Fireball - support skills?

Right now your basically required to go full crit with spells like fireball. If you skimp on crit I'm positive it will end up being too weak in the end.

Yep, without crit it won't work. With all the crit, cast speed and spell damage needed in the passives it is unlikely you will have many points to go into marauder area.

These nodes are mostly in the shadow and witch areas.

Don't know how are you going to take it all health based, unless you are planning on using Shavronne's. Health based builds need lots of points in health.



I am using it atm on the scion, skill tree, consider that I also have spell damage and crit on the weapon, shield and necklace, cast speed on weapon, crit multiplier on necklace. 56% crit chance on the skill, 500% crit multiplier, 8,5 K tooltip dps. This isn't OP or something, just enough for party play in higher level maps while also not too much to die instantly to reflect even with arctic armor.

My support gems are lesser multiple projectiles - power charge on crit - fire penetration - life leech (5L) and for the fifth support I would have taken either faster projectiles or empower.

Also life leech on your main skill is mandatory. Life leech support gem since it is a spell.

An alternative to ST would be a staff with +2 to Fire +1 to All, then link Fireball to Empower.

You can also use a Scepter/Wand with 90+ Spell Damage and Rathpith Globe, or perhaps use a shield and dagger with Critical Strike Chance for Spells and Critical Multiplier.

Alternatively, you can go for fireball spam via Flame Sentinel Trap Spectres.

There are many underappreciated builds for Fireball.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgUAAnEEswVbEmkUTRSwFm8XHBkuGYUaOBpsHwIkiySqJ-0pTyqNLJw2xTbYNuk6MDrYOuE8LT0PQYdG10kbTdhQUFRJVcZYY13GXz9gbXF5d2J8u31TffWBb4Kbh2WIG4jxi4yMdozPj0aQVZeFm6GcLZ2unjyiAKZXpwinhKgYrJivt7UEtoa3PrndxPbGrsbYz2XQ0NSP2CTa3d3z4XPjauQi5PHnUudj7DjsVe0g7w7vhfAf8i_yRfNx9kj31_no_go=

This is the tree and gear for my current lvl 78 fireball templar. He is not crit based and he employs a massive hp pool with es gear for a secondary hp pool as defense. I havnt really invested anything into improving my es at all besides nodes that were on the way. Has no problem running high level maps besides the occassional thena moga that pops up. His biggest issue holding him back is the massive mana requirements of spells.
As you can see my gear is far from optimal and has lots of room for improvement.
My current plan is to finish off grabbing the life by the scion then head south of the maruader and grab the two large life nodes and the ring of fire damage.

I agree entirely that fireball builds are underappreciated.

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Ezhiel wrote:

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iamstryker wrote:

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Mr_Mustasch wrote:

concentrated effect is very good with fireball.

Does that support effect the displayed damage because I could have swore that I checked and it didn't so I figured that it didn't work....

The tooltip doesn't display area damage, but as long as the fireball explodes, it multiplies its damage.

A fireball will always explode provided it does not fork or pierce. A conc effect is a MORE multiplier to fireball. At LVL 20 it is 69% MORE damage.

Fireball + faster casting + Conc Effect + Fire penetration + LMP + Mana Leech

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Mr_Mustasch wrote:

A fireball will always explode provided it does not fork or pierce. A conc effect is a MORE multiplier to fireball. At LVL 20 it is 69% MORE damage.

Fireball + faster casting + Conc Effect + Fire penetration + LMP + Mana Leech

69% more damage? Hmm, hmm, haven't tried this on anything other than cyclone, can't tell. I still have some doubts on this non-critical fireball setup though. Here is why: 50%+ crit chance and 500%+ crit multiplier as I have it means my toon does 5 times more damage on every second hit on average. This is 250% more damage, multiplying all the increased spell damage from gear and passives too.

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mammoth_hunter wrote:

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Mr_Mustasch wrote:

A fireball will always explode provided it does not fork or pierce. A conc effect is a MORE multiplier to fireball. At LVL 20 it is 69% MORE damage.

