Fireball - Passives and Support Gems

Hi everyone

I started playing yesterday and I'm about level 19 just now and I have been using Fireball and to a lesser extent Firestorm as my primary source of damage.

I'm interested in seeing if Fireball is any good once you start stacking up the passive skills along with the support gems. In particular I'm interested in matching Fireball up with Support Gems like Elemental Proliferation, Chance to Ignite, Added Cold Damage, Increased Area Affect (Is that needed with all the passive bonuses?), Increased Duration and Pierce.

I have a few questions, I will do my best to be as clear as possible since stacking things can get complicated.

I've probably missed out a few things and done a horrible plan for my Passive Skills but this is what I have just now, few points can be taken out and switched around etc but the general idea was to go for Spell Damage/Elemental Damage and Burn Duration along with Energy Shield buffs

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAQMA7de5eGBHBMkETGTDZsc12zbSHOqCqinExiETAlXIbMA268VUYhIaFpYcZWoy6rnsIXnaevU5uo_9mG3TvSG7Vs3KZmNJRzicP55fTeBLbLZ3ABYJfPbQmtR8MYuEmCbz_HO6wrHb0_bDBzLnhtSerrjAAnvN2qjGZaSHCV2tb68kWJ8t8TuKPrK3ac6zU-wL5E26SoXKd63qjuqYf6rIHgsK0lnAcPSWMr1m1gWqm1Uv1U9iw6tJH-3ZeEjEsyd5btjt_pzFRM3udu7PGp1ZtLEoYKO49X_t2ZuoEjAa61nzX-1WmS1ht2URcrVn7gnqm_AqxeVj0FTgIiIfMNo5cL0pmYD-i-KufIbKGVzZ3xRXYMW9vIG45lwLouiYVKpk


1) If you put Pierce with Fireball I assume the projectile will travel through the target and subsequently the splash damage from the fireball itself will not strike those surrounding the initial target?

2) Is using Chance to Ignite along with Elemental Proliferation viable at the expense of ignoring spell crit chance and damage? (I understand that targets only get inflicted with Burn if you crit with fire?)

3) How does Increase Duration interact with Burning damage from fire spells? (If at all)

4) Would Added Cold Damage first of all apply chill to the splash damage from Fireball and would this also interact with Elemental Proliferation?



Thanks in advance for any help/advice! :)

Lesser/Greater Multiple Projectile is one of the better support gems you should get. That with Elemental Proliferation and increased chance to ignite (because of your low crit) are probably your most important ones. Depending on how much mana you're comfortable with using per cast you can also add more to that. Added cold damage sounds good, and yes chill is spread with Elemental Proliferation. Pierce works on all projectiles which includes projectile spells afaik, but if you're already using the above mentioned support gems you might start to get a little starved for mana by now, and in my opinion the others are more important. I'm not sure if the increased duration works on fire damage but even assuming that it does I think you'll refresh the dot often enough with the increased chance to ignite that it's just a waste of mana.

You might want to consider grabbing Soul Siphon, getting 25 mana per kill is very useful regardless of your lvl. It's 2 up and 1 to the right from Elementalist, You've already passed it with your current build so you only need 3 points for it.

Thanks,

I might play around with multiple projectiles. I seen on the tooltip that it reduces the damage dealt. How does that play out? Is there any chance of more than one fireball's splash damage overlapping with each other and actually dealing extra damage in total even though each one was weaker?

I guess I'm gonna have to level up and grab these gems and play around to see what happens :D

"

Korgath wrote:

Thanks,

I might play around with multiple projectiles. I seen on the tooltip that it reduces the damage dealt. How does that play out? Is there any chance of more than one fireball's splash damage overlapping with each other and actually dealing extra damage in total even though each one was weaker?

I guess I'm gonna have to level up and grab these gems and play around to see what happens :D

I'm pretty sure they can overlap, and every time it lvls up it increases the damage of Multiple Projectile by 2% so the 30% doesn't make a big difference after a while. It has a rather low dexterity req but I still recommend to grab the single +30 dex node below Chaos Inoculation so you don't have to depend on your gear to be able to lvl it up.

To answer Korgath's questions:

1) Fireball + Pierce
You're correct, the fireball deals damage and can ignite the target it passes through but it does not make an impact explosion.

2) Fireball + Elemental Proliferation
Ignite is the least useful elemental status effect with Elemental Proliferation. The burn duration is only 1 second instead of 4 when spread via EP and it really disrupts clustered packs of mobs because they'll begin fleeing in random directions when set on fire.

One funny thing about EP is that a mob will continue to burn after it dies until the duration wears off. EP will spread the fire of the burning corpse to nearby mobs.

3) Fireball + Increase Duration
No effect on the burn duration.

4) Fireball + Added Cold Damage
You'll have a chance to both chill and ignite mobs (independent rolls for each). It may work well with EP as you'll minimize the dispersal of a clustered group by chilling them.

Edit: Upon further testing, I still wouldn't recommend pairing it with Elemental Proliferation.

Fireball + Multiple Projectile

I have mixed results with this. It's fantastic for large packs of mobs in open areas. It performs poorly for single target damage. Multiple fireball impacts can overlap to create more damage than an individual one BUT the majority of my fireball damage comes from ignite. I use Lesser instead of Greater so the ignite is still toasty.

I use:
Fireball + lesser multiple projectiles + added cold dmg + chance to ignite.

Once I get a 5 linked armor with the correct colors I will most likely add item rarity.

Mana? Had to go eldritch battery + clarity + discipline to fuel it but together with elemental weakness it destroys everything.

im using fire staff with fireball+fasterCast+GMP+CritDmg+ManaLeech

its amazing. burn dmg is huge since im up to a 200%increase on it. i do use 2 crit flasks

"

Blackguard wrote:

Fireball + Multiple Projectile

I have mixed results with this. It's fantastic for large packs of mobs in open areas. It performs poorly for single target damage. Multiple fireball impacts can overlap to create more damage than an individual one BUT the majority of my fireball damage comes from ignite. I use Lesser instead of Greater so the ignite is still toasty.

dont know if anyone knows but if you move the mouse to the edge of the screen when shooting your 5 fireballs they all spread out to a very small cone. so if there is 1 mob right in front of you, shoot far away to hit him will all 5 fireballs. HUGE dmg

"

Blackguard wrote:

Fireball + Multiple Projectile

I have mixed results with this. It's fantastic for large packs of mobs in open areas. It performs poorly for single target damage. Multiple fireball impacts can overlap to create more damage than an individual one BUT the majority of my fireball damage comes from ignite. I use Lesser instead of Greater so the ignite is still toasty.

dont know if anyone knows but if you move the mouse to the edge of the screen when shooting your 5 fireballs they all spread out to a very small cone. so if there is 1 mob right in front of you, shoot far away to hit him will all 5 fireballs. HUGE dmg