I just watched some D4 footage again and the explosion of the Sorceress Fireball skill looks very much like a fire-version of the Arcane Orb detonation, which got me thinking.
Maybe the Scorch or Obliteration rune for Arcane Orb could be turned into Fireball.
Obliteration already kinda works like Fireball, but it does not look like it at all and it also does reduce the detonation radius.
There are already a few visuals in D3 that are Fireballs, like the Fireballs from the Fallen Shamans or Guardian Constructs and also procs from items like Cinder Switch or Gyana Na Kashu.
This new Fireball could simply increase the damage of Arcane Orb without reducing the detonation radius or even leave a pool of fire on the ground around the impact zone.
If Scorch gets replaced with Fireball, then the burning trail effect could be put on the Demon Hunterâs Immolation Arrow, or Molten Arrow as it was called previously:
Scorch is a pretty trash rune (the burn trails donât stack, so the damage is very mediocre), would probably be the logical one to replace if you wanted something to be more like Fireball.
Also, the skill is called âArcaneâ Orb, so it probably shouldnât have more than one fire rune. Right now it has mostly arcane runes (unruned, Obliteration, Arcane Orbit), then one each of fire/lightning/cold (Scorch, Spark, Frozen Orb). Wouldnât really make sense for Obliteration to be a fire rune too. Makes more sense to change Scorch to something more fireball-y. And actually useful. Leave unruned, Obliteration, and Arcane Orbit as arcane. Makes more sense for a skill called âArcaneâ Orb.
I wouldnât get your hopes up though, doubt weâll see much in the way of rune changes at this point. Especially changes that would involve a change in the animation of a skill. That takes substantially more work than just tweaking numbers. They might be able to just tweak the Scorch animation I guess to remove the fire trail but use the rest of the animation? Either way though, I wouldnât have high hopes.
This is stupid, since when are youtube videos classified as âimagesâ?
Back on topic, Iâd replace that lame Arcane Orbit with anything at this stage. Who uses that junk??? And I was looking forward to Molten Arrow. Immolation Arrow doesnât have the trail, does it?
Somethingâs changed because Trust Level 2 people used to be able to embed YouTube videos into their posts. I just checked, by trying to embed the video you linked in the opening post, and got a message telling me I canât post images.
oof, that means that Scorch is even worse than I thoughtâŚ
But the fire trail from Mammoth Hydra does stack, right?
Yeah, that makes sense.
Also, I think Obliteration should INCREASE the detonation radius, rather than decreasing it. imo it just does not feel good to use it, especially since there is no rune that keeps the base skill as it is, and Obliteration decreases the AoE, which feels like a nerf.
In D3 classic, when all runes of Arcane Orb did arcane damage, the runes did increase the damage of the orb, increased detonation radius and reduced resource cost, which are al gone now (there was the pierce rune, which is now Frozen Orb and Arcane Orbit is still the same).
imo one of these rune - preferably a Fireball rune - should increase the damage of the Orb, and another rune - an arcane one - should increase the detonation radius.
Obliteration could increase the AoE and Scorch could be a Fireball that increases the damage. Would perfectly fit imo.
It depends, I think.
I donât know how difficult it would be to do it, but to make this new Fireball rune, they could take the Arcane Orb graphic from the unruned skill as a base, replace the orb with one of the Fireball graphics that are already in the game (which I mentioned in the original post) and use the detonation animation from Scorch.
So the graphics are all already there. Not sure how much work that would be, but I would be awesome to have a Fireball in D3 on the Elemental Caster Class.
Yeah, that could work, but I personally have a huge dislike for the gigantic, black boulder (as wella s the overlay black ball on Spark and the giant white sphere of Frozen Orb - all of them are just unnecessarily large).
I wondered this as well.
Previously I could put videos in my posts, but apparently no longer (or it maybe is a bug, dunno).
Yeah, it did work for me in the past (probably even last week), but now it doesnât. Maybe its a bugâŚ
Yeah, I agree. The base rune doesnât really deal enough damage. Obliteration does more damage but reduces the AoE, which doesnât really feel that good in actual use. Iâve played with Obliteration a bit, but gave up on it because the reduced AoE really doesnât make it all that great.
Since theyâve buffed Frozen Orb, itâs really the only rune worth using. It has the highest damage AND the best AoE. Arcane Orbit is interesting because it changes the mechanics of the skill and you can make more of a melee build. None of the other runes are really worth using.
smhâŚ
why?
there probably is no good reason for thatâŚ
I feel the same.
I often level new characters just for fun, and often when I level a Wizard, I just use the unruned version of Arcane Orb, because it looks good and it feels god to use. I donât even bother to use a runed version of it, because they look weird (like the giant spheres of Frozen Orb, Scorch or Spark), and Obliteration feels like a nerf and also looks worse than the unruned version.
Obliteration could simply be replaced with the visuals of the unrined version and has its explosion size increased.
And not just by a bit, but by a mile and a half.
Arcane Orb could really use some love.
Blizzard really made a mistake when they only buffed the Frozen Orb rune instead of the entire Arcane Orb skill + runes. With the exception of the Frozen Orb rune, Arcane Orb is such a underwhelming skill imo, especially considering how high the resource cost is to even use the skillâŚ
All secondary skill are kinda bad on their own when you compare them to Disintegrate. Disintegrate is even much stronger than Ray of Frost, because Disintegrate ticks more often per second than it should (iirc).
