Fireball vs 2.6 enchant sorc…

So I just got my

Fireball sorc past hell

Baal, and am now leveling up a bit to maximized

Terror zones.

She’s pretty close to perfectly geared, 3/20 eschutas with 5/5 facet, Flickering Flame (only -11 er but whatevs), all other standard gear (wearing

Um’d vipermagi until I find a

Fireball

Ormus robes), past the 105 fcr breakpoint. Also have a -71 sunder charm and Infinity merc. Although I don’t have a Phoenix shield yet… something to work towards I guess.

Other than the Infinity, pretty cheap, especially compared to my Tesladin. And damn she’s fun to play. I maxed

Fireball and it’s synergies, got my 1 point wonders (including

Enchant) and am now just chucking new points into

Warmth. She melts pretty much anything - only lister and his crew give us problems if they spawn with extra fire res - this in on p7. Cows on p7 goes fast too, not as fast as a javazon, but at this point the limiting factor isn’t kill speed, it’s how fast I can visually sift through all the loot.

Fireball is showing ~21k dmg on the character screen.

So is the new enchantress that much better? I have a

Demon Machine in my stash, so I could convert, but honestly she’d have to be pretty amazing to usurp my

Fireball girl.

What do you guys think?

The 62k-72k dmg in MacroBioBoi's

Enchant Bow Sorc vid seems decent:

Huh…yea that does seem pretty decent, I may have to try it out

Ignore that number. His video was pre-patch and in order to adjust the actual performance to what it would be now (the accuracy having been debatable), he added a ton of %fire that you wouldn't normally have. As the char screen back then already incorporated both, the (previously not applied) double dip and that "hacked %fire", the number you see there is rather inflated to say the least.

If you want to look at the actual raw aoe dmg numbers in terms of dmg per hit on a fully damage focused, optimized build, you can push

Fireball to right around 61k vs. a 0 res target and

Enchant to right around 58k top-end, both accounting for realistic -res (which basically means both have the target at -100, thanks to Infinity and flickering alone).

If you go for a more well rounded gearing approach, the raw damage will naturally be quite a bit lower in both cases but it will typically remain comparable, usually in about the 35-50k range after -res, give or take.

In that approach,

Fireball comes with the advantage of giving you a lot more flexibility in gearing and allowing for more support/defensive stats (faster cast, better res, hit recovery and so on). Plus you can stack a fair bit more -res to pull ahead (noticeably) on higher res targets. Faster cast in that case not only leaves you with better travel times but it also obviously helps your

Fireball, typically taking it to 8 frames.

Demon Machine by contrast leaves you at an 11 frame attack. As a result of all that,

Fireball can pull ahead a fair bit on single targets/bosses (esp. high res/immunes), despite DM's potential double-hits on those.
(The travel time bit can be helped by keeping an FCR switch set but that just makes the

Enchant pre-buff cycle even more annoying)

The big gain an enchantress/DM sorc gets is the fact that

Pierce can cause extra hits, resulting in not one but multiple explosions for the same damage. So while your attack speed might be lower, at comparable damage, a 1-

Pierce with another target behind it will cause 2 explosions off the same attack, effectively doubling your aoe damage from that shot. And since you can

Pierce multiple times, that adds up a fair bit. As a result, an enchantress can outperform

Fireball by a good margin in aoe farming (e.g. cows and whatnot).
Additionally,

Enchant leaves you with a ton of skill points left over for either full

Energy Shield goodness or to add in something like

Blaze or firewall just for fun/for bosses.

Though the difference in aoe farming is actually alleviated a bit again in some scenarios (again, depending) because

Fireball isn't just

Fireball but allows you to throw in the occasional stacked

Meteor where better suited which for that hit causes a good chunk more dmg than either (about double, realistically, not counting the burn over time). That's especially true in cases where you can accurately time a pre-cast and have the

Meteor hit without waiting for the delay.

Baal waves are a perfect example of that.

With all that said, they both have their advantages and disadvantages and do outperform each other, depending on what you actually do with them. So as so often, I would say it boils down to playstyle and personal preference.
My ladder fire sorc actually has two full gear sets, one for a traditional fire approach and one for the

Enchant approach. Both work exceptionally well and are comparable overall. Though I for one never enjoyed the "mweh, slow-ass

Crossbow shooting into crowds" approach so my

Enchant set is actually more of a sniper set now (inherently more of a novelty/just for fun), having ditched DM (not because it was bad but solely because I don't enjoy it) using

Widowmaker instead. Obviously not ideal for aoe farming at that point but that's not the goal with it.

