Can someone explain to me why Wildfire (3.11) is not useless now ?

Hi all.

BTW, TL;DR, you were warned!

I am trying to understand the changes to wildfire. From how I am looking at it, its is not worth using for all but MAYBE some weird deadeye melee build. Maybe I have missed something here and you guys can enlighten me.

I am going to use my current molten strike build I use as a league starter. Its technically a flicker/Molten strike, but it will work for the sake of getting some numbers for damage. currently, my projectiles do about 134k damage. I fire 7 of them with Old wildfire and helmet enchant. With the hit element, I do just over 1mil DPS. I have 100% to hit and concentrated effect, so we will assume all projectiles hit.

So, wildfire will now cause my projectiles to chain once but fire 50% fewer projectiles.

Ok, let's just look at my existing build atm. Using wildfire in 3.11 will now reduce me to 2 balls. I am down from 7 to 5 because wildfire does not give the extra projectiles, and it causes 50% fewer projectiles. (7-2)/2 = 2.5, this will most likely round down to 2. It now chains, so hits with effectively 4 balls.

4x134 =536k + my hit, which is about 200k. I am left sitting at 750k, I am 25% DPS down from using wildfire.

Now, the answer is to change the build to stack some chain. Except, if you look at chain, you will see there aren't many sources. Other than chain support, there are a few items and 1 ascendency node. Of the items, only 3 are melee, only one would be useful with fire-based damage and it is a vendor trash item (Ewar's Mirage). See https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Chain

That leaves the Deadeye ascendency or chain support. The deadeye ascendency does not really lend itself well to a lot of melee builds, primarily focusing on bow skills. Yes, you can get +1 projectile and +1 chain, but that's it and you will find it hard to get to a lot of the melee nodes from here.

Ok, so let's go with Chain support. Let's say i drop combustion for chain and concentrated effect for slower projectiles.

I now do approx 89k per ball, fire 5 balls, that chain twice. That's effectively 15 balls- so 15x89k, is over 1mil DPS. Nice.

Ok, let's throw in wildfire again.

Now I fire 2 balls but at 104k damage each. It chains 3 times. so that's effectively 6 balls. 6x104 624kdps. Once again, we lose a huge chunk of dps for using wildfire.

The answer is getting additional projectiles. But this is very hard. There are no nodes on the tree to do this. There are some items. Most are wands or bows. One is a staff but makes projectiles fire in a circle and the other is an amulet that changes the way additional projectiles functions entirely (Fury Valve). Remembering, Molten strike is a melee skill, these items are all bust useless.

As it stands, i can't see a build, with the exception of some weird deadeye melee build where using wildfire will ever be useful. It always seems to nerf your DPS.

Surely GGG can't have made this gem either so niche only one build can use it or its useless ??

what am I missing guys ???

GGG never says they buffing molten strike.

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Setasuna wrote:

GGG never says they buffing molten strike.

Its not really about MS itself, its the Wildfire Gem.

They have taken a useful gem and made it utterly useless. Even if you stack all the chain viably available to you as a melee, it will still, give you a HUGE DPS loss just using it. You would be better of just using chain and not bothering with wildfire at all. In which case just remove it from the game. Don't alter it so it's not usable.

As I mentioned, even if I stack chain, it still gimps DPS. I have run experiments with GMP as well and in all cases, you will get better damage with just chain and ignore wildfire.

Unless, as mention, I am missing something > which is really what this topic is about

Pretty sure the Jewel is ment to help with clearing as chaining projectiles presumably make you do damage in a bigger area.

They want the threshold jewels to be something that trule changes how a skill functions, not just be a mandatory straight dps boosters.

Also your making an assumption that you can make the projectiles chain with out the jewel, i kinda assume that wont be the case.

"

Torguemada wrote:

Pretty sure the Jewel is ment to help with clearing as chaining projectiles presumably make you do damage in a bigger area.

They want the threshold jewels to be something that trule changes how a skill functions, not just be a mandatory straight dps boosters.

Also your making an assumption that you can make the projectiles chain with out the jewel, i kinda assume that wont be the case.

