Lament of the refuge is on paper a fun option to approach volcanic orb in my opinion.
The problem with this item however is that this is the only item for mage that changes a skill into void damage.
Because of this other skills still do lightning, cold, fire damage for example.
The problem in my opinion:
The spear gives flat spellvoid damage which makes it even harder to use a different skill beside volcanic orb and make it somewhat viable. Even with scaling generic spell damage.
The reasons being:
1: Mage has zero passives or skill nodes that support void damage.
2: Normally one of the biggest sources to get flat damage is of the weapons.
Now you lose all the spell damage of the weapon for other skills because the spear only gives spell void flat damage. And there is no other way to convert the other skills into void.
So the void flat damage only benefits Volcanic orb.
This skill alone together with dark shroud of cinders chest is seems just not worth it from my tests. I also posted this on the forum and others seem to agree.
My suggestion is to change the spellvoid damage on the spear into generic flat spell damage. This would open up the option to play volcanic orb with other skills without other skills doing potato damage since they benefit of the spear now aswell.
I really hope this is getting changed because now this item feels like a dead unique to me.
There are so many hoops to jump through with this spear at the moment.
Keep enough fire stacks up can be challeging and if volcanic orb finally does more damage than the fire variant, i lost the weapon slot the chest slot and fire aura nodes to justify it.
If the extra aura stacks (you know how hard it is if you tried) and the heraldy stacks FINALLY give you a bit of uptime (which i found pretty unreliable since the percentages of the heraldy stacks were pretty awful). I finally do acceptable damage at best.
In the end it didnt seem to be worth it like at all. Beside the items etc i lost i also lost the other skills sort of. The damage loss of those skills is just to much in my expirience, so i have to rely on volcanic orb only which at this point imo is just not enough.
Could you please atleast change the spell void damage into generic flat damage.
Iam not 100% sure if this item is good enough than since i need to test it.
However what i do know is that other skills atleast are viable again to play beside volcanic orb which would be a lot of fun in my opinion.
!