Inferno Needs More Firepower!

General Discussion
1

I just finished building an Inferno Sorceress and I have to say, even with the buffs from Patch 2.4, it’s still bad and completely outclassed by other Fire Skills - never mind other Skill Trees. So I was thinking on why that is and came up with a few issues that Inferno has handicapping it’s potential and some potential changes to address them.

1) Inferno is largely unaffected by increased cast rate. While Fireball can potentially double it’s rate of fire, Inferno has a static cast rate between each plume of flame. This leads to a huge damage deficit when compared to rapid fire attacks especially since cast rate is basically a required investment for every Sorceress. Skills with a cooldown such as Firewall or Blizzard, not only have better damage but also let the Sorceress move freely after casting so a faster cast rate allows her to “Fire and Flee” more efficiently.

I think the best way to address this is to have increasing cast rate reduce the gap between each individual plume that makes up the inferno. Perhaps a 6 frame gap may go as low as 3 frames (just to throw out some random numbers). Not only would this increase damage, it also makes Inferno a better AoE attack when spewed back and forth across the screen.

2.) Inferno is a single target skill in practice, Despite it’s long range and adjustable aim, Inferno is not a good skill for AoE damage. The AI pathing doesn’t usually line up single file for the Sorceress to torch them unless you’re in the Maggot Lair. Instead monsters typically spawn in a pack formation and close distance from multiple angles. This creates as situation where you’ll likely be mobbed and smacked out of your Inferno animation (which has a horrendously long start-up).

Now obviously skilled spacing with Teleport helps but it’s not as rewarding as it could be so here’s my suggestion. Each plume of flame currently increases in size as it flies away from it’s point of origin - my suggestion is to turn that visual effect up to eleven and to correlate the visual to Inferno’s hitbox. This would give Inferno a strong area of effect at long distance and a skilled Sorceress would be rewarded for maintaining that position. Aggressive packs of monsters would still be problematic but slower more passive targets would be much more manageable, adding an adaptive and rewarding gameplay dynamic.

3) Inferno sucks for close quarters combat. It’s startup frames are horrible and it’s DPS is miserable. Fireball carries forth thousands of fire damage in one hit while Inferno casts many small ticks of damage over time. If a single Fireball lands you’ll know you did something destructive while a single cast of Inferno may have singed an eyebrow if you’re lucky. Energy Shield does help counter this weakness, as it can stop you from entering hit-stun, but Fireball is still left with a far better run and gun playstyle.

The nature of Inferno doesn’t really allow for a mobile playstyle, nor should it, but if we’re stuck standing our ground against the forces of Hell, we should probably deal a little more damage. How about Inferno deals more damage at close range? It could even match the blue plume of flame within the first couple yards so that players have a visual que to aim with. This gives us greater reward for greater risk.

Even with all these buffs Inferno still leaves the Sorceress with clunky mobility and doesn’t play well with other skills but, if you ask me, that gives it character. Anyway if you’re still reading, thanks for that and feel free to comment, critique, or otherwise eviscerate my post. I hope to see you all on the first ladder for D2R!
-GG

2 Likes
2

my bladesin with bladefury ran to hell with a inferno sorc. id say both skills are very similar in the way they work, just that blade fury uses weapon damage. my bladesin was viable, the inferno sorc sucked hard.

3

I like your post on inferno. I think your proposals could address the problems inferno has while giving the spell character.

4

It sounds as if the startup animation length and length between plumes is the biggest issue. Having Faster Cast effect that seems like the first obvious step to try.

Would it be possible to test in combination with Glacial Spike? Maybe something like freezing enemies with the Spike first and then Using Inferno on the frozen enemies?

5

Been thinking about Inferno some more and what would be needed to make it usable.

Faster Cast not effecting it is still a major issue that needs to be addressed, but I thought of a few more ideas:

1: Add a Monster Flees effect

Specifically, monster flees when taking damage (so Fire Immunes not effected). This helps with a lot of the problems using Inferno, in that you can’t move while the monster comes up to hit you. It makes sense thematically, as Inferno is basically a Flamethrower, and one of the main uses of a Flamethrower was as a terror weapon to make people run away. It would also give Inferno some use as a utility skill for crowd control, the way Howl is used on the Barbarian. Allowing a Fire Sorceress to have some crowd control instead of always having to use Cold Skills for crowd control could be useful. Would also make +Inferno O-skills more useful. Even if it doesn’t do significant damage, it can be used for the flee effect.

2: Add “On Fire” as a damage over time effect

Inferno gives its damage as an average overtime, but that’s really just the average damage done to a monster in the line of fire. What if each plume of flame was treated like napalm or Greek fire? It “sticks” to the monster and then continues to do damage over a specific length of time, say 3 seconds? This would synergize extremely well with the Monster Flees effect. Basically, you hit the monster with sticky flame that causes it to run away while on fire, once the fire runs out it stops running away. This would also help the spell work with groups, as each monster runs away it opens up a lane to hit the next monster behind it.

