In the upcoming Path of Exile 3.24 Necropolis League, Scorching Ray stands out with its unique mechanic that enables multiple entities to inflict debuff together. So, today we will delve into the significance of this for the altered Scorching Ray.

About Scorching Ray

Scorching Ray is a channeled ability that deals fire damage over time, and it does this by applying stages of a debuff to enemies caught in the beam. Debuff stages are gained based on the cast interval, each debuff deals with its own damage and has its own duration.

But the duration only starts to expire when the enemy leaves the beam, with each debuff stage increasing the base damage by 60%, and if the enemy remains in the beam long enough to reach 8 debuff stages. Fire exposure is inflicted at a magnitude of minus 25% to fire resistance.

Ascendancy Choice

In terms of ascendancy choice, Hierophant will overcome this problem by reaching 6 maximum totems: one from Ancestral Bond, one from the ascendancy, one from a Shaper Shield, and 2 from Multiple Totem Support. This way, you’d have 3 cycles of totems, providing a larger window for each set of totems to apply their debuff. However, one of the biggest problems with Scorching Ray totems is map clear, as the totems’ AI often locks onto targets and there are some straggling mobs that are left unchecked.

The Chieftain’s Hinekora, Death's Fury notable may provide a much better map clear with his explosions, and Chieftain also has the upside of Ramako, Sun's Light, which makes the use of Temporal Chains easier as you don’t need to worry about flammability. Of course, having some POE Currency in hand can make your game smoother.

Scorching Ray Totems

Now Scorching Ray has another rather unique mechanic attached to it which allows beams from distinct entities to deal damage simultaneously, which is why Scorching Ray totems have been a thing in the past and this is an intended mechanic.

In fact, since the Scorching Ray appeared in patch 2.4.2, fire resistance of the Scorching Ray is specified to be no more than minus 24%. Each Scorching Ray debuff on an enemy can have 8 stages. An entity can be affected by multiple Scorching Ray debuffs at a time from different beams. They’ll all apply their damage over time based on their individual stages, but the total fire resistance penalty from all the debuffs on a particular enemy cannot exceed minus 24%.

In the past, this mechanic has only really been relevant for the case of using Scorching Ray totems in a standard totem build setup, where you try to max out as many totems as possible. This makes sense because Scorching Ray deals the most damage when it gains all of its stages. If the totem has been long enough to gain 8 stages, it will deal the maximum damage that it’s capable of, which is a lot more than just the base one stage because it gains so much damage from extra stages.

Transfigured Version Of Scorching Ray

However, we now have a transfigured version of Scorching Ray in POE 3.24, that’s Scorching Ray of Immolation. This gem is significantly different in terms of the numbers from its original counterpart, but it shares the same mechanics Scorching Ray of Immolation has far more front-loaded damage relying a lot less on gaining stages to deal decent damage.

It also has double the base duration and doesn’t have the fire exposure at maximum stages by using this version of Scorching Ray you can scale the damage in a way that wasn’t possible with the original gem and this is by having totems inflict their beam debuff right before re-summoning them again to inflict new debuffs and so on.

So forth this way you can scale the duration of the debuff that lasts when an enemy leaves the beam and scale your totem placement speed to achieve a ramping damage over time, which is somewhat similar to poison in fact you even make use of Temporal Chains since Scorching Ray damage component is considered being a debuff which persists on the enemy and it is affected by Temporal Chains slower expiry mechanic.

Theory & Technology

So, let’s have some theoretical and technical discussion. I think to make use of this tech, you’re going to want to invest into duration because it’s increasing your maximum potential damage output. You’ll need a good balance between scaling damage normally through increases, more multipliers, and DoT multipliers, and scaling skill effect duration.

A single duration wheel on the passive tree combined with the more skill effect Duration Mastery will be good, along with Efficacy and Malevolence. This will bring the 3-second base duration up to around 6.2 seconds, and Temporal Chains then essentially act as a multiplier on top of that duration, which will bring the actual debuff duration to just over 8.2 seconds.

Re-summoning totems will despawn the oldest totems first, so having access to additional maximum totems is potentially a great thing to have in this build. Where you get the opportunity to spam your totems for maximum damage ramp in a boss fight, if you have a low maximum totem limit, depending on your totem placement speed, you may despawn the totem before they’ve applied their debuff.