Firestorm

Having just tried firestorm for what I think is the 3rd time since OB commenced, I feel it's overdue to share my thoughts on the skill and how it fits in the context of the game currently.

The character in question is currently 81 in Beyond and mapping quite swiftly, 70+. Self cast, focused on crit with ~49% crit chance and ~600% multiplier.


Potential damage output can be quite absurd, assuming a quality gem, both sets of skill duration nodes and in my case, a significant level of cast speed, crit chance and multiplier. I chose to use italics for potentially, as the actual damage output is highly dependent on how many fireballs actually hit the desired target. In practice this can mean at the extremes, taking 10-15 seconds to kill a typical beyond rare to it dying virtually instantly as it spawns, even such that on occasion I don't even see said target.

While mentioning not actually seeing a mob, visually this skill is incredibly poor. The clutter when you have well over 100 fireballs raining down at the same time is silly, to the point that it's tough to see some mobs, their affixes or even auras. This is especially pronounced with certain view angles. Add to that, each ball tries to play it's own sound eventually leading to all other game sounds being overwritten, even currency that drops at your feet can have no discernible sound played, and you'd better hope it drops at your feet, otherwise the chances of either hearing or seeing it can be pretty low. Though I understand the limitations of the game engine in relation to sound and that firestorm is not the only skill to suffer this issue, the visual and audio clutter combined make this otherwise fun and potentially powerful skill a real pain to use.

With regards to area of effect it's probably in a reasonable place right now following the 'buff' a while ago though I regard concentrated effect as something only desirable for single target. It may be considered that some of the randomness could be alleviated by using this gem, and I would agree. You are however, even more susceptible to targets that wander off/run away from your fairly small area of effect, leading to a chase of 3 or 4 targets from a pack that chose differing directions to flee. In addition, concentrated effect doesn't really impact clear speed that much, since the coverage is so much worse.

Somehow, despite the issues listed, I have a real soft spot for firestorm. It's different, somewhat under utilised and can be quite satisfying when the stars align.

When your map buddy throughout Nemesis, Invasion and Beyond says after the ~4th map (I'd been solo to level 80) that he's unable to group with me playing firestorm, you just know that it's unacceptably poor.

Overall, firestorm is an anachronism in need of change. Yet I kind of like that it struggles to fit the current state of the game. Just not enough to persevere with a skill that has so many barriers.

WTS two level 19/20 quality firestorms! Anyone mad enough to buy?

I've been spending some time trying to make this skill work but I can only agree with everything the poster above me outlined.

I compared it to Flameblast, which is similar in a way that it's delayed fire damage in an AoE with somewhat different scalability (Duration vs Burning).

Base Damage: Over 3 seconds you can cast 3 Firestorms or 1 fully charged Flameblast, and while the total damage of the Firestorms is ~80% more, your chance to hit any point in its AoE is roughly 9^2/25^2 = 13%. Now mobs aren't dots, but you would still need to hit ~55% of the time to break even with Flameblast which would take a pretty huge mob.

AoE: Increasing your AoE will hurt your dps by hurting your chances to hit, while Flameblast is just happy with any AoE increases. You might just find yourself standing there casting 8 spells at a shield crab. Reducing your AoE can potentially increase your damage while reducing your clear speed, but the increased damage is often an illusion because your target will just move out of it.

Visuals: imagine Firestorm was a strong spell and you join a party of 4+ people spamming it with Spell Echo. Now imagine the same thing with 20 quality and a level 5 Enhance.

Overall, a fairly weak spell which needs more reliability and less screen clutter foremost.

I have an idea to make firestorm more viable (at least to solo players). Make each fireball have a secondary explosion area that is bigger but does less damage (like 20% damage in a 15 area). That way you can keep Firestorm characteristic of random damage and big mob destruction while giving it a minimum amount of damage per fireball cast on smaller or fast mobs.


About the graphics, well that is one of the many, MANY, optimization issues GGG has to resolve, given how simple the game is there is no excuse to have it be as pc hungry as it is.

side note: it seems that there are some ggg-side tries on new firestorm effect (there are some NPC spells droping FEW balls with large AOE

as for the current firestorm - i find it very pleasant to play

Increased Duration
Three Dragons helmet
Added Lightning (Quality)

Curse on Hit (second firestorm copy + CoH + 2 curses

Fire damage % leech on belt (and/or rare weapon/Catalyst)

it provides focused and high damage. i was able to do 66 maps just after killing Cruel Domino. damage of lvl 14-15 gem was enough.

what is not so fun is the gfx side and - especially - the sound side. this engine is simply not good enough to support this type of skill currently.

Not sure if it's just me or not, but I haven't been able to find anything on Firestorm cause massive headaches whenever it open up onto the screen.

what about the Damage effectiveness being only 20%? is it even able to compete to other skills on end game maps right now like incinerate? incinerate can cast more projectiles per second and its Damage effectiveness is 30% try to compare with the same cast speed, i think a single proj incinerate lauches more proj/sec. this skill needs a buff imo.

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Osiruschappelle wrote:

what about the Damage effectiveness being only 20%? is it even able to compete to other skills on end game maps right now like incinerate? incinerate can cast more projectiles per second and its Damage effectiveness is 30% try to compare with the same cast speed, i think a single proj incinerate lauches more proj/sec. this skill needs a buff imo.

Firestorm is cast and go skill. 3.5seconds to be precise when build around duration. This overlaps like crazy and allows for kiting that incinerate does not allow (not counting lightning warp tricks with cwdt).

And numbers? Havent really noticed that fs is weak. It is annoying (gfx vomit) and underappreciated but weak? Not really.

After playing a build based on this, I feel like while overall damage output is decent, to get to that level of overlap between casts takes a few seconds (around 3) which is quite a while during fast paced gameplay and presents painful visuals

I feel like the duration should be significantly reduced, cast speed increased, and damage increased so that the same damage output can be maintained while reducing vomiting visuals and make the gameplay more fast-paced (monsters dont stand around and wait until you finish releasing all your fireballs)

(added lightning is because of 3Dragons and will be replaced soon-ish with something else)

the only issue with FS is that damn gfx and sound vomit.

gameplay is quite fast-paced (cast and go, almost always on the move). mobs are gathering around my char and it plays pretty much like a melee character. took Vaal Pact 'just because it is near' and it is quite tanky with my 3300 life and meh gear (this chest is probably the best piece of it..)

Warlords Mark + Vaal Pact + Firestorm makes for a really tanky combo.

but i admit that it took me some time to get used to 'cast and go' mentality. it helps to level 'as' from zero to get used to some mechanics (or decide that we do not like them and play something else).

this skill probably wont win Gorge clear speed contest but it is quite fun to play and definitely deals damage when build around

If FS were to ever be changed at all, I'd like to see the number of hits lowered very significantly, damage brought up to scale and the duration made longer to help differentiate the skill from incinerate/flameblast.

The delayed damage isn't a dealbreaker, but the payoff for it isn't nearly as good as what you get from flameblast, with the current duration that is. Meanwhile the performance issues and visual clarity ARE a dealbreaker, which is why I have since respecced my firestorm scion to use 100% pierce spark and scaling duration with that.