Meteor is one of the Fire Tree's two highest attack skills. It requires a whopping five prerequisites to obtain, unless via staff, but is one of the few skills in the game that offers a strong initial hit followed up by a lingering area of effect.

Meteor is a much more balanced skill than Firewall, in that it isn't as strong at certain points, but it doesn't have Firewall's glaring weaknesses with framerate problems and extreme difficulty with mobile opponents. I recommend that when using meteor, that you think of it as a single attack, relying only on the initial hit for damage in most cases. The afterflames can get to be very useful at higher levels, but generally only against large or slow opponents.

Meteor can apply as much as 500 damage or more to a rather large area. This is a whole lot of hurt in a very short time. Against larger mobs, it is also more mana efficient than you might think. This massive damage potential, applied to multiple targets, makes this simply the most powerful skill in the tree, and one of the mightiest skills in the entire game. Using meteor vs firewall, blaze or hydra will quickly show you the value of the principle that the best defense is a strong offense. If you are going up against foes that you can kill outright with one or two meteors, there isn't a whole lot you are going to fear. This skill is so strong, you can solo-8 with little trouble at all, except against fire resistant opponents.

The true power of Meteor lies in the initial hit. The damage done by the afterflames is just a bonus -- don't count on the lingering flames in a life or death situation if you don't want to end up dead. They are best used for conserving mana against slow or resistant targets, or for stacking in dire situations.

Meteor's area of effect is quite nearly as large as Blizzard's, which is good. You can smash large mobs, if they are somewhat tightly packed, with each Meteor hitting most if not all the mob simultaneously, and the flames licking up the wounded. Meteor does not work like the rest of the direct damage skills, though. Unlike firebolt and fireball and even inferno, meteors do not originate from your character and fly until they collide with a target or terrain feature. Instead, they fall from the sky and always hit the targetted area. Nothing can stop or derail a meteor once it's been cast. But... the falling from the sky is just eye candy, strictly visuals. In real terms, you cast the spell then there is a multisecond delay before it takes affect, and then you get an instant high-damage fire hit on a four yard square area, and then some seemingly-random patches of flame in that area that burn briefly, adding further damage. Those incidental flames burn out almost instantly at low skill levels, but last a meaningful duration at higher levels. The up side to meteor's targetting is that you can hit anywhere in line of sight without having to kill intervening monsters first. You can target shamen types in the back lines right away -- something you can't do with Fireball. The down side is that targetting is more difficult, and the delay before the meteors hit means that it's a spell that works better at longer ranges than shorter ones. Fireball you can point and click even at speedy targets charging you, and hit them. Meteor requires a lot more risk and work to hit really quick enemies.

Meteor will shine just about everywhere that firewall will. Against stationary targets, firewall is stronger, but also harder on the framerates. Meteor can do the same job, and can do it for about the same mana cost, to be honest, but will take a little more time and a few more castings to get it done. However, in situations where Firewall grows costly and inefficient, such as when dealing with skeleton mages and quill rat types, Meteor is as strong as ever. It's larger area of effect allows for more room for error, as well as targets that move around a little bit. Meteor is more effective than Firewall when it comes to dealing with aggressive melee opponents, but it's not as safe as Blaze can be in that department. But where Blaze and Firewall are both extremely strong in certain situations, they are just as weak in others; yet Meteor can get you through any situation, and that is its greatest strength: it has no glaring weaknesses, no foes against which it simply will not work.

Also, if you get into a real jam, Meteor is the best skill in the fire tree for quickly doing massive damage to a mob that has you trapped or surrounded. Firewall's area of effect is just too small, Blaze can't be targetted at anything, and none of the other skills can do as much damage per second as Meteor. You will have to have enough skill points in your Meteor to compete with the area you're in, though. Trying to rescue yourself from a tight spot in Nightmare Act 4 with slvl 1 Meteor is NOT going to cut it. :)

For immobile targets, rangers attackers, and slow-moving targets, Meteor tactics are straightforward. You may have to lead your aim a little, but that should be no problem. For speedier foes, you can use all the same tricks that will work with firewall, in terms of using terrain, but you can also time your shots and make it work fairly easily in the wide open. You aim ahead of your sorcie, then walk through and past the target area while the rocks fall from the sky to hit the creatures following you. How much you need to lead depends on the speed of the chasers. You can also do a sort of scattershot effect, where you spread your shots out, knowing that some will miss but some WILL hit, and at higher skill levels, when the afterflames actually last long enough to matter, you can spread a rather wide area of flames across the map. This also works against restless foes you have trapped on some terrain feature. You might spread the shots out a little to make sure you don't risk missing with them all.

