Build/Playstyle Questions with Flameforged Staff

[Nobear]

I'm about to buy a Flameforged Hexstone staff for my lvl 52 Sorc.

I have a question regarding how having a weapon like this with an OP proc does or doesn't affect your skills or skill usage. What I mean is, if I had a basic staff with high damage and no proc (say a Beetleborn Antenna), I wouldn't go out of my way to autoattack. I would always prioritize my skills, and only autoattack when skills were on cooldown.

Now I've seen this Flameforged Staff in action with its Wildfire proc, and obviously it's in my best interest to get in at least one or two autoattacks early, perhaps right after I cast my first spell. But am I going to want to autoattack a lot? From what I've both observed and read, Wildfire seems to have a high proc chance, and it also seems to spread on its own without having to keep autoattacking. But once I've spread Wildfire to a group, would autoattacking more do anything to spread it faster or increase the number of stacks?

My current build is shield/clock/fireball/lightning, with clock mastery, int, str, dmg, crit passives, and remaining points into fireball mastery. I have always charged my spells and prioritized using them as soon as they come off cooldown. I've been using a Glint Gun, which I've grown tired of. I don't consider its proc to be good enough or have a high enough proc chance to be worth prioritizing autoattacks, and I rarely get an autoattack in prioritizing my 3 damage spells.

I am wondering if maybe I should even replace lightning with heal, if I'm going to want to be autoattacking more now anyway.

Thoughts?

[Nobear]

Thanks for the advice.

1) Well, damage passive gives you more than an Exquisite Chaos jewel, but I guess that's still low for 5 points. I'll try Int/Str/Dex, and see what I can do with those 5 points.

2) I bought my staff and tried it in a normal Cryogem Mines and Northal run, and then for half an hour of km3 farming. First, it felt awkward getting used to the close range and targeting of a staff, because I've used only guns on my sorc for a long time. So you are saying that once Wildfire procs on a group of mobs, there's no point trying to proc it again on the same group, and I should be nuking normally giving spells priority to refresh/spread/stack it instead? Will Wildfire ever run out so I need to proc it again, and if so, how can I tell?

And you say always charge clock (which I do), but don't charge other damage spells unless I have a specific need to stun again with Fireball? So you wouldn't charge Fireball, Ice, Light or Gale (if you had them) while dpsing unless a specific utility need called for it?

3) I've read that Ice is better for mobs and Light is better for bosses. But Light gives a chance to AoE. Ice doesn't look like an AoE skill by reading the tooltip. Am I wrong? My other reasoning was that I thought I had enough crowd control with clock mastery and Fireball lol, but maybe you can never have too much :P.

4) Hey I agree with you about Lifegiver lol. Let me tell you though, the irony is that I've been called the most nab mage and a garbage mage for NOT having "mana" skill, and people don't listen when I try to reason that my damage and control helps the party more than enabling people to be poor and lazy about pots. It was especially bad when I was running the Ursoth event. I pretty much avoided using my sorc sometimes. Groups literally left me alone in Ursoth because they were such noobs that they thought I was the noob, and didn't stop to think about how I was actually helping them win the fight. One time people even told me to go hang myself lol. Fortunately that crap doesn't seem to be as big an issue closer to level cap >.>

Going back to Lifegiver was just a thought. I actually specced back into it when I was trying out my new staff, and I kept it for probably less than 10 min and remembered how useless it is lol. I was just thinking that, with its longer cooldown, I might have more time to autoattack with it. But maybe if I don't usually charge some/most of my skills, this will also give me more time to autoattack. I know I could always autoattack when my spells are off cooldown, but then I feel like I have wasted points in my build.

Oh, and why did you mention cryogen worm in relation to spamming Ice? Do you just mean when there are packs of mobs close together? Again, I don't see the AoE in this skill reading the tooltip, can you please explain?

I know I asked a lot of questions this time. Sorry and thank you in advance!

[Nobear]

1. try gale mastery since I see you use it. 4 points there should suffice, also 1% into light mastery will deal ~200 extra damage on light cast, this should be more than one point into damage passive.

2. You can tell a wildfire proc has ended when the animation runs out.

3. Ice works on mobs some mobs better than others, ice and light are both a must for me at bosses. Ice freezes and light deals out beast damage.

4. Yep you shouldn't see anyone asking for heal skill at endgame. Too many questions will answer them layta!

Thanks, you answered most of my questions actually.

