FB splash damage, um help? (in General)

I'm now getting into damages done and was wondering why FB has such a high splash damage to friendly minions. This is the last round of a draw battle with a character with an Electric Familiar (which for some reason deals amazing damage with NO splash).

Frosty's familiar takes damage from his own Fireball (17521)!
Frosty's familiar's Fireball hit X's familiar [1633215], Frosty [401903]
X's familiar touches Frosty's familiar [2026154]

R.I.P. Frosty, Frosty's familiar R.I.P. X's familiar


The first thing I don't get is why the splash is near 30% of the damage dealt?? 400,000 splash seems awfully high considernig a 2million hit doesn't deal any. I know EF attack don't factor in ranged, but I would rather not worry about that crazy splash. Is splash really necessary, and if so that high? Also, if you have another Fire minion, wouldn't it make sense that they aren't effected by the damage?

Does CoC have splash? I read that is actually a better spell to use? Would it be better to switch the FB to CoC?

With more than 2 minions its advisable to stay away from FB at all, unless you're geared towards quick killing in ranged.

I just don't get the splash and how high it is, or why it's there at all... why?

Because multiple FBs on a team were very powerful in CB1, much more so than any of the other DD spells. And it hits multiple targets in ranged. As it stands it's already capable of taking out the opposition in a short time, if you give it the possibility of working on a bigger team, thus lasting longer, it would get stupid.

SG and CoC both have the 'penalty' of having to last until melee. MM attacks from behind so can be defended against. FB has this as a penalty. It's to keep things balanced.

If the numbers vehiculated are right, CoC basically matches total FB damage output by round 8 of a battle (5 ranged + 3 melee or 5+1 ranged if HoC is involved + 2 melee), and outdamages it from that moment on.

So, unless you have a HUGE amount of XP into fireball on your team to *ensure* kills in the first 5(+1) ranged rounds, you're usually better off with CoC anyway even on a single minion - even moreso on multi-minion teams since in the two or three melee rounds up to break-even, the rest of your own team gets hit with an equal power by splash damage.

"If the numbers vehiculated are right, CoC basically matches total FB damage output by round 8 of a battle (5 ranged + 3 melee or 5+1 ranged if HoC is involved + 2 melee), and outdamages it from that moment on."

You could at least make it easier to understand. xD

What he means is Cone of Cold only has to cast TWICE and it has already dealt the same amount of damage that a same sized fireball would have dealt from the start of the battle. So if you're usually surviving past the second round of melee, you're probably better off with Cone of Cold.

Thrice.*

"FB has this as a penalty. It's to keep things balanced."
Oh, I think I'll have to disagree. It's already penalized by ranged penalties. It's the same with MM, except FB stupidly hits its own allies. "FB hits like a wet noodle" has been stated one too many times, so I'll leave it at that. My lvl 11.9 mil CoC hits for 200k more damage than my lvl 17.6 mil FB did per round. And because of ranged penalties, my CoC (being roughly 6 mil less in level) would out-damage my FB by round 2 of melee (3 rounds vs. 8 from FB). So, there no longer is a reason to have splash damage; it was needed back when FB actually was too good. If you have FB on a big team, you have less xp concentration, and thusly can be easily stopped by AMF, not to mention be far too low a level to do any considerable amount of damage. FB is useless; noone should use it except a single minion with another form of damage (i.e. a familiar or RoBF).
And, yes, switch to CoC as long as you think you'll last that long. You need more survivability to utilize CoC properly.

That's why I made my FB mage a PL sink. Anything to get that sucker killed off. *smile*