On its own Disintegrate is the best secondary skill by a mile and a half, so what they can do is either buff all skills and runes expect Disintegrate and Frozen Orb, or nerf Disintegrateâs tick rate and Frozen Orb.
In the latter case, they also had to buff a few legendaries, so builds are still on par with each other, but that is not as much work as buffing every other skill and rune.
Next patch is going to be major balance patch, so there is a possibility that it gets addressed there. That also would be a perfect time to change Scorch into Fireball and to change Immolation Arrow into Molten Arrow,
They Removed Molten Arrow from the Demon Hunter before the game went into beta, so only the footage of Molten Arrow from when the DH was announced exists. Later wen RoS came out and the Wizard was turned into more of an Elemental Caster, they gave the Molten Arrow effect to the Arcane Orb rune Scorch, which imo does not fit on that skill.
Yes, however Arcane Orb imo takes the cake (or at least ranks up there) because compared to itâs own rune, Frozen Orb, the damage output of every other Arcane Orb variant (both rune and non-rune) is far less.
That said, if blizzard does actually use the patches after this upcoming one to address builds at not just the level of sets and/or legendary powers but also deeper into individual skills and/or passives, then I would be rather delighted, as there are a lot of skills and passives (all classes included) that really need some love and attention. Of course, Iâm not holding my breath for it, but it would be great if that were to happen.
Nope. Well, I mean technically yeah, the fire trail is the bulk of the damage in the Scorch rune. But it does very little damage, because it canât stack. Letâs say you attack at 2 APS. And are fighting a high HP stationary target (say an RG). You cast 10 Scorches over 5 seconds. You deal 2210% weapon damage from the 10 explosions, plus 734% from the 5 seconds of non-stacking fire trail. Thatâs 2944% total weapon damage over the 5 seconds. Because the trail doesnât stack, after the first cast of Scorch in an area, all subsequent casts do very little damage, until the trail from the first cast expires (itâs not as bad if youâre spreading them around attacking a bunch of enemies, but itâs terrible for single target). Contrast that with Obliteration, which would deal 7000% weapon damage from 10 casts. Scorch is pretty garbage in comparison, primarily because the fire trails donât stack. If they did, stack, youâd deal (221+734%)* 10 = 9550% total weapon damage, because youâd get full value each cast from the fire trail. That would be much better.
Blizzard works the same way (overlapping casts donât stack).
And it gets even worse once you factor in Unstable Scepter. Scorch is actually far and away the worst rune once you factor in the wand, too.
The 450% damage bonus from the wand applies to both the fire trail and the explosion. But the double explosion ONLY applies to the explosion part. So youâre doubling only a small portion of the damage dealt by the rune, in contrast to all the other runes, where the double explosion doubles a much larger proportion of the overall damage dealt by the rune.
A rune like Obliteration, where all of the damage is the explosion, gets the most benefit from the doubling explosion effect of Unstable Scepter. The same is true for Arcane Orbit (all damage in explosion). A rune like Frozen Orb, where a big chunk of the damage is still in the explosion, also benefits pretty decently from the double explosion of Unstable Scepter. A rune like Scorch, where only a small portion of the damage is in the explosion gets very little benefit from the Unstable Scepter double explosion.
Unstable Scepter makes Scorch even worse in relation to the other runes, because Scorch benefits the least from the double explosion part of Unstable Scepter. All the other runes get a larger relative multiplier from the double explosion part of Unstable Scepter.
This alone is a good enough reason for turning Scorch into Fireball, which would just (significantly) increase the base damage of the explosion, instead of creating an unnecessarily large black boulder that pierces though enemies and leaves a trail of fire on the ground.
Blizzard is by far the worst skill in the Wizards arsenal of active skills, even when you donât factor in any legendaries that buff skills.
imo Blizzard should have a cooldown of maybe 10 to 15 seconds and have its damage significantly increased, so that it feels much more impactful (something similar could also work with Meteor).
Yes, I agree with that, but the solution then would be to nerf Frozen Orb and increase the damage multiplier on Unstable Scepter, so all runes are equally powerful.
Yeah, I have already posted a few threads on what Active Skills could get adjusted (on the PTR Forum as well as on the General Forum), but maybe I also should make one about Passive Skills as well (although other people have done so already).
Donât get me started on the tiniest of things blocking the trajectory and triggering the explosions far sooner than intended, like a leaf on the groundâŚ
Theoretically there also could be a rune for Arcane Orb that causes the skill to work like Cluster Arrow, where the orb will only detonate at the spot where you target your mouse cursor.
The Spark rune lands where your mouse cursor is. It arcs up and then lands wherever you were pointing. The damage is pretty low though. IIRC it zaps for half the tooltip damage while in the air, then lands and explodes for the other half the tooltip damage. And the tooltip damage is quite low to begin with, so only doing half off it per zap is pretty bad. Frozen Orb has similar mechanics (shards while it travels, then explodes at the end) but way higher damage numbers. Spark could actually be decent if they gave it the Frozen Orb treatment and just buffed itâs damage numbers.