This weapon needs utility support like a stacking rend over time
4 Likes
I genuinely do not understand why you’d use meteor shower. The opportunity cost is still huge compared to literally doing anything else.
I’ve literally done the simplistic math here: Meteor Shower exists and is still the worst ability in the game
Even after the buff, you’d have to hit at least 3 targets for the whole 6 seconds to barely outperform light attacks during the same duration, and that’s if none of those light attacks crit or have enchanted or 50 INT bonus.
“But it performs well in wars” is not something I understand. With those 6 seconds you could easily use a refreshing move ice gauntlet to perform more Icestorms per minute than ever weaving in the suicidal Meteor Storm.
To put things in perspective, Ice storm does 255% weapon damage over its duration without any of the perks in its branch.
With ALL of the perk upgrades for Meteor shower branch, AND the new PTR buff, you would STILL fall short at 244% weapon damage! I just don’t get the logic here.
At the very very thinnest silver lining, the skill can be used over walls at some angles in OPR.
I just don’t understand and really want an explanation as to why this skill is the way it is. It serves no purpose because it is weaker than any other option. Using it only deprives you of a skillslot better used for something else. Even unpopular skills like Cyclone or Wind chill theoretically have some utility or purpose. Meteor Shower has no utility, and only finds benefit over other firestaff options in a miraculous situation where you hit 5+ enemies for 6 seconds that move in and out of the zone to proc the initial hit.
Don’t even get me started on the armor perk. A full health damage bonus perk for a damage over time skill defies all logic to me.
6 Likes
Maybe should be changed so can be used like Rain of Arrows. Can be cast at a better range. Even if this was given a 1 second cast time, with the increased range it would still be better
1 Like
Add big meteor every like 2 seconds that staggers and does extra damage, cause if you stayed in a meteor and got hit by it, you deserved it lol.
3 Likes
Actually the math shows that a single meteor show caps at around 45-48k Damage on a single full channel cast. A storm only does around 25-30k. Additionally, Meteor can stack on top of ice storm dealing insane aoe pressure (upwards of 1.8k damage a second).
Meteor also refreshes like icewar. Even with optimal stacking meteor will outdamage anything in the mages arsenal. It has deceptive mechanics, and is very unstable in that sense. If it was changed to just applying burning effect instead of initial damage and removed the channel meteor should have an amazing position.
The OP Is right however, fire staff is often if not always invalidated because of its lack of utility. having rend applications probably by reworking reheat or rune of helios would massively empower the mage in terms of its competitive options vs other weapons for magic users.
I highly desire meteor just be a single damage application with probably 240-280% weapon damage, and a very long (40-50 sec) cooldown. If it aoe staggered it’d be great.
2 Likes
I do not understand how you got that math.
Meteor shower on PTR deals one initial hit of 34% weapon damage and 30% weapon damage 7 times over 6 seconds with all perks allocated (except empowering Meteor Shower) = 244% weapon damage per cast.
Ice storm deals 17% damage three times a second for 5 seconds = 255% damage
If you take into account Weakening Gust, Punishing Storm, and Ultimate Chill, you are looking at significantly more damage output per cast, at least 318.75% weapon damage from Ultimate Chill alone.
That is not even including the fact that you can continue doing other attacks during Ice Storm, which would dramatically improve damage output over Meteor Shower over any metric of time.
Ice storm builds in wars use Refreshing Frost and Pylon/Ice Spike to roughly have a 6 second cooldown Ice Storm, you can’t upkeep that cast rate if you are switching to Meteor Shower. Over a minute you will cast at least 10 Ice Storms WITHOUT Refreshing Move, adding in Meteor Shower will only mean replacing Ice Storm casts with the weaker Meteor Shower.
As for Meteor outdamaging the rest of Fire Staff’s kit, barring extremely gratuitous circumstances where you are hitting 5+ people the whole 6 seconds, that seems mathematically impossible too. I think you know how much damage you can do with those 6 seconds doing other things? Light attacks hit once a second, that’s 600% weapon damage over 6 seconds, not counting the burns, crits, enchanted, INT passives, and keen procs. You’d need to channel Meteor shower on at least 3 people to outperform light attacks.
Heavy attacks grant more casts of other abilities as well, which means more Pillars/Fireballs over time.
For example; Pillar of Fire, hitting three people is 510% damage and with Refreshing pillar of fire, has a 3 second Cd with maxed Refreshing. You’d cast it twice for 1020% weapon damage (not including First Strike or critical hits) before Meteor Shower is done channeling for 732% (244% x3) weapon damage (762% weapon damage with Empower Meteor Shower perk).
I calculated using %weapon damage because throwing random theory-crafted damage output is not standardized across all players.
6 Likes
Fire staff on its own is just meh, a weapon designed to only do damage was nerfed to the ground and now actually does less damage than other options that also has utility/cc built in their kit.
2 Likes
Tweaking numbers will never be enough to make Meteor Shower viable. The ability needs a major rework (just like many other useless abilities and passives).
3 Likes
It should be a CC ability imo
1 Like
should rather be a mighty meteor. instead of a shower.
1 Like
ideally yes that would be cool
this was a mage 
Yup. You can hop into an Explosive Cannon or Fire Launcher and deal almost twice as much damage as Meteor Storm for as long as you have ammo.
1 Like
This 100%. Fire staff hardly has any CC and what CC is does have is useless because incinerate doesn’t have grit so you’re usually dead before you can get it off. Adding CC to meteor shower would give it some point and force an interesting choice between using it and, say, pillar of fire.
Edit: I’d suggest a “blind” aoe ability which melee can’t attack through because they can’t see through the smoke. Literally make their screens go black for x seconds. This would be useful in a variety of circumstances, especially to mages.
Im thinking a rend over time since IG already has an aoe slow so like 10% rend every 2 second with a max of 30% rend
1 Like
Hi there CamelotMadness, thanks for sparking this discussion on the meteor shower ability. It looks like a topic that the Dev team might want to read through so I will send it on up. Take care!
1 Like
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