Firestorm

The skill is great, don't listen to theory. My blood witch has 1500 hp and with just 880 dps in char screen can clean 4 people chaos pretty fast. Current setup is firestorm - concentrated effect - increased area - faster cast - life leech - increased duration. I've tried almost all the other caster spells but firestorm's ability to push dps over the edge by spamming with increased duration means tankier builds (not just witches, mine just happened to be one) have a good spell to lean on.

Definitely not for your regular "kill you from offscreen but die in 2hits" builds, if you work to the skill's strengths (i have 18% quality gem) it's very fun and effective.

This is still my favorite skill in the game.

The change haven't impacted it's usefulness at all. Rather, it has improved it, as you can now socket other gems than just added damage.

I remember this being one of the worst skills in the game when it was first introduced. Now I feel like I could probably play the game blindfolded and still come out on top just by spamming Firestorm.

I don't have any power charges, no Fire passives (and hardly any Elemental passives either for that matter), and my character is basically fresh so I don't have any über gear to speak of. Yet, I've been destroying things left and right from Normal to Merciless without even trying. Either this skill gains too much from +radius (I have +40 from passives) or it's just plain too strong relative to the content.

Does "Increased radius of are skills" increase both the area in which fireballs can fall and the impact area of each fireball, or just the size of the area they fall in (effectively making the skill worse)?

How do add xxx damage support gems work with this skill? I noted that maybe in 0.9.5 chaos damage for example (but also added lightning) was added to each meteor falling from the sky, while now i feel the animation is only one single AoE when the last meteors are falling, like the added elemental damage was added only one time.

Is this intended? I mean the skill is very powerful but i feel that in this way the + mana that linked support gems (elemental damage) cost is pretty much useless. It is like the opposite situation since some of the past patches when the added chaos damage was so powerful that it dealt more damage than the firestorm itself, now it is so nerfed that the added chaos damage it is simply not worth (i am using increased duration for example and it is great).

I mean you introduced a big penalty to the added damage in each meteor falling (-80%) Is this not enough to nerf the +added chaos damage (also lightning or fire), you also added the elemental damage only one time at the end of the skill? Or maybe it is only the animation?

Thx

I had this skill on early levels in a wand with +1 level to fire gems, and it was absolutely raping, later on it averaged out, but it still does an insane amount of damage to one area.

One thing that's bugged though is the dps it shows in the window.

It does a lot more damage than for instance my shock nova to a single target, but it only shows as 55.6 dps against the 226 of shock nova.

I'm guessing this is because the dps is for every fireball (in retrospect)

I really love this spell. I played only (sadly) this weekend and got my witch to about lvl 28 and firestorm was my skill to use since i got it. The dmg was big and i killed any group of enemies with 2 to 3 firestorm. I skilled +fire dmg and had an increased chance to burn on my firestorm and it became stronger and stronger with each lvl. Although and didnt have any skill in comparison except fireball and never seen the later lvls of fireball. But i still love the gem and planing on using it as soon as this game goes into open beta or i get a key for closed beta and i can play again.

Well at the moment it looks like it deals the most dmg. In fact i play a fire Witch it seems like this is at the moment the only useful spell for her,sadly :(