Played scorching ray for a while longer. Tried to find a balance between offense and defense.
i`m a lvl 92 elementalist in standard and play pure scorching ray.
Note:
This is PURE SCORCHING RAY. Nothing else involved. No cast on channel,nothing. just ray as main skill. You can keep your 'but you can leech with cast on channel + firestorm'to your self.
Gear:
or
Curse setup to trigger elemental overload and defensive curse

No place for cwd so i have to manually cast
I use i find that this is one of the best auras. Removes thread from desecrated grounds,burning grounds and helps with
2 golem setup
Main skill setup.

ray in hideout
I`MA CHARGIN MY LAZOR full dmg
defensive stats without endurance charges
jewels:7x jewel with:
increased damage over time
increased fire damage
increased damage while wielding a staff or increased spell damage
tree: https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAMCAASzBx4I9AmqDkgQWBEPES0RlhJpEzUTbRQJFm8WvxccF6QYVhpsHNwdFB8YH8ci9CSqJogmlScvKPoreCycLYs26TpYOtg7DTwtQYdEq0V8RZ1JUUyLUftTUlRHVUtVrlXGVkhd8mHiZlRodGpDbAttGXF5fIN_xoIQgpuCx4Nfg8yFe4dli4yMNo8aj0aPppBVkPqTJ5Uul5eYrZo7muCboZ2unsShL6IApr6nCKyYtDi00bcwtz64k76KwFTAZsCayAzNFtQH1abYJNi92fzaYtyN323fsOFz42rkIuUZ6-7sOO0870vv6_DV99f53fno-_X-Cg
Experiences so far with maps:can do all of them.
Experiences with 4 guardians so far: extremely hard.
There is no life leech.(see Note at top)) There is only potions and % life recovery. And to be frank, compared to leech and ES it is absolutely horrible.
Damage and usability:
Damage is lacking for how much defense you have to sacrifice to make it somewhat viable,and how much work you have to put in offensive gear. Skill feels like it lacks risk reward attribute. Why stand still and channel the skill for not so great results?
For stronger bosses you have to keep it at 8 stacks to do 'viable' dmg. It gets tedious that you have to ramp up your stacks every time you couldn`t apply a stack to refresh its cool down.
The length of the beam is ok-ish but its too narrow to be used confidently as AOE.
Standing still for swiping motion puts you in a lot of danger. And since skill can`t leech,char feels truly squishy.
You need cast speed to be able to move your beam more fluid. Imo cast speed shouldn`t be a factor to aim speed with a skill. The rotation of the beam in this case.
Did i mention how obnoxious cast animation is for this skill?
Conclusion: (my opinion)
Skill looks awesome. Besides its cons,the skill is fun. The play style is great if you like 'apply debuff,move'build styles. But because it works with stacks and slow aim/ rotation speed,low dmg,it becomes tedious. Its not like essence drain where you put one big debuff and move on. This is why ray becomes lackluster in certain situations like facing big mobs or bosses where u need to dodge attacks and map hazards.
When encountering big mobs it can get slow and dangerous because you have to stand still and swipe the screen to get them. This puts you in nasty spots in high lvl gameplay. When doing bosses like Guardians you have to keep up all 8 stacks if you want to do reasonable damage. But they create situations where it prevents you from doing so. Making you ramp up the stacks again.
As of now i feel like Scorching Ray is just not there. I feel like its a skill made to complement another skill.
Suggestions:
Increase base beam rotation speed by a lot. Remove cast speed factor to aim(rotate) speed.
Buff base damage by 20%.
Reduce maximum stack from 8 to 4 and increase stack attributes from 60%dmg and -3%fire res to 120% damage and -8% fire res
Increase base duration of debuff
Build in defense buff. Gives defense buff stack when channeling.

Posted by
kindevu
on Jan 15, 2017, 3:06:25 AM

Does channeling SR count as casting it every 0.xx sec (its cast time) for triggering effects that work 'if you cast a spell recently'? If I start the beam and don't stop, will those effects continue working or will they stop working after 4 sec of channeling?

