Frozen orb is the main attack and a lot more damaging. Fireball is mostly a backup for cold immunities. But I’ve read many sources saying that the optimal DPS (at least when you can stand still and Spam) is to cast fireballs between Orb cooldowns. They claim that you can squeeze in 2-3 fireballs between every Orb but I can’t figure out how to effectively squeeze in even 1…
Orb has a 1 second cooldown but it also has a 0.5 second global cooldown during which you can’t cast ANY spells as far as I can tell. So that means you have 0.5 seconds to squeeze in fireballs without delaying the next Orb which would be a dps loss and thus defeat the whole purpose.
If I pay close attention to the cooldowns and time it perfectly I can barely fit in 1 fireball and even that slightly delays the next orb. For how much effort and attention this requires it doesn’t seem worth it at all (especially on hardcore). I tried using hotkeys to alternate the skills fast on the same button, assign to different mouse buttons and hold both down, and try to carefully alternate between two buttons which is the only way I can get it to work semi consistently.
I have no idea how do people squeeze in 2-3 balls when I can’t even do 1 reliably. 105FCR breakpoint would make 1 more feasible but there is no way to do more than that that I can figure out. And even 1 requires so much babysitting of the cooldowns that it doesn’t seem worth it.
Idk, I wouldn’t worry about it honestly. You can still squeeze fireballs in, does it really matter if you waste a 1/4 second that you didn’t frozen orb because you casted one more fireball? I’d argue, it doesn’t. Just spam those spells the way you like, don’t worry about it, and have fun 
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That’s a good point lol.
But if all that effort ends up barely breaking even or being a dps loss. I might as well just faceplant on the frozen orb button and not worry about fireball at all - which is pretty much what I’ve been doing 
But I’m trying to optimize 
Just dont bother to squeeze in fireballs in between, really not worth it tbh
Also i would highly recommend firewall instead of ball as a backup skill
Thanks, I actually respecced into Orb / firewall yesterday and I’m liking it so far. The potential seems a lot higher. Definitely takes getting use to and the initial period was very rough and I almost killed myself a few times (playing hardcore) but I’m getting better at it.
I used to have orb and fireball both on left click. And right click was essentially permanent teleport. Now both firewall and teleport are on right click so I’ve had cases of accidentally teleporting into mobs, casting firewall instead of teleporting, and also running into mobs while trying to cast Orb that’s on CD from firewall.
But yeah, firewall is very strong when you can position the merc to tank stuff in the right place. Does more singletarget damage than fireball and A LOT more aoe damage than either fireball or orb. I actually have several skillpoints unnasigned still because I’m not sure if I want to put them into beefing up orb or firewall further (right now theyre about halfway in both trees with some points in both masteries and synergies). I prefer Orb as the main, default skill but even a maxed out Orb doesn’t fare that well above Players 1-3. A partially maxed firewall is doing fine in higher player counts and has potential to get even stronger.
İf you are to build around firewall you should go for a tankier setup and tank yourself as much as u can as well as merc to hit with firewall
But imho after maxing out orb, synergy, enough mastery orb is still more reliable and also my firewall after this kills cold immunes in one touch now so the extra dmg would not benefit more tbh
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you cannot fireball between orbs, you need to wait the orb-cd until you can cast a spell, casting a FB there will just delay the next orb.
It makes sense to cast firewalls between orbs if there is a good spot for it tho …
Firewall and Orb share the same cooldown. I think somewhere between 1-1.5 seconds.