Why is fire mastery better for fire ball dmg than fire bolt synergy?

General Discussion
1

After maxing fire ball and meteor you can decide whether to go with maxing fire mastery or fire bolt first. From the numbers you would usually go with fire bolt (14% to fire dmg synergy) and not with fire mastery (7% fire dmg).
But in reality fire mastery is superior to fire bolt and should be maxed first (you can check with skill planers like d2.maxroll.gg/d2planner):

fire ball 20 - meteor 20 - fire bolt 20 - fire mastery 1
fire ball damage = 1711-1943

fire ball 20 - meteor 20 - fire bolt 1 - fire mastery 20
fire ball = damage 2067-2347

So maxing fire mastery first is clearly better. But why?

2

Because mastery multiplies synergy bonus as well.
I believe that you can get highest damage from 21 skillpoints if you split them not 1-20, but 4-17 or something like that.

3

Yes you are right. 6 fire bolt and 15 fire mastery results in 2110-2396 fire ball dmg.

4

Think of it this way:

Every time you add a point to a synergy a point in firemastery gets stronger (will add more dmg) but the synergy stays the same. Likewise every point to mastery makes the synergies stronger but mastery stays the same so the optimal path is to split them along the way as they overtake each other.

5

I am still wondering why almost every FB sorc guide recommends to max fire bolt before fire mastery after meteor ist maxed. Even without splitting fire mastery is noticeable better than going for fire bolt first.

6

Just don’t use guides. All you need is arreat summit official site.

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7

Best is: max fireball, firebolt/meteor and 1 point in fire mastery. With gear you get +8…15 to all skills easily to push fire mastery.

But … firewall as second element is way better than fireball. 43 points in fire for firewall results in 9000+ firedamage per second and firewall (+10 all skills). So you melt bosses with 18.000 dps.

Fireball can be cast 3,x times per second (105% fast cast) and deals 2700 damage per projectile. 2700×3= 8100dps.

Fireball is just weak.

If you play a pure fire sorc … well … then fireball and its synergies get more points, but … firewall is still the strongest dps fire skill … with 60 points in fire skills it ramps up to MORE THAN 14.000 dps per wall, which is insane.

Meteor is just crap compared to fire wall.

8

Google-Translator

But for firewall, opponents have to stand in one place. But they rarely do that and run out of the wall, so they do not suffer any damage.

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