So I am playing Impale Strafe in GRs this season (like all of us probably).
I started with fire as I had two items with + fire damage but then crafted another Guardian’s bracer and got an ancient with cold. Since my previous bracer was crappy I decided to switch to cold. It felt like I didn’t get a boost at all even though the previous bracer had no crit and low stats, maybe even slightly slower speeds.
Is fire better for speed GRs or are they equal? I see build guides that suggest fire but I believe I also heard somewhere that it doesn’t really matter.
Hi, fire is better than cold. Impale hits harder with chemical burn (fire school) and scale way better with wrists(20% fire damage), quiver (20% fire damage), gloves / magefist (20% fire damage). convention of element ring (200%fire damage).
You need to farm more till you have some luck with the right gear/rolls.
Good luck.
Fire is single target, dot buffed byy s6. Does not benefit from subsequent 25000%
Cold penetrates in strait line, benefit from subsequent 25000% s6 bonus
Lightning circulates near by mobs, have chance to ricochet same target(elite), there fore only rune to proc 75000 and chance of 25000 on same target. AOE.
Lightning=cold for AOE
Lightning best for Solo up to 2 min spd tiers
Fire best for rgk/elite focused pushing
Cold turns out bit awkward among the 3 ele as it significantly slower than lightning of solo spd.
Fire is extremely bad solo speed. If group spd, should bundle with a trash clearer. Lightning excels at killing trash for fire to snipe on elite in dual impale speeds.
Fire is best for solo unless as DMKT suggests you’re willing to change your play style for Cold. Lightning is bad. Everything else is worthless.
Fire is excellent all the time unless you pull too many mobs because this makes it so you cannot maintain the burn stack on the targets you want. You can usually resolve this by simply moving slightly slower through the rift and killing everything along the way. When you focus on the same targets, they die super fast. When you attempt to burn down large groups, you can’t maintain the burn stack on specific targets and it will feel like nothing is dying.
I think it is most obvious that you have not tested with Fire and are disparaging it because you like to use the other rune. Fire is utterly amazing in speed because the dot melts things right away. You only need to worry about building up the dot stacks when pushing, where Fire also excels. Maybe next time try out something before pretending you know enough about it to give advice on it pal.
GPH and XP/Hr don’t lie. I started season with fire and it’s pure rgk build now.
Yes you have much to learn strafe impale restriction is run speed, not kill speed. Show me how your fire can reach 46s speed on crushing tiers. You want ultra fast turn ins for Xp/h or Leg/hr
As i said, it’s not my loss. I am about to full 150 aug my builds.
Are speeds only delegated to the 2 min and below category?
I absolutely agree that lightning is superior for solo speeds for 2 min and under, but why do people dismiss high GR’s at a slower pace for efficiency? LoD WoL monk comes to mind and soulnsane took first GR 150 world playing SSF by doing 3+ min “speed runs”. Anyhow,
Fire excels at higher GR’s, so if someone chose to do 125’s in 3 minutes with fire as opposed to 118’s at 2 mins with lightning, the XP/HR is similar, splitting hairs, especially if you consider key efficiency vs loot efficiency.
This makes cold the oddball here, but depending on how one wants to play, both fire and lightning are good for solo speeds.
It’s underrated actually. On paper cold would be assumed the best rune, but because in fast speeds barely anything is lined up straight and you don’t have time to position yourself to hit things in a straight line, lightning becomes superior as the ricochet bounce almost guarantees to hit.
You are right Di. +14 tiers XP doubles, 4 min 134 = 2 min 120 in Xp/h. I don’t think fire has that big of advantage but if one is willing to play this style then why not.
With my current Fire build I literally cannot do GRs that are lower than 120 because everything dies too fast and I run out of Hatred. I haven’t figured out if running 120 in 3 mins or 125 in 4.5 mins is better, though I usually prefer the 125. Running 120 and getting a Power or Conduit makes it difficult because everything dies too fast and I can’t keep up Hatred.
I also love how with Fire you don’t have to finish off enemies. You get them down 80-90% and let the burn kill them while you move on to the next mobs.
The only time Fire is kinda bad is when I get a wide open map and I can’t keep the group size small.
But darn Wudijo did his rank 1 clear with Cold so now I’m wondering if that was just a preference or if Cold really is the way to go to progress. I’m currently stuck at 132 with my Fire build, though I have plenty of room for improvement with paragons, ancients and gem upgrades.
As I understand it the best is 2 minutes (at 90 or above) for most efficient item farming and 3 minutes for XP?
I agree with you on the slower time. Seems like people should see the 2-3 minute rule as a general guideline and not set in stone for all builds. Fire Inna’s Monk was the same I believe, I think I could do quite a bit higher for a small time penalty so that felt correct.
I’ve seen high GR people run lightning for group exp metas. 120s sub 2 minutes. Fire is garbage for trash clearing, but it is much better for elites and rift guardian.
pretty sure that’s not accurate, but feel free to show me wrong.
if it were true, then Echoing fury would not increase the fire burn damage as much as it does. the damage would be almost completely unnoticeable, like grevious wounds is almost zero.
Which part is inaccurate? The Fire rune doesn’t pass through or bounce so it can’t hit subsequent targets and the +25000 damage is only on additional targets.
The dot benefits from the s6 bonus. I’m not sure how you think echoing fury is affecting it. Does the dot damage scale with attack speed? It doesn’t seem like that would be related to the shadow set.
I’ve also heard the dot stacks, but I’m not sure the mechanics there. Maxroll doesn’t mention anything about the stacking effect, so maybe it doesn’t.
oh i thought you said the dot doesnt get the shadow set bonus damage.
also, yes the dot scales with attack speed. by far the best rune for single target damage, but the other runes arent bad either with stricken.
So let’s get mathematical here:
Fire rune
Damage: 941,511,989,566
Burn Damage: 627,674,659,711
Lightning rune
Damage: 941,511,989,566
First Target Bonus: 94,151,198,956,608
Subsequent Target Bonus: 31,383,732,985,536
Cold rune
Damage: 941,511,989,566
First Target Bonus: 94,151,198,956,608
Subsequent Target Bonus: 31,383,732,985,536
So what do we see here. We see that lightning and cold are far superior for clearing aoe while Fire rune does almost double the single target damage. This is what makes impale so great, you can choose the rune depending on your goal and there’s a lot of flexibility. Fire for single target power, Cold for pixel tight packs, and Lightning for spread aoe.