My fire warlock and playstyle

So I just swapped my

Abyss warlock to fire one, level 91 currently.
Skills are basically the same as with every guide, tough I put rest of the points to Lethargy to slow enemies.
I could use summons, like

Bind Demon, but see no use in it, currently this is just so dam fast to kill, and has tank life because of

Consume.

But the main thing why I created this topic was to let people know the power of

Ring of Fire skill.
I build Phoenix rune word, but forgot that you could no longer wear two handed weapons with regular shields, and thought that I just wasted runes.
When you use

Ring of Fire, it takes a lot of mana, but with Phoenix

Redemption aura, it is no longer an issue. I run with Phoenix and hoto, mainly just using

Ring of Fire, like i would use

Nova on sorc. Sometimes i do cast

Apocalypse, but usually

Ring of Fire is just so much faster, only issue is the flashing of fire.

Try it,
1.

Consume

Tainted
2. Enigma to warp
3.

Ring of Fire to kill
4.

Redemption to keep the mana up

I am more focused on MF, 300 currently, and the

Ring of Fire does 1800dmg, -50% enemy fire resistance.
I could swap

Chance Guards to mage fists,

Gold wrap to

Arachnid Mesh and so on, but I feel like there is no need to do so.

On swap I have Mang songs lesson and the book below, have not yet got a Ars Diabolos.

I mainly use

Apocalypse,

Sigil Death and

Flame Wave. Those three skills in conjunction are enough to massacre anything on /P1 in one cast.

Ring of Fire has a bad ratio of mana cost and damage. I only use it if I am swarmed by melee monsters.

The key to fire Warlock is MaeK (

Hex Siphon) so you don't need Insight on merc or Phoenix. I didn't find

Ars Al'Diabolos or

Mang Song's Lesson yet, so I am still using

Measured Wrath and Hoto.

As for the demon, I have put 15 points into

Bind Demon so I can have a unique monster. 5 Points into

Demonic Mastery to get a consumable

Tainted and a few into

Blood Oath to bolster my demon's life. Since I am lacking CC it is very good to have a second tank. My merc dies a lot when encountering strong

Herald parties. My demon is the last bastion, and he saved my ass more often than not.

DasNarf wrote: 19 hours ago

a few into

Blood Oath to bolster my demon's life

Just fyi, the life/resist bonuses on

Blood Oath only apply to summoned demons (

Goatman, defiler,

Tainted, but not

Bind Demon)

I used

Flame Wave in the beginning, but shifted to

Ring of Fire, tough might go back to the wave as my main second skill.

Redemption aura solves any mana issues and swapping to it is a nice quality of life improvement. Have to try

Hex Siphon, sounds like another solution

Fin-Hifi wrote: 17 hours ago

I used

Flame Wave in the beginning, but shifted to

Ring of Fire, tough might go back to the wave as my main second skill.

Redemption aura solves any mana issues and swapping to it is a nice quality of life improvement. Have to try

Hex Siphon, sounds like another solution

Not to forget

Sigil Death over lethargy. Its just better for the firelock, whos not near the enemie most of the time.

Fin-Hifi wrote: 19 hours ago

So I just swapped my

Abyss warlock to fire one, level 91 currently.
Skills are basically the same as with every guide, tough I put rest of the points to Lethargy to slow enemies.
I could use summons, like

Bind Demon, but see no use in it, currently this is just so dam fast to kill, and has tank life because of

Consume.

But the main thing why I created this topic was to let people know the power of

Ring of Fire skill.
I build Phoenix rune word, but forgot that you could no longer wear two handed weapons with regular shields, and thought that I just wasted runes.
When you use

Ring of Fire, it takes a lot of mana, but with Phoenix

Redemption aura, it is no longer an issue. I run with Phoenix and hoto, mainly just using

Ring of Fire, like i would use

Nova on sorc. Sometimes i do cast

Apocalypse, but usually

Ring of Fire is just so much faster, only issue is the flashing of fire.

Try it,
1.

Consume

Tainted
2. Enigma to warp
3.

Ring of Fire to kill
4.

Redemption to keep the mana up

I am more focused on MF, 300 currently, and the

Ring of Fire does 1800dmg, -50% enemy fire resistance.
I could swap

Chance Guards to mage fists,

Gold wrap to

Arachnid Mesh and so on, but I feel like there is no need to do so.

On swap I have Mang songs lesson and the book below, have not yet got a Ars Diabolos.

