Fire Ball

Creates an explosive sphere of fiery death to engulf your enemies.

Fire Ball is a Sorceress Fire skill (level 12, requires Fire Bolt) and the prerequisite of Enchant and Meteor. It is the tree's workhorse missile: a fireball that explodes where it lands and damages everything in a small radius. The numbers that decide it are the damage, 199–226 at level 20 before synergies, and the +14% per hard point it takes from Fire Bolt and Meteor.

The numbers

The damage comes from the EMin/EMax columns, halved by HitShift 7. The minimum starts at 6 and grows +6.5 a level to level 8, +11.5 to 16, +14 to 22, +16.5 to 28 and +19 a level past that (EMinLev1–5 of 13, 23, 28, 33, 38, halved); the maximum starts at 14 and grows +7.5, +12.5, +15, +17.5 and +20 in the same brackets. That is 74–91 at level 10, 199–226 at level 20 and 364–401 at level 30. The line reads lvl, so +skills from gear count.

The explosion radius is fixed: Param1 is 4 (the table's "Explosion Radius", also calc1), which the tooltip shows as 4 × 2 ÷ 3 = 2.67 yards at every level.

Mana is 5 at level 1 and 0.5 more a level (mana 10, lvlmana 1, manashift 7): 14.5 at level 20.

How it works

Fire Ball is a missile (srvmissile "fireball") that flies to its target and explodes on impact; the explosion applies the damage to everything within the 2.67-yard radius. The Basin's page notes the explosion is centred on the point of impact, not on the target, so a second monster standing behind the first can be outside the radius even when it looks to be in the fire. It is fire damage, reduced by the target's fire resistance, see Dealing Elemental Damage and Resistances and Immunities; as a spell it needs no attack rating.

The Basin's page says Fire Ball has the same velocity, range and size as Fire Bolt (it only looks bigger), with range enough to reach any target on an 800×600 screen. It is cast at casting speed and the Sorceress's Faster Cast Rate breakpoints.

Synergies and +skills

• Fire Bolt: +14% fire damage per level and Meteor: +14% fire damage per level (skills.txt Param8 = 14; the calc reads skill('Fire Bolt'.blvl) and skill('Meteor'.blvl), hard points only).
• Fire Ball in turn feeds Fire Bolt (+16% a hard point), Meteor (+5%) and Hydra (+3%), and Hydra's row reads Fire Ball's hard points directly for its own bolts.
• +skills raise the base damage line (lvl) but none of the synergy percentages.
• Fire Mastery multiplies the result; the Basin's page on the mastery says it applies after the synergy bonus.

The Basin's page adds that with full synergies and a skill level above 46 (47 without hard points in Meteor), Fire Bolt deals slightly more to a single target than an equal-level Fire Ball, for far less mana; Fire Ball keeps the radius.

Against players

A player's hit on another player is cut to 17% of its value (difficultylevels.txt PlayerDamagePercentVSPlayer) before anything else, see Player versus Player. The Basin's page gives no other rule for Fire Ball against players.

Build notes

• Fire Bolt is the better synergy point for Fire Ball than Meteor is for itself: a Fire Bolt hard point is +14% here and +5% to Meteor, and Fire Bolt is a 2.5-mana skill you already own.
• At level 20 the ball costs 14.5 mana for 199–226 to an area; the brackets past 20 (+16.5 and +19 a level) are why +skills gear matters more than the twentieth hard point.
• The radius never grows: positioning the impact point, not the skill level, decides how many targets the explosion catches.