Scorching Ray/Balefire - Bad or Just Unused?

Is it really a bad skill these days, or is it just no one is using it for this league? Can't seem to find any builds on the site, and poe.ninja isn't so great for following a build...

Also, side question, is Balefire useful, aside from making a totem out of the lvl25 SR built into it?

It's actually very strong but the current league mechanic isn't exactly good for standing still & channeling. It's also not the most interesting skill to look at but it's a solid league start.

I think some people bring Balefire to Hall of Grandmasters to deal with max block guys.

I mean, Ritual is perfect for standing still and killing everything in range, no? Still, sad to see no real builds with it... I like the skill, but I'm too terrible to do self-made builds.

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DarkenX wrote:

I mean, Ritual is perfect for standing still and killing everything in range, no?

No, Ritual is not good for standing still.

Standing still is never good in this game unless you are tanky AF.
Otherwise you will take a beating and die.

Movespeed and positioning are amongst the most underrated while easy to get defensive mechanics in PoE

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DarkenX wrote:

Is it really a bad skill these days, or is it just no one is using it for this league? Can't seem to find any builds on the site, and poe.ninja isn't so great for following a build...

Also, side question, is Balefire useful, aside from making a totem out of the lvl25 SR built into it?

scorching ray is actually incredible, especially now.
balefire is not useful for it, however, IMO. mostly because you can very easily out scale balefire with mediocre gear.

most people think you need to stand still and channel like crazy with SR but this is completely untrue. SR functions differently then other channel abilities, in a very positive way, let me explain.

most channel abilities make you stand still and channel to get to max damage - and when you stop channeling your damage instantly drops off and you need to stand still and channel to max damage again.
scorching ray functions differently where the stacks are not applied to you, but the monster. thus when you stop channeling the damage does not drop off instantly. the full damage remains on the monster for its duration (1.5s base) and thus you don't need to channel to full stacks on the mob again UNLESS you let the duration run out.

essentially you stand still for a short time, much shorter this league because of scorching ray buffs of HALVING its cast time, to get max stacks on a mob. then you only need to touch that mob with the beam again in order to refresh the duration and continually deal max damage.

this makes it an actual incredible bossing ability because it allows you to be very mobile during the fights. every single ability needs to stand still to cast/attack, so there is no difference. the difference is, do you still do damage while you're moving around or not?
with SR, you do. max damage. and its very easy to keep its max damage uptime high.

unlike toxic rain, for example, where pods are constantly expiring and blowing up, reducing the amount of pods that are doing their damage to the monster every single time you stop attacking to move around. SR damage is basically always up.

the playstyle is much like a stick and move. you channel for half a second and sweep the screen briefly. flamedash to a different corner and sweep again. by this time if max damage wasn't on each mob, it will be now. thats how fast it stacks.
flamedash/movement skill away and sweep again, refreshing the duration and keeping max damage on every mob.

SR is also different from other abilities in that it does not hit. its much easier to keep elemental equilibrium up. its much easier to avoid elemental reflect. the downside is you cannot leech and, for some reason, you still accumulate corrupting blood stacks.

but yeah its a wonderful ability. i love it. i've been bossing with it for awhile now and its a fantastic league starter. im trying to perfect an SR build for both offense and defense right now. i used to play agnostic trickster, which is strong, but i think a hybrid inquisitor is a better option, which is what im building and playing with now.
hell even an agnostic heiro would be better then trickster at this point - once they fix heiro's arcane surge bug thing.

Huh... Well, I guess I'll be on the lookout for your build sometime, then, xMustard. The skill was always a fun time when I used it a few leagues back, but it seems like not many want to use it anymore, or at least, none are willing to make a build out of it. Same goes for Firestorm, really...

Ah well. Here's hoping for good things sooner, rather than later!

ppl don't like to do anything other then meta stuff
or they just don't like thinking about how to make things work

i love the skill though. its insanely powerful offensively. requires very little offensive investment to get a couple million DPS out of it. makes it so you can focus a ton on defense if desired

Exactly right! Templar makes the most of it, similar to Divine Ire, only less burst and more "I'm going to melt your face off with my lazor!!"

I just wish there were more build-makers who stretched outside the meta. Plenty around, but not enough who go too far beyond the "flavour choice" gems/skills of the current league.

I use it with CwC+Arc to proc EE on one of my Flame Golem builds. That's pretty much the only thing I've used it for in ages, besides HotGM.