I was just gifted a Monarch, so I made a Spirit shield, and need to respec to equip it. Thinking about going Firewall/Orb with this respec, since I’ve never done it before. It looks powerful, too.
I’m currently level 68, Fireball/Orb, with meh gear (Lore, Spirit sword, Stealth).
Any advice on what to max first at level 68? I’m not sure which is more important as I move into Hell – strong Orb, or strong Firewall.
Thanks! (At work all day, so I can’t make any replies back until tonight).
Personally, I do Orb first. But I just love Frozen Orb.
For my Orb dual element builds I tend to forego the points in the Orb synergy since it only gets a 2% bonus and instead put those points into the fire/lightning tree. I think they are more valuable there.
So I’d do 20 points into Orb, enough into Cold Mastery for -100, max Firewall, then whatever points you have left into Warmth/Fire Mastery to maximize your damage. For maximum Firewall damage, you should aim to keep your soft points (including +skills) in Fire Mastery about 8 above your hard points (base points only, excluding +skills) in Warmth.
So for example at level 68 with +5 skills (Spirit sword + Spirit shield + Lore helm) you might have something like:
1 point each in: Frozen Armor, Static Field, Telekinesis, Teleport (I include these in all my builds)
1 point each in cold prereqs: Ice Bolt, Ice Blast, Glacial Spike, Frost Nova, Blizzard
20 points in Frozen Orb
12 points in Cold Mastery (+5 skills = -100 cold res)
1 point each in fire prereqs: Inferno, Blaze
20 points in Firewall
5 points in Warmth
8 points in Fire Mastery (+5 points = 13 points, so 8 above hard points in Warmth)
You may be 1 point shy of this at level 68 if you don’t have the point from Hell Den of Evil yet.
Only adding the skill planer as a helpful link. You can test different builds there and if you want to invest the time you can import your gear and play around with that as well. Helps to determine if you would benefit from a specific item or not before buying/searching it.
Would skill similarly as TinneOnn suggested.
https://d2.maxroll.gg/d2planner
Dont listen to orb synergy doesnt add much
İt adds decent
That 2% is 40% when maxed and it is like 80% when it doubles with cold mastery
Also firewall is not skill point hungry and it is harder to aim and adding more dmg doesnt really speed u up since y use it for fire immunes and bosses only
Returning back to your question
For u at lvl68
Static,teleport
Max fire mastery, 1pt warmth, 1pt fire mastery
Max orb, make cold mastery -120/-130
Rest into orb synergy
When u max out orb synegy then go bac to fire and max out warmth
(Dont listen to people saying fire mastery is 7% warmth is 4% —> put in skill calculator u will see u will get similar or more dmg with warmth when maxed)
Also u will not be needing insight any more if max warmth so u can use reapers toll or obedience which are better than insight
That’s not how the math works. The synergy bonuses are multipliers, 1.4x damage with a maxed orb synergy is always 1.4x damage. It doesn’t matter how many points in Cold Mastery you have.
If you have 1*1.0 vs. 1*1.4, the 1.4 increases it by a factor 1.4. If you have 2*1.0 vs 2*1.4, the 1.4 still increases it by a factor of 1.4. Having Cold Mastery doesn’t magically make it a 1.8 multiplier.
He’s level 68, if he maxes Ice Bolt he’ll have hardly any points for Firewall and his Firewall will be fairly weak. If he was level 90, yeah sure, maybe maxing the orb synergy makes more sense.
Maximum Firewall damage skill point allocation at various +skills with 21 points to spend in Warmth/Fire Mastery:
+0 skills
7 Warmth, 14 Fire Mastery
Damage bonus: (1 + 7*0.04)*(1.23 + (14 + 0)*0.07) = 2.8288
Compare to 20 Warmth, 1 Fire Mastery
Damage bonus: (1 + 20*0.04)*(1.23 + (1 + 0)*0.07) = 2.34
You gain 2.8288/2.34 = ~21% damage doing the optimal allocation.
+5 skills
9 Warmth, 12 Fire Mastery
Damage bonus: (1 + 9*0.04)*(1.23 + (12 + 5)*0.07) = 3.2912
Compare to 20 Warmth, 1 Fire Mastery
Damage bonus: (1 + 20*0.04)*(1.23 + (1 + 5)*0.07) = 2.97
You gain 3.2912/2.97 = ~11% damage doing the optimal allocation.
+10 skills
12 Warmth, 9 Fire Mastery
Damage bonus: (1 + 12*0.04)*(1.23 + (9 + 10)*0.07) = 3.7888
Compare to 20 Warmth, 1 Fire Mastery
Damage bonus: (1 + 20*0.04)*(1.23 + (1 + 10)*0.07) = 3.6
You gain 3.7888/3.6 = ~5% damage doing the optimal allocation.
The more +skills you have, the more points you’ll want in Warmth. And the smaller the difference you’ll see between the optimal allocation and all points in Warmth first. But at low +skills, like where OP is at, you can see a fairly sizable increase in your Firewall damage by optimizing the skill point allocation. For example at +5 skills (it looks like this is where he’s at with dual Spirit + Lore), he’d see about an 11% increase in his Firewall damage with 9/12 instead of 20/1.
You could definitely argue the utility of Warmth outweighs the damage. But 11% more Firewall damage is also decent. Will help with the cold immunes as he progresses through Hell.
Thanks for the replies, the info here is very helpful.
As I level and get more + skill gear, I can fiddle with the levels of Warmth and Fire Mastery.
Two questions, though:
Do I eventually want to put some points into Ice Bolt? Or is Orb strong enough without them?
If I don’t put any points into Ice Bolt, should I go ahead and max both Warmth and Fire Mastery?
Thanks!
Edit: I haven’t done the respec yet, but I just spent a few minutes playing around with my level 6 unsynergized Firewall in NM, and it’s surprising how powerful it is. Being specced for it is going to be awesome, I can tell.
İmo once u get firewall to a decent dmg level that can handle cold immunes dump your points into orb synergy
U will be using orb more then firewall for general trash clearing so higher dmg orb is more useful then higher dmg firewall
So i would max firewall, 1 fire mastery, 1 warmth
Then dump the rest to orb synergy (after cold mastery) then go back and dump points into warmth
I think that which is better will come down to your playstyle preference. So, once you respec, pay attention to how you are using the skills. If you find yourself using Firewall as your main attack and are only using Orb for immunes and CC, then skip Ice Bolt. If you are using FO as your main killer and only breaking out Firewall for immunes, then once you have Firewall to a point where it feels like it’s doing the job comfortably, you can start investing in Ice Bolt.
Thanks again for the replies, everyone.
After Blizzard’s announcement yesterday that the new patch has “bug fixes” in it, I decided not to respec (yet). I’ve only got 2 respecs left on my sorc, and I don’t want to gamble that I use one up, only to find that Blizzard thought decent Firewall damage was a bug. I’ve known Blizzard long enough that I can smell an incoming nerf, so I’m going to wait and see what they do.
Well, I decided to bite the bullet and go ahead and respec. I followed TinneOnnMuin’s recommendations, and I’m very happy with the result. Great damage, for sure. Thanks for the input!
If they do nerf FW next month, I’ll just re-roll. It doesn’t take that long to level up, and I’ve saved all my leveling gear.
You can also farm a token for a respec.
If you’re running andariel and meph on Hell you’ll have plenty of those essences anyway and then only need the ones from diablo and baal. Both also good to farm with dual spec.
Well, that was fun while it lasted. Re-rolling now.