Firestorm

thx

I found a searing touch on my duelist the other day and decided to make a fire witch, and i gotta say, Im already wrecking mobs with firestorm with no support gems attached to it.
Loving the skill atm, its so pleasing hearing those crits when I rain fiery death on the mobs.
I see alot of discussion about how effictive firestorm is compared to fire trap and fireball, but im guessing a searing touch changes alot eh?

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taboo wrote:

I found a searing touch on my duelist the other day and decided to make a fire witch, and i gotta say, Im already wrecking mobs with firestorm with no support gems attached to it.
Loving the skill atm, its so pleasing hearing those crits when I rain fiery death on the mobs.
I see alot of discussion about how effictive firestorm is compared to fire trap and fireball, but im guessing a searing touch changes alot eh?

Searing Touch also makes Firetrap one shot mobs or kill them within a second in the burning ground or Fireball super strong. I played 2 firestorm chars though, I think it's actually pretty good, as long as you don't pick the aoe passives and keep concentrated effect on it, in this case it kills what you want it to kill and there's less randomness to it. It's just horrible at killing stuff that doesn't stand still like those whirling blades mobs in act3 or golems when they roll around, but anything that stands still gets wrecked once you start stacking the firestorms on their position.

They definitely need to improve this skill to make it worthwhile. Slower cast + higher damage + longer duration will do it!

I build my blood magic marauder to use this skill, but I cant bring myself to actually use it because it makes the screen such a mess. I've been using GMP fireball for a while now. I could give firestorm another shot though...

I also have 1 AoE cluster, and I'm not sure if that is hurting its damage potential.

I know that Firestorm isn't technically considered a projectile attack, and so won't work with projectiles like fork or chain, but I was curious as to whether or not increased projectile speed would at all reduce the amount of time it takes for them to actually strike the ground once they've been "summoned," or if there were any way to reduce that time via other support gems or passives?

If not, is there a chance that it might be implemented? I still love Firestorm, but after having played with some of the other skills available in this game, I've definitely come to the conclusion that it's currently a bit outclassed. With the right support gems (increased duration, faster cast, concentrated effect, etc) you can still make it pretty capable, but not nearly as versatile or reliable as a skill like fireball.

I feel like if the delay between the fireball beginning its fall and the fireball impacting the ground could be shortened a bit, it would definitely round out Firestorm as a whole!

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Zazulio wrote:

I know that Firestorm isn't technically considered a projectile attack, and so won't work with projectiles like fork or chain, but I was curious as to whether or not increased projectile speed would at all reduce the amount of time it takes for them to actually strike the ground once they've been "summoned," or if there were any way to reduce that time via other support gems or passives?

If not, is there a chance that it might be implemented? I still love Firestorm, but after having played with some of the other skills available in this game, I've definitely come to the conclusion that it's currently a bit outclassed. With the right support gems (increased duration, faster cast, concentrated effect, etc) you can still make it pretty capable, but not nearly as versatile or reliable as a skill like fireball.

I feel like if the delay between the fireball beginning its fall and the fireball impacting the ground could be shortened a bit, it would definitely round out Firestorm as a whole!

I don't think shortening the initial fireball would have much of an impact, it's one out of 12-20fireballs out of the whole cast. After that they would fall faster but not spawn faster so the frequency would still be the same, so it'd make absolutely no differences past that initial hit. Maybe what you'd want is for faster proj to also reduce the frequency of fireballs? That'd be extremely strong though, and definitely overpowered. That'd be yet another damage multiplier on top of conc effect. Quality does that and it does by very very small amounts and yet a 20% firestorm is insanely stronger than a normal one.

I think mostly the issue is Firestorm lacks stopping power. It's by design an over time high damage ability that requires the target to stay within its area. That's alright but it's fairly hard to keep mobs to stay in one spot. Decoy tends to die pretty fast, skeleton totem isn't guaranteed aggro at all and frost wall duration is quite a bit too short. There's also the "ramp up" time. You cast, it starts falling on that spot, but unless you're lucky, the damage is averaged over the entire duration and will tend to be uneven and spread, so it takes 1 or 2 second to really have a visible effect. Unlike Explo Arrow which has a similar delay however, it still doesn't instantly kill stuff once the delay is up.

I'd consider doing one change, that'd be reducing the duration and/or the damage for a total of 35ish% or so, and then making it so every interval 2 fireballs fall at the same time. That'd reduce the randomness, increase the effective aoe at any given time and give more "burst" to the spell. The damage would go up though on a static mob so the % reduction would need to be tweaked depending, but I don't think it's that high currently anyway, it's pretty high with full supports but the constraints make it not optimal anyway.

so you want to both multiply its damage by 75% (35 vs 20) then also double it (two balls landing instead of one)?

i wouldn't mind if it slowed down intervals of 0.24 to preform two balls instead of one. that'll help those that complain about AoE size. although in that case, the quality effect should be boosted by 33%. damage stays the same.

a different idea is for every 4 bolts is instead a larger one that'll always happen in the center. could then create a store effect for this so it'll more properly look like a meteor storm.

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soul4hdwn wrote:

so you want to both multiply its damage by 75% (35 vs 20) then also double it (two balls landing instead of one)?

i wouldn't mind if it slowed down intervals of 0.24 to preform two balls instead of one. that'll help those that complain about AoE size. although in that case, the quality effect should be boosted by 33%. damage stays the same.

a different idea is for every 4 bolts is instead a larger one that'll always happen in the center. could then create a store effect for this so it'll more properly look like a meteor storm.

No, I said reducing the damage/duration by 35%. Has nothing to do with the damage efficiency which would still be 20%, but the amount of dmg done and/or the duration would also be reduced, to compensate for the "double damage" of having 2fireballs, even though technically it'd only double the damage if the mob gets hit by both which isn't guaranteed at all either, thus 35% and not 50%. It's just an idea though, numbers can be tweaked accordingly later they're never the issue, the point would make it so firestorm is more reliable and provides more damage faster after a successful cast, so it's not so completely terrible at handling anything that moves fast by maybe being able to outright kill it or at least put a decent dent into it before it reaches you.

I played Firestorm 2 ways, with a normal caster along with block/armor/health stacking and molten shell and with a summoner. It worked alright in both cases but first case is very dangerous and is akin to a melee build really so not necessarily very viable, plus molten shell was doing most of the work on anything faster than zombies. As for the summoner it worked fine as long as the mobs weren't too picky about their targetting and stayed on my minions and relatively in one spot.

It actually really shines when you can get mobs in one spot and stay there for a couple of second, the damage output is crazy when you start stacking firestorms in one spot, but the problem is that, keeping mobs in one spot. I think actually the best way to do it would be to play dual totem firestorm and you casting icewalls non stop to keep stuff in one place. Hell it'd probably wreck, but I don't really want to play totems so meh. The contrary, you casting firestorm and totem casting walls doesn't work cause totems cast the walls on the targets so they keep pushing the targets away until max range, also they push tons of stuff out of maps and all(usual knockback issues) so it's really messy and desync mobs too which is dangerous. Cold snap+prolif could be an alternative, I don't know how well it works at freezing higher level stuff though.

i'm glad you're explaining your experiences to the devs and other players =p, i already know how nice and not nice firestorm is.

sorry for the mis-interpretation of when you said damage. when i joke with math, either my time delay (with full quality) or your damage reduction comes out to roughly the same. wonder if my other idea is reasonable.