Posted by
Kelvynn
on Feb 4, 2017, 12:18:57 AM

RF/scorching ray marauder - Lets talk about this skill.
Scorching ray can't leech
Scorching ray can't penetrate
Scorching ray can't grow in AoE
Scorching ray can't clear as fast as top tier skills because the damage isn't as good as it should be
Player can't move
Player can't tell how many stacks there are
Most players can't even tell how it works.
Simple fix to this ability overall in my opinion would be this.
Make it so the stacks apply to the spell/player NOT the targets. Each stack on the player means it puts that many stacks onto the target it hits! so if i have 8 stacks since ive been standing there for 4 seconds casting it (which will still be sluggish to clear maps i reckon) all monsters get instant 8 stacks when they get burned. Show some visual indication of the stacks growing on the player like changing the color of the beam or possibly increase its thickness since the thickness won't REALLY do much in terms of increasing it's AoE aslong as you dont let it get huge but this can also fix the problem players have with the skill which is the rotation speed, bigger beam = less need for rotation speed. This would make the spell less fustrating to use and make it look cooler, easier to understand and better for actual gameplay such as clearing maps.

Last edited by MaxRim on Mar 12, 2017, 8:19:53 AM

Posted by
MaxRim
on Mar 12, 2017, 8:17:04 AM

Just forget this skill man. GGG wants you to play broken double dipping ignite or poison builds.

Posted by
kindevu
on Mar 13, 2017, 11:02:43 PM

I have a cosmetic suggestion (or request, really).
It would be very cool if the ray grew in width as you leveled the gem. Perhaps 3-4 scale increases from 1-20 and another at 20% quality. I assume it would involve little more than 4 'cosmetic' applications at different gem levels.
I use the gem for CWC, and have been enjoying the added damage and debuff of the gem itself despite few links. However, I keep finding myself wishing the beam got more intense looking as I leveled. Or perhaps this begs for a channeling skill-specific support that increases the spread or width of the skill. This would increase as the gem leveled, so that would take care of the visual.
Don't we all wish we could build it up to a Shaper beam?

Posted by
sgoer
on Mar 14, 2017, 1:23:53 AM

The game had a tremendously fun and rewarding PvP experience.

Posted by
a_z0_9
on Mar 14, 2017, 7:50:57 PM

Not sure if posting here is of any use, but here goes:
Imho, the channeling skills provide the most fun and dynamic type of gameplay. D3 was quite abominable for a long time D2 fan like me, but I gotta credit them for really getting the feel right for the channeling spells like Disintegrate and Ray of Frost.
The reason they feel so good to play with is the nimble quickness you can cast them with, reposition, tap or hold, etc. All this is missing from PoE channeling skills. They feel bloated and floaty, like the characters themselves. It feels like you're constantly wading in a tar field left by one of those zombie things; this is not good.
I understand that the cast speed affects the turn rate, but I don't think it's a good way to keep the skill's power in check. Please don't sacrifice playability for balance.
Hopefully we'll see improvements in this area for the channeling skills. Will be checking back when 3.0 drops.
Cheers!

Posted by
Reuboid
on Apr 3, 2017, 4:30:49 PM

Hi,
does scorching ray directly benefits from the Ngamahu ascendancy (chieftain) ?
It says '35% increased damage vs burning enemies', but the damage of SC is listed as 'fire damage per second' (probably in order to be able to deal damage to imune-to-burning-damage enemies).
Moreover, will it also directly benefit from the Ramako ascendency (chieftains till) ?
It says 'when you kill a burning enemy, blablabla'. I wonder if it works for the same reasons as above.

Posted by
on Apr 5, 2017, 1:41:31 PM

Burning Damage is simply a convenient word for 'Fire Damage over Time' or 'Fire Damage per Second' - they're all equivalent. Enemies that are immune to Burning are also immune to Scorching Ray (I believe there aren't any enemies immune to Burning, only immune to Ignite?).
Damage over Time cannot trigger conditional modifiers such as Ngamahu.
Because Ray deals Burning Damage, it will trigger 'when you kill a Burning enemy'.

Last edited by Vipermagi on Apr 5, 2017, 3:03:10 PM

Posted by
on Apr 5, 2017, 3:02:40 PM

I believe this is wrong (convenient word for [..]). Izaro is ummune to alemental status alignment, yet can still be damage by scorching ray.
So there must be more to it than your explanation.

Posted by
on Apr 8, 2017, 12:08:47 PM