Witch - Fire, sucks.

Wait, wait. Did you just say lightning is fine? Lightning Arrow is fine. Lightning Spells certainly are not. Spark builds are still fairly popular despite the totem nerf, but lightning's range nuke; Arc, just down right sucks in comparison to it's counterparts.

And Fire already do outdamage Freezing Pulse in terms of single target damage, Freezing pulse just have the benefit, and a large one at that, of doing their single target to the rest of the mobs on the screen while at it.

Also:

Fire:
Fireball
Fire Trap
Firestorm
Fire Totem
Detonate Dead
Molten Shell

Lightning:
Shock Nova
Arc
Spark
Lightning Warp

Frost:
Arctic Breath
Freezing Pulse
Ice Spear
Ice Nova
Frostwall

Not only does fire have 6 spells, but 6 viable ones at that. Lightning is sitting at 4, Arc lacking some usefulness with current supports. Frost with it's 5, with Arctic Breath being almost completely redundant.

Hi, Owl,

I don't think we actually disagree. But take a look at BURN. Burn continues to do damage when you do nothing. So if you can light something on fire, you do damage while you reposition.

I do understand why you objected: cold stops things and lets you safely kite also. So really, you're right. Cold and fire both allow kiting, but accomplish different things.

Is the GGG thought for fire "best single target DPS"? I would be okay with that.

"

Courageous wrote:

Hi, Owl,

I don't think we actually disagree. But take a look at BURN. Burn continues to do damage when you do nothing. So if you can light something on fire, you do damage while you reposition.

I do understand why you objected: cold stops things and lets you safely kite also. So really, you're right. Cold and fire both allow kiting, but accomplish different things.

Is the GGG thought for fire "best single target DPS"? I would be okay with that.

I think you're confusing "allows" with "benefits from". Cold allows you to kite by slowing and freezing mobs. Burning, along with various sorts of chaos DoTs like poison, benefit from kiting but don't actually do anything to allow you to kite. Sometimes your movement speed is enough to let you kite, other times you need to use certain skills/map structure/etc to successfully kite mobs. The way I see it, fire damage and burning is not really meant for a kiting play style, rather fire damage is meant to deal a tremendous amount of single target(or small AoE radius) DPS with the burn effect giving you some extra damage against tough mobs(certain elites and all bosses).

"

Courageous wrote:

Is the GGG thought for fire "best single target DPS"? I would be okay with that.

That kind of thing has no place in a game like this... Its the same reason Magic Missile sucks in D3 and Blizzard keeps buffing the damage thinking people will start using it

There isnt a single popular skill in this game that focuses on single target because no one cares, they want skills that can murder the largest number of mobs in the shortest time

When you look at cold skills, both popular skills (Freezing Pulse and Ice Spear) have natural 100% pierce properties, for whatever reason, which is what makes them so OP

If you remove pierce from FP, it actually becomes worse than Fireball... and no, using a pierce gem doesnt really fix it, since Fireball has such a small projectile size

Then you have Firestorm which I love in terms of skill effect, but needs a serious buff in the way of less randomized fireballs, or just larger aoe per fireball, so that it doesnt feel like youre trying to headshot snipe a target while he stands right in front of you

Fireball also clearly needs a range boost on its explosion, and I mean like twice what it is right now, similar to what D2 fireball used to be like

I really wanna use fire on my witch but it always feels like Im gimping myself

"

soranamae wrote:

"

Courageous wrote:

Is the GGG thought for fire "best single target DPS"? I would be okay with that.

That kind of thing has no place in a game like this... Its the same reason Magic Missile sucks in D3 and Blizzard keeps buffing the damage thinking people will start using it

Actually there is more of a place for it in D3 than in PoE. D3 has few mob sizes (packs are smaller) and the difficulties arise from elite mobs, of which there is only a single one (yellow) or 3 (blue)

PoE on the other hand has ridiculously large mob packs, hell any dungeon area its uncommon to go into a room with like 10+ skeletons

I don't think reduces the mob size is too much to ask for so the game is not so AoE centric

"

That kind of thing has no place in a game like this... Its the same reason Magic Missile sucks in D3 and Blizzard keeps buffing the damage thinking people will start using it

Well, that's fine. But what should fire want to be when it grows up? That's the question.

I agree with Owl's assessment on kiting with regards to cold and fire. Having used both, I can see what Owl is saying.

Perhaps fire should be "best total DPS, but you have to wait." Now for farming, waiting's to be avoided, but the trade off is that you would take down big HP mobs better.

