Blizzballer: meteor or firebolt?

[stekkelino]

hi, ive decided to make a blizzballer for the new ladder but i cant decide wich way to go

either i max firebolt as a synergy to fireball or i use meteor as a synergy/secondary timerd spell wich will cost me more prequisites.

now the question is, using blizzard as my timered spell and fireball as my spammable spell (iceblast as secondary ice spammer) will i need a meteor too?
and will another meteor actually fit into my playing style casting blizz and then just spamming away(with fireball)?

the gained points i can use to put into cm, fm or another ice-prequisit.

[Noite Escura]

Untwinked? Meteor. IMO with 5+ skills or less and low FCR you'll feel lack of power x mana cost ratio of Fireball to rely extensively on it. Using Meteor + FB requires a bit of skill, but the result is very noticeable.

[PhatTrumpet]

Personally, I think Meteor is useful enough to justify the extra pre-reqs regardless of the context (twinked/untwinked, vita/block, whatever). I suppose if you had no Merc and no blocking Meteor might be more trouble to use than not, but how many people run without a Merc these days?

This is coming from a guy whose only Blizzballer didn't have Meteor.

[Ed from Russia]

I've always prefered Fireball on left mouse button, and Blizzard on right. So I'd definitely go for Fireball. Blizzard is an area spell, so it's good to have a quick-fire targeted spell beside it.

[PhatTrumpet]

That's not what he was asking at all. He's already planning to max Fire Ball. What he wants to know is if he should max Fire Bolt (purely as a synergy to Fire Ball) or Meteor (as a synergy to Fire Ball but also as a functioning timered fire spell, the drawback being a few extra pre-requisite skills).

[Ed from Russia]

sorry, should have read it properly I guess. I agree that Meteor is useful.

[stephan]

I disagree. I can't really think of any situation where one would desperately want to use it, certainly not considering what the end purpose of a blizzballer tends to be.

[PhatTrumpet]

It's not about desperately wanting to use it. It's about being useful enough to justify the 3 pre-requisite skills.

[BobTheWarrior]

I maxed meteor with my blizzballer and had occasion to use it more than a few times. It's paticularly useful against blood lords (I think, the vampire looking guys, usually in durance 3 and the arcane sanctuary). They tend to run to a corner and meteor/firewall you, and they're always cold immune in hell. So, do the same thing back to them, cast meteor and spam fireball.

I setup fireball on left-click and then hotkey teleport/blizzard/meteor on right click. When I meet up with a cold immune, set meteor on right click and alternate mouse buttons until their dead. Just count the fireballs you can shoot before you can cast another meteor and alternate accordingly. At 63-105FCR I think four fireballs per meteor cast is about right.

[TheMightyGoat]

If you want to run for keys I find Meteor to be the most useful against Nihlithak. Assuming you don't have something to prevent him from using Corpse Explosion, with Meteor you can just get close enough to cast a couple times and run away before things start dying.

[ioupainmax]

I would go meteor as it is very useful when you want to stay away from monsters and it has a big area of effect for clumps of cold immunes.

[Noite Escura]

Personally, I think Meteor is useful enough to justify the extra pre-reqs regardless of the context (twinked/untwinked, vita/block, whatever). I suppose if you had no Merc and no blocking Meteor might be more trouble to use than not, but how many people run without a Merc these days?

This is coming from a guy whose only Blizzballer didn't have Meteor.

My Blizzballer didn't have meteor either, since I didn't started from scratch. I wouldn't put it the way you did: "regardles of context". I'm adept of the idea that is always better to make one attack tree stronger than the other. That's why putting the 3 points you save from Meteor in Cold Mastery or Ice Bolt are advocated. In a build that is tight in skill points available all of them should go in improving your best skill: Blizzard. this is the one you will use most, be it for bosses or large mobs. Though, then I say untwinked weights in my decision i take in factor the speed at which you will kill Cold immunes.
Meteor, if well used will greatly spped up your killings in a low power build that happens to be a 2-element untwinked char. In a twinked environment, this changes, because when you can kill most monsters with 2-3 Fireballs, you end up not using much Meteor(if at all)

[melianor]

I would always go Meteor with BLizzballer. Why? Fireball is a spamming spell, Meteor and Blizzard are not. But, they both don't share the same timer and so you can squeeze in a Meteor or BLizzard inbetween your Fireball spamming.

Can you say the same of Firebolt? No. You will not use it since you have Fireball. Also the 2 extra points you have to invest to get Meteor are really worth the 2 points compared to the synergy only effect of Firebolt. So i think this argument is settled, no?

I also like the arguement about improving Blizzard, but i don't think the damage of Blizz will be that much higher compared to the awesome power of Fireball combined with Blizzard or Meteor together!!!

Blizzard itself will be powerful enough with the standard setup against fire immunes. Those 3 extra points won't really hurt to get Meteor. :)

[Darkoooo]

I went with Fire Bolt with my Blizzballer and never regretted it. I just can't imagine a situation where Meteor would be helpful. Fire Ball kills all enemies fast enough for not to be bothered with Meteor. And there is also discussion about whether to maximize GS or IB. I went with IB cause I thought I'm gonna be mostly running Mephisto with her but now Pindle has become my favourite target and GS is just a king there... But if your main target is only one boss I would recommend IB but if you face with a group of monsters(more frequent MF targets) go with GS .So you have to ask yourself for what are you going to use this build. I'm probably build another one soon with maximized GS...

