OTOH, in the mines, Incinerate has a field day hosing down the hallway with fire. It’s a tradeoff for the confinement and lack of mobility I guess.
Spock
1802
So Incinerate is better than Fireball? I’ve been Fireballing up to now with my witch, but I recently acquired Incinerate, and it didn’t seem as effective. I suppose I need to spam it?
I haven’t used incinerate yet, but I believe the description for that skill gem says that you do more damage the longer you use it. So maybe the flame gets stronger and stronger until it is a blue flame, something to that effect? Like turning up the gas on a bunsen burner?
Everything is better than fireball. Ok, not everything. It’s not one of the stronger caster gems. It’s probably considered decent these days. Easy to get started with. Fireball’s problems are probably base damage and how it interacts with certain supports ; a lot of fancy stuff (chain, pierce, fork but for doesn’t get a lot of use these days) negates the explosion which is part of the damage.
Incinerate stacks. At each of it’s 3 stacks, it gains 100% more damage. It was initially nerfed pretty hard in the 2.0 beta because of the shotgunning changes, as it was one of the most famous shotgunning spells. But they increased damage by bunches to compensate for that. Incinerate’s stacks are gained more quickly via cast speed; essentially the spell is “pulsing” and cast speed increases the rate at which it does so, which means you geto to 300% more damage more quickly. Because of the late beta damage boost it’s still a very strong skill (it was a long time top tier skill before 2.0; it may still be). The void hounds that start showing up in a3 docks use incinerate breath, FWIW. That’s why standing in it starts to get scary.
As with all caster gems, incinerate needs to be leveled and eventually linked to supports. Other things equal, a higher level gem will outperform a lower level one.
Blue flame is a microtransaction alternate skill effect for incinerate.
If you link incinerate + lesser multiple projectiles (and optionally stuff like faster casting or added lightning or fire penetration) it melts stuff.
The build I’m using has Incinerate + Spell Echo + LMP + Fire Pen and in A1C stuff is withering.
Since the stacks are so powerful, positioning is everything. I run Arctic Armor so what I do is run through packs, then turn around and start incinerating. Stuff is slowed by the AA effect and as a result, I hardly get hit.
Quality on Incinerate adds projectile speed (which is good - you can trade for a 8 or 9% incinerate gem in Tempest for 2 chaos orbs, and it’s worth it).
But only because LMP = aoe, which is good for clear speed/not needing to be so precise. Assuming a choice of all supports, Echo should be the first link, regardless of how one wants to handle adding AOE. There is no more spell shotgunning, and having 3 streams on a single monster offers no benefit.
Spock
1807
So how quickly must one fire off successive Incinerates to ensure that its strength builds? One after another, rat-a-tat, lots of fast mouse-clicking (or key-pressing)? Or will it still build if you cast it, say, once every five seconds?
You hold down the button. If you stop holding down the button (e.g. you’re running from Piety’s death star laser, or any one of a number of Malachi’s bundles of fun, or the TOUCH OF GOD) and then re-cast you start from scratch AFAICT. It’s why a lot of incinerate builds do a lot of cast speed. You want your 0-3 stacks time to be super quick where possible, so that even the smallest of “I incinerate in your general direction!” casts is still maximally hurty. Those you can run from death laser and still opportunistically get damage in without needing to sustain cast for long periods (until she stops shooting the laser, at which point it’s unleash the fury time).
There’s fun things you can do to supplement the play style. They won’t help against roving aoe boss death mechanics, but e.g. having a cwdt with frost wall will knock enemies away from you while you gleefully incinerate them into their base components (xp and loot). Projectile speed is important because it increases the length of your jets of flame, and that does help with some of the boss mechanics (but not others). Incinerators want to get projectile speed on their wands where possible, in addition to a quality incinerate. It helps tons.
Oh, you can sell 40% quality worth of gems for a single Gem Cutter’s Prism (+1% quality to gem). And a level 20 gem + 1 GCP = level 1 gem with 20% quality, but it takes a long time to hit that obviously and then you need to level again. Some gems with quality are quite valuable, but a lot of them are just vendor fodder for getting GCPs. GCPs are pricey on the market.
Why projectile speed for Incinerate?
Right. But the advantage from LMP far outweighs the decrease in DPS (and anyway, I have the vague feeling that the DPS shown for Incinerate is per stream, which makes the LMP addition great. Not sure though).
