[PTS] BW feedback (single target)

[lumpi33]

I've tested a lot with BW now. Here is my feedback about the new stuff:

Lets start with mid tree:
- Detonate: Damage of over time part replaced by: If the target is Ignited, you will apply Minor Ignite to all enemies within 20 ft.
You basically Ignite (dot) the target and when you use Detonate after then it puts a Minor Ignite on the target as well and all enemies within 20ft. I kinda like the idea but it is just fluff damage.

- Minor Ignite: New "ability" that can be applied through Detonate: A Hex which causes your target to burst into flames, dealing 3 * (112 + 0.35*DB) Elemental damage to them over 9 seconds.
This is the Minor Ignite triggered by Ignite -> Detonate as stated above.

- Ignition: Now Minor Ignite also reduces the Corporeal Resistance of its targets by 240.
That's the Ignition tactic from the mid tree that you use to debuff targets. It debuffs the Minor Ignite as well. Only a few BW AOE abilities benefit from it because most AOE is elemental (Fiery Blast, Rain of Fire, Flame Breath, Fireball Barrage, Wild Fire, Spreading Flames) it debuffs croporeal (Slow Boil, Annihilate, Scorched Earth, Backdraft).

- Fan The Flames: Now additionally has the following effect: If the enemy is affected by your Slow Boil, Detonate will also spread Minor Slow Boil to nearby enemies
With this tactic you can do a similar thing you did with Ignite -> Detonate -> Minor Ignites with Slow Boil. So you can stack up Ignite and Slow Boil, then Detonate and the main target as well as the surrounding targets will the the Minor Ignite and Minor Slow Boils. It is better than the Minor Ignite but you need this tactic for it.

- Minor Slow Boil: New "ability" that can be applied through Detonate: For the next 5 seconds, the target is inflicted with a Hex which raises their temperature to a delirious fever, causing them to lose 3 Action Points every 1 seconds. When this effect ends, they will suffer (187 + 1.0*DB) Corporeal damage as the fever peaks.
That's the Minor Slow Boil triggered by Slow Boil -> Detonate as stated above.

- Withering Heat: Damage changed from 4 * (399 + 1.0*DB) to 4 * (300 + 1.5*DB).
With 230 magical damage bonus this means 399 + 230 to 300 + 345. So a mini buff and a bit better scaling with damage bonus. Btw: The sorc mirror Hand of Ruin hits harder: Damage per interval changed from (448 + 1.0*DB) to (262 + 2.0*DB). Gonna come back to this later.

- Playing With Fire: Now undefendable. Duration increased from 10 to 15 seconds.
That it is now undefendable was really needed. It is on a 20s cooldown and not spamable like on SW/SH.

My conclusion about the mid tree:
The old Detonate had a dot effect so the new Minor Ignite is a bit of a nothing burger.
The Minor Slow Boil is better but you need the tactic for it. It does about 2/3 of the Slow Boil. I think they tried to do a mirror of the Chilling Gusts with that Minor Slow Boil, however, it feels clunky and not as good. The Chilling Gusts of the Sorc is such a great tactic and it procs off Chillwind and Ice Spikes. You get a ton of procs without having to care about a Detonate. Look: https://ibb.co/WNFjGN5Y

BWs have the Smoldering Embers in the mid tree but it is pretty much useless. It only has a 25% to proc after the effect ends. It barely ever does. Go try.

The sorc also got the Absorb Vitality buffed. It does 5x up to 620ish crit damage and heals you for the same amount. So a lot damage and a lot healing where we have our Stop Drop and Roll which is more of a free immunity vendor with that short 2s kd that removes the Ignite which we need for the debuffing. Then there is the Gloom of Night which is also a ticking AOE dot in the Sorc mid tree that just had it's cast time reduced to 1.5s. On sorc you need no tactic for the Ice Spikes to have 0 cooldown. It is per default. So, what you can do there is AOE Ice Spikes dot with Chilling Gust procs, optional AOE Gloom of Night dot and Absorb Vitality dot then do your single target rotation with VoT, WoP, Chillwind, Hand of Ruin while the pre-stacked dots are still ticking. It is a smooth play and your burst is obviously noticeable higher than on the BW while they even heal themselves from the Absorb Vitality. Where is the BW heal? We got the Heal Debuff on a 20s instead while the Sorc is doing 5x up to 620ish crit damage and healing for the same amount with Absorb Vitality? Well, great...

