Fireball
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I think this needs a few tweaks, mostly numbers. I'd say speed up the cast a bit, increase projectile speed quite a bit and then maybe increase aoe a bit. Overall it's very lackluster as a spell imo, it does pretty good damage but the area is small and it's not very good at hitting anything that's moving at all. Also I'd make the graphical effect about twice as big, it looks too puny at the moment, but that's a minor issue ^^.
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Fire ignite has been a solved problem, it't not going to offer utility (even if they added lowering healing while burning isn't that useful) so it has to compensate with damage.
1 - Ignite rolls/stacks. Each new hit refreshes the ignite duration but is tracked seperatly internally for the purpose to dealing damage, no lost ignite ticks. 2 - Criting a target with ignite up consums the previous ignite and does the damage instantly. 3 - Ignite causes a disorient/accuracy loss/ fleeing effect. Specifically fireball seems like it needs to have a slightly larger area of effect, with some visual indication of the range of the explosion. | |
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1. The way stacks currently work is that they are all tracked individually, and they all tick down constantly. Only the strongest deals damage.
You Ignite a monster for 100 damage per second, and two seconds later for 50 damage per second. Second 1: 100 damage (3 seconds left) Second 2: 100 damage (2 seconds left) Second 3: 100 damage (1 second left. Second burn is added) Second 4: 100 damage (first Burn ends) Second 5: 50 damage (2 seconds left on Burn 2) Fairly reasonable if you ask me. You'll never lose damage by applying a second Burn. 2. Incredibly overpowered. Mutlple Projectiles alone makes this a disaster. Crit rolls are per-cast, so every individual fireball in a volley will crit. These will all Ignite every target nearby if you add in Proliferate. Let's say you fire a Crit Fireball with Proliferate and LMP. One monster takes two Fireballs to the face. Additionally, he is close enough to two other monsters that also get Fireballed to get Ignited by the Proliferate. He takes 100% + 100% direct damage (two fireballs), 133% + 133% + 133% direct damage from the Burning (four stacks of burning, three are consumed), *and then* Burns for another 133%. Under current circumstances, he would take 200% direct damage, and burn for 133% over 4 seconds. With your suggestion, he takes 599% direct damage and burns for 133% over 4s. 3. Burning already causes Flee occasionally. | |
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The LMP/shotgun issue with #2 isn't very different than how Spark works at pointblank when it crits, you get a full stack of shock and each of the spark gets the benefit from the previous one since they don't exactly hit at the same time. That's the advantage of being at very close range to the enemy. Proliferation also works the same way, the only difference really is that spark doesn't have a natural aoe however you don't even need lmp to do it. I don't think that's much of an issue, and damage would be rescaled with the change anyway, there's no reason you have to consider a potential mechanic change to buff ignite viability while necessarily keeping the exact same values as it does currently.
Anyway Fireball itself could use a few buffs, it's fairly weak as I pointed out before in this very thread I think. It casts slow, moves slow, does good damage but has a very crappy aoe. One of these should be changed to be better. I'd like a much large aoe, maybe with the aoe doing less damage than the initial hit(split the skill in 2, kinda like explosive arrow but with an instant explosion). It's not a terrible spell but it's not that good either, Firestorm is in a much better position, Ignite issues aside. | |
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No, that's entirely different, actually.
With Shock, the main target takes 100% damage from the first Spark (first hit applies the first Shock stack, doesn't benefit), 140% from the second Spark (one Shock stack). That's a total of 240% damage. That's still nowhere near, and doesn't leave the monster Burning. Proliferating Shock also doesn't actually deal any damage. By stacking four Burns in an area, every enemy in that area takes a shit ton of damage because three of those Burns deal direct damage (worth 399% of a Crit Fireball's damage), and the fourth happily ticks away at their smouldering corpse. Last edited by Vipermagi on Jan 6, 2013, 11:23:59 PM
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If Shock was +133%dmg instead of +40% it'd be close enough(assuming you LMP it too for the sake of the comparison). Only difference would be enemies taking dmg directly from ignite vs only having shocks stacked from proliferation but at the same time it'd be a lot bigger in groups where someone else can hit the +400%triple shock mob for a billion dmg.
My point was, you can't say the mechanic would be overpowered based on current numbers alone plus the mechanic can be worked out to do it differently, such as ignite only being able to be "popped" after 1sec. Discarding it because the current numbers don't support its introduction is pointless, a stronger mechanic would involve a weaker damage potential for obvious balance reasons. | |
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shock only stacks 3 times for a 120% damage increase for the foe (multiplicative for player's dps). burning gets benefited from shock.
use both, stop being confused. nothing is overpowered alone, you need something else to help. lightning damage isn't reliable, while fire is. burning is more sure of what you are doing while lightning is spiking out of luck. everything is numbers toss. as for "expending burning" that makes things FAR too one sided as viper already pointed out. | |
" Yes. Ignite and Burn effects rolling instead of refreshing has been overpowered in every single game it's ever been in. From League to KOTOR to Diablo to WoW to almost every game, the developers always end up allowing rolling burns for a while. Then perfect balance touting fools like you come along and say OMG FIRE SO MUCH DAMAGE OP OP NERF NERF NAO PLX, and get it nerfed so hard Fire sucks, it's inevitable. Fire always sucks when burns don't stack and roll, when sheer damage isn't able to trump the safety and utility of Cold, or the burst and mobility of Lightning. For Fire specs to be viable compared to Cold and Lightning, it NEEDS to be overpowered. There needs to be a reason that you're sacrificing so much utility, or what's the point of Fire even existing. On the topic of Fireball itself, it's underwhelming, and too small. When I think of Fireballs, I think of balls of fire the size of a Mini gracefully arching from source to target. I would call this Fireball a Firebolt, but it's too slow. Last edited by elbicnivnimai on Jan 13, 2013, 2:36:04 AM
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Okay, so do you have anything useful to add?
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if you ask me fireball is pretty much 'fine' as is, it just needs a significant projectile speed increase (somewhere around 15-20% faster than its current un-modified speed) and it'll be a top contender like freezing pulse, heavy strike, ground slam and spark are.
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