Also, Echo isn’t available until level 38, while LMP is level 8, so while I definitely link Echo as soon as possible, I would definitely link LMP and Fire Pen (which I think is level 31) when I got them.
One guide I saw recommended getting a 7 to 9% quality incinerate and using GCPs to level it up. And while it’s more expensive than leveling a gem to 20 and using the recipe to turn it to 20% with a GCP, you also don’t have to relevel the frickin’ gem from level 1 again (I read when you do it this way it means you don’t hit level 20 with the gem the 2nd time until you’re level 92… which I’ve never come close to hitting). One of my Incinerate dudes bought a 8%-ishi gem and and got it to 13% or so with GCPs (before he died into Standard). It seemed to work great.
All projectiles (type is irrelevant) have “speed” and “duration”, which combine to be “range”. Spells like Incinerate and Freezing pulse have projectiles with low durations, so the effective range is shorter. The only way to extend the range is increasing projectile speed. It’s very useful for these spells. But not others, e.g. Fireball.
Just wanted to make sure it was understood (for everybody) that all those sprays are not damaging anything right next to you . Some aoe is usually important for a spell like this.
One guide I saw recommended getting a 7 to 9% quality incinerate and using GCPs to level it up. And while it’s more expensive than leveling a gem to 20 and using the recipe to turn it to 20% with a GCP, you also don’t have to relevel the frickin’ gem from level 1 again (I read when you do it this way it means you don’t hit level 20 with the gem the 2nd time until you’re level 92… which I’ve never come close to hitting). One of my Incinerate dudes bought a 8%-ishi gem and and got it to 13% or so with GCPs (before he died into Standard). It seemed to work great.
Well, available wealth and supply is everything. If I can get a higher amount of quality I would. Got a bit lucky that way in the last one-month league pre-beta, actually, and scored a 14% Incinerate for like 10c or something. Easily worth it. But that won’t always be possible (and this league is a little crazy economically, to boot). I’ve only done two incinerate characters but it’s one of the builds I consider quality mandatory (freezing pulse was the other, but I don’t think it came out of the other end of the shotgunning changes nearly as well off).
fdsaion
1813
You cannot shotgun with just about everything anymore, so the displayed DPS is not multiplied by 3, if that’s what you’re trying to say.
LMP is still good on lots of things just for AOE coverage in generic monster killing. Just consider swapping it for something on a boss.
So I did Kaom. The road up to him was interesting, but the Kaom fight itself was over in a second. Toss fire totem. Let Chaos Golem waltz around. Hit RMB for Incinerate (with Spell Echo and Faster Projectiles); poof, no more Kaom. CODT for Temporal Chains and Arctic Breath, running Clarity, Arctic Armor, and Herald of Thunder.
Now have to find a 4L footwear with the right colors to add GMP to my defensive autocasts…
KevinC
1815
Same reason as my flame totem character is a Scion for easy access to the Ranger area projectile speed nodes. Try it out, just try not to cackle out loud at the results. :)
Nah, the speed thing makes total sense. Also explains why I need Slower Projectiles for my Molten Striker, and maybe Concentrated Effect too.
…and Malachai sleeps with the fishes. The fight was actually over before I really knew it. I had to pop some potions and portal back once or twice (once was inadvertent) but he sort of caught on fire and burned up while I was running around. Dropped…one crappy blue item and a portal scroll. Whee.
Congrats! Sounds like it went pretty well. Be safe in Cruel!
Yeah, Cruel is mostly new territory. I have another character who got exactly to where I am now (44) but that was prior to there being an Act IV. She is still around in Act III Cruel I think, but this is a lot different.
I do wish it was easier to verify that in fact my cast on damage taken is actually casting. I can see the Temporal Chains fire off (the icons over the bad guys) but I’ve yet to see any indication of Arctic Breath shooting. It is socketed properly and says “this skill cannot be used” when I try to slot it (which is what it should say), but I can’t recall seeing it actually fire off. Also, I tried putting in Enduring Cry to CODT just because, well, I had it laying around, but it never fired off that I could see. Weird.
Cast on Damage Taken does have some limits. Most notably the level of the supported gems. Make sure that whatever CoDT says for the max level lines up with the other gems. It’s checking the player level required by the gem…so if you have, say, level 3 CoDT (which says max level 42 for supported gems) but level 7 Arctic Breath (requires level 44) then it won’t work. Another limit is that it only works on spells, so I don’t believe Enduring Cry qualifies any more…it was changed from a “spell” to a “warcry” in 2.0.
