Incinerate

I'm curious about the 80% more damage each phase. Normally "more damage" is multiplicative with other "more damage", but Mark seemed to be implying here that they stack additively (since they seemingly replace eachother).

In this situation, while phase 2 still deals 80% more damage, Phase 3 is doing only an extra 44% more damage, and phase 4 is doing only an extra 31% more damage
(1.8*1.44*1.31 = 240% more damage).

Nothing wrong with this per se, except for the misleading description. The description in the skill says it gives 80% more damage each time; by that logic it should be dealing 480% increased damage at stage 4.

It should probably be clarified in the skill that it does 80% more damage at stage 2, 160% more damage at stage 3, 240% at stage 4 to —in my opinion— clear up potential confusion. Sure some real idiots might think the bonuses from each phase would stack in that new description, but honestly I'd say they'd have to be mentally challenged to think so. Also, you could always say "bonuses per stage do not stack" to clear even that up.

I really want to use this in a totem build but i am concerned that i will be kicked out of every group.

Seriously, the graphic needs a fix. it is unacceptable that the spell covers everything the way it does. I can't see anyone willing to put up with this in groups



does anyone have any experience with running this spell and grouping?

Can this spell still not crit? And from people who've used it, can it shotgun?

Does it do enough DPS without either of these things? Does its extremely high granularity make up for inferior tooltip DPS?

Lvl 20 Incin Avg: 239
Give it LMP, Added Chaos (101.5 avg), Faster Cast, Mana Leech and Fire Pen.

Let's say +250% increased spelldmg an +150% increased Fire/Elemental, with +100% faster casting. Gonna rate Fire Pen as a 35% multiplicative on the fire part.

226 fire and 50 chaos per projectile, cast speed of .08s = 3450 DPS in stage 1.

In stage 4, this would be 11,730 DPS. This isn't terrible, but it isn't very good either, since with this level of gear you'd be getting 30k on Freezing Pulse (though due to falloff that ends up more around 20k).

If it's shotgunning 2x in stage 4, it hits 23k, which is good. Anyone know if it consistently does this? And at point blank I'm pretty sure it shotguns 3x, which is very good single target DPS (assuming your target doesn't move away from you....)

But even so, having to stand still and wait until stage 4 just to get this DPS doesn't seem good enough to me.

If you let it crit, you'd have to scale back base damage a bit, as a typical crit factor is around 3x (though you'd have less spellpower that I'm modeling here). Letting it crit would allow the spell to scale decently with gear (though having spells that are good without good gear is OK).

And this is totally ignoring the crazy mana costs, which grades out to around 400 mp/s with this setup, a number so ludicrous that even the Mana Leech gem wouldn't let you sustain it.

TLDR: This theorycrafting is telling me that Incin is decent enough that I'd actually have to play it to judge it, to see how bad the ramp up is and how useful the extremely high granularity is. But the apparent downsides of mana usage and standing still don't really look promising.

"

aimlessgun wrote:

Can this spell still not crit? And from people who've used it, can it shotgun?

Does it do enough DPS without either of these things? Does its extremely high granularity make up for inferior tooltip DPS?

Lvl 20 Incin Avg: 239
Give it LMP, Added Chaos (101.5 avg), Faster Cast, Mana Leech and Fire Pen.

Let's say +250% increased spelldmg an +150% increased Fire/Elemental, with +100% faster casting. Gonna rate Fire Pen as a 35% multiplicative on the fire part.

226 fire and 50 chaos per projectile, cast speed of .08s = 3450 DPS in stage 1.

In stage 4, this would be 11,730 DPS. This isn't terrible, but it isn't very good either, since with this level of gear you'd be getting 30k on Freezing Pulse (though due to falloff that ends up more around 20k).

If it's shotgunning 2x in stage 4, it hits 23k, which is good. Anyone know if it consistently does this? And at point blank I'm pretty sure it shotguns 3x, which is very good single target DPS (assuming your target doesn't move away from you....)

But even so, having to stand still and wait until stage 4 just to get this DPS doesn't seem good enough to me.

If you let it crit, you'd have to scale back base damage a bit, as a typical crit factor is around 3x (though you'd have less spellpower that I'm modeling here). Letting it crit would allow the spell to scale decently with gear (though having spells that are good without good gear is OK).

And this is totally ignoring the crazy mana costs, which grades out to around 400 mp/s with this setup, a number so ludicrous that even the Mana Leech gem wouldn't let you sustain it.

