Lightning

Creates a powerful lightning bolt to lay waste to your enemies.

Lightning is a Sorceress Lightning skill (level 12, requires Charged Bolt) and the prerequisite of Chain Lightning (Chain Lightning). It is a single bolt that flies through everything in a line. Its damage is the widest range in the tree, 1 to 272 at level 20 before synergies, and its two deciding numbers are the maximum, which grows in steep brackets, and the three synergies that each add +8% a hard point.

The numbers

The minimum is 1 at every level: EMin is 1 and every EMinLev column is 0. The maximum comes from EMax with HitShift 8: it starts at 40 and grows +8 a level to level 8, +12 to 16, +20 to 22, +28 to 28 and +36 a level past that. That is 1–120 at level 10, 1–272 at level 20 and 1–552 at level 30. The line reads lvl, so +skills count, and they count for a lot: the +28 and +36 brackets are reached only through gear.

Mana is 8 at level 1 and 0.5 more a level (mana 16, lvlmana 1, manashift 7): 17.5 at level 20.

How it works

Lightning fires one "lightningbolt" missile along the line from you to the target and on past it; the Basin's page classes it as a long-range piercing missile, so every monster on the line is hit. It is lightning damage, reduced by the target's lightning resistance, see Dealing Elemental Damage and Resistances and Immunities; as a spell it needs no attack rating. It is cast at casting speed and the Sorceress's Faster Cast Rate breakpoints.

The Basin's page explains a quirk of the bolt's size. Bolts are size 2, so one can touch two adjacent targets at once, and since a bolt is not destroyed when it collides, it can collide alternately with two neighbours as it passes between them and damage each of them twice before it is out of range.

Synergies and +skills

• Charged Bolt: +8% lightning damage per level, Nova: +8% lightning damage per level and Chain Lightning: +8% lightning damage per level (skills.txt Param8 = 8; the calc reads each skill's blvl, hard points only).
• The Basin's page notes the synergy bonuses do not apply to the minimum damage, which stays at 1 whatever the synergies.
• Lightning in turn feeds Charged Bolt (+6% a hard point) and Chain Lightning.
• +skills raise the maximum line (lvl); none of the percentages move with +skills.

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 Lightning against players.

Build notes

• Three 8% synergies are the most of any Sorceress skill; 60 hard points across Charged Bolt, Nova and Chain Lightning are +480%, and they feed each other back (Lightning is +6% to Charged Bolt).
• The maximum's brackets steepen all the way out, +36 a level past 28, so +skills gear is worth more here than on any flat-bracket skill.
• The minimum of 1 never moves: synergies, +skills and hard points raise only the top of the range, so two casts of the same bolt can land for very different numbers.