User blog comment:BorosPaladin/Josiah, the Hand of Flame/@comment-9713132-20121010121123/@comment-5441738-20121010155651

The main balance point against such strategies as ramping mana for Outpouring is that you've put a lot of effort into maxing a spell that requires you to be standing right next to the enemy to use. Yes, you can make that be a LOT of damage, especially with a Tear of the Goddess, but then you aren't stacking the survivability you need to survive the close contact you need to take advantage of that ability. Aside from his ultimate, all of Josiah's ranges are very low, which limits the amount of AD or AP that he can get safely.

Also, for that ability, your numbers sound off. The calculations are (assuming level 9 and 4 points in Outpouring):

(50*9)+50 [for his natural mana] + 1000 [for 5 sapphire crystals] = 1500 mana.

Half of that, the ability's cost, is 750. The ability then deals damage equal to 60% of THAT value, for a mere 450 damage. Add the 120 for a mere 570 damage. Potentially impressive, sure, but not seriously so, especially when you consider that you now have to survive within 250 units of the enemy on 1165 health and minimal armor/MRes. And that assumes that they enemy even lets you get INTO range, since the build you mentioned didn't account for using Streak to get into range (if the enemy even lets you do THAT).

And thank you for the overall support. I realized before even starting to make his abilities that no matter what I did, it would require tons of fine-tuning, so I made the abilities "feel" like him and didn't worry too much about balance. I'm glad I succeeded.