First off, I realised my math is off a bit. You get 4 projectiles, not 3. However, the problem still stands. In fact, the more I think on it, the more pointless wildfire becomes. IF the only source of chain will be the jewel, that's like super dump, and this is why


Lets say i put GMP, with helm enchant. I get 10 balls. With wildfire, that is now 5 balls that chains ONCE. If i can concentrate the ball, with conc effect or slower projectiles( these now work with MS in 3.11) then I can get them all to hit. Great!, except.....5 balls chaining once...gets me 10 balls effective.
So, the wildfire Jewel halves the balls, then effectively double them with a chain. WTF point is there in that !!!!

The only thing I can think of is using some of the cluster jewels and chain notables to create damage multiplication.
The chain notables are near deadeye again, yuk, and the only real chain cluster jewel notable is Follow-Through, and it is meh. For one chain, you gain 15% damage. I can spend less passive for 32% flat increase in fire damage, so its not worth it

maybe they will announce a unique that make all the MS projectiles chain

"

pailarkhan51 wrote:

IF the only source of chain will be the jewel, that's like super dump, and this is why

No i ment that i assume you need the jewel for the projectiles to be able to chain, but after that you can add more chains

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pailarkhan51 wrote:

Lets say i put GMP, with helm enchant. I get 10 balls. With wildfire, that is now 5 balls that chains ONCE. If i can concentrate the ball, with conc effect or slower projectiles( these now work with MS in 3.11) then I can get them all to hit. Great!, except.....5 balls chaining once...gets me 10 balls effective.
So, the wildfire Jewel halves the balls, then effectively double them with a chain. WTF point is there in that !!!!

Your thinking about single target damage, but as i said i think the point of the jewel is to boost clearing speed. So you put in Wildfire, annoint Tribal Fury on your amulet and then link MS with Ancestral call,chain and incread area of effect supports. Now when you hit a pack of enemies one attack hits 4 enemies that all create 4 balls that chain 3 times, with the increased are of effect that should do damage in quite a wide a area.

Yes, i am focused primarily on a single target.
I have been working on a fire build. It does 100% fire damage. 2 handed weapon.

No, this isn't a, they broke my build bitch. I accept its bust.

BUT, while trying to build it, I found there were very few single-target melee skills that scaled with fire damage. The best was MS. And even that produces barely enough DPS to ATTEMPT Sirus.

The real issue I have with the wildfire change is it is yet another example of how GGG is actually stifling and killing off build diversity, despite that being a key feature of the game.


GGG Nerf the OP cookie cutter builds that dominate leagues, then they promote something else they want to be the new meta. 3.11 Its slams. Earthquake is the new meta. Someone will create a build that slams Sirum though the planet and out the other side. 3.12 it will be nerfed and a new style system put in play.

The issue is a lot of builds are collateral damage. Mine included. The nerf to Wildfire is in response to how threshold Jewels have been used to create OP builds. However, my build was no OP, it was a starter/ mapping build. ITs now dead.

This happens over and over. So many builds have been killed as collateral damage from nerfing the OP builds. Now GGG are in the cycle of nerf one style, promote another.

All most guarantee Earthquake will be top build this league.

Well done GGG. We have gone from a diverse pool of build to play the game in TO you selecting what builds we play. Balance your game properly so all Well thought out builds are viable, rather than being in a Nerf buff cycle that picks the builds people will play for them.

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pailarkhan51 wrote:

BUT, while trying to build it, I found there were very few single-target melee skills that scaled with fire damage.

Fire only elemental hit or wildstrike?

"

Torguemada wrote:

"

pailarkhan51 wrote:

BUT, while trying to build it, I found there were very few single-target melee skills that scaled with fire damage.

Fire only elemental hit or wildstrike?

Wild strike converts Phys, and I do 0 physical damage at all with the build I am trying to save.

Elemental hit randomly chooses an element. As I can not control what it chooses, this is no use as I am 100% fire. At best I could waste gem slots to try and convert the other ele hits but, either way, When it choose fire as its hit, the damage would be huge, when it chose lightning or cold, it would be non-existent.