3 Dragons + Flame Surge + Herald of Ice = OP?

Herald of ice will cause cold damage to burn, which will trigger Flame Surge's "more" bonus damage, and Flame Surge itself will apply shock stack. Has anyone made a build around this concept yet?

What would be the best 6L setup for it? At the top of my head... Flame Surge - Conc Effect - Inc AoE - Faster Casting/Spell Echo - Added Chaos - Inc Crit Dmg?

If you think of it that way, flame surge and added cold damage are op too. Herald of ice doesn't have a chill/freeze component. It only asplodes already frozen enemies for more damage when they shatter

Flame Surge itself won't ignite. The skill clearly states 'cannot ignite'. You can, however, use Herald of Ice with a different skill to ignite enemies.

I actually have a build planned around Flame Surge and Herald of Ice with 3 Dragons, but I have yet to play it. My plan is to get a high block chance and use Tempest Shield. Herald of Ice (supported by Prolif and Chance to Ignite) will cause Tempest Shield to deal cold damage. The cold damage will then spread ignite on block (not 100% of the time I block, though). No idea if the concept works as I haven't tried it yet. But I plan to try it at some point.

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Crossflip wrote:

If you think of it that way, flame surge and added cold damage are op too. Herald of ice doesn't have a chill/freeze component. It only asplodes already frozen enemies for more damage when they shatter

HoI has cold damage, which can crit -> burn, and it doesn't take up a link slot.

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Kaz2ndChance wrote:

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Crossflip wrote:

If you think of it that way, flame surge and added cold damage are op too. Herald of ice doesn't have a chill/freeze component. It only asplodes already frozen enemies for more damage when they shatter

HoI has cold damage, which can crit -> burn, and it doesn't take up a link slot.

The problem is that Herald of Ice's cold damage is being delivered by Flame Surge, which can't ignite. As Reizoko said, you would only be able to ignite using a different skill, and at that point you might as well just drop Herald of Ice and use Ice Spear or something.

I tested it and FS + HoI does not ignite. Because FS cant ignite.
You can however use something like firetraps whcih are nice because:
a) they reliably deliver brun in a huge radius (Fire trap, multi traps, IAoE, Ele prolif)
b) the explosion will shock and proliferate
This leaves you with basically a 100% more damage curse before flammability or ele weakness or crits.

I´m playing this atm, its fun and the damage is really good for the little investemnt required.
BUT
You need to consider the weak and very narrow AoE of FS. Using a concentrated effect on the skill will probably make it only really usefull for single target.

I think at the start of the leagues herald of ice ignited the targets when used with flame surge (unless I imagined it). But it doesn't do it anymore.

Conc effect on FS is fine if you have other +aoe stuff and increased aoe. Even without conc effect the skill stays incredibly narrow and you really won't feel a difference between having or not having conc effect (all you really gain is a bit more range, which you don't care about).

Overall it's a pretty poor ability: it's mainly a "single target spell" (sadly it's the bad kind of single target: still not appropriate for Vorici missions).

It's excellent at killing dominus however. I ran this until around level 85ish? I had like 29k tooltip dps with it on a 5L searing touch with increased aoe, fire pen, conc effect and spell echo. I also ran a three dragons which means I shocked. A lot.

This mean that on dominus I put up my searing bonds totem behind him and I would deal 29k * 1.5 * 1.5 = 65.25k dps before mitigation just from that (searing bonds was like another 7k).

For purely dominus it might even make sense to change the inc aoe to faster casting or crit dmg. But this damage is a double edged sword elsewhere: my upper spell damage end was around 6.5k. I had ~315% multiplier. This could mean that if the target somehow got ignited (I had ice spear on cwdt, so it would almost always trigger vs reflect) and I crit it would shock the target. Because of spell echo I would also shoot twice. The second hit then would deal up to 46k damage in one shot. Which meant that one cast on an enemy could reflect up to 1600 dmg to me (after mitigation!). And I wasn't even using a crit dmg gem!

The best use for flame surge i found is using herald of ash/anger with reave, cast on crit flame surge, its ridiculous damage.