Searing Bond

This is a good skill, but its not viable as a main damage skill. I actually made a character just to test out this skill and see if its viable as a main damage source (since its sounds like so much fun).

No skills should be designed JUST to be a backup or extra at best. Thats one of the good things about PoE, virtually any skill can be used as a main damage skill late-game. This one cant.

Once you get the burn damage nodes and searing touch, your only damage boost to this skill will be from leveling the gem itself. Either buff the damage of the gem, add more burn damage nodes (or buff the current ones), or some other method.

Altering Fire Penetration to work with Searing Bond seems like a no-brainer. Since Fire Penetration attached to any other fire skill already increases the burn damage due to damage taken from the actual skill, altering the mechanics of it to work with searing bond won't effect burning damage from other sources, and might even make Righteous Fire builds more variable.



Just to put all of this into perspective:

Level 17 Searing Bond does: 270 Damage per second.

Searing Touch = 70% increased burning damage.
Burning Damage Nodes near Witch/Templar = 70% increased burning damage.
Level 17 Increased Burning Damage support gem = 54% increased burning damage.

Total bonus burning damage right before you start maps = 194% burning damage.
270 DPS x (100% + 194%) = 793 DPS. Once you hit ~Level 70 you might have 850 DPS.

These are really the only main sources of increased burning damage out there. A single fireball buffed with the same things and the bonus fire damage nodes would do more burning damage. You can add another totem, and do a massive 1600 DPS total when you're around level 60, but have no other sources of damage except for traps.

So 800 DPS. I'm not even sure I would call that high enough to use Searing Bond as a supplemental damage skill. It wouldn't be worth the trouble.

How about Bond being able to link with one adjacent friendly totem as well?

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Kwonryu wrote:

How about Bond being able to link with one adjacent friendly totem as well?

It might be able to link with other totems owned by you already, I'm not sure on this. I know it can link with other Searing Bond totems already. If it was able to link with 'friendly' totems, this would mean you would have to have other party members with totems, and then its effectiveness would become purely situational.

Allow fire penetration to work with this, up base damage by 25% and incrementally increase damage per level by 5% more. Then it MIGHT start to be effective in Merciless as a main damage skill, and only with Ancestral Bond. It'll still get crushed in effectiveness by totems like Spell Totem linked to GMP and Ice Spear with crit multiplier with its high crit chance and ability to almost perm-freeze.

I'm just saying, this totem is LACKING. It needs a damage buff badly. 25% at the base, 5% incrementally per level. 5% bonus to the increase it already gets from 1 to 2, 10% bonus to the increase it already gets from 2 to 3, up to 95% bonus to the amount it already gets from 19-20. This will boost damage to be on par with damage levels of current totem builds, even though it'll be boosting damage on average by 3 fold. It really needs THAT much of a boost to be effective late-game.

It has no crit chance, isn't effected by increased spell damage or cast speed, cannot leech life, cannot freeze or shock, and does 25% of the damage of other late-game totem builds. If this totem doesn't get a buff, it'll get shoved into the pile of other useless abilities like Shield Charge and Puncture, which have almost NO builds centered around them because they are neglected.

How about letting the Support Gem "Increased Area Effect" boost Searing Bond, maybe making the Beam a lil thicker/wider?

Are there any ways to improve the damage and efficience on Searing Bond, beside Increased Burning Damage?

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Kwonryu wrote:

How about letting the Support Gem "Increased Area Effect" boost Searing Bond, maybe making the Beam a lil thicker/wider?

Are there any ways to improve the damage and efficience on Searing Bond, beside Increased Burning Damage?

Increased area won't make it kill faster. It might hit a few more enemies, but then again good totem placement with Ancestral Bond will take care of hitting where you need it to hit. Fact is, it still won't kill any individual monster faster by increasing the area.

Burning Damage is the only way to boost damage AFAIK.

I mean, regarding Support-Gems, any other that Increased Burning Damage?

increased duration, so the totem itself lasts longer.
totem and minion resistance, so they have defense.

I'd really not care much about making a totem last longer if it doesn't do much damage to begin with...

How about Searing Bond also giving the Caster +x up to +20 Fire resist (at lvl 20) for the Duration?