Assuming we use the current damage of Inferno and apply that over the full 3 seconds that should be enough handle most monsters (depending on equipment). But Bosses would be a problem, (especially since they don’t flee). Unless the effect stacks, IE you hit the monster with 3 plumes, and then each of those plumes does the displayed damage for three seconds, that should allow an Inferno sorceress to handle a Boss. Might need to do some play testing to get the right damage for balance. This would also make the effect of Faster Cast rather important.

3: Add a damage to Fire Resistance effect

Basically, each plume that hits a monster damages the monster’s Fire Resistance by -X%. I’d also recommend letting this break immunities. Make it something like -5% and that means for immune monsters it only reduces resistance by -1%. That means for a Monster with 120 Fire Resistance you’d have to hit him with 21 Inferno Plumes to break his immunity. That way it’s not really useful against highly immune monsters, but against something just barely immune, like 100% Fire Resistance, or 105% Fire Resistance, Inferno can “burn through” the immunity and start letting you damage them. And if you are willing to stand your ground and cast Inferno at a 145% Fire Immune Pit Lord long enough to hit him with 46 Inferno plumes, I say hats off to you, and let the crazy Sorceress do some Fire Damage.

I know breaking Immunities is a sensitive topic, but there are so many Fire Immunes, that adding one additional skill that can break Fire Immunes can certainly help the game be less limiting on where a Fire character can play. Especially if it’s a skill that requires significant amount of effort and skill to apply. I mean, this isn’t like Conviction or even Lower Resist in how easy it is to apply the effect to a target.

Adding those three effects to Inferno would certainly make Inferno a skill that would see some use. Both as a utility skill, but also as a viable build that would play very differently than all the other Sorceress builds. And that would be a lot of fun.

1 Like
6

I wish Inferno was like Burning Hands from the Sorceress in Baldur’s Gate Dark Alliance…

7

too long didnt read

since inferno is a channel, the inferno should be a cone and grow in width the further it is from the player. but it would look a bit janky now if it always continued to the end, so inferno should end when you let go, rather than just letting all missiles continue to teh end

8

Inferno doesn’t need more power, it need mechanics

There are 3 mains ideas for buff inferno:

  1. widen the cone, most of the time done with side by side infernos

  2. inferno explodes the corpse of monsters on death

  3. while casting inferno your character generates an Apocalypse type fire effect to nearby mobs, like a 1 monsters wide patch of fire that spawn bellow monsters periodically like thunderstorm

9

look up my recent thread in regard to patch 2.5

its 1 of the skill i covered up :slight_smile: and is rdy to be forwarded to the devs when the 2.5 forum open up

edit: here …you know where to paste this up by looking at the address bar up top
d2r/t/my-full-list-for-25qol-skill-adjustementimprovements-additions/139701

10

Widen the cone, make it more consistent(not to brake into projectiles), add DoT burning effect(chance to make monsters flee?), the longer you chanel it the higher it’s dmg(with a cap).

1 Like
11

It seems this is everyone’s attitude, since no one responded to my actual suggestions:

1: Add Monster Flee Effect
2: Add damage over time effect ie make each plume sticky fire.
3: Add -5% to Fire Resistance per hit

Everyone keeps saying “widen the cone” but I don’t think that will solve Inferno’s problems since it will spread out the plumes and make it harder to hit and kill one monster rushing at you.

I’m suggesting a Monster Flee effect, because that will actually help with the main issue of Inferno - being stuck in one spot while continually casting it. Adding damage over time is then needed to kill monsters since they are now running away instead of standing in the cone. Adding minus fire resistance would give us a new mechanic to deal with Fire Immunes that is not as simple as Conviction or Lower Resist.

It’s also all very flavorful and fitting for the flamethrower type spell it is and would result in a skill that could be used as a main damage skill, or as a utility skill.

Can anyone please read my post and actually respond to the ideas?

12

did you even look at my thread ?

280 degree with fire going out all side at once except the back on top of
200% additionnal base fire dmg not enough ?

13

inferno by design is a bad skill. its single target, extremely slow to activate, and is a channel. you could set inferno to one shot all monsters it touched and it still wouldnt compete with some of the better builds in terms of clear speed. the design needs to change

the fear idea just doesnt make sense. all that sounds like to me is the monster youre actively trying to kill runs away from you while every other monster runs at you

the fire DoT has been talked about, thats just mechanically copying poison, i dont think we need to borrow poison mechanics to make inferno useful

-res is just buffing inferno, which doesnt do anything, because the design is bad in its entirety

you said cone wouldn’t work, but yes it would. idk why you think it woul dmake it harder to hit. the skill would obviously be reworked. its not gonna use the same little puny fires thats shot out now. imagine something like nova, but only in a cone, and grows away from you as you channel.