1) I actually don't use Gale, I was just mentioning it as an example when asking what to charge or not to charge, and in what cases. I must admit that between the three classes (and I have all three at 52+, you met my 56 warrior Mupim briefly today lol), Gale is the only movement speed booster that I never quite got the hang of. The other classes seem to have more control in the movement boosters. I tried Gale before and it seemed hard to predict where I'd end up, or to change the course mid-flight. Maybe I just didn't practice it enough.

2) The animation is those sparkly things right?

3) I just read the tooltips again and Ice is only AoE if charged. Light has a 25% chance to be AoE if charged and 15% uncharged. The damage range differences don't look all that huge to me. Is it the bigger crit bonus that makes Light much more damaging than Ice on average? But then Ice has that DOT. hmm...

I'm not a fan of switching skills for bosses vs mobs, but I guess I'll bite the bullet if it will make that big a difference. Even though it's not your preference, do you think I could be strong just focusing on four skills: shield, clock, fireball and pick either Light or Ice? Or would skill switching really make a big difference for endgame/elite maps?

Thanks again.

[Nobear]

So it seems you use every Sorc skill in PvE except Curse and Lifegiver lol. Do you respec every time you switch between different content (e.g. hard elite, easy elite, km3) or keep the same build but just swap skills? Because I can tell you I've bought plat once or twice, but respeccing that often would not be sustainable for me.

1) So do you charge Gale only when you use it for the movement, but not when you use it to DPS? Is it a regular part of your DPS rotation or more of a utility "oh no" button once you're more or less stationary in a fight? And what upgrades to take or not with it? I'm not sure what the "point blank" one does.

It seems you also imply that the speed set is superior to the Arlorian ring. Makes sense.

3) So to get it straight, for hard elite boss fights you use shield, Ice, Light, and for your fourth skill either FB or TS but not both? For hard elite mobs it's shield, Ice, FB and TS? And for easy elites or km3 it's what, Gale, Ice, FB and TS?

I've been pretty impressed with the TS mastery myself, and found its proc rate to be much better than you'd expect reading the tooltip. But I guess since Ice is a guaranteed freeze, it makes sense to use that as well on certain mobs. That said, why not charge FB instead for those mobs? With FB mastery, you can make the cooldown lower than the stun duration.

No wonder I haven't been noticing a bigger difference going from Glint gun to Flameforged staff in km3. I guess mobs need to survive longer for Wildfire to really shine. But I have been practicing and just getting used to a staff in km3 lol. Probably the thing that helped the most was not charging skills except TS, or FB only when I want to stun. I can get in plenty of autoattacks, and see that it procs frequently now. I also don't know if they changed this, but people used to complain that staffs couldn't autotarget while guns could. I could swear my staff was autotargetting lol. Only thing it can't do is hit enemies behind me as I'm running.

Your advice has been very helpful so far .

[Nobear]

Hey it's good to meet you man. I know what you mean about it feeling better to help someone who appreciates it and actually tries your advice lol. Some things are going to come down to personal preference and style, and I'm not trying to be a carbon copy of you exactly lol, but I've learned a lot and think I could learn more from you.

In all my time playing, so far I have met one noob who is hands down the most enjoyable and rewarding guy to help. Slowly but surely he's emerging from noobdom, and I think he'll be able to help me someday on my runs when he's maxed. He plays a rogue, but I play all three classes and there are also a couple of grateful sorcs in my guild, who have listened to my explanations of stuff like why damage and control are more helpful to the party than healing/mana. I've given some sorc advice to help them go from noob to decent, but told them to read the forums and especially this thread where my own questions are answered by a real pro lol.

I'd definitely be up for runs with you man. My ign's are: Mupim (56 tank w Glint Aegis of Grit and Nekro), Mucinex (53 sorc), and Azshandine (52 rogue). My rogue is currently using Zeus' old build with Glint Bow, but I want to buy dragon blades and switch to daggers at some point. Arcane ring shared by all 3 atm until I can afford separate rings :P.

As for elite umbral chasm, I haven't tried it yet but I'd like to. To give you an idea, my warrior had crap gear until recently and couldn't even survive pt1 mobs. Last night I tried pt1 again and he was a rock solid tank for all the mobs, only had problems stunning the boss which I posted about elsewhere. I also tanked normal umbral recently, and my survivability was similarly vastly improved. Currently sitting at 8,800+ HP and 3,500 armor, just respecced into a build aimed at tanking hard elites with just one attack skill and 3 support skills. So yes, I'd love to try elite umbral and get those axes for my house haha!

Back to sorcs: So with Gale, also uncharged when I'm DPSing rather than using it for movement? And what upgrades for Ice? You say I want to charge it in big pulls, so I'm guessing I want that 20% chance to spread to other enemies?