Incinerate

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KuteKitteh wrote:

It needs a serious nerf. The drawbacks are too few for the insane clear speeds it provides. I think dropping the cast speed to the pre-2.0 value of .24s would be dandy, so max stages will be a teeeny bit harder to achieve.

No, it really doesn't need a longer spin-up time what with the game emphasizing mobility. I'd rather they nerf the damage if they absolutely must nerf something about it. Or give it the Reave treatment, which would be bad because we don't need a Reave copy in blue.

Sorry, but i couldn't find answer on this question. I tried to seach but got 190 pages of answers and spent like half hour with no result. So...

How incinerate stage damage works?
Let's say it has 10 dps without wand. Wand has 100% spell damage.
So with wand on 3 stage my dps will be:

1. 10 * (1 + 1) * (1 + 3) = 80 dps?
2. 10 * (1 + 1 + 3) = 50 dps?

Thank you.

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Demonell wrote:

10 * (1 + 1) * (1 + 3) = 80 dps?

this one

d

This gem, especially the scaling early on, needs a nerf (or all other skills a buff I guess).
Incinerate is the #1 offender when it comes to main skill gem imbalance and it's tuned to such an extent that it honestly feels broken and not just a bit better than other skills.

The fact that this gem had the power level it has for such a long time now, makes me kinda curious about what's going on in the devs test sessions. This imbalance is obvious and game warping.

I always thought the damage is slightly overtuned to balance the "no crit".

But even considering this, it's still massively overtuned, compared to other spells.

I swapped for some other fire spells during levelling, none of them can hold up against Incinerate.

So I wouldn't want to see Incenerate nerfed (at least not by a lot), but maybe get the other spells on par?

Some numbers might say more than any elaborate text here.

Fire spell base DpS and "Damage Effectiveness per Second" (DEpS) at level 20:

Fireball
DpS: 729.4
DEpS: 1.176

Relatively low damage, small AoE, LMP/GMP or Prolif mandatory, one of the worst damage effectiveness' in the entire game (only beat by Ice Spear i believe?).


Flame Surge
DpS: 1070.0
DEpS: 2.000

Featuring the bonus damage from burning effect that has to be added via a secondary skill, which requires a higher skill level of the player, we get:
DpS: 1605.0
DEpS: 3.000

With crit, this skill can put out some insane damage when used correctly, but scaling all damage and crit while also getting a meaningful sized AoE making this an expensive but rewarding skill to use.


Incinerate:
DpS(stage 0): 917.5
DEpS(stage 0): 1.500

DpS(stage 4): 3670.0
DEpS(stage 4): 6.000

In other words: A stage two Incinerate already puts out more damage than Flame Surge with the extra damage against burning.
A max stage Incinerate puts out more than twice the damage output of a much more difficult to use skill like Flame Surge and over five times the DpS of Fireball.

Even featuring in crit for Flame Surge and Fireball, which can essentially double the damage output with ~10 more nodes invested as well as considerably more expensive gear, a max stage Incinerate still has a bigger damage output.
In my opinion this is way too much power that is way too easy to obtain.

Balance is sometimes determined (perhaps wrongly) by the relative popularity of a skill.

I notice a lot of people don't like to use incinerate because of the limitations it places on your mobility (and thus survivability). While I wouldn't call it a "glass cannon" skill as such, it shares some of those traits.

I notice many posters saying similar things, that they'd like the skill a lot more if there were mechanics which permitted greater mobility while using it.

Any discussions of balance and over-poweredness can't ignore that facet. A fourth-stage incinerate may be powerful, but if you have to face-tank everything in order to use it well, and die more often as a result, that offsets its power somewhat, just as it does with a glass cannon skill.

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I notice a lot of people don't like to use incinerate because of the limitations it places on your mobility (and thus survivability).

Hi there played incinerate on three different char trought differents leagues and i'm totaly agree with you.

Basicaly damage output of incinerate is really high regarding to some other spells in some sense i agree but it has lot of problems aswell that should be considered before stating it's "OP".

Mobility problem, you have to run an stay static then run again making it more dangerous and tedious agaisnt monsters with lot of move speed. If you want to stay static you have to build around a good defense limiting you in damage choices from tree and gears.

Think also crit base is really low gating this spell again to a low amount of build ways.

Collision with walls arn't really easy to handle and become really boring at a certain point specialy in some maps ( bazaar map best example or Springs maps when there are a lot of trees ).

Soo that's think i said all here. Maybe damage sounds too big but assuming how it limit you i think it's pretty balanced at all :)

Question, What is the supposed difference using Incinerate with :

Anger + Herald of Ice
or
Anger + Herald of Thunder

I have read in builds that HoI was far better but I dont understand why.
(i dont have place to use proliferation or Curse on hit, just the damage purpose here)