Fireball + faster casting + Conc Effect + Fire penetration + LMP + Mana Leech

69% more damage? Hmm, hmm, haven't tried this on anything other than cyclone, can't tell. I still have some doubts on this non-critical fireball setup though. Here is why: 50%+ crit chance and 500%+ crit multiplier as I have it means my toon does 5 times more damage on every second hit on average. This is 250% more damage, multiplying all the increased spell damage from gear and passives too.

You can use conc effect with a crit build. It is not that hard to get a decent crit mult without supporting it with increased crit multiplier. What I would change in his suggested link is mana leech. Get some good mana flasks, qualify conc effect and get some mana on gear and in tree and you should not need it unless you are running no regen maps.

Edit: I wish fireballs tooltip would display explosion and not projectile dps. Optimally it should only display the projectile damage if it is linked with fork/chain. It really should be doable for GGG to fix considering linking some gems like trap/remote mine changes the damage from dps to average. So the support for it should already be there.


Edit2: the other way of using fireball is going for proliferate burns without any lmp or gmp support. I would probably link that something like: 1fireball-2ele prolif-3fire pen-4crit damage-5conc effect
last link probably something like crit chance or one of the added damage support gems (probably lightning or cold for synergy with ele prolif).
this way would require good crit chance and crit multiplier as none crit fireballs makes really worthless burns. Don't bother with going out of your way for quality fireballs, the chance to ignite support gem would also be useless.

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mammoth_hunter wrote:

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Mr_Mustasch wrote:

A fireball will always explode provided it does not fork or pierce. A conc effect is a MORE multiplier to fireball. At LVL 20 it is 69% MORE damage.

Fireball + faster casting + Conc Effect + Fire penetration + LMP + Mana Leech

69% more damage? Hmm, hmm, haven't tried this on anything other than cyclone, can't tell. I still have some doubts on this non-critical fireball setup though. Here is why: 50%+ crit chance and 500%+ crit multiplier as I have it means my toon does 5 times more damage on every second hit on average. This is 250% more damage, multiplying all the increased spell damage from gear and passives too.

With your stats it would be better to swap increased crit damage gem for conc effect.

When you crit:

500% crit mutliplier without conc effect

1.00 * 6 = 6.00

400% crit multiplier with conc effect

1.00 * 1,69 * 5 = 8.45

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Mr_Mustasch wrote:

A fireball will always explode provided it does not fork or pierce. A conc effect is a MORE multiplier to fireball. At LVL 20 it is 69% MORE damage.

Fireball + faster casting + Conc Effect + Fire penetration + LMP + Mana Leech

Mhh that mana leech is really wasted. Usually pots and basic mana pool is enough.

Also for crit spell build i prefer EB life, so i have enough mana to sustain all skills and an high level Arctic Armour while having 5k+ life

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Mr_Mustasch wrote:

With your stats it would be better to swap increased crit damage gem for conc effect.

I do not have it in my setup, here is how it looks



I would not change any of these supports.

LMP and fire pen are necessary supports.
Power charge on crit is one of my main sources of crit, won't change it.
Life leech is required, without it my survivability would suffer. I need some means to replenish ES others than its native regen. Certain boss fights are unbearable without it. And I do not like to die at level 92.

Can only add one more if I'll get a 6L at last. But I hesitate to use conc effect because I am concerned about increasing my damage significantly more, because of ele reflect. With AA I can still do ele reflect maps but they are borderline safe and I always carry a ruby flask in my belt for when I need to fight large reflect packs. If a map has ele reflect in combination with - max res, ele weakness or half regen it is a no-no.

500% multiplier also comes from these

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Edit2: the other way of using fireball is going for proliferate burns without any lmp or gmp support. I would probably link that something like: 1fireball-2ele prolif-3fire pen-4crit damage-5conc effect
last link probably something like crit chance or one of the added damage support gems (probably lightning or cold for synergy with ele prolif).

There is also increased burning damage support gem and passives.