Ball Lightning

Ball lightning is not that bad. Look to the guides, people just rips mobs in single cast. I have made ball lightning in essence league and it was good, have done guardians with it (blue maps). Dps roughly was around 300k+ considering aoe and proj speed, and more with flasks, and 2x more again with reduce proj speed enchant against bosses (tooltip ~23k, can check wiki's actual dps here- https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7_jqIx4zJa5Y3ZjTkQ0M1BUSDQ/view), gear used:

full fire conversion.

Althou, dps ussually is around ~60%-70% of calculated, because for full dps mobs have to be in specific area in front of your char, outside of that area dps drops.

Thou there is one thing which annoys, its lag, especially against cannot die mobs.

And almost every single spell dmg and elemental dmg node anything near witch area. Tooltip 18K, according to calculator it will be more or less 120K. What I'm doing wrong?

Ok more details:
29 inc cast speed
143 sp dmg
178 lightningf
118 elemental
42% pen (not counting curses)

Final stats:
With auras:
17.323 dps
+49% aoe

According to calculator final DPS with best possible scenario (stationary monster targeted perfectly)
121261 DPS
And curse that gives -44 pen

"

Prostitute4Money wrote:

And almost every single spell dmg and elemental dmg node anything near witch area. Tooltip 18K, according to calculator it will be more or less 120K. What I'm doing wrong?

Ok more details:
29 inc cast speed
143 sp dmg
178 lightningf
118 elemental
42% pen (not counting curses)

Final stats:
With auras:
17.323 dps
+49% aoe

According to calculator final DPS with best possible scenario (stationary monster targeted perfectly)
121261 DPS
And curse that gives -44 pen

you should use slower projectile gem, It's a massive dps increase (with 49% less speed and 29% more damage, results in ~259% more).

Hi,

I made a totem-Ball lightning character. https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/Visca Name: ESP_Antajo

I feel the damage is lacking, but let me explain my build:

First, what works:

My build was mainly focused on defenses, and excel at that. I chill, blind, hinder, taunt (by totems, so 10% less damage), knockback and freeze. Also Burning (and getting endurance charges) and a Kitava's Thirst to have IC up most of the time. Also the chieftain less damage taken from enemies near totems and basalt flask. The plan was to use Enfeeble for very rippy maps, but as the huge lack of damage I never really use it. 180% life on tree.

Defensively my build performs well.

I also use Kitava's to trigger Elemental Overload and use seething mana flasks without suffix to deal with the huge mana costs of this (one sip=1 totem). I just press the flask at the same time i press the hold position button (normaly shift). This sounds weird but is comfortable to use.

Now what doesn't work.

I get out of flasks on bosses without ads and have to tp out. I still never ran without tps on maps.

The less relevant is that my totems die easily against breaches or bosses with ranged attacks. Considering getting 0,2% cold leech on weapon and/or some totem nodes.

Totems lack damage. But to tell you about this, I have to explain you the sweetpoint of Ball lightning.

As you know, ball lightning can't shotgun with projectiles on the same volley. But areas overlapped of balls launched one after another do interact well.

Given enough reduced projectile speed, area of effect, and cast speed, you can overlap several of these. For me (even with the 30% less cast speed from totems) I can make enemies to be affected by 5 balls.

I maintain enemies on that point through knock back. Insuficient knock back with 4 balls and slightly above for 5 balls (RNG), to push enemies at balls speed.

Well... That was the hypothesis. On reality it's hard to see if it really works or not. With those calculations, I deal 51k DPS per totem.

Elemental Overload, hypothermia, controlled destruction, 20% cold penetration (half my damage is cold), faster casting, -37% ele resistances, lvl 20 BL... Are enough investments to have a decent damage, but it isn't.

What is damage lacking? I know this is subjective, but I have clear speed problems with trash monsters on T12 maps with +40% monster ele resists or +x% monster life. That's just uncomfortable speed 10 minutes for map clearing + boss.

But bosses are something else. THEY ARE SUPER SLOW TO DIE. Yesterday I gave up because after 10 minutes I only took off about 15% of his life (no regen, but monster life and ele resistances).

Maybe I fucked up with that sweetpoint calculations, but man... it's so SLOW -.-

That's why I would like to suggest a 20-30% damage buff. Maybe using a better quality bonus.

TY

I tried using slower projectiles. Dmg seems like 20% better, but it disables all pleasure of playing this build. Range (from you to when last ball disappears) becomes as small as hmm flameblast with conc effect (from center to edge, not from edge to edge).

Can a dev confirm the projectile duration of ball lightning is 4 seconds, and that it hits during those entire 4 seconds?

So I have been thinking about potential threshold jewel ideas for Ball Lightning and this is what I have come up with:

Idea 1:
Ball Lightning travels at 100% increased projectile speed while not in range of an enemy target.
or
Ball Lightning projectile speed is halved when in reach of an enemy target.

and
Ball Lightning damage is multiplied by 0.75, but two Lightning Balls from the same cast can instead damage the same target at the same time.

Idea 2:
Ball Lightning has an additional two projectiles.

and
Ball Lightning damage is multiplied by 0.75, but two Lightning Balls from the same cast can instead damage the same target at the same time.

Idea 3:
Ball Lightning has 100% increased Area Radius, but limits the amount of projectiles to 1.

and
Ball Lightning hits its targets twice as often for twice as much.


I personally like all the concepts but I am not entirely sure whether they are too powerful or too weak. Regarding the above threshold jewel limits I suppose they should all be limited to 1.

What do you guys think?

concerning the skill updates i think adding a duration tag to the gem would be nice. duration=range / speed=dps. currently every ball has a fixed number of discharges and/or maximum distance. I always wanted to extend the maximum range of the skill to provide extra safety when clearing because the balls would follow me or move in front of me, depending on speed, and kill enemies I have not yet encountered similar to what frostbolt does.

gemswapping slow proj or faster proj could make the skill more flexible for clear/bossing.

How does ball lightning's limitation work with proc? Specifically, if I use the new craft "cast socketed spells on skill use," and used ball lightning as the skill, would the second simultaneous ball lightning double down? The wiki says ball lightning attacks every 150 ms per volley, but in this case, are they separate volleys or one single cast?

"

Bassemannen wrote:

So I have been thinking about potential threshold jewel ideas for Ball Lightning and this is what I have come up with:

Idea 1:
Ball Lightning travels at 100% increased projectile speed while not in range of an enemy target.
or
Ball Lightning projectile speed is halved when in reach of an enemy target.

Awesome!