Scorching Ray

whoa awesome, this skill is getting a megaton titan giga colossal gargantuan 10% more dmg buff.

I actually love this skill. I'm not sure about end game viability as I haven't gotten that far yet (just started using it this on breach league), but like most skills I would be shocked if this can't be made workable. (cast on channel lightning warp would be funny at least)

As for everything else... The skill design gives you the overall sense of "*F* this guy in particular", while still being able to get the "to whom it may concern" feel by sweeping.

I love the animation. It's very well done, and the flare out and refocusing a short distance from your character really makes this skill stand out from generic beams.

The sound is spot on, sounds like a pilot light turning on followed by a blow torch. I can't imagine this sounding any different.

Overall this skill is very satisfying to use. So much so that it got someone who almost never posts on the forums to come out of the woodwork. Keep up the good work Devs, and thank you.

I really like the skill so far. It works quite well and it doesn´t need a ton of cast speed as I was afraid it would :)

The combination with Cast while Channeling is VERY nice, thats a great new mechanic you just added there. What bothers me is, that Firestorm gets casted at the end of the ray instead of your mouse position.

This is is actually ok ish but definitely the dmg is lacking. Currently doing a toten scorch build but not sure how it will go scared that endgame would be horrible lol

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raggapaul wrote:

I really like the skill so far. It works quite well and it doesn´t need a ton of cast speed as I was afraid it would :)

The combination with Cast while Channeling is VERY nice, thats a great new mechanic you just added there. What bothers me is, that Firestorm gets casted at the end of the ray instead of your mouse position.

Yea, i am using the same combo and i HATE that.
Anything getting close wont be hit by firestorm.
Casting it at the mouse position on the ray would be so much better!

I have been playing this skill for a couple of days now and here is my input.

I find that the damage at late game is okay-ish. Nothing special compared to other top tier skills but it does its job if you can maintain 8 stacks. Sure does feel like a trash skill however,when my previous fireball build could ignite enemies(not even crit) for more damage. Oh well,it is what it is.

What i would like to see for this skill:
Since it`s a channel spell that prohibits us from moving and fires in a straight line,i`d like to see the base damage get bumped by 20% more to give it more of a satisfactory risk reward attribute.
Not only are we unable to move while channeling,the cast animation just makes it that more obnoxious. The cast animation also makes it harder to maintain 8 stacks at some situations since the debuf lasts 1.5 seconds. Even with maxed increased duration the debuf lasts 2.6 seconds. I feel like playing starcraft where i have to micromanage my zerg army.

suggestion 1: Don`t buff the base damages. Reduce max stack to 4 where each stack gives 100% increased damage and -6% fire resistance. We will lose 80% damage at max stacks compared to current ray but this will get us back in the heat of the moment faster.

Suggestion 2: buff base damages,keep current stack values but increase duration of debuff inflicted on enemies to 2 or something. Gives us a bigger window to play with and makes boss fights more fluent.

And for the love of God. Please. Please remove casting animation on scorching ray. Or at least lower it by 75%. It is anti fun on a skill like scorching ray.

I don`t agree with current skill attribute choices but that is developer design choice. No aoe :(

I will play scorching ray a while longer with the hopes that the skill gem will get improved. Will try life based with it next.

current gems:


Check my tree and gear on my profile page.

Ok, so I have played with the skill now up to level 91. It plays well enough but the damage just isn't there and it's hard to gauge when you're at various levels of debuff.

To explain the damage part a bit better. After hitting 91 and 20 gems I went in to do some breach lords. Fire, cold and lightning went fine as far as getting to the bosses was concerned.

Fire and lightning bosses was killable with no real problem as both are mechanical fights and time is of little concern. Cold on the other hand was a struggle due to how long it took to kill him as I simply ran out of flask charges. Triggering the adds is just not an option as they take too long to kill for the gains. It is killable though with a couple of flask refills.

I then proceeded to try the phys one. I couldn't even reach the boss, the monsters simply did not die fast enough and this is with 15.3k degen tooltip DPS, EE , EO, Flammability and Temporal Chains in a Heretic's. Using Sulphur and Witchfire Brew.

Gear is is follows...



Now for general mapping it's just fine, you can play with it up to T15 maps and never have any real issues.

I do however foresee Guardians and their rather large health pools will make them take so long that you wouldn't be able to call the skill HC viable. Combine that with the above issue with not even being able to get to the phys breach lord my conclusion is that something needs to change. At least if the skills should be fully viable without having a high level empower as a requirement.

The only change I could make, beside getting a higher empower, is to try and up my cast speed in order to stack faster but then again it would have to be at the expense of raw damage which is kinda counterproductive. But increasing the cast speed on the skill it self might be a solution to the problem, possibly with a minor DPS bump as well.

Another might be as mentioned above to reduce the amount of stacks to make cast speed have less of an impact.

With that I'm sadly off to join the meta train in order to be able to kill what I need for the challenges... =(

Edit: The problem could just be the breach lord timers for clearing to the boss and all of the above is redundant. That's for you at GGG to figure out though.

1. Does the res debuff work in the same way as Flammability, i.e. can it make the enemy resistance negative?

2. Does the res debuff stack with Flammability, i.e. if I use Scorching Ray and Flammability on the target will its fire res get lowered by 38+24=62%?

So in my frustration I vaaled my lvl 2 empower and got a level 3. Decided to buy a level 21 Scorching Ray and give the phys breach lord map one more try.

Tooltip:
Hideout = 19283
With flasks = 22109
With EO = 27048
With EO and flasks = 31012

Couldn't even get halfway through...either the timer is way off or this skill just isn't viable for the content without lvl 4 empower, 21 skill and a +3 staff. Not to mention how anyone would be able to do Chayula ever...