Firestorm

Or at least change the direction, in case you have too many MTX attached to the current visual

Suggestion: If the first impact only hits 1 enemy it will deal double damage. This would make it more viable vs bosses, which is its achilles heel right now.

Firestorm - damage isn't there, it still needs damage buff (better damage scaling) and aoe is also lackluster. Sometimes it takes like 5-10 seconds to clear your screen fully, as you move monsters too and these delays until meteor impact misses enemies and don't forget that you have to stand in place to cast it... Unless someone's playing triggering skill.

League Started as Ignite Firestorm Elementalist in 3.16 in SSF Scourge.
Had only 5l dps so dmg fell off in red tier maps/scourge as expected in a non trade lague.

https://pastebin.com/nhu3sM9F

Biggest complain i have is the delay of the first mega projectile.

It made it very sluggish to play in an forward oriented league like Scourge, where you usually clear ahead but have to wait in case of Firestorm till damage arrives at the target location.

Suggestion to make this compatible with clear speed/forward oriented (Delirium,Scourge,Breach) content.
Either decrease the delay of the first impact or/and increase its AOE more.

Hi, I have thinking about how to fix the actual problem with this spell and his underperforming compared to others skills, so here is my suggestion for a buff and adjustment for this underperforming skill gem!



The changes i suggest to improve this skill is:

1º: The First Impact take 0,2 seconds to hit the ground
This is the biggest disadvantage to use this spell, it take to long to hit the ground, most of the cases the monsters can run out of the target location, consequently a big chance to get hit by pack of monsters and die.

The Following changes will increase the build diversity:

2º: Tag update: *linked with 4º change
Spell, AoE, Duration, Fire, Physical (before: Spell, AoE, Duration, Fire)

3º: Radius: 30, 10 (before: 25, 10) *Linked with 5º change
It will improve the area of effect of this skill plus the first hit area of effect change below.

4º: Damage change: *linked with 2º change above
Deals (23–361) to (35–541) Physical Damage (before: Fire Damage)
100% of Physical Damage Converted to Fire Damage (New Mod)

This change above can improve the build diversity to this gem like: convert physical to lightning support, added fire damage support and other supports that affect physical damage.
Herald of Ash will finally work properly with this gem as it have extra physical damage to fire damage.
In additon the other reason of this change as well is based in the concept of the skill. A meteor have 2 characteristics, first one is a big ball made with rock/metal(physical damage) and the second one is a extremily hot temperature surrounded by fire(fire damage).

5º: Buff area effect of first impact: *linked with 3º change
First Impact has 150% more Area of Effect (before: 100% more Area of effect)

6º: Buff Damage of the first impact:
First Impact deals 380% more Damage with Hits and Ailments (before: 325% more damage)

7º: Revert the Anomalous quality to >> 60% more damage on first impact + Cover enemies in Ash for 5 seconds when you ignite them + Your Ignite do not deal burning damage. (before: 10% ignite chance/ before patch 3.15 60% more damage)
The Anomalous quality should be reverted to prioritize the hit damage, the actual Anomalous is so generic, it feels like a wasting quality.

These changes are the most commom complains that players have with this skill like: low damage, take to long to the first impact hit the ground, area of effect to small etc etc.
These adjustments that i propose probably will solve or at least reduce drastically the frustration to play with this skill gem.
I would like to see some feedback and hope to GGG take a look about these suggestions I made.

Here is how the skill could look like:

I just tested firestorm on magic T1 maps with different setups to see how it feels to play.

First of all it feels good with giga AoE in the open space, but the deficit is the requirement for AoE investment is too high. Therefore increase base AoE some more would be good.

Secondly the delay. As people said it's too slow for monsters in PoE, either slow monsters down or decreased delay could be a good thing. But overall if the base AoE is higher, then this problem could be bareable to some extent. I mean slow but powerful skills should have a place in PoE.

Third the base damage. I could understand that Firestorm never been a high base damage type in the first place since it's hitting several times. The first impact with more multiplier is a great welcome. But it wouldn't be bad to increase the base damage by 25% at the very least, so that the early game wouldn't feel as pain. Flat scaling is also a hard thing to do if you're not playing archmage.

Lastly the duration. 1.4 seconds as base duration is too low for this slow skill. Since it's already got limited by 3 concurrent storms, have a base duration of at least 3 seconds should be a sweet point. The number here I came up because the average casting time would be around 1 second.

The current Firestorm(3.21) got high potential for stuffs, but the investment tradeoff is too great for that potential. Also if you want to play ignite, it's not a very good skill to play unless you're aiming to use just the first impact as a baseline.

I don't want to mention other skills which can do better jobs than Firestorm. Since Firestorm itself is very unique in a way, some adjustment in number to ease burden on both passive skills and gears investments would be greatly help.

I love skills that look powerful like this, I'd be so happy if this could happen.