Sometimes it works best to target meteors to left AND right of a restless target or small group of targets, instead of directly on them. If you cast a single meteor, the target might randomly evade. You could try again and still miss, and over and over. If instead you cover all the places the target might go, you are sure to get a hit. This principle of widening the area of effect can be expounded upon in a variety of situations, to get faster or more certain kills at the expense of some extra mana. Only experience can lead you to decide how much of this style of Meteor use will suit you.

Meteors can serve as a defensive shield against swarming, weak enemies. Just cast one on yourself, and maybe another right in front of you, to smash whole swarms of maggots, crows, flesh beasts, fallen ones, or flayers, none of which have any fire resistance.

In some situations, you can fire meteors at the edge of the screen then advance while they drop. If you time it well, and actual enemies were there, they will see you and walk right into the meteor shots. This works best on creatures with low health, like cats and vultures and insect swarms, but can be applied in a wide array of situations, with varying success. The down side to this is that you must do it blind, because by the time you know something is there, it's too late for this tactic -- and so it sometimes means pulling the trigger on empty space and wasting some mana. Whether or not you will need to resort to moves like this, depends somewhat on your other skill choices and the rest of your character build.

As with Blizzard, Meteor's afterflames work better against larger targets. An enemy can take damage from more than one patch of flame, and the larger they are, the more damage they will be taking there. This makes Meteor grandly effective against Mephisto and Diablo, and great against Duriel if his attention is occupied by other players.

In multiplayer situations, Meteor's delay can be a detriment if your coop partners are killing things quickly. Most targets will be dead by the time the meteors land. In that situation, you either have to anticipate more or head off on your own to one degree or another. However, if kills are coming more slowly, then Meteor is easier to use and will make a bigger difference. Necros in particular are fond of Meteor, since it leaves them corpses to work with and helps out their minions enormously. As with Firewall, Meteor's effectiveness in coop situations is magnified if there are players or minions tanking for you.

Meteor also appears to have its effects even if you depart the area after casting it but before the rocks land. You can see this easiest in the Chaos Sanctuary, where you empty your mana ball on the site the mob will appear, and then immediately hit the Seal as the rocks are landing and still falling, then duck out a waiting TP and return via waypoint or some other player's TP. Even though the mob hadn't appeared when you left, you will find many of them damaged or even dead. This principle can also work at stairs or in any situation where you find yourself trapped: cast, then make your exit. When you return, you still get credit for the spells you cast there, although I do not know if you get any experience for absentee kills.

One of the precision moves I did not learn until recently, playing with Astra in Hell difficulty, is what I'll call the Maypole. You drop rocks near your own position, then walk or run a small loop around the area, tempting chasers or just keeping them close. This rounds them up VERY nicely for you, and if you dropped enough rocks, everything will be dead and you will have saved a lot of footwork at virtually no risk. The safety of doing this depends on low lag, though. Don't try this move if you are badly blurred.

Tempting Fate also works well for Meteors. Fetishes in particular... even undead ones. Tempt them, then drop rocks. They will stand there long enough to get hit. Tempting has many other applications, allowing you to control the position of enemies while you are waiting for rocks to hit. In this regard, Meteor can be more tactically satisfying then either Hydra or Blaze, as you take aggressive control of the battlefield instead of timidly or passively killing. The power of meteor, of being to drop X number of rocks and KNOW that everything around you is going to die when they hit, allows for a kind of precision and degree of calm just not possible with the damage over time skills, even hydra. This skill is a must-play for true sorceress fans, and represents the pinnacle of close quarter combat for the sorceress. There is nothing quite like it. You must play it to understand.

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