Full tals Meteorb, Firebolt or Mastery?

[sunflowersmooth]

Right now my skills in the fire tree look like this.
Level 87

firebolt: 1 (15)
fireball: 20 (34)
Meteor: 20 (34)
Fire Mastery: 1 (17)

Should I invest my remaining points in Firebolt or Fire Mastery in order to maximize my fireball damage?

Would doing so decrease my meteor damage by a lot?

Also, does anyone know when the ed from Fire Mastery is added when calculating damage?

I've read two different guides...
http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=254070
http://forums.diabloii.net/showpost.php?p=6081111&postcount=13

leaving me confused about what to do...

[AnimeCraze]

Fire bolt. Sasja's guide was done before someone applied calculus on D2. Read the stickied synergy + mastery explained guide instead.

[mephiztophelez]

points in fire-synergies > points in Mastery.

ergo: max firebolt and leave mastery at a base point, or even skip it altogether seeing as you'll get it phree from Tals Orb.

[AnimeCraze]

Actually, that's also incorrect......

The optimal skill placement, assuming no +fire damage, is to have your hard points in fire ball synergy 10~11 points above the displayed mastery. This will make you dump a few points into fire mastery, but mostly in fire bolt. (ie. do not skip mastery and only use the 1 point by full Tal's)

See this thread for details.

http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=485416

[Eilo Rytyj]

It somewhat depends on the number of +skills you have.

Run it through a Skill Calculator (http://diablo2.ingame.de/spiel/skills/calc/index.php?lang=en). Add each point one at a time to either Fire Bolt or Fire Mastery to determine whether it will result in a higher Fire Ball damage.

Judging from the numbers you listed, Fire Bolt should be maxed out first. Your Meteor damage will be roughly the same either way.

At level 87, you should have Fire Bolt maxed out with 6 or 7 hard skill points in Fire Mastery, if you have been investing your skill points properly and have finished all the skill quests on each difficulty.

[sunflowersmooth]

thanks for the advice guys, really appreciate it.

[barker]

Could someone help me understand how Firebolt yields higher fireball damage than mastery? I still don't understand, and when I enter the hard points into skill calculator linked above, Fireball is always higher with added mastery points than it is with firebolt points. I didn't test above 20 hard points, but below is what I found:

Firebolt - 20
Fireball - 20
Meteor - 20
Mastery - 1
Yields Fireball damage: 1711 - 1943 (ø1827.5)


Firebolt - 1
Fireball - 20
Meteor - 20
Mastery - 20
Yields Fireball damage: 2067 - 2347 (ø2207)

I'm probably missing something here, could someone clarify for me?

Using various combinations of the remaining points, I'm still getting similar results. Shooting for 61 hard points in these 4 skills (not counting prereqs which are all 1), the highest I can get is the following:
Firebolt - 6
Fireball - 20
Meteor - 20
Mastery - 15
Yields Fireball damage: 2110 - 2396 (ø2253)

Going higher or lower with either yields lower FireBall damage, so I think I am missing something here, probably the item +skills that makes a difference, I'll just keep testing both as I go.


Thanks,
Barker

[AnimeCraze]

More +skills will shift the highest damage combination towards more fire bolt. The math behind it is elementary calculus. Read the thread I posted, and either work through the math, or take what they say as granted.

[sirpoopsalot]

Could someone help me understand how Firebolt yields higher fireball damage than mastery?


Edit: Oops, I should really read your post before responding. :tongue:
The info below doesn't really answer it, but it's useful nevertheless, so I'll leave it in there. Sorry about that.

Edit2: AnimeCraze is correct - try adding a few +fire skills into the calc. I noticed that +5 fire skills almost makes the damage totals the same with a 20/1 Fb/FM split (with a constant 20 in each FB and Meteor). Since many sorcs will have more +skills than that, the synergy is the one that most people consider 'better'.


******
Nevertheless, the search function is a real plus to these forums; I don't know if this really answers your question, but I remembered the post...



In a formula the Fireball damage becomes:


base damage*(1+%ED from synergies/100)*(1+%ED from mastery/100)

The trick is that only hard points count for synergies, but the mastery benefits from +skills as well. If you know the amount of skill points you have available for FB synergies and the amount of +skills you have you can exactly calculate what the best balance between synergy points and FM is for max FB damage.

[barker]

Cool, thanx for all the responses. I gave up on trying to understand the calculus, and just made the spreadsheet as noted in that thread, I understand it better now, and have a nice layout of all of the combinations / best damage output. As you mentioned, I was misunderstanding the slvl of masteries vs the synergies and how they changed with +skills. Thanks for all of your help and the link to that amazing thread!!!