I liked the Fireball in Diablo 2. It has a short cast time, moves fast, and explodes on impact with some small AoE damage. I think it even interrupted the movement of the enemies or knocked them back a tiny amount. Diablo 3’s Arcane Orb (especially with the Obliterating Orb Rune, which makes it faster) works very similar.
I would like for something like this to exist in Last Epoch. Fireball and Static Orb have the potential, so let’s talk about these.
Fireball
By default:
- fast moving projectile
- fast cast
Nodes on the tree:
- Flame Burst: AoE effect every fifth hit (per enemy)
- Volatile Flames: reduces required amount of hits to trigger Flame Burst
Flame Burst isn’t as reliable as I would have hoped. I tried it in combination with Embers (fire projectiles in sequence) and Dancing Fire (more projectiles). My mage fired (at least three) projectiles in sequence and needed three projectiles to trigger the Flame Burst. The little crabs in Lagon’s Temple occluded each other frequently when approaching me, so the AoE only triggered every second time or so.
Proposal
Change Flame Burst to trigger on every hit. Reduce its damage to 1/5 of what it is now. Change Volatile Flames to increase the damage of Flame Burst by 35% per point.
The damage output would be similar to the current state, but triggering the effect would be much more reliable. This would also allow these nodes to be useful if there is only a single projectile (for people like me that don’t like the style of rapid firing fire balls in sequence or having them fly through enemies (aka piercing)).
This could also be expanded upon with more nodes/points increasing the AoE damage or radius (the latter one could need added/increased mana costs). In case this gets too strong with many projectiles, I myself also wouldn’t mind if it was hidden behind Unchained Fire (only one projectile with bonus damage), but that would probably destroy some existing builds.
Static Orb
By default:
- (slow) projectile
- fast cast
- has AoE explosion (but not on impact)
Nodes on the tree:
- Rapid Orbs: makes projectile fast (but requires investment into projectile damage)
- Controlled Explosion: Orb explodes at (or rather behind) target (but not on impact)
- Nexus of Destruction: Increases the explosion damage
Proposal
Add another node that makes the Orb explode on impact. This would conflict with Controlled Explosion, so maybe it requires and disables it. I also wouldn’t mind if Rapid Orbs wasn’t hidden behind many projectile damage nodes, but having single target damage on top of the AoE damage maybe wouldn’t hurt too much (I see myself getting that anyway). If there is a single target, it would probably be hit by both the projectile and the explosion (similar to how Controlled Explosion works now).