Nice build, the Hoto / Phoenix combo is a nice one that gives a good balance of everything you need - negative fire res, skills, fcr, resist, and mana regen! I also think

Ring of Fire Warlock is very underrated - IMO it is the best general purpose farmer, plus it takes down most T5 heralds in ~2-4 seconds.

Mana issues can be handled with some combo of Phoenix OR

Hex Siphon+some energy investment OR Insight

I use Mang/Diablos/Flickering Flame/

Magefist/Arachnid/2-20 amulet/

Opalvein/SOJ with Infinity merc. Magic find is a bit over 200.

(note @mikelessar I did take your suggestion to bring Infinity back into my build with a 2/20, soj, and

Hex Siphon, and I was able to get it to work w/o being annoying by putting some energy investment to get to 1k+ mana post

Battle Orders and getting mana after kill up to +34).

I formerly used Mang/Diablos/Flickering Flame/

Magefist/Arachnid/2-10 amulet/2x

Opalvein with Insight on merc - this works great too,

Conviction only adds a little kill speed on P1.

I use a 4/25 Ars Diablos - I ditched my 5/23 Ars Diablos since I use

Ring of Fire way more than Apoc, and I don't want to spend up for a 5/25 for a skill I sparingly use. A 3/25 would be great also and is probably cheap since people focus too much on the Apoc skill level. Is probably cheaper than a low Phoenix.

My

Ring of Fire is doing 3600 - 4400 damage I believe, with -70 fire resistance. Everything melts. It is IMO FASTER THAN

Nova SORC. The base damage is similar base damage to my

Nova sorc, however Fire WL has the following advantages:

- A damage boost over the base listed damage of 5-55%, depending on the distance. Per this file, a radius of 11 yards (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gtM ... it?tab=t.0) with a damage multiplier of up to 55%. Note - I have seen sorc

Nova listed as 8-9 yards, but visually based on my tests casting in the center of

The Arcane Sanctuary WP, RoF and

Nova are the same radius. I have not tested actual hitting of enemies.

- Defiler adds shared damage, which presumably should work on top of AoE effects, unless next hit delay prevents Defiler shared damage (have not tested)

- WL Demon's can do great damage on their own with a defiler for AOE (also adds merc AoE). This damage is not insignificant, plus they hunt down strays for you so you don't have to waste as much time with that if

Herald hunting.

- Ability to mix in

Flame Wave and Apocolypse depending on enemy strength and geometry / layout.

Flame Wave and Apoc do higher DPS, but have delays, but for high HP enemies (mainly Heralds, but TZ cows or megademons to a lesser extent), these can be useful to mix in, especially if the layout / direction of where the enemies are coming from works better for a FW or Apoc.

- Incredibly fast run/walk.

Consume is +40% and my demon has lvl 16

Vigor aura +41%. Neither of these have diminishing returns like normal Faster Run/Walk. And then I have ~110+ base faster run/walk. Leads to faster and more efficient spell positioning, faster loot pick up, faster town trips, etc.

Nova sorc does have the following advantages:
- Very slightly higher base damage, but is only like 2% higher for me.

- Theoretical max negative res before

Conviction is 100, versus fire WL at 70 (110 with Apoc). In practice, I run ~92-95 due to the need for a

Cham rune (

Nova sorc has limited FRW boost ability/slots, and my build has low cold res which makes cold slow last forever) and also I haven't fully maxed my lightning negative res by having a fully maxed sunder

- 1 frame / 10% faster TP and 10% faster

Nova spam.

In practice, I find fire WL faster - the listed advantages on WL outweigh the

Nova sorc advantages.

Note that this thread indicates Defiler does share damage on an AOE attack:

https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo2/commen ... _faqtoids/

No proof posted, but was confidently posted.

So, comparing vs.

Nova sorc:

At surface level, does 87% the DPS before factoring resistance (98% base damage * 8/9 cast rate). Factoring in resistance will then take it lower (52% vs. a 95% enemy pre

Conviction) And if the skill calculator doesn't take into account

Consume

Tainted (already factored in the 98% number), it will show 76% (45% vs. 95% enemy pre

Conviction).

Seems pretty weak vs

Nova sorc, eh?

Here are the calculations that factor in

Consume

Tainted,

Ring of Fire distance damage boost, and defiler shared damage:

98% base damage * (8/9) [fcr difference] * range(1+5%, 1+55%) [distance boost] * (1+50%) [defiler damage] = 137% - 206% the pre resistance DPS of sorc

Nova (self wield build).

