Firestorm vs Fireball Ignite

I would say im a an undergrad when it comes to POE PHD knowledge level. I get most the mechanics but not this one.

Can someone compare these 2 skills for me in terms of ignite? Am i correct in my understanding that when ignite calculated from base damage, takes the skills base damage + any added damage multiplied by anything on the gem?

Basically, I dont understand why an ignite base hit would be affected by firestorms first hit bonus of 150%, but it doesnt get effected by any node that would give you say 20% increased fire.


How would you compare firestorm lvl 20 vs fireball lvl 20 BASEHIT if you had this
100 added fire spell damage from gear
100% increased firedamage from tree
10% more fire damage from another source

essentially any increases to fire damage will increase both damage, the hit and the ignite. the difference is ignite doesn't care about the hit damage. it used to, now it doesn't. as you say its about the base damage.

you have base hit damage and base ignite damage (based on the base hit damage). % fire damage will increase the hit damage, good if you're focusing on hits, and it will increase the ignite damage, good if you're focusing on ignite.

since you want to focus on ignite lets focus on that.
point is, % increase damage will not matter when comparing skills, since its about the base damage of the skill. any % increases will apply to both equally.
now, adding base damage is a bit different because skill gems have a different "effectiveness of added damage", so this is worth comparing.

so fireball
base damage of 1643
39% ignite chance
88% more damage with ignite
massive 240% effectiveness of added damage

firestorm
base damage of 311
250% more damage

so, comparing the two is pretty easy. fireball is WAY FUCKING BETTER

not only as a base gem for ignite, but its also a projectile and can utilize Flame Wall and apply its fire damage over time effect to everything hit.

use fireball.

Thank you for your response, two questions

1. why does firestorm get the benefit of 250more on first hit, for its base damage, but something like a elemental more gem gem doesnt scale the base hit? ie 30% more support elemental. They are both more modifers. Is it that base damage for is only affected by multiplers on the gem itself?

2. If fireball is such a better igniter, and has such a high base damage too, what is the point of firestorm?? In what cases is firestorm the go to skill?

for maybe if you want to use it to make a shock/brittle/chill/sap instead of ignite? Oh yeah leech and stun too

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bdictkam wrote:

2. If fireball is such a better igniter, and has such a high base damage too, what is the point of firestorm?? In what cases is firestorm the go to skill?

great question. this is what ppl have been asking for years! lol

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bdictkam wrote:

2. If fireball is such a better igniter, and has such a high base damage too, what is the point of firestorm?? In what cases is firestorm the go to skill?

Firestorm USED to be good because you could stack cast speed and duration and be dropping 20 - 25 firestorms on top of an area. Even then it was never a top tier skill.

It was always bad at ignite, its base damage is so low. It was only decent as a haste/duration scaler.

Whoever changed it doesn't seem to understand gameplay very well. It is a mediocre to bad clearing skill now, and awful, awful bosser in every way.

Skill balance is poor in this game.

Firestorm went from a very bad skill to a bad skill.

Fireball ignite elementalist is going to be a thing this league.

How about hexblast vs fireball?

Also, Malicious Intent on tree gives you +4 doom, but it doesnt give you a full 5 like the hexblast gem talks about. So how does this notable affect hexblast?

Hexblast is pretty good just you need to wait till the doom is full on the enemy after self cursing them to ensure the best damage/ignite

also the malicious intent node just changes starting doom and doesn't really affect much since there is a hard cap of 30 doom. Picking up the Skittering Runes node increases the cap to 40 which is really strong, you just need faster doom generation nodes or it feels a bit too slow.

If ignite doesnt get scaled by hit at all, why is it taking withering Presence on occulist on POB, it says my ignite dps gets increased (in my case by 17%). I cant understand what is boosting this ignite damage here.