Regarding druid fire spells, almost fifteen years ago, Garbad_the_Weak posted here his
Primal Flame tour-de-force build guide. I enjoy very much the chaotic nature of most druid elemental skills; it's one of the reasons that the druid is my favorite hero class. Many players that use these fire elemental skills seldom focus on just one, but instead tend use two or more fire skills together as a package.
Dec 2022 Update: A very influential change in the
D2R 2.4 patch affects cooldown casting delays. In legacy patches, skills with a delay timer all shared the same timer. For example, after casting a Volcano spell, a druid could cast
no other timered spells (Firestorm, Molten Boulder, Fissure, Hurricane, Armageddon) until
after Volcano's four-second timer expired. But now all timered spells have their own separate cooldown timer, so in this example, the druid may cast each of the other spells at least once during the four-seconds after Volcano is cast. Although this change applies to all skills with casting delays, it's probably most noticeable to fire druid players.
Firestorm
Firestorm sends three streams of ground-based fire toward enemies. One of the flame tendrils travels straight, but the other two move chaotically; they meander at an oblique angle from the straight flame, and often cross over the straight stream at least once. All of the druid's fire elemental skills trigger a casting timer, which must time-out before any other timered skill may be used. Skills without casting timers, which can be repeated as frequently as cast rate allows, are often referred to as "spammable" spells. Firestorm's cast timer is just 0.6 seconds (fifteen animation frames), so it's close enough to feel spammable even though it isn't.
Firestorm itself gets a healthy fire-damage synergy bonus from each of the next two fire spells (Molten Boulder and Fissure). One of the five druids that took advantage of a fully synergized Firestorm was
BhutJolokia by Colorless Green, who bragged that "non-FI hell ancients went from full health to dead within a couple seconds of firestorm." Two druids, Nightfish's
Regret and zaphodbrx's
Fervous, seemed less satisfied with only one maxed Firestorm synergy (Fissure).
The other reason to invest in Firestorm is for the fire-damage synergy that it grants in-turn to Molten Boulder, Fissure, Armageddon, and Fire Claws. Here are some of the shapeshifters that chose to max Firestorm as their Fire Claws damage booster:
Contagion by Nightfish,
Cerebus by winmar,
Smokey by JihadJesus, and seven more that used the complete Aldur's Watchtower collection:
Foulflame by PhineasB,
Wesley by Thirty-Thirty,
TheHobo by Arkardo,
Danson by Colorless Green,
Mizor by Stony,
Lycastus by Milb, and
Getafix by Cygnus.
Molten Boulder
This exploding bowling ball slowly travels in a predictably straight path, so in that sense, Molten Boulder doesn't behave chaotically like most other elemental spells. However, its cast timer delays successive attacks by 50 frames (two seconds), which ensures that the usual battlefield chaos keeps things challenging and fun. It also seems to be the only fire elemental skill that can reliably damage the swamp monsters in act 3.
It gets two distinct synergy boosts: enhanced fire damage from points in Firestorm, and enhanced physical damage from points in Volcano. A very recent patriarch that used Molten Boulder extensively while maxing just its fire synergy is
Pb_pal's
Orange. Twelve years earlier, Colorless Green had this to say about
BhutJolokia's fully synergized Molten Boulder: "[It] can consistantly take down a single FI with two or three casts, but it's really difficult to hit more than one or two at a time because of how slow it rolls, and the fact that the knockback angle screws up multiple hits if you move after casting it."
Molten Boulder in turn provides physical damage synergy to Volcano and fire damage synergies to Firestorm, Armageddon, and Fire Claws. Among the heroes that chose to max MB as a Fire Claws synergy were Cormallon's werebear
Bratulix, Neksja's werewolf
Amanu, Sir Lister of Smeg's werebear
Aldur, and T72on1's
Fireworks, who also reveled in synergized chance-to-cast effects from gear with Doom and Phoenix runewords.
Dec 2022 Update: After the
D2R 2.4 patch, a Molten Boulder rolls twice as fast as it used to. Also, its casting delay is shorter, and the physical damage synergies between Molten Boulder and Volcano are stronger. -- Bowler
Annihilation by
Vang is one of our first D2R Fire Druid guardians. (I don't know the skill point counts on him, but the context suggests he invested heavily in Molten Boulder, Volcano, Armageddon, Summon (spirit or dire) Wolves, and Summon Grizzly.)
Fissure
The delightful chaos in the Fissure skill lies in its seemingly random pattern of "vents" or "cracks" in the ground that appear and disappear under enemies. I think its gameplay mechanic is similar to the sorceress Blizzard skill, which has a seemingly random pattern of ice shards that fall from the sky over an area-of-effect. However, Fissure requires "ground" through which the fire can rise, so unlike Blizzard, it won't work against monsters that aren't over some patch of passable ground, such as act 3's swamp monsters, or flying/floating monsters that are moving across rivers, pits, or other empty spaces.