Factoring resistance difference on sorc:

Worst case non immune (95%) res results in damage reduction of 16% (1.6/1.9) for effective damage range of 115% - 173% that of

Nova.

Worse case immune is 92/122 = 24.4% less for damage range of 104% - 156%.

Granted this is after defiler and

Conviction kick in, both of these pulse and don't kick in immediately. Defiler is limited to 5 targets, but if you give up the demon which sorc doesn't have, it is 10.

Then factor in the run speed, demon/merc AOE damage, better tankiness, and much higher damage FW and Apoc spells vs. high HP enemies and it is no contest.

These are averages and estimates, but I think this explains why it feels stronger to me vs. ES

Nova sorc.

Finally, the kicker. During a 2 second interval, instead of casting 6

Ring of Fire, you can cast 4

Ring of Fire, 1

Flame Wave, and 1 apocolypse, for a total effective average damage of ~5k*4+10k+40k every 2 seconds vs. ~30k w/o (calculated pre-resistance, post distance RoF bonus, pre defiler).

This boosts your effective damage during the 2 second period by about 225% (+125%) vs. the already more powerful than

Nova RoF. Actually more, because I didn't bother calculating the bonus -40 res from Apoc, or the higher AoE radius of Apoc.

Because of the casting/animation delay,

Flame Wave and apoc are slower at standard enemies (and most uniques/champions) than just blasting RoF.

Nova sorc does have

Static Field, which can take down HP by 44% for 2 casts (2/3 of a second wasted), which does also increase kill speed against ultra high HP enemies, but still not as much as the FW/Apoc mix in on sorc.

My rotation for most areas is

Apocalypse,

Flame Wave,

Sigil Death on a place where the most monsters are (which is, hopefully, somewhere around my merc) and another

Flame Wave. If timed right, the whole screen goes boom in a single explosion. The second Wave is aimed at elites or spread monsters that refused to join the battle.

DasNarf wrote: 19 hours ago

I mainly use

Apocalypse,

Sigil Death and

Flame Wave. Those three skills in conjunction are enough to massacre anything on /P1 in one cast.

Ring of Fire has a bad ratio of mana cost and damage. I only use it if I am swarmed by melee monsters.

The key to fire Warlock is MaeK (

Hex Siphon) so you don't need Insight on merc or Phoenix. I didn't find

Ars Al'Diabolos or

Mang Song's Lesson yet, so I am still using

Measured Wrath and Hoto.

As for the demon, I have put 15 points into

Bind Demon so I can have a unique monster. 5 Points into

Demonic Mastery to get a consumable

Tainted and a few into

Blood Oath to bolster my demon's life. Since I am lacking CC it is very good to have a second tank. My merc dies a lot when encountering strong

Herald parties. My demon is the last bastion, and he saved my ass more often than not.

wait, Siphon works on spells? I figured it only worked on melee because of the tree it was in...

Been using 3 goats and a merc as meatshields while I cast, while also supporting them with Lethargy; guess a respec is in order thanks to this thread teaching me new things.

DasNarf wrote: 7 hours ago

My rotation for most areas is

Apocalypse,

Flame Wave,

Sigil Death on a place where the most monsters are (which is, hopefully, somewhere around my merc) and another

Flame Wave. If timed right, the whole screen goes boom in a single explosion. The second Wave is aimed at elites or spread monsters that refused to join the battle.

What is your FCR,

Ring of Fire damage range, and negative fire res (post

Consume

Tainted)? Do you typically play P1? Do you use a defiler?

Generally as enemies get tougher relative effective to

Ring of Fire damage (e.g. P8 vs. P1), the calculus between

Ring of Fire and

Apocalypse changes towards Apoc and

Flame Wave. The math still suggests you should spam RoF in between the casting delays on those 2 if the enemy is tough. Of course Apoc kills nearly everything once it hits 1.8 seconds later.

I have not been using

Sigil Death, I use

Sigil Lethargy versus heralds and

Baal. Mainly because I play on a controller and am out of buttons But based on your recommendation, I want to try

Sigil Death instead of Lethargy vs. T5 heralds. I can often wipe out the minions near instantly by timing Apoc and

Flame Wave and

Ring of Fire to hit right when the heralds land. Curious if that combined with

Sigil Death would then instantly wipe out the

Herald boss as well.