Firestorm LITERALLY does nothing.

"

Bigwilleh#1842 wrote:

NGL, I'm genuinely hoping someone comes in with proof to the contrary...because I've always loved the style of firestorm type spells, but its implementation in PoE2 brings back sad panda memories of Armagedon from D2

This. It was always my favorite skill in poe1 as early as 2013 even though it's been mediocre, even after the several reworks over the years.

Now I can't even imagine what you're supposed to do with it. It looks like it's trying to be some combo piece, but it's a high level spell, meaning endgame, meaning no one is using combos anymore (even the devs admit they want you blowing up the screen endgame for some reason, which is contrary to all the work they put in balancing all these new skills, but that's beside the point). In the short time in the campaign where you can use it, it's still not very good at its combo. Consume ignite to power up some garbage that doesn't hit anything? Why go to all this trouble? It's nonsense.

It's actually funny if anyone remembers, they NERFED this already awful skill in the CoI patch. It used to have some minor use against large bosses, or using "fair" CoI builds, now it has absolutely none.

"

TheLenymo#5063 wrote:

"

HannibalGraham#5550 wrote:

I was trying to see if I could make a build use this skill. The way I see it, the only way it could ever be useable is if you can spam the entire screen with it. Problem is, the limit 1 is global, so as soon as a second one is cast, it stops the attack. Even when you let it happen, it RARELY RARELY RARELY hits things. What was the point in this?

i currently use it in my setup with an insane amount of increased aoe, the regular bolts are at 2.6m radius and the improved bolts are at 4.4m, the spell echo regular bolts are noticeably larger than a standard comet by comparison. even with all this aoe the ability is still pretty bad, and there is no way i can imagine using it for anything other than just pressing it before a ritual or a boss or after ive covered the screen in frost walls... but it does kill stuff and it looks really cool.

My main issue with the skill is that when you increase the AOE the storm radius also gets larger, like mine for example is 12.4m which is larger than my screen (dunno how accurate the tooltip is). If increasing aoe only effected the bolts then you could get massive bolts to hit in a much smaller area repeatedly hitting the same targets. If increased aoe only effected bolt size you could definitely make a build with this skill.

So honestly, I cant do this anymore. Ive pretty much burned out on the game, really just waiting for cyclone. Ofc that isnt until probably the last added weapon/skill combo. Might be on axes, idk. My idea was to do max AOE with a Titan using Blueflame Bracers. The Firestorm has 14% base crit chance as well. So if you can get a decent amount of crit chance, you can keep everything frozen or stunned. If you want to try that, you should. I was going to call it Cryogenic Storm Titan. Forgot to add, the damage would be from spirit stacking.

Not sure if it would serve the purposes for raging spirits others have been discussing because of the socket pressure, but I've done a bunch of messing around with Svallin on my witch and warrior, and found firestorm to be one of the better options.

I'm a pretty average theorycrafter, but my experience was that there wasn't anything too incredible to socket into cast on block and you're better off enabling/strengthening synergies. Even with investment in the tree, you can't build enough energy to spit out a bunch of comets unless you're against something like a pack of +proj crabs. I think cast on block was probably hit a bit too hard by the necessary reductions to other cast on X spells.

I generally had more success going the utility route by using it for things like solar orb with triple fonts or, relevant to this conversation, firestorm. I can't remember what I used it for, but more importantly I remember it having pretty great (if not 100%) uptime. I could see some potential use there if anyone wants to explore it further.

I just use it as an AoE debuff applier. Damage is barely noticeable.

"

HannibalGraham#5550 wrote:

really just waiting for cyclone

I would bet Lance Armstrong's remaining nut that a) it comes with swords, b) swords come with 2.0, and c) it will probably be some kind of weird brick skill like the whirly jump thing quarterstaves have.

"

Bigwilleh#1842 wrote:

NGL, I'm genuinely hoping someone comes in with proof to the contrary...because I've always loved the style of firestorm type spells, but its implementation in PoE2 brings back sad panda memories of Armagedon from D2

I had good results by reducing the AoE size of firestorm as to condense its effect. Granted, -%range affect the size of the 'arrows' too, but as they are much more often hitting in a much smaller area, they tend to hit hitboxes more reliably than when playing with +%range.

"

Bigwilleh#1842 wrote:

"

HannibalGraham#5550 wrote:

really just waiting for cyclone

I would bet Lance Armstrong's remaining nut that a) it comes with swords, b) swords come with 2.0, and c) it will probably be some kind of weird brick skill like the whirly jump thing quarterstaves have.

"

dwqrf#0717 wrote:

"

Bigwilleh#1842 wrote:

NGL, I'm genuinely hoping someone comes in with proof to the contrary...because I've always loved the style of firestorm type spells, but its implementation in PoE2 brings back sad panda memories of Armagedon from D2

I had good results by reducing the AoE size of firestorm as to condense its effect. Granted, -%range affect the size of the 'arrows' too, but as they are much more often hitting in a much smaller area, they tend to hit hitboxes more reliably than when playing with +%range.

That does in fact check out; I used to scale PoE1 firestorm the same way before they limited it to three active storms or w/e and added the big chungus ball. Still feelsbad that its limit 1 in poe2 tho, and its base radii are WAY too big for that style (don't think theres enough aoe reduction available in the game to put it to much better use than a "fire and forget" bonus dakka if you had one more unset ring than you need)

The double radius scaling is likely on purpose to hinder AoE layering though I'm not sure I should give that much credit since PoE has been notoriously bad with AoE layering.

Skills that hit with a small radius within a larger radius multiple times tend to obliterate large hitbox enemies and do nearly nothing to smaller hitbox enemies.

I'm curious myself how the ratios of increase and reduce AoE affect it.

Base Firestorm 5.6m radius with 1m impacts. Total Area = 98.52, Impact Area = 3.14. Each impact is 3.18% of the total area. Add +50% AoE, Total Area = 221.67, Impact Area 7.07. Each impact is 3.19% of total area. Add -50% AoE, Total Area = 24.63, Impact Area = 0.79. Each impact is 3.2% of total area. Doesn't look like there's much difference outside the hitbox size itself.

In such a case reduced radius would be more potent given hitbox size doesn't change.

"

GnMQDMLmWZ#3336 wrote:

The only use I've found for it so far is that I can reliably get 10 raging spirits as opposed to 5 by having a very large area on my firestorm.
I'm currently toying with a way to autocast it as an Infernalist but cast on minion death doesn't really cut it because my minion's just don't really die.
Maybe I will respec to remove some of their survivability, but I'm not sure.
While the Firestorm is currently shit, it would be nice to autocast that and have that autotrigger 10 raging spirits at least semi-frequently while mapping.

Any suggestions to get this build working are welcome.

Give raging spirits infernal legion, the support that make them take 20% more damage, and the support that explodes then when they reach low life; then use cast on minion death with 40% increased energy or more to have a somewhat reliable auto cast support.