"

Courageous wrote:

"

That kind of thing has no place in a game like this... Its the same reason Magic Missile sucks in D3 and Blizzard keeps buffing the damage thinking people will start using it

Well, that's fine. But what should fire want to be when it grows up? That's the question.

I agree with Owl's assessment on kiting with regards to cold and fire. Having used both, I can see what Owl is saying.

Perhaps fire should be "best total DPS, but you have to wait." Now for farming, waiting's to be avoided, but the trade off is that you would take down big HP mobs better.

I honestly think either fire or shock should not be damage boosters. We already have a dps booster (shock), we have CC (cold), so the last one should be some sought of debuff thats not CC or damage. I came up with a stat reduction (which stacks similar to shock), but anything thats not just "more damage" would fit better than what fire is currently doing

"

deteego wrote:

No, people are using lightning because at 3 stacks its 220% more damage from every source, fire is never going to beat that even if you completely disregard the every source bit

Please, serenade me. How many stacks are you throwing on mobs you 1-shot anyway?
I'm sorry, I play a fire-based caster. It takes 1 shot. I don't have to sit there for 20 minutes waiting for Sparks to hit them. I click once, mobs die. I don't need to worry about shock. Even less clicking with Elemental Proliferation.

So, I ask you again, what are you doing wrong?

"

deteego wrote:

Pointless analogy is pointless

Likewise, pointless bitching is pointless.

"

deteego wrote:

Concentrated effect makes a lot of things stupidly powerful, regardless if they are fire based or not.

I give you a way to make your fire skills more powerful and you degrade to this? That's your problem, you didn't want this to work in the first place.

"

deteego wrote:

The point being made is, that fire as a debuff is crap, hence why most people are still using Lightning/Cold based abilities. Fire has a few strong spells (like molten shield and fireball) but regarding the rest, there are better options.

Now we're going to the "well the majority uses x instead of y" argument. Cute. Damn near adorable. Let me explain why you're a fucking idiot:

History has proven that "what most people think" and "what's actually true" are two different things. If a life lesson has been proved several dozen times in human history, why are you making it seem like it magically doesn't apply to games? There's this thing called a meta. Let me break it down for you:

1) Someone finds something that works
2) It becomes popular
3) Meta

I guess people are using Ice Spear because of the 600% crit chance, right? True, however that's only in its second form. Meanwhile, anything closer ranged than that are getting hit with stupidly low damage due to all the damage nerfing supports on it. People are using Spark? That's amazing, they stack Shock and can hit a relatively large area. Too bad you only need 1-cast with Fireball/Firestorm for the same general effect.

Ignite isn't a bad effect, you're just not using it right. You can't use a pickaxe to dig a hole in the ground, that job is reserved for a shovel. Likewise, stop comparing the elements since they all approach the same situation differently.

"

deteego wrote:

Yes concentrated effect + firestorm + couple of other things is strong, but something like spark + fork+ LMP/chain + GMP is stronger, just as LA + fork + LMP/chain+ GMP, is stronger.

With the stupid-wide range on Lightning damage and all those damage nerfing supports, you're relying on Shock. Like I've said 3 times before now, 1 Fireball achieves the same effect faster.

"

deteego wrote:

The number of people I see using firebased skills I can barely put on my hand, and most of the time its fireball (one of the few decent fire spells) and molten shield, which is more used for its spell properties rather than its element (massive armor buff + massive feedback damage)

Wahh I don't see anyone using fire it must be bad qqqqqqqqqqqqqq

That's your argument. Make it better and stop being bad at a PvE game that's still in beta.

"

bingobill wrote:

make a video of this, i have never seen vaal merci 2shotted by anything.

I did, it's right here (Sorry, in fact, it's 4 fireballs with 2 crits):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bvBjdhHNOHY

And my gear was absolutly crap, < lvl40. Just maligaro, searing touch and this 4 L mentionned before.

So, yeah, go ahead, let's buff ignite, i will like it.

"

Keyen wrote:

"

bingobill wrote:

make a video of this, i have never seen vaal merci 2shotted by anything.

I did, it's right here (Sorry, in fact, it's 4 fireballs with 2 crits):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bvBjdhHNOHY

And my gear was absolutly crap, < lvl40. Just maligaro, searing touch and this 4 L mentionned before.

So, yeah, go ahead, let's buff ignite, i will like it.

jesus, ok, stand corrected, nice!