Lets have a look at the left tree changes:
- Draining Burn: Reworked to: Burning Iron now applies a Hex on the enemy for 20 seconds, inflicting 352 Elemental damage each time they use a melee ability.
This does around 250ish damage. It is comparable to the Shaman Gork Sez Stop. You need a tactic slot for it. Not really sure about this if it worth it. Needs to be tested in real pvp.

- Searing Vitality: Reworked into Burning Focus: Your Path of Incineration damaging abilities deal an additional (337 + 1.5*DB) Elemental damage. You have a 50% chance to deal the same damage to yourself. This effect can only occur once per 10 seconds.
This is probably the worst tactic ever created. It does only one proc with 10 seconds cooldown and you have a 50% to get the same damage back. Like WTF? It is buggy as well. With Fireball Barrage it doesn't hit the main target when there are several around, just a random target, just one proc. Ridiculous. The cooldown needs to be reduced to at least 5s and it should not damage you, it should heal you. The BW lost all its self healing stuff while the sorc got a really strong one with Absorb Vitality. It is supposed to be a soft mirror to Swell of Gloom but it is just terrible.

- Fireball Barrage: Damage changed from (450 + 0.75*DB) to (300 + 1.5*DB) for its single target damage and from (225 + 0.38*DB) to (150 + 0.75*DB) for its AoE damage.
ok, so less single target damage from 14 point ability of what is supposed to be the ST burst tree than Withering Heat from mid tree which can use the Ignite debuff. What's the logic here? Because of the fluff aoe damage?

- Burning Iron: Base damage increased from 187 to 337.
It does the same damage as Sear now but removes AP from the target. Nothing to write home about. Only good thing about Burning Iron is that it is corp damage which can be debuffed.

btw: Sear and Nova do Elemental damage which cannot be debuffed with Ignition. The same abilities on the sorc, Gloomburst and Impending Doom are spirit and can be debuffed.

All in all the BW still feels meh. It is kind of fun to see the AOE procs but it is just fluff damage. Sorc has what actually matters: More single target punching power and the smoother game play. To me the new Searing Vitality tactic speaks volumes that there was no interest in making the BW actually decent. It is worse than the Sorc and A LOT worse than the Magus.

Bombling has already discussed to AOE builds (right tree) so I'm not gonna do.

[wonshot]

Hey!

For ST BW in scs I imagine if this patch goes live as it is, ill be running these four tactics:
Boiling blood, ignition x 2 middletree
Flashfire, Searing Vitality.

It will basicly be me trying to do the standard rotation with full combustion Ignite, Boilingblood (if this connects without disrupts)
then ill commit more of my cooldowns on hand for the target with Healdebuff into unloading the multiple instant first ticks, castetd 1timers and trying to finish the target.

The issue for me, is that for Flashfire to fit into this it needs to be pretty much only Ignite attempt one, that you want disrupted anything else is too much of a burst loss. I will not really be hard casting or investing my Flashfire and now Searing Vitatlity 10sec internal cd proc unless i see a kill window on a low target, which will basicly be from assisting someones else's work lol.

I feel like this could make for some additional pressure window, when stars allign. But you now have two internal cooldowns you need to track when to consume. Thats not too bad, it just becomes more and more situational when you are backloaded with burst and need to set up the 5sec timebomb timestamp and trying to fit the internal cds into this kill window. Add on top your target's detaunts running out on a timing where you need to burst before its reapplied, or a tank feeding you a target with punt or kd setting up a killwindow based on immunities.
I dont think BW will be unplayable or much different, its just still stuck in pugstomping monster or hardcountered by veterans. Imo

All in all, the gain of Burning iron becoming corp might be the main, or only real change. Which is nice, even if thats the case.

[lumpi33]

I've tried all kind of different builds and here are the things that annoyed me the most:

#1 Forced to go close. Flame Breath having only 40ft range and a 10s cooldown by default. You need 8 points in conflagration tree and a tactic slot to reduce it to 0s. You basically have to go into melee range to apply it on multiple targets. This is awful because going close to a melees is never a good idea and it's even worse on Order side because of the Choppa pulls, Mara kds and Dok snare prayer. You are going to get instantly snared and maybe even pulled or kd and focused. With the 10s cooldown you can't spam it like the Sorc to keep you power up without targets or pump it up before the encounter.
The Sorcs Ice Spikes on the other hand is 75ft range (line) and is on a 0s cooldown by default. It allows her to stay behind the melee line and she doesn't have to worry about the Choppa pulls, Mara kds or Dok snares. It is spamable and has a synergy with the Chilling Gusts from the single target mid tree builds.
That's one example of why the BW feels clunky compared to the sorcs. They are being forced to go close for most of their Conflagration stuff but it is very hard to pull off that play style, especially vs the mentioned destro abilities and then for what? Mediocre damage? If I want to go close then I pick a Slayer.

