3.25 - Starter Skill Speedrun - Fireball Elementalist - 3h34m31s
161#pathofexile #speedrun
Fireball, or some variant of it, is a classic starter skill for casters in ARPGs, but how does it work as a speedrun skill in Path of Exile? Turns out, would not recommend the variant I cooked up. Its a bit of a uphill battle the entire way through and felt a bit underpowered in single target contexts.
This is the second of the starter skill speedrun series where I try to take a starter skill use it for the majority of the run and get a time somewhere that is reasonably within the range of established A10 Pts+Lab speed runs. This run was done as part of Wraeclast Rally 3.25, a speedrunning event. The fireball run was more of a struggle than double strike slayer. Fireball has a lot of quirks to work around and can require quite a few more utility based supports to really start getting it feeling good. In a speedrun context that is a tall order given how limited sockets can be while you are trying to blast. Ultimately, I kind of went with a pseudo-hit ignite hybrid, trying to capitalize on both portions of the damage while retaining some QoL utility through support choices as its still possible to find that balance within campaign for good clear and good single. That might have been a failed mission from outset conceptually as I never really found the support loadout I wanted to accomplish that and I ended up towards end on more of a clear-based fireball than anything. In campaign, you can typically find a decent balance between clear and single portion for fire skills on elementalist, but fireballs base functionality of the box kind of did not allow this as focusing on ignite made clear poor while focusing on clear made single target ignite poor. Nonetheless, run was sent. Fireball became main skill at Level 8 once Lesser Projectiles Support could be equipped. I ran two fireball setups early in campaign to have a clear fireball and a single target fireball. This was eventually trimmed down to one fireball setup around Act 4. Scorching Ray Totems on bosses to supplement Fireball dps provided some nice extra juice and an exposure source. This might be a run type, I might revisit in the future and try to iron out some of the quirks and build concept choices I use to end with a smoother product. Fireball clear felt pretty smooth once things like pierce and projectiles were added, but those things also take away from single target of skill. There might be a way to thread the needle better than I did here to come up with something more serviceable, but I feel like there is some unfinished business with this run as I'm not entirely satisfied with build choice. Campaign fireball at your own risk as the as the confines of using fireball are really restrictive and somewhat overbearing compared to just using a different fire skill that is more ready to go out of the box like Firestorm and you will be in for more of a battle than with other fire skills.
Unfortunately, I accidentally sent the character to shadow realm before saving a capture of its gear/skill tree with PoB. This was the planned skill tree I had before run: https://pobb.in/F04wwzWwV5zb and it mostly was followed. Only differences were that I didn't quite get enough levels to get all of the points in the cast speed wheel above witch and I had to put one point into Lightning Walker for resistance issues. Caster wheel points are last points allocated as best choice available at that point with time/levels remaining in speedrun
Table of Contents
0:00 - Act 1
22:56 - Act 2
44:48 - Act 3 and Normal Lab
1:17:49 - Act 4
1:35:47 - Act 5
1:52:54 - Act 6
2:12:39 - Act 7 and Cruel Lab
2:36:05 - Act 8
2:56:19 - Act 9
3:15:19 - Act 10 and Merc Lab
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