[PTS] BW feedback (single target)

[lumpi33]

It's so easy for Maras to pick them out with a pull or just charging/pouncing to them. Than it is most of the time already game over. As Sorc you can at least see the pet coming and fall back outside their pull range. And a WH you can knock back with the m1 while the WE is 2s later back on you with the pounce.

PS: BWs used to be able to use their m1 to break the Mara pull channel. Now they have flight time on it and you are still getting pulled before the Mara is being interrupted. So bad...

[lumpi33]

It is easier to solo bw then to solo on a sorc just so you know

Not really. The BW has the absorb and the self cleanse.

The absorb wont trigger without being hit and when you are being hit it is usually over in scenarios without healers.

As Sorc you can switch your spec to Absorb Vitality then you have every 20s a strong self heal to keep your health up. Both, their heals and their resis self buff got buffed. The heal is stronger and the self buff got additional 10% disrupt.

They are both bad without healers and dead when they are coming at you. When being left alone the sorc is better now. They don't have to deal with the chosen reflect either.

PS: Further more they can run a proc build together with absorb vitality. Chilling Gusts and the new damage after defend. Both don't do draft backs. BW can't do that. Believe it or not, Sorc is better suited for rounds without healers. Not only for rounds without healers, also for rounds with only one healer that has to keep up 6-7 allies - which happens a lot - the Sorc can run such builds to have the healer having to care a lot less about you.

To me the PTS patch speaks volumes. Sorc getting nice little improvements while for the BW they didn't address ANYTHING of their issues.

[Bozzax]

Well you do not play the classes and my remarks was about pre patch obviously

[Shogun4138]

BWs are over powered in the aoe. This is why they dominate kills in warbands. They should take more self damage when aoeing.

[fillfillfillfill]

After playing around with both AOE and ST, i've come to realize we need a healer at the damn training grounds. A pocket healer so I can play the class you need me to try. It is absolutely ridicilous and beyond infuriating to play solo BW in in sort of setting at all, let alone inside your safe haven city. Jesus, guys. Do something about this farce.

For the builds, the main problem will continue to be how telegraphed the incoming damage is. Cleanse, shield, detaunt and the BW does more damage to himself than to the enemy

The secondary thing is the KD eating your ignite forcing you to reapply it if you want to do damage with your resistance shred. This is unbelievably clunky and a silly, punishing mechanic, and it feels very bad to use. Why is this still in the game?

Third, this class needs a tool to deal with the defensive layer of disrupt. This class, this spec, maybe specifically. When your Boiling Blood or in this PTR, your Slow Boil gets disrupted you have no realistic way of killing an enemy in the upcoming burst. The timestamp suffers way too hard.

Fourth, is this class forever going to be have to be babysat to play the game? I think we need to challenge the idea of having to take this obscene amount of damage for just using our frankly mid damage skills. Me being a relatively new player of a year and five months can understand that maybe once upon a time this class used to have insanely gamebreaking damage and that the selfharm was a sort of check to this, but let's be real here: this is not the case at all anymore.
The self damage is far, far beyond what is reasonable when you consider the payoff, combined with the fact that the self damage is on ability activation, and not on damage dealt we are yet again feeling the sting of Deft Defender and disrupt stackers.
Other classes and specs do far more damage, both sustained and in burst without dying in process. Let's start a conversation on this topic, please.

The tools provided to deal with this self damage are not enough. The Darkpromise heal mechanic being tied to a long cooldown and with very very low numbers on the heal(to the point where two procs of your Combustion during the CD of the ability offsets the whole reason for using the set).
Power From The Ashes: Meltdown self heal. This probably needs to be baseline, and even then you're likely to lose the effect of the heal as you ramp back up to 100% combustion.

I will segway here to give input on the other tactic and ability reworks.

Tactics:

Draining Burn: I like this a lot. I think this is good addition.
Searing Vitality: This is weak and self-destructive. Suggestion 1: Make it corp, make it able to crit and should not come with self damage. Otherwise, just revert to using 160 Int and gain the same damage without the drawback???
Flavour text in patch notes says it's a soft mirror to Swell of Gloom, but even Sorc with its new found selfheal ability doesn't need to suffer self damage on equipping a tactic. This has potential, but Devs are far too sadistic with the selfdamage part of BW.
Suggestion 2: Realize that the class has enough burst, but we need to be consistently able to land our skills. Remake tactic into disrupt strikethrough based on combustion level.

It also seems to do some janky stuff when it proccs off of FBB, where it's not the single targetted aspect of the ability that recieves the extra damage, but a random target in aoe.

Ignition: Great addition!
Power From The Ashes: Covered above.
Fan The Flames: Fantastic tactic. Excellent job.

Distracting Fires: I struggle to see what tactic get replaced in favour of this. I like the idea of a temu No Escape, but that was closer to what was given to Sorcs. I don't believe anyone has ever looked at Fire Cage and thought, "Hey, this needs to be a damaging skill that CANNOT crit and it needs to hit 2 more people while still breaking on 50% of dmg". If we wanna give BWs more CC, then just do that. Lord knows we could use a rework on Backdraft.
Maybe there's an organized use for it, but in reality it will likely just be 6 targets taking no damage and getting immunities, up from the current 4.

Abilties:

Detonate: I love this new ability and how it synergizes with tactics. Super fun to play with. Good job.
Minor Ignite, Slow Boil: both good and fun to play with. Good job here. Feels better to use FBB & Withering Heat channels(not just single tics) now that these abilties exist.

Fireball Barrage: nothing to say
Withering Heat: nothing to say.

Playing With Fire: Beautiful change. Great job.
Burning Iron: Strong skill now. Good change.

Ending thoughts; the good far outweighs the "meh". It will be a lot of fun to mess around with the many new builds that have sprung from these changes. Overall great job. I do however think some changes are made for the sake of change and that Devs are trying to solve problems that don't exist, instead of trying to solve glaringly obvious issues that people bring to the forefront often and repeatedly (see self damage, disrupt and QoL KD mechanic). But perhaps we deal with this as we go along. Overall I think good job, Balance Team, and thank you for your efforts.