Ball Lightning

What I find a little lame is the quality.
Why do other skills get 20 area while this one gets a crappy 20 lightningdamage?

20 area would be so nice on this one.
Or Chance to shock. Or a little like firestorm where the 200ms "cooldown" gets reduced by 2ms per % of quality or something like that.

Raw damage is fine and on par with Arc, if you know how to build. The only problem is, that it isn't instant damage and offscreen range. Would be nice, if the travel speed was a bit lower and the "lifetime" of each orb a little longer.

The damage is not on par with arc, as lost of smaller hits will never outdo 1 big hit. Plus it has even less synergy with crit, as even if you go ball to the walls in crit, you get about 50% crit, aka half of your attacks will do close to nothing. Plus all the other gripes everyone has mentioned here.

Combine it all and you get a mediocre skill. It could have been great, but now it's one and only plus is aoe interaction (which GGG have botched too, giving it a 20% lightning damage aqulity, yeah on a skill that does very little actual damage). Plus no real more multipliers, kinda like arc, but it's powerful now so it doesn't need it really. Lightning pen is not real multiplier as it varies and doesn't always work.


God, I have a whole crit freezing ball lightning templar theorycrafted (or witch, doesn't matter). But this whole low damage and aweful crit makes me unable to bring myself to lvl it, because if it sucks I have wasted time, which I do not want. And in theory it sucks.

seriously - have you tried it in practice or is your constant complaint based on theoretical (and thus less founded) basis? this skill has scaling that is not visible in tooltip (like knockback multiplicative with AOE multiplicative shock chance)

there is also question of survivability - i leveled my BL with arc and bl at the same time and BL with knockback performs WAY better in practice than typical arc setup (goefrey + empower) - so arc is 2 levels higher than BL

numbers dont lie but poe doesnt show all numbers..

or were you expecting Piety Ball lightning compatible with GMP spectral throw CoCS for 1mil dps build?

btw - BL with dual curse: conductivity + proj weakness is hilarious

Yes, I have tried it in 74-75 maps with iron will caster with RF and 1100 str (don't actually have a regular caster). It was less than stellar. Although I do have to agree that iron will is not the most accurate testing, since another mandatory support makes BL almost impossible to work very well, as it is already support gem hungry. And based on theory and this test I'm afraid to waste time on the fun build that was theorycrafted (since it will only be fun if it works, as it depends on crit freezing).

This theoretical build does actually utilize the dual curse - proj weakness and frostbite/ele weakness (depending on which is better for freezing), because socketing knockback is impossible - PoCS is mandatory (without power charges crit is in 30% range, which is laughable). But at the same time, it might not be necessary since freezes will act like knockback, or better. But again, it all depens on if it will be able to freeze in maps at all with its pathetic single zap damage.

The skill is really held back, by low crit (coupled with mechanic that crit is rolled on cast of the ball), low base damage, badly though out quality bonus (aoe would have been best, may have allowed to remove inc aoe support and socket it added damage one).

casually strolling trough twitch i saw someone doing 3Dragons BL crit build - watched shortly as the gamers voice got on my nerves but the build did maps without any issues

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Allnamestaken wrote:

Yes, I have tried it in 74-75 maps with iron will caster with RF and 1100 str (don't actually have a regular caster). It was less than stellar.

Are you kidding me?
You obviosly have to build around BL to get its damage on par with arc. That includes all area nodes, slower projectiles, ... in my current setup i can hit a single enemy with 8 balls simultaniuosly which is 40 hits per second. Combine this with some spelldamage and you can reach arc damage quite easily.
But like i said: Arc is instant autotarget and has offscreen range, thats what makes it superior.

You can't expect to deal half of its potential damage without building around it correctly.

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Allnamestaken wrote:

The damage is not on par with arc, as lost of smaller hits will never outdo 1 big hit.

Wrong again.
While this statement might be true on physical damage (where one big hit penetrates more armour %-wise) elemental damage is always reduced by the same percentage.
This being said, smaller hits are even better than big ones especially with lightning damage wich has a wide damage range. The more hits, the more constant the damage is and - most importantly - the faster you get to 3 shock stacks wich makes a huge difference as you can imagine. And yes, BL can shock all bosses i have tried so far, all you need is some shock duration and added lightning damage.

You have to build around it is pretty silly statement. You build around a skill to make it deal a lot of damage, not to make it viable. I used a caster, it should have been good enough for 74-75 maps, other spells were. If a spell requires all but "shamanistic dances" to make it just viable, it is not good.


Pls show me a video of boss being hit by 8 balls simulatiously, highly doubt it. Unless you somehow managed to cast then from all sides around the boss while it wasn't moving. Maybe people should stop exagerating to make the spell look better than it is, just a though. First I get fed some positioning nonsense, then somehow I'm supposed to control the movement of the spell after casting, now this.

stick to your 'non viable' mantra then and move on

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Allnamestaken wrote:

You have to build around it is pretty silly statement. You build around a skill to make it deal a lot of damage, not to make it viable.

So if I take a lot of bow nodes, absolutely no area and no attackspeed reave will still be viable?
Thats nonsense.

BL scales pretty hard with increased aoe and slower projectiles.
50% slower projectiles equals 100% more damage, 100% area equals another 100% more damage.

If you get 200% increased spelldamage with iron will ontop of already lets say 200 spelldamage this increase equals 50% more damage.

Can you maybe see it now?
If you still belive you can go without area and stack spelldamage like with every other spell that hits a single time and (not multiple times independant of cast speed) you should move on i guess.

What? When I said I used the skill, I said I USED it. Inc aoe and slower proj gems included, so don't give me that. I didn't just socket it in a hoped for the best. Well, I did at the beggining, with multi proj, lol. But quickly learned. So reave and bow nodes is not an example, it's thinking that everyone around you is not very smart. Don't do that, makes you seem less than well adjusted.

Bottom line, it is not as strong as it should be. Requires very specific setup to even function well enough. This is not acceptable to me, specific setups should make a skill very powerful, not just make it work. The same story as with arc, overleveling it made it somewhat work even before the buff, but that is a specific setup. Arc was useless in all other setups. Now it is a very good spell.