All heros have a ranged focus class, a melee focused class and a balanced class which all lend themselves to distinctly different play style. This is not the case with Sienna.
Unchained steps up to the melee role very well and is a great class. The problem is battle wizard and pyro are too similar with battle wizard being curretly inferior. Both classes have 10% bonus ranged damage vs unchained which does nothing to vary play style.
The first issue is ability usefulness. The burning head is an incredibly powerful ability having high damage, strong knockback and a relatively short cooldown. Firewalk in comparison is very weak and is mostly used to vent overcharge rather thsn as an actual ability.
The second problem is passive traits.
Pyro benifits from bonus crit chace at higher overcharge which automatically a better user of the beam, bolt, flamestorm and fireball staff dur to the heat sink perk. Battle wizards passive trait to vent overcharge requires the player no to use thier ranged weapons to actually feel the effect of it, this synergies poorly with siennaâs mediocre melee weapons. The passive and perk abilty to reduce charge is only noticeable on the fireball and conflag staff with the fireball not benifiting due to rapid fire charges being more effective.
This culminates in battle wizard being a better user of a single staff and possesing a far less useful ult.
Some changes need to be made to raise the viability of this class vs pyro and unchained. An exclusive melee weapon with high armour effectiveness could achieve this.
It would be nice to see more variation than beam staff pyro in every level.
Iâd somehow like to see battle wizard be more mobile, allow her ult to teleport her to more unaccessible places as in rooftops(unless thereâs specials, elites or bosses blocking her way to keep it balanced), and maybe even reduced overcharge generation the more she has. so she can fire more. pyro and unchained can be the melee variant.
Roles of careers are a little more complicated than simply âOne ranged, One melee, and One bothâ, but Iâll pass on that.
BW needs to become a more team-oriented career.
Changing her ult, giving her the ability to light the blade of her mates, giving her some love.
Same goes for WHC.
Both of those careers are really good when played well, but WHC seems like a Crit-for-team based role, which doesnât feel player-friendly, and BW should have gone the fire-team way
To compare a Pyro with a BW, is like comparing apples with bananas.
I don´t know your playstyle, some of your thoughts are correct, but some others are vague.
Here are my pretty easy thoughts:
The Pyromancer is broken.
The Battlewizard is balanced.
You can just compare them in their choice of weapons. The melee-weapons are overall the same on each of Sienna´s 3 careers. Unchained gets a buff yeah, but overall you probably spam your stuff, go into melee and repeat it with her. So the Unchained is (for me) actually strong but boring.
Pyro:
So⌠as you mentioned, our pyro can easily use the âheatsink on critâ perk on on-hit weapons. (bolt/beam)
Especially the beam can fill the ultimate within 2s. Intended or not⌠it´s ridiculous. She is a brutal damage-dealer and such easy to play. Her ultimate penetrates everything, so she is the only Sienna career, who don´t have to run AP - weapons to be useful VS chaos warriors.
Her only âconâ is her stationary mechanic. That´s what the BW can do better in many ways, but that´s up next. So⌠if you can´t kill anything fast enough, something will reach you and if it´s not alone, you´ve sometimes any problems.
But even with that âconâ, she is overall the probably best dd you could´ve in your team. Only the 3 elf-careers and the crossbow BH are able to reach her stats / usefulness.
BW:
The BW is better with âloading staff´sâ like the fireball or conflag. It´s pretty strong to stagger whole patrols and escape easily with her ultimate. I would compare her a lil bit with the HM. Definately not that strong, but what FS probably thought about this class.
You can get more surviveability and last man standing perks in her tree. The passiv relies on the fact, that you don´t have to vent in such situations.
Spam the hell out and run away´/ go in melee-combat. Your passiv will trigger quite fast and you can use your strong staff´s again. There are even other ways to play her. I go on high mobility and play with a flame-sword, just becaue i like it.
Her âconsâ are quite obvious. It lacks on armor - penetration, special kills, boss melting etc.
The BW is strong in waveclear and her own surviveability, but if you start to compare her?
The Pyro got her ult and the unchained tankyness + melee-buffs. So both are quite good able to handle any armored enemies. The BW got mobility/surviveability only and is just pain VS any CW and especially BĂśdvarr and Spinemanglr.
Just nerf that pyro crits and her ultimate. Atleast the cooldown should be much higher.
Buff / rework sienna´s melee-arsenal and adjust the unchained to it.
It needs AP and surprise⌠the BW would feel awesome for everyone and could pass the comparison to the pyromancer/unchained.
It´s that simple.
But i guess FS have a plan⌠maybeâŚ
Pyro - ranged class
Unchained - melee class
BW - is more proficient in range and melee than the above classes
How?
BW has the ability to have infinite stamina. She has the potential to be tankier than UC and still deal additional damage with range like her Pyro counterpart.
BWâs ultimate is very versatile. You can dash away to prevent from being surrounded, you can dash to save a teammate from being dragged away by a hook rat, or you can point downwards and hit F to create a mini version of UCâs ult that knocks back enemies and temporarily stuns them. Whenever you have a downed teammate thatâs surrounded by enemies, dash facing downwards to knock back enemies to safely revive them.
She has everything the other two have plus much more.
Sadly youâre mistaken. Battle wizard is totally different character than Pyromancer. Their most efficient staff of choice (Battle wizard should take Conflag most of the time while Pyro will stick to Beam Staff), their heat management (Pyromancer should either deplete his overcharge just by beaming enemies which triggers -4.0 overcharge on crit or by using his ultimate while Battle Wizard will want to have her overcharge relativelly high. It comes down to having 80-90% overcharge bar - casting conflag charged spell a LOT faster thanks to that - getting relativelly high amount of temp hp from it. Burning that hp to lower overcharge down tiny little bit - like back to 80-90% and casting that charged spell again. Battle Wizard can deplete her overcharge with her ult as well but should do that rarelly as her skill is more of a utility to interrupt attacks, move away or ressurect in peace since u can cast it while doing it)
The key factor in playing battle wizard for me was: proper build and break points, proper heat management, proper priorities in game itself. Battle wizard controls the battle field. I renember I felt BW inferior to Pyro in all aspects when I started playing her. Now I find her more powerfull than Pyro as long as you donât try to play âsoloâ in a coop game. In that case - Pyro might feel stronger.
P.S. The build I was using is: 3 1 1 2 3
Mace 2.0 stamina + 30% cost block reduction | Parry
Conflag Staff 10%vs Chaos + 10%vs Infantry | Thermal Equalizer
Neklace 2.0 stamina + 30% cost block reduction | Healerâs Touch or Boon of Shalya
Charm 10%vs Chaos + 10%vs Infantry | Decanter (I carried Grims mostly since I didnât need potions in any scenario)
Trinