My lvl 111 Fireball is vastly more powerful than my lvl 113 Ring of Fire. Lvl 111 Fireball: 136 attacks 9,717 total damage 5.88% crits Lvl 113 Ring of Fire: 232 attacks 6,985 total damage 0% crits I thought the Ring of Fire might do better against a large number of enemies. So I went to Resolute Sewers and used Ring of Fire on the swarm of spiders. I got the same results. Am I missing something or should I just forget about Ring of Fire?
Ring of Fire has been whacked with the Nerf bat so many times that even the UFC has stopped calling it. Trying to understand the balancing in SotA is the path to madness. I'm not saying it isn't balanced after a fashion, just trying to keep track of the reasons for all the twists and turns over the years would result in a tome to rival the Nerconomicon.
Forget about ring of fire? No definitely not. Both of your attacks are doing tremendous amounts of damage. Ring of fire is much easier to apply because it is a stationary ring that you can draw enemies into and keep them in the circle. Fireball is a direct attack that also does great for dot damage, but it's harder to apply due to the way it is cast. They are both very powerful and can be used at the same time. You probably don't need to use both on non-boss enemies. But against a high hit point boss mob, you should try and apply the highest charges/ stacks of both ring and fireball and keep evaporate applied at all times for the most dps.
Thanks for that. I was fixing to give up on RoF, but I will keep at it. As Barugon said, I can use both. I wasn't sure if the smarter move was to put all XP into Fireball and not level RoF. I think I will do 2-to-1 on the leveling. I will keep Fireball higher, but won't neglect RoF fully.
And don't forget your overall attunement in fire plays a big role in damage for all your fire attacks. Your attunement is the average of your 10 highest fire skills. So lowering ring of fire would probably make your attunement less and indirectly make your fireball weaker. For xp purposes, Ring of Fire is a (2) meaning it costs twice as much xp to raise compared to Flame fist (1), Immolation (1), and ignite weapon (1). Fireball is a (3) so it costs triple the xp compared to the (1)'s. Ring of fire should most definitely be in your top 10 highest skills, because the only other xp cost similar in the fire tree is Fire Arrow (2). The 3 passives are all (4) and Fire Spec is (20) so it's very expensive. Eventually fire spec (if you use it), will not be in your top 10 highest skills, because it costs too much xp compared to the alternatives. Long story short - you want to raise something like Ignite weapon up to be one of your highest skills, even if you never use it at all. The additional fire attunement you gain, compared to the smaller xp cost, will give you more power with for all your fire magic overall.
Its ok, even more, the more powerfull you will be - the more important fireball would. I`m noticed that on my level, against anything less than 4k hp stacking RoF is useless (still there is some exceptions related to high resistant targets or very high respawn rate encounters). Still stacked x6 must have against fat targets becouse of fire resistance debuff. P.S. All active spells from fire tree worth to use + evaporation(one of the most OP combo ingame) + combo with death(forgot the name) add some heavy damage.