TLDR: This theorycrafting is telling me that Incin is decent enough that I'd actually have to play it to judge it, to see how bad the ramp up is and how useful the extremely high granularity is. But the apparent downsides of mana usage and standing still don't really look promising.

as an experienced player would you play with someone running this on dual totems? I think that it does shotgun, just based off what i have seen. no it can't crit.

I've never partied with anyone using Incin so I have no idea haha.

Regarding critical hits for incinerate, I think if it had 2% critical chance and a 50–100% more critical multiplier the skill would be fine. The fact it would crits less would be balanced with the fact it hists faster and would critical for higher amounts (without the multiplier it wouldn't be balanced with a skill that has like 2-8% critical chance)

Of course having a skill that can't crit is a unique thing and maybe worth having for diversity. In that case, I think the base damage should probably be increased (not just the higher level damage).

Regarding use of the skill overall, I think the allowable dead time before resetting stages should be increased. Certainly I'd say that the default default stun duration should not reset the stages of this skill. I'm not sure what it's at now, but I'd guess 250-300ms (default stun time is 350ms).

Aside from increasing the allowable time before reset a bit, I think one of the following options should also be added:
- It should be increased significantly more, in order to allow movement a few steps forward and/or curses or other spells
- the incinerate should blast the character backwards like a jetpack — lol. Probably not the most viable of efficient, but many people might like it. Forwards would be nicer, but that wouldn't make much sense.
- The skill should not reset when not moving or casting anything else (just standing still between casts, even for long periods of time)
- The skill should power down slowly when not being used. If this was to be implemented (or even if it wasn't), it should also have a power bar to indicate the power level of the skill. The rate of power loss would probably be equal to something like 2 times the default rate of power gain or something (6.25 per second x2); that number could be tweaked to whatever works well of course.
________________

"

train20 wrote:

as an experienced player would you play with someone running this on dual totems? I think that it does shotgun, just based off what i have seen. no it can't crit.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think flame totem is pretty damn good compared to spell totem incinerate. For one thing you gain an additional support slot, but aside from that, there's 4 other really big benefits:
1. It doesn't have staged damage so it does max damage from the start (then again without staged damage it will do less damage than something at stage 4)
2. It's GML/LMP clumps up REALLY tightly so that all projectiles can hit a single target even from quite a distance. This is not the case for incinerate.
3. It casts twice as fast, so knockback/blind is twice as effective (but not from added chaos/lightning)
4. It can crit! (I guess because crits from totems don't count toward surgeon flask or PCoC support)

Downsides:
-Really-huge mana cost per totem. This is the most expensive skill in the game along with that terrible searing bond spell (although spell totem curse would beat it, but that uses a [additional] support slot)
-damage (DPS) is lower than stage 3&4 incinerate totem I think.

On a side note, I'm somewhat confused why flame totem is a red gem when incinerate is a blue gem (I guess because it's a totem? a fire totem at that. perhaps incinerate should be red too since it's mainly useful for non-crit tanky builds, to which the blue area is not either). This isn't the only case of that either. This game has tended to alternate between gems being the color of their element, and being the color for the type of skill they are (spell, melee/physical attack, ranged-attack/speed). It's not a big deal, but a bit weird.

"

aimlessgun wrote:

Can this spell still not crit? And from people who've used it, can it shotgun?

Does it do enough DPS without either of these things? Does its extremely high granularity make up for inferior tooltip DPS?

Lvl 20 Incin Avg: 239
Give it LMP, Added Chaos (101.5 avg), Faster Cast, Mana Leech and Fire Pen.

Let's say +250% increased spelldmg an +150% increased Fire/Elemental, with +100% faster casting. Gonna rate Fire Pen as a 35% multiplicative on the fire part.

226 fire and 50 chaos per projectile, cast speed of .08s = 3450 DPS in stage 1.

In stage 4, this would be 11,730 DPS. This isn't terrible, but it isn't very good either, since with this level of gear you'd be getting 30k on Freezing Pulse (though due to falloff that ends up more around 20k).

If it's shotgunning 2x in stage 4, it hits 23k, which is good. Anyone know if it consistently does this? And at point blank I'm pretty sure it shotguns 3x, which is very good single target DPS (assuming your target doesn't move away from you....)

But even so, having to stand still and wait until stage 4 just to get this DPS doesn't seem good enough to me.

If you let it crit, you'd have to scale back base damage a bit, as a typical crit factor is around 3x (though you'd have less spellpower that I'm modeling here). Letting it crit would allow the spell to scale decently with gear (though having spells that are good without good gear is OK).

And this is totally ignoring the crazy mana costs, which grades out to around 400 mp/s with this setup, a number so ludicrous that even the Mana Leech gem wouldn't let you sustain it.