[Noite Escura]

I also like the arguement about improving Blizzard, but i don't think the damage of Blizz will be that much higher compared to the awesome power of Fireball combined with Blizzard or Meteor together!!!
Taking my own build as example, 3 points if invested in Ice Bolt would net 7% more to Blizzard damage and 9% more to Ice Blast. If you take CM in cosideration, it's more, because I would have 3 less levels of it, meaning Mephisto let's say, would have its res at -10% instead of -25%. A gain of 13%.
It may not seem much, but the discussion goes the same way as to why invest in Fire Bolt or Fire Mastery in Meteorb. People like to fine-tune their builds to do maximum damage availbale. Yes, you can say Blizzard damage won't improve much, but you can go other way round and say Meteor won't improve much your killing speed agaisnt CIs. It may not help at all if you kill most CIs before Meteors hit the gound.

Blizzard itself will be powerful enough with the standard setup against fire immunes. Those 3 extra points won't really hurt to get Meteor. :)
Notice you won't be using Blizzard only against FIs, but for everything that is not CI. That is roughly 75% of the monsters.

[PhatTrumpet]

I think you're assuming that everyone making a Blizzballer places their skills to focus on cold damage with fire as a backup, but this is not the case for everybody. Part of the beauty of the Blizzballer is the versatility and freedom of skill placement. You can go the other way around (focus on fire damage with cold as a backup, although this is basically a Meteorber with Blizzard instead of Orb), or you can even go for a nice balance between cold and fire. Under your assumption (which is probably how most people end up building their Blizzballers), I'd agree that you can get away without Meteor, but under the other two options you really can't.

You also have a point with the untwinked thing, I didn't really take that into consideration (I must've replied before the ladder reset accouncement or something). I even went so far as to build my untwinked Single Player Meteorb Sorc with no Meteor (i.e. Orb/FireBall) because I didn't think I'd be able to use Meteor effectively.

[Turmoil]

If you have both blizz and fireball, the only time you'll use meteor is against cold immunes as your timed spell. For non CI monsters you will use blizzard almost exclusively, and spam with fireball. There is no benefit to throwing a meteor into a blizz/fireball combo - it's just a waste of time.

You might use meteor about 22% of the time against cold immunes, but as was mentioned here you will usually do fine with just fireball. For regular mobs you'll kill them with 4-5 fireballs before your meteor ever lands. Bosses are where meteor is helpful, but few major bosses are cold immune (and none of the act bosses) so your blizz will work there. So in my opinion, since you've already got blizz as a timered spell and would only need meteor in small % of situations, put your points into firebolt for the 14% synergy bonus to fireball.

3 points doesn't sound like a lot, but at 14% dmg increase for each point, that works out to about 200-300 increase in damage per cast.

For example, assuming you've maxed fireball and fire mastery, fire ball does 598-679 at level 20. Assuming you have 10 points left over after your cold skills are done, here is fireball damage with those 10 points in fire bolt vs meteor:

10 points into meteor (minus 3 points for pre-requisites): fireball does 1112-1262
10 points into fire bolt: fireball does 1259-1429

I'd rather have my main weapon do 20% more damage than have a very secondary weapon at hand.

And just so you know I'm walking the talk, I had a 92 meteorb sorc on US East ladder (last season), and I'm rebuilding a pure cold blizz sorc under that same principle - I'd rather my main weapon (blizz) do as much damage as possible than have secondary weapons that I only use 10% of the time.

[PhatTrumpet]

Your assumptions are off and your numbers are misleading, in my opinion. You never max Fire Mastery before pumping Fire Ball synergies.

We're not really discussing sacrificing fire damage here, we're discussing sacrificing Blizzard damage, so that 14% Fire Ball increase becomes only a 5% Blizzard increase.

A more appropriate comparison would be the following:

20 Blizzard
20 Ice Blast or Glacial Spike
some Cold Mastery
20 Fire Ball
20 Fire Bolt
1 Fire Mastery, etc.
rest in Blizzard synergies

vs.

20 Blizzard
20 Ice Blast or Glacial Spike
some Cold Mastery
20 Fire Ball
20 Meteor
1 Fire Mastery, etc.
rest in Blizzard synergies (4 fewer than the first build)

Comparing these two builds at higher clvls (80-90ish), the second one has about 10% less Blizzard damage and 4% more Fire Ball damage. This is essentially the sacrifice you make for a functioning Meteor.

[Noite Escura]

I think you're assuming that everyone making a Blizzballer places their skills to focus on cold damage with fire as a backup, but this is not the case for everybody. Part of the beauty of the Blizzballer is the versatility and freedom of skill placement. You can go the other way around (focus on fire damage with cold as a backup, although this is basically a Meteorber with Blizzard instead of Orb), or you can even go for a nice balance between cold and fire. Under your assumption (which is probably how most people end up building their Blizzballers), I'd agree that you can get away without Meteor, but under the other two options you really can't.

Yes, I assume Blizzard will be the main attack, because if I had to build a sorc with main attack on fire I would make a Meteorb instead. Way more efficient. I realize there are people that would prefer otherwise, and that's the beauty of the game(hey some people even make tri-elementalists - Hell, I would make one myself If I had the gear). But the OP's question seems to indicate he's looking for the best optimization out, and I'm pointing the combos in which my view work best for every situation and why. I hope all this debate has helped him so far :cool:
As a side note i just realized now you save 4 and not 3 points by ignoring Meteor, go figure:
20 FBall
20 FBolt
1 FM=41

20 Met
20 FBall
1 FMast
1 FWall
1 Blaze
1 Inferno
1 FBolt=45