@Schnorki

From what I can see from my comfy seat, GG

Fireball (lvl47 skill) against -100% res is 140k DPS (8FPA), GG enchanted bolt (lvl54 skill) is at 200k DPS (11FPA) split 50:50 between initial hit and explosion, both against single target. Hitting (therefore a must-have in high attack rating) means you double your damage output and can

Pierce on top. Missing means you just deal the explosion dmg at ~100k DPS. Against more than one enemy this is not even comparable.

One tangible bonus fireball build has is zero need for gear swapping as you are not getting those enchant numbers without spending some seconds pre-buffing and stash switching. I'm running at lv40 enchant base compared to the lv54 pre-buff. Secondly,

Fireball can stack more -res gear against enemies that have high natural fire resistance or immunity.

Meteor will eat away slow enemies even faster. No

Energy Shield here though. You wouldn't be able to keep it up anyway, your spells cost mana. Enchantress spends mana on

Teleport and

Static Field, if needed, only.

I wouldn't go back to fireballing.

Nate wrote: 2 years ago

So I just got my

Fireball sorc past hell

Baal, and am now leveling up a bit to maximized

Terror zones.

She’s pretty close to perfectly geared, 3/20 eschutas with 5/5 facet, Flickering Flame (only -11 er but whatevs), all other standard gear (wearing

Um’d vipermagi until I find a

Fireball

Ormus robes), past the 105 fcr breakpoint. Also have a -71 sunder charm and Infinity merc. Although I don’t have a Phoenix shield yet… something to work towards I guess.

Other than the Infinity, pretty cheap, especially compared to my Tesladin. And damn she’s fun to play. I maxed

Fireball and it’s synergies, got my 1 point wonders (including

Enchant) and am now just chucking new points into

Warmth. She melts pretty much anything - only lister and his crew give us problems if they spawn with extra fire res - this in on p7. Cows on p7 goes fast too, not as fast as a javazon, but at this point the limiting factor isn’t kill speed, it’s how fast I can visually sift through all the loot.

Fireball is showing ~21k dmg on the character screen.

So is the new enchantress that much better? I have a

Demon Machine in my stash, so I could convert, but honestly she’d have to be pretty amazing to usurp my

Fireball girl.

What do you guys think?

I understand the fun! I am playing one myself, have pretty much the same gear plus

Ormus FB and Phoenix.
As much fun and damage as it is, I am a real glass cannon. Resistances are so awful that I am considering going back to vipernmage. Even with resi charms and Maras, the souls in A4 kill me instantly. All my chars did Hell Solo. This is the first one that can‘t do it.

Queegon wrote: 2 years ago

@Schnorki

From what I can see from my comfy seat, GG

Fireball (lvl47 skill) against -100% res is 140k DPS (8FPA), GG enchanted bolt (lvl54 skill) is at 200k DPS (11FPA) split 50:50 between initial hit and explosion, both against single target. Hitting (therefore a must-have in high attack rating) means you double your damage output and can

Pierce on top. Missing means you just deal the explosion dmg at ~100k DPS. Against more than one enemy this is not even comparable.

One tangible bonus fireball build has is zero need for gear swapping as you are not getting those enchant numbers without spending some seconds pre-buffing and stash switching. I'm running at lv40 enchant base compared to the lv54 pre-buff. Secondly,

Fireball can stack more -res gear against enemies that have high natural fire resistance or immunity.

Meteor will eat away slow enemies even faster. No

Energy Shield here though. You wouldn't be able to keep it up anyway, your spells cost mana. Enchantress spends mana on

Teleport and

Static Field, if needed, only.

I wouldn't go back to fireballing.

To be fair, you're comparing a near perfect

Enchant to a definite-room-for-improvement

Fireball. Even in a well rounded build, you can hit 50+ with FB and the same 54 if you want to focus more on dmg (and can find/afford a suitable orb). Merely the 55 (which you could get your

Enchant to) is realistically out for FB as you can't just pre-buff FB and do need to carry a sunder whereas for ench, you can switch that out as part of your super-annoying convoluted buff sequence.
Either way, as the skill level gets more evenly matched again, so does the dmg.

But yeah, more enemies/successful

Pierce = ench wins, as already noted.

Either way, overall, when you compare the two at actually similar levels of gear (and hence skill), between more -res for FB and saving all of that

Enchant-buff-sequence time (assuming you are looking to optimize) vs. getting massive multi-hits with DM, to me they felt quite comparable overall (which makes sense if you look at overall numbers/context), making it ultimately just a matter of personal preference and/or subject to where/what/how you actually farm. After too much theorycrafting along with plenty of actual playtesting, I stand by that claim.

PS:
You can totally use ES on an FB sorc. It obv. won't be as overkill as that of an ench sorc with a ton of skill points left to

Cap both, ES and TK at will, but it is absolutely usable and perfectly possible to keep it up.