assume stacks are unlimited"
They're not: 'Burning Debuff can have a maximum of 8 stages', description. With the duration resetting on each successive application, there's no reason to use Increased Duration imo.

Cast While Channeling Firestorm is the much more sensible option.

Well, I wouldn't used the increased duration gem, but it is worth considering grabbing an increased duration cluster in the tree if you're near it and have some other use for it. Having the debuff last longer means you have more of a grace period in which you can stop channeling, move around/cast something else, then resume channeling without losing your stacks... it can help out nicely against bosses where you can't afford to just stand still for seconds at a time. Plus it increases the total damage you do by sweeping the ray over mobs once (which pretty much means just applying one stage and letting it run it's full duration), giving you that little extra push to help clearing quickly.



As for the supports, if you wanna do pure SR then elemental focus, controlled destruction, and rapid decay are reliably good options. Empower is also solid, ofc, but very expensive, and iron will can be very good if you've built for it.

Personally, I took an RF/SR character to 90 this league, and I actually use SR-Ele Focus-Controlled Destruction-Rapid Decay in a Horror Essence helm (30% more ele damage for socketed gems) while using Repentence (the Iron Will gloves). RF gives me a lot more spell damage as well, and the Elemental Overload keystone tops it off. Overall it was very potent, able to sweep over mobs in pretty much all maps for quick clearing and able to take down bosses pretty quickly.



CWC firestorm is a good option too, but tactically it lacks something that pure SR has: with pure SR, you can stop channeling to move around or use other skills without losing any SR dps (in my case I took that time to use decoy totem, vortex, or orb of storms). As long as you use SR again on the target before the debuff runs out, you'll maintain all the stages you've built up. With cwc, stopping your channeling to do that kinda thing will mean you stop proccing your firestorm or whatever other spell, which is a substantial portion of your damage... you'll get slightly more dps while channeling, but lose a bunch if you have to stop. Idk, I tried out both, I much preferred the feel of pure SR.

thanks for the replies folks you gave me a lot of food for thought and things to work with I will try them out and see how it goes