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Quote from Laokin

Quote from DerpNerpem

I don't know if it's just me, but it feels like ranged fire spells are really disappointing compared to the lightning and frost spells. I know fire is meant to deal DoT, but compared to running a Frozen Orb build on T1+ solo, a Scorch Orb/Conflagrate build just doesn't seem to have that same wow factor. I mean, Frozen Orb alone has this massive piercing AoE when it moves compared to Scorch which is basically a small piercing fireball that leaves a trail of flames behind.

As for Meteor, it's either got a really long cooldown and delay (Molten Impact), or it's too random and too slow (Meteor Shower). I get the feeling that fire damage was meant to be more focused on the close range with Wave of Force and Explosive Blast being really popular from what I've seen in random groups. Do you guys think it's disappointing?

Nah, I think you have it backwards, Wave of Force and Explosive blast are useless, they don't do anywhere near enough damage to compete with the build that I used when I was rocking fire.

So here is a definitive Fire Build that will melt everything in the game;

Build:

WALLS OF FIRE - [WoF Wizard]

Skills;

Actives Mammoth Hydra - Hyrda
Spark Flint - Familiar
Meteor Shower - Meteor
Scorch - Arcane Orb
Conflagrate - Magic Missile
Wormhole - Teleport

Passives Conflagration
Prodigy
Illusionist
Supporting Gear;

Jewelry Stone of Jordan - 20% Fire Damage
Eye of Etlitch - 20% Fire Damage

Armor Bracers Demons/Strong Arms - 20% Fire damage
Gloves Magefist - 20% Fire damage
Chest Cindercoat - 20% Fire Damage
Helm Andariels Visage - 20% Fire damage
Source Mirrorball - +2 Additional Magic Missiles
Weapon Serpent Sparker - +1 Additional Hydra

For skills % damage, you want all gear that enhance Magic Missile.

This gives you 120% to fire damage skills.

You can also get up to 30% to magic missile on shoulders and a belt, you can get another 15 on pants too. So that gives you 45% to magic missile, but with the mirror ball, that's actually an additional 135% on magic missile.

So with this, you get double hydra damage [because you get 2 of them] * 100% Fire skill damage.

How to play it;
So you open with the double hydra, then shoot a magic missile to get a stack of conflagration, drop a meteor or two, and lay down the scorch over the hydra fire walls, keep using the magic missile with *885% bonus damage[Brings you to over 1000% weapon damage on magic missile] to fill back up your arcane power to drop more meteors and scorch. If you get in trouble, you have teleport handy, with the new illusionist, it resets teleport when you get hit basically by anything on T4 or higher, so you have plenty of escape options as well. If you are confident you don't need the escape options or are playing with a good group, you can drop teleport for magic weapon force weapon for an additional 20% damage which gives you knockback that gives you 20-30% enhanced damage from the legendary passive on the Strong Arm Bracers. I'm not entirely sold on Ignite, although, it's possible that's a viable rune too when stacking all this bonus fire damage gear.

*The break down on magic missile bonus damage.
Magic Missile does 175% weapon damage, with a mirror ball, you shoot 3. This gives your magic missile effectively 525% weapon damage. You have 20/20/20/20/20 bonus to fire damage, this is 120% bonus to fire damage skills * 3 magic missiles.
You have 45% weapon damage on magic missile, but since you are shooting 3, and each one gets the bonus, you get an additional 135%. The Familiar gives you 10% * 3 magic missiles, and magic weapon another 20% * 3 magic Missiles.

Totaled Magic Missile does 1,110% [1,140% to elites with a 30% SoJ] weapon damage per attack. This is why the mirror ball is absolutely ESSENTIAL to any fire build, this makes your generator one of your most damaging skills, the entire time -- all the enemies are roasting in the DoT's from the double Mammoth Hyrdas and the scorches [which do stack.] The meteor is your big damage aoe that capitalizes on the conflagration stacks caused by magic missile, enhancing your crit chance and doing mega damage.

You don't want to stack +% to meteor damage at all, since you're going to be shooting a ton more magic missiles than meteors. The magic missile IS your bread and butter and because the mirror ball triples the damage output you end up dealing WAY more damage stacking magic missile damage. I don't care how alluring the +% to meteor is, it's all about magic missile.


This is an end game fire damage build, and it's certainly nothing to scoff at if you have a decent crit chance [30% or better] and good crit damage [280% or better.]

Touching on Cold Damage There is also a similar build for cold damage. It won't put out as much damage as fire for obvious reasons, but it will make the harder difficulties easier to solo. Why? Because you'll be freezing things at all ranges with almost the same efficiency as old Critical Mass frost nova builds, with the added advantage that you can do it from ANY range.

Yes you can virtually permafreeze mobs in 2.0.

Quote from Ximin

You guys really need to come play hardcore
T4 being godmode easymode, T6 being on farm etc

I'm 2mil toughness and I'm not even considering entering T4 yet.

Then again, I don't run gameabusing routes (note here that I'm not saying illegal or want to start a shitstorm) I meerely pay through the game

Also I'm almost about to finish my fire gear I'll try a spec I have in mind on HC soon... just need a cindercoat>_<

Quote from entro

i have a few +fire dmg items so i did run a fire sorc for some time, my setup was conflagrate, heat wave and meteor shower with the usual sparkflint, force weapon and an armor of your choice, i highly recommend heat wave instead of scorch, more reliable spammable aoe damage, for packs and bosses i just used meteor shower and conflagrate in the downtime, stuff just melts

Quote from sOFrOsTy

Wrong! No I don't want to sound cocky, but I built my Wizard based on fire. I only have 200,000 DPS, but my items are all built around fire and I farm T4 solo, and T5 with a group just fine.. Magefist, Cindercoat, bracers with +15% fire, and I have + damage to magic missile and + damage to arcane orb items. Arcane Orb- Scorch usually crits for 2.5M and DOTs for about 600k every tick afterwards from the flame left on the ground. Magic Missile Conflagurate is the highest DPS single target SKILL, the Wizard has. Yes skill as in, not just signature skill. Fight a boss and just spam this magic missile, it refreshes the damage stacks over and over and adds to them. Example: If you are fighting a boss in T5, just spamming Magic missile after about 20 seconds if you attack speed is high enough, make the fire damage over time deal 5,000,000 every tick. If you continue this after 40 seconds on that same boss the fire damage over time is ticking for 10,0000,000 every time, and this is on top of the initial 170% it deals on the initial impact. Couple this with Gale force energy twister which makes all mobs hit take +15% fire damage for 4 seconds, while keeping stacks up, you do an insane amount of damage. Here is my current skill build:



Magic Missile Conflag (which btw pierces, so isn't just single target)

Arcane Orb Scorch

Energy Twister Gale Force

Energy Shield Prismatic Armor

Magic Weapon Force Weapon

(any defensive skill in last slot, teleport, Diamond skin, or Mirror Images I switch between often)



Passives:

Prodigy

Conflagurate

Blur

Quote from knightofthorns

Because rewards are higher. If you can kill things efficiently, higher difficulties will yield more experience and more legendaries.

And there is always "fun" and "challenge" factors. Bowing up stuff in mere seconds can get boring after a while. In these cases, raising the difficulty helps with boredom.