#2 Self healing. We lost all healing abilities. As Sorc you can now use the Absorb Vitality every 20s to get really strong healing with an additional dot on top.

#3 Backlashes. The amount of backlashes are a lot higher on BWs. You want to use Funnel Power -> additional backlashes, You want to use the new Searing Vitality tactic? -> 50% chance of full damage backlash, You want to hit destro groups with AOE? -> pray that there is no chosen running Discordant Fluctuation aura or you will get lots of additional backlashes. It feels so painful. The sorc doesn't have that amount of backlashes do put out her damage and doesn't have to fight knights with that backlash aura.

#4 Disrupts. The BWs have zero abilities or tactics to reduce disrupts. The sorcs just got -10% on the Obsessive Focus. Both are still really bad regarding this and will have tons of disrupts like it is on live but sorc got at least a little bit to overcome it.

#5 Defense. Shield of Aqshy vs Shroud of Darkness. The SoD just received a buff that it increases your disrupt by 10% as well. So you get 360 to all resistences plus 10% disrupt on top. The SoA stayed the same with 594 armor and 50% less likely to be set back. When do I ever need that reduced set back? Most stuff is instant or channel and the casted stuff with 2-3s casts is mostly useless without flashfire or focused mind. Id prefer to have 10% dodge instead of that reduced set back vs these nasty SHs a lot more. It would be more of a fair mirror. Sorc gets magic defense, BW melee defense.

#6 Morals. Yeah, a close range m2 is what I want... NOT. BWs are the rdps class here, yet the mdps have the ranged m2 damage abilities. SW/SH have ranged m2 damage morals as well. What the hell?

So there you have it. Clunky play, no self heals, more backlashes, bad morals, less single target damage, fluff and meaningless aoe damage, slightly more disrupts but in general a ton of disrupts, some awful tactics like Searing Vitality and Smoldering Embers, a KD deep in the tree that is freaking short, getting into Choppa/Mara pulls, Mara kds, Dok snares when going closer, no escapes.

Basically, lots of disrupts, self damaging and worse escapes/HD debuffs compared to a SW/SH for doing the same or less damage? What's the point?

Destros laugh at them because they are so easy to kill in 1:1, small scale, scenarios, cities with their cloth armor and no escapes. You only have to look at them and half of their health is gone. And when they are free they need to get 100 power first, then constantly shoot themselves into the knees with the backdrafts and their clunky rotations. All for what? The same damage output as SWs/SHs? Half damage output of the Magus? come on...

I don't like it.

[TheWatchGuy]

Hey!

For ST BW in scs I imagine if this patch goes live as it is, ill be running these four tactics:
Boiling blood, ignition x 2 middletree
Flashfire, Searing Vitality.

It will basicly be me trying to do the standard rotation with full combustion Ignite, Boilingblood (if this connects without disrupts)
then ill commit more of my cooldowns on hand for the target with Healdebuff into unloading the multiple instant first ticks, castetd 1timers and trying to finish the target.

The issue for me, is that for Flashfire to fit into this it needs to be pretty much only Ignite attempt one, that you want disrupted anything else is too much of a burst loss. I will not really be hard casting or investing my Flashfire and now Searing Vitatlity 10sec internal cd proc unless i see a kill window on a low target, which will basicly be from assisting someones else's work lol.

I feel like this could make for some additional pressure window, when stars allign. But you now have two internal cooldowns you need to track when to consume. Thats not too bad, it just becomes more and more situational when you are backloaded with burst and need to set up the 5sec timebomb timestamp and trying to fit the internal cds into this kill window. Add on top your target's detaunts running out on a timing where you need to burst before its reapplied, or a tank feeding you a target with punt or kd setting up a killwindow based on immunities.
I dont think BW will be unplayable or much different, its just still stuck in pugstomping monster or hardcountered by veterans. Imo

All in all, the gain of Burning iron becoming corp might be the main, or only real change. Which is nice, even if thats the case.

I love Flashfire, but Flashfire gets disrupted as well unless you spec into BurnThru, which is very expensive. The biggest problem BW has atm besides get away tools, will be spells getting disrupted alot. With the new patch, Sorc will no longer have this disurpt problem with Cruel Reprisal and Echo of Power.

I don't know who is consulting the Devs on BW/Sorc, if they have none, I strongly suggest you represent us. I no longer play my sorc and BW unless brainless AOE spec and fully supported, and you know the reasons why.