14

Well, that sounds like it’s going to take extensive programming to remake the entire skill. Not to mention new graphics and new animation. I don’t think we can get that. I thought you just wanted the plumes to shoot out in a wider cone. While probably doable, that would make monsters harder to hit.

Fear makes perfect sense thematically for a flamethrower. It works well with the current design of the skill, countering the main difficulty of using Inferno, which that once you start casting it you can’t run away yourself, so run and gun like with Fireball doesn’t work. Instead make the skill cause the monsters to run away. This is also low cost for the developers, only needing to add the Monster Flee mechanic which already exists in game.

As you point out there is the problem of killing a monster if it runs away, which is why I suggest a short timespan for the flee effect of 3 seconds, which is the same as on level 1 Howl. Howl is a useful ability, and I could see Inferno being used for crowd control by a Fire Sorceress, making Inferno a potentially useful utility skill for a Sorceress (especially since you don’t need any prerequisites to get it).

Additionally, adding damage over time helps to mitigate the monsters running away, since the monster will continue to take damage even once out of the line of fire. More importantly, it allows Inferno to have a more consistent amount of damage that is actually equal to what the display tooltip says it does. Right now, that damage is very inconsistent since it actually depends on how many times you hit the monster with an Inferno plume, and so the amount of damage you do to a monster is often significantly less than what the tooltip says you do. It’s also a relatively low cost solution fro developers, since damage over time exists in both poison and Open Wounds.

You object to copying a poison mechanic, but in fact if you read the actual description, I give it’s not the poison mechanic since it should stack. Which poison does not do. If Inferno is like a Flamethrower, (which is what it looks like), then this mechanic makes perfect sense for the skill. Each plume has a certain amount of damage that it will do when it hits a monster. That’s what would allow the damage to be accurately occurring as on the tooltip.

This would all give Inferno its own playstyle very different from Fireball, Nova, or Blizzard. It’s a spell that fixes you like a turret, and you flame away at all the monsters making them run away while on fire. Fun, thematic, and a flavorful fantasy that the devs ought to like.

The minus Fire Resistance would not only buff Inferno, but buffs the entire Fire tree, by giving Fire Sorceresses some way of dealing with Fire Immunes besides Infinity. Yet, it’s in a way that is relatively difficult to use, in that you actually have to hit the monster with a spell instead of an aura.

I don’t think you really gave much consideration to how my suggestions would all work together to make Inferno both a useful utility skill, and potentially a main skill (though probably not as powerful as Fireball).

You seem fixated on your solution of completely reprogramming the skill, but I don’t think that is a realistic expectation.

15

There is a constant in all Arpg

Skill Mechanic >>>>>>>>> skill raw power

1 Like
16

you seem focused on trying to balance a skill that sucks. you say fear = 3 seconds, but inferno is a bitrate skill, so it would be applying 3 seconds every frame the monster is in the inferno, so its indefinite for as long as the monster is in the inferno, so they will eventually run out of it… and its still single target, howl is AoE so it can actually clear all the monsters around u, not 1 lol

why do you think poison doesnt stack? multiple sources can stack and do their added damage. it doesnt always happen but it does happen. this would be more coding than just making a cone lol

-res doesnt break immunity in d2, only conviction and LR do, so it doesnt help with immunes. -res is just dmg% in a different way

i think you’re only interested in appealing to your own “flamethrower” fantasy. you could probably do 1 and 3 with soft modding now (definitely not 2, unless u did something wild with states maybe, dunno if possible) and test it out. i can definitely promise you itll be terrible. fear mechanics are pretty bad in d2

17

Hey the flee on hit idea is a neat concept! Here’s my take on the flamethrower…

  1. Inferno could blind it’s target while also increasing the users defense.

Like staring into the sun, the light emitted from the Inferno should blind anything looking into it, and while blind a monster’s chance to hit should suffer to some extent. When casting Inferno, the Sorceress is already targeted and standing still so the blinding effect won’t do much good until she needs to flee. The defense boost, however, might just be the thing she needs to stand her ground. If they combined this with an increased damage at close range, this skill could take a whole new lease on life.

  1. Buff Enchant

Inferno’s only synergy is with Warmth, just like Enchant. This puts the Inferno Sorc in an interesting position where she must max Warmth and using Enchant seems practical. Demon Limb gives us level 23 Enchant charges so investing points seems unwise but what if we were to drastically buff the base damage at level 1? This would increase the damage at higher levels while also making Enchant much more lucrative as a 1 point wonder. The new upgraded mercenaries should appreciate it.

1 Like