Fissure gets synergy fire-damage enhancement from Firestorm and Volcano. Some of the builds that specifically maxed all three of these skills include Cormallon's
Iruma,
Cyrax's
ReignOfFire, Doctor Clock's
Ragnarokr, buraz's
Artemis, and zaphodbrx's
Lex Luthor. Two curious fissure casters that also invested heavily in wind skills were
Regret by Nightfish and
Shib by Stephan.
TopHatCat64's
Dendron was a unique build that combined fissure with Grizzly and Poison Creeper summoned minions.
Fissure gives a synergy duration bonus to Armageddon, and adds synergy fire-damage to Firestorm, Volcano, and Fire Claws. Several of shapeshifters chose to max Fissure as a Fire Claws synergy. I'll just link to a few: bcoe's
Tyto_Alba,
PhineasB's
Ember, Grape's
Mitya, and Nanomist's
Ash.
Dec 2022 Update:
ffs'
Bruce is a new innovative hybrid elemental/shapeshifter druid, who frequently shifted in and out of werewolf form to use Fury against non-PIs and Fissure against non-FIs.
Volcano
Volcano is a reliable damage dealer at the exact point it is cast. Every other frame, for for 150 frames (six seconds), it spews fiery rocks up out of the ground from a single point. Any monster that happens to be over the volcano may suffer physical and fire damage from each of those rocks. Then each rock that spews upward must also come down, and that's where the chaotic aspect of this skill's happens. The rocks fall back down in a seemingly random pattern around the volcano, and occasionally they strike another enemy, causing more physical and fire damage.
Volcano receives a physical damage synergy from points in Molten Boulder, and fire-damage synergy from points in Fissure and Armageddon. A few Volcano casters that maxed one or more of these synergies are:
Predator by
Pyrotechnician,
Beast by Corax,
Septimus by
PhineasB,
Rusull by AlterEgo, ricrestoni's
Meltdown,
Tanis by scwormy, and
Trim's
Fallen_Eremite. Also, be sure to look at
Pb_pal's summary of the long epic journey of
Klaus, who maxed every fire elemental skill.
Volcano bestows a physical damage synergy to Molten Boulder, and fire-damage synergy to Fissure, Armageddon, and Fire Claws. Some shapeshifters that chose to max Volcano as a Fire Claws synergy:
ViralInfection by
Cyrax, Naturallog's
Jeor,
Fiesta by Liquid_Evil,
Lucas by Low Key,
Beethoven by maxgerin,
Calorique,
Jeltz and
ImmolateKing by purplelocust,
DrJekill_MrHide by Vorbiss, and
Grisu's
Oberon.
Armageddon
I think this is the most chaotic of all of the elemental fire skills. Armageddon's fire bombs randomly appear somewhere around the druid, and then take a few moments to fall to the ground. During those moments, he may choose to stay, fight, and observe some bombs explode on nearby enemies. He may instead choose to run, and lure enemies to chase him into the field of falling fire bombs.
I was surprised to learn that Armageddon's bombs deliver
both physical and fire damage. Three of its synergies (Firestorm, Molten Boulder, and Volcano) only boost its fire damage. The other synergy skill (Fissure) increases the amount of time the bombs continue to rain down.
Armageddon is the only fire skill that does not grant a synergy fire-damage bonus to Fire Claws. However, since it's the only elemental skill that can be cast while shifted into werewolf or werebear form (or under the Delirium runeword's strange bone-fetish curse), it's no surprise that all of our patriarchs and guardians that maxed 'Geddon were shapeshifters. A few are:
Syrtis_Major by
TopHatCat64,
Vanya by Grape,
Yunno by NagisaFurukawa,
Death by Brak, and
Cleglaw by
D2DC. There were still more that equipped an Earthshifter unique thunder maul weapon to use with Armageddon:
Vlooienbaal by Arkardo,
Allanon by Mordalles,
Solid_Good by VoX Dei,
Alcohol by Neksja, and
Wolfredd by dryzalizer. Also noteworthy is
Farnham by
Vang, who only put fifteen skill points in Armageddon, but chose to max its Volcano and Firestorm synergies.
Dec 2022 Update: Shortly after completing
Bruce,
ffs built
ZodDruid, a more traditional shapeshifter/elemental hybrid that focused on Armageddon and Fury. -- With the
D2R 2.4 patch, Armageddon drops more bombs per second. Each bomb causes more physical damage and causes splash damage in a larger area-of-effect. Its Volcano synergy now boosts physical instead of fire damage, and the Hurricane skill is no longer a prerequisite.
[11 Dec 2020: edited to fix a link]
[Update, Aug 2021: new histograms]
[2022 Dec Update: new histograms, D2R notes]