Firestorm

It should work pretty well with static blow + added lightning damage or not?
Just need some clarification regarding Firestorm... Sorry, tried to filter through the posts but to many and a lot of older patch information.


1)is keeping the area of effect of this spell smaller, better? In other words, should I not take the skills that give +12% area of effect ranger and +8% dmg?

2) Do either the life leech or life on hit gem work with this? Some people say it does, others say it doesn’t…

3) My current passive set up is defense + as much fire dmg as I can get. So since I have 0 points speced into weapons and do not use them for damage, am I better of just stacking whatever scepter I can get that gives me the most +elemental damage regardless of its weapon damage?

4) Currently gemmed Firestorm + Mana cost reduction + increase cast speed. (if I can, I want to add fire penetration to it and if it works, one of the life leech gems). Is this a pretty good set up for firestorm or is there a more optimal way? I currently run clarity and between that and the mana reduction I don’t need potions.

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xXSaithXx wrote:
It should work pretty well with static blow + added lightning damage or not?

No. The +Lightning damage is demolished by FS' Damage Effectiveness, which in turn destroys the Shock duration. Odds are it's not going to Shock anything.

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@Kryzen:
1. AoE increases allow for more area coverage, but it'll deal a smidge less damage to each individual target.

2. The Leech support gems work with any damage dealt by the supported skill. As long as the damage per hit exceeds 100/%Leech it'll work (ie. with 1% Leech you need to deal 100 damage, 2% Leech, 50 damage).
Life Gain on Hit explicitly mentions it only works on Attacks. Spells are not Attacks.

3. Your weapon's base damage and Crit chance never matter for Spells. Look for Wands or Scepters with a bunch of Spell/Elemental/Fire damage, and preferrably +x Fire Gem Levels.

4. I would really go for Increased Duration.
Thanks Viper... I haven't found the increased duration yet and ill keep my eye out for it and the life leech gem. Appreciate the info, i can continue on at ease knowing the direction im going to take will work.
Increased duration + faster casting make this really shine. With both faster casting/duration gems plus the passives its similar to freezing pulse/lmp in that I can stack three or maybe more firestorms continuously. amazing. also, I haven't put a single point in to fire damage. I have specced completely into crit/crit damage and use a frost wall/freezing pulse(lmp) totem as a distraction. loving it. Much smoother at later levels I must say. When I tried doing a increased area/fire damage templar it just didn't gel. Dual dagger shadow all the way.
I would really like to see a revisit to this skill and fire as an element in general. The fact of increasing firestorms AoE actually causing less damage to single targets I feel is frustrating to play.

Also a very short summary of the elements is that Lightning you want to do small damage but many hits, Fire large damage with less hits, Cold a safe middle ground. This makes Lightning ideal for low damage high survivabilty builds as the shock stacks negate the lack of damage. However for fire to be effective you need to hit hard and burn the target, this means you have to build more to damage and lose some survivabilty.

This makes molten shell a good skill as it gives you armour and hits very hard. Fireball is the mid point giving decent damage and less reduction with LMP and GMP because of the inherent splash (although you do still need to and L.Arrow does it much better). However firestorm doesn't hit hard, it isn't reliable to hit and aside from casting at range gives no extra survivabilty benefit. It lacks a niche where you can straight out say Firestorm would be the best skill for this build.

With the recent buffing of Fire Trap, Firestorm is in no way the predominant fire AoE skill and it really needs a rework. If you wish to continue with the idea that fire must hit hard to burn harder, then multiple small hits, like firestorm does, need to do more than refresh the duration of burn. It is not an efficient damage skill in its current state.
Last edited by VGGnome on Feb 8, 2013, 12:17:52 AM
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VGGnome wrote:
I would really like to see a revisit to this skill and fire as an element in general. The fact of increasing firestorms AoE actually causing less damage to single targets I feel is frustrating to play.

Also a very short summary of the elements is that Lightning you want to do small damage but many hits, Fire large damage with less hits, Cold a safe middle ground. This makes Lightning ideal for low damage high survivabilty builds as the shock stacks negate the lack of damage. However for fire to be effective you need to hit hard and burn the target, this means you have to build more to damage and lose some survivabilty.

This makes molten shell a good skill as it gives you armour and hits very hard. Fireball is the mid point giving decent damage and less reduction with LMP and GMP because of the inherent splash (although you do still need to and L.Arrow does it much better). However firestorm doesn't hit hard, it isn't reliable to hit and aside from casting at range gives no extra survivabilty benefit. It lacks a niche where you can straight out say Firestorm would be the best skill for this build.

With the recent buffing of Fire Trap, Firestorm is in no way the predominant fire AoE skill and it really needs a rework. If you wish to continue with the idea that fire must hit hard to burn harder, then multiple small hits, like firestorm does, need to do more than refresh the duration of burn. It is not an efficient damage skill in its current state.


good feedback but bad logic, are increase increases the whole skills aoe but also impact aoe. So you just do more dmg to bigger area. Single targets takes the same.

AS you said fire burns, try utilize that = kite...you just have to play smart. In current game there is robe which gives +50% duration and another passive +30% = 4/3*1.8=7.2sec burning =216%burn dmg without any burning nodes. Its not weak, its op, you need the items though.

Btw you should go crit and faster cast speed, because burning damage reqrites when bigger hit occurs (that also apply to normal attacks) so those smaller hits will hurt lik fireballs. And thats where the fun begin.

Its a great skill overall.
burn is actually 237.6
Firestorm always sucks for Burn damage. Applying a Burn with any other skill get you more damage over time. Most Cold skills linked to Cold to Fire would even work better than FS.

It's fine regardless, mind. Just the Burns are weak.
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good feedback but bad logic, are increase increases the whole skills aoe but also impact aoe. So you just do more dmg to bigger area. Single targets takes the same.


Not true at all. Because area of effect has no bearing on enemy size, increasing the area of effect will decrease the number of fireballs that it a single enemy.


Look at it this way. Say you have a firestorm with a small area of effect, about the size of Brutus. If you cast it on Brutus, every single fireball is going to hit Brutus. On the other hand, if you increase the area of effect ten fold, then not every fireball is going to hit Brutus. In fact, very few of them will hit him.

This is why smaller area of effect tends to be better for firestorm. That being said, concentrated effect will probably be adequate without worrying about taking increased AoE nodes.
IGN: Iolar

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