Nobody has mentioned the Firestorm nerf

I haven't seen any discussion of this and nor was it mentioned in the patch notes, but the AoE of Firestorm is much larger as of 0.9.11, meaning that it hits individual targets far less often.

Was this an intentional change or unintended? My only guess at the reasoning behind it would be to make the skill synergize with Concentrated effect better.

It's probably intended to push the skill more towards being a field effect that's not guaranteed to hit everything. That's how it was when the skill was first added to the game.

I would hesitate to call that a nerf, however. One of my personal gripes with Firestorm was the standard AoE range. In most other games, a meteor shower-type skill has a larger range, fewer projectiles but each hits quite hard. PoE's Firestorm is visually quite 'overpowered' -- let's see, one slow-casting fireball or 10+ fireballs raining down from the sky in rapid succession?

Not a hard choice, even if later on one can Support either skill into fairly clear realms of ownage.

I hadn't actually noticed this change in Firestorm, so thank you for bringing it up. I'll be glad to try a Firestorm character now.

I re-skilled one of my merciless shadows to be a Firestorm caster yesterday - apparently this wasn't listed in the patch notes. :|

In any case, when I was playing with it, I thought it seemed a bit weird...I popped Concentrated Area on it, and it feels like it did before +30% more damage. Faster Casting + Increased Duration as well, and now it feels really strong. Glad to see I'm not going crazy - it was changed (I'd say for the better, as it was a bit OP as single target when it was meant for AoE, but the ease of bypassing it is still a bit crazy).

Definitely interested in this skill more now.

Have to admit, I'm coloured by experiences such as 'meteor swarm' from D and D and the devastating (but super-cooldowned) Meteor Shower from Gw1/2. I just love the way Gw1's meteor shower would knock things down.

I'd be delighted to see a support setup that slowed the rate of fireball drops but made each one stronger. Much more dramatic, a lot less 'spammy'.

I guess something about 'spamming meteor showers' rubbed me the wrong way.

The spread of Firestorm was absolutely increased. It's practically useless against single targets now. I half suspect this was a result of a Firestorm witch I built and showed to Chris that arguably broke the skill.

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Charan wrote:

I'd be delighted to see a support setup that slowed the rate of fireball drops but made each one stronger. Much more dramatic, a lot less 'spammy'.

Something I never understood was adding "Added Chaos Damage" to this skill. I've heard that the Chaos damage is diminished, rather than adding the full amount to each "meteor" (as that would be OP). Never been able to confirm it, however.

In any case, the rate of fireballs dropping can't be slowed, to my knowledge, but you can increase the AoE on it meaning less fireballs would drop in the same location - this would be somewhat counter intuitive to doing high dps, but it would achieve the seemingly slower drop-rate of meteors (in a target area, anyway).

Something like this might work for ya (personally not my taste of build) - I feel like the burning damage is being wasted, the skill seems better how I described in my first bost, and the build would be too glass cannon (very chaos-vulnerable and no defense outside of mediocre energy shield), but I just threw it together based on what you described :


71 PT Shadow


Voll's Protector to make use of Power Charges along with 2 Redbeaks to work with Pain Attunement.

A blood magic support gem along with an aura of choice (Discipline or Clarity, perhaps) would be necessary to get HP into the "low" range.

Firestorm
-Concentrated Effect
-Critical Damage
-Critical Strikes
-Iron Will (~20% more damage)
-Utility (mana leech, life leech, +IQ/IR, etc.)

I would seriously reccomend not using Increased AoE passives with this skill, from what I've seen. All it does is make the skill less accurate - the amount of enemies hit doesn't seem to change (unless the meteor explosion radius goes up, but if it does, it doesn't seem to go up by enough to make it worth increasing the AoE).

Heh. Wondered why Amarissa switched to Fireball. =^[.]^=

I was personally a fan of firestorm, added lightning damage, increased AOE, and elemental proliferation.

Spread shock stacks to EVERYTHING.