The way the change works, you actually need to use your staff more times to get the same crit chance bonus you got before. Which makes Pyro clunkier to use as it’s harder to control exactly how much overcharge you have. It’s also a direct nerf to melee and hybrid builds, if you go melee with bolt staff you need to spend a significant amount of time using the staff (and hence not using melee), just to keep your overcharge high. I know you said you wanted to give pyro more identity as a ranged career… but I didn’t think that meant straight up nerfing her melee oriented builds! Pyro can be played melee, ranged or hybrid, this change is a significant nerf to 2 out of the 3 types of builds that you can do on pyro, and that sucks.
And this doesn’t just hurt melee builds, ranged builds are pushed to constantly spam the staff to keep those stacks up, even if there are just a few enemies around. It gets annoying for teammates and feels really clunky. To top it all off, it also makes it harder to safely make thp on ranged builds, because it’s harder to keep your stacks up, and without those stacks you’re much worse in melee. And it’s not like pyro felt like she needed more overcharge anyways, ranged builds didn’t get better because of that change.
The solution to this is simple, make the crit stacks appear on the same amount of overcharge as before, instead of proportionally to the whole bar.
More overcharge = more ammo capacity = shooting more without risk of self-explosion.
Being able to vent with nearly no damage damage taken = Shooting even more.
Volans made a passive = Benefits both.
Ranged did benefit.
…
But i do get the idea that at least for some staves like boltstaff, it can be a hassle to keep up a decently high overcharge when enemies arent abundant. But ironically this does kinda also push the identity of a ranged specialist over a melee one even more. Its easier to play ranged-centric but she isnt necessarily bad at melee, just clunkier at it now. And, if you wana play melee centric it also kinda makes sense that bringing a sniping staff isnt the best pairing, instead the shotgun or cannon-like ones are more synergistic. Kinda like how waystalker with hagbane is a whole other level of menace to hordes, near or far, compared to a longbow stalker.
I was talking specifically about the extra overcharge. I never had trouble spamming ranged all I wanted on ranged Pyro builds, the extra overcharge didn’t change much. And normally, when you play a melee build, you want a sniping option to take care of specials. But now, if you want to play pyro in melee, you’re kinda foced to use beam staff, because other staffs aren’t really safe to spam in melee range of horde, and you’re forced to spam it a lot to keep up the stacks. Yeah my main complaint is that it just feels clunkier now.
A weapon to deal with specials is indeed desired but people have rarely wanted sniping weapons for it except when they had no options, its no wonder practically no elf used longbow when javs and moonfire were options. Or why the dwarves that can uses trollhammer or the mercs use repeaters.
As for what staves are good for pyro now, i still suspect that Corsu/shotgun staff is still good, fireball should also still work well, even has the perk of decently good effective range.
…And to be honest, fully charged Boltstaff base damage is wild stuff, takes a moment but does pack that punch. 170 damage easily on a cata CW headshot. This without anything else.
Melee does feel a bit worse on her because, as you said, it takes more ranged attacks to build the overcharge you want.
Ranged feels stronger but also far more spammy. Having both dissipating + the new lvl 30 talent + 50% more overcharge has combined into an incredible amount of spam.