TLDR: This theorycrafting is telling me that Incin is decent enough that I'd actually have to play it to judge it, to see how bad the ramp up is and how useful the extremely high granularity is. But the apparent downsides of mana usage and standing still don't really look promising.

It is pretty bad.
It does shotgun as far as I can tell. I heard that all spells shotgun aside from EK (and that no attacks do). It doesn't crit at all unless critical weakness is used.

My level 53 character on alpha deals 550 DPS with LMP and crap gear (but 6-linked), stage 1; stage 4 DPS would be 2k. Aside from the fact that seems like it's damage is really low for that level, mana issues are somewhat problematic too. I have to use clairity and get all the mana regeneration nodes and use mana flasks constantly. So I have gotten to 53, but this is with a bit of alpha tester cheating; it doesn't seem particularly viable right now, but it's within usability I guess?

list of bad things:
• lose all stages if you cast any other spell, even with high cast speed (there may be a point where you can cast a spell, but it would be pretty damn fast cast speed if it is possible)
• lose all stages if you move at all (really bad because you have to wait for monsters to get into range which takes a REALLY long time usually; meaning you're wasting mana for all that duration. What's even worse is if something's attacking you with longer range, then you HAVE to move and reset casting)
• Costs loads of mana. I don't know how the dmg:mana ratio compares to other spells, but it seems really low for incinerate, so the leech support doesn't help much. The overall mana cost per second isn't much more than like 30-60% more than most spells I think, but in addition to that, there's all the wasted mana from keeping the spell on when monsters aren't in range yet, which is what makes it especially expensive (with other skills you can cast the spell, kite a bit, then cast again, but that doesn't work with this skill)
• REQUIRES both faster projectiles and either blind or knockback (in my opinion) to be even somewhat viable, so that cuts into it's DPS.
• It's annoying that it has to build up stages, but that's obvious and somewhat minor
• Lightning thorns will buttstuff you faster than you can say "onomatopoeia". You have to change to another spell as soon as it happens. Oftentimes, you won't have time to switch spells since you're either already at low health, or the monsters are covered by fire and can't really tell that they have thorns on them.
• Cannot crit. One of the bigger problems with the skill, because it makes damage progression terrible.
• Almost forgot: it has very short range(relative to other projectiles); seems like the shortest ranged projectile spell in the game.

list of good things:
• When used with knockback or blind it is very effective against shield charge leap slam monsters, as well as archers (but not rock throwers(knockback only), chaos constructs, arc casters, elemental skeleton casters, or ranged miscreations (knockback only)). Oak and other melee bosses were easy; can't say the same about ranged ones though.
• It's nearly impossible for reflect to accidently kill you in any short period of time because it's DPS is so low and steady (no crits, low dmg). This is mostly just a downside I just twisted to be an 'advantage' though :P
• Ignoring the lack of crit, based on my math the theoretical DPS of the skill seems quite high (at stage 4). However when factoring in critical, due to the fact it can't critical, I think that's no longer the case. Possibly the best damage for critless builds though (like tanky builds). One should also realize that incinerate doesn't have long range either, which also factors into DPS as well (faster projectiles takes up a slot, lowering DPS slots)

Just completed incinerate build theory and i can say its on the same scale as FP. By mid game with crapy gear
60k armor
+180% life
+150% c speed
+87% ress

Just tested it to check and yes indeed, critical weakness lets you crit with incinerate and grants power charges with those crits.

Now to make a character that uses faster casting+lmp+PCOC level 1 incinerate to power a billion cold snaps.

"

Wooser69 wrote:

Just tested it to check and yes indeed, critical weakness lets you crit with incinerate and grants power charges with those crits.

Now to make a character that uses faster casting+lmp+PCOC level 1 incinerate to power a billion cold snaps.

LMP won't get the crits any faster (unless you're using Voll's)
If you have many passives into crit, spark or freezing pulse spam (with faster casting, but also increased critical chance) could very likely gain power charges just as fast (or faster/slower depending on the crit chance), without having to deal with the hassle of continually casting critical weakness. The advantage is that once you have a few power charges going you'll gain them at a faster rate, as opposed to incinerate where the power charges won't increase the rate of gaining power charges at all.
And if you're just looking to establish power charges and not worried about maintaining them, swapping to Voll's will give you power charges in a very short amount time if you use it with pierce/fork/chain/AoE skills.

Also, it seems like a hassle to continually have to cast critical weakness then spam incinerate just to maintain your power charges. When I use PCoC I put it on my DPS skills (as unfortunate as it is) because otherwise I find it's a pretty big hassle and/or charges will run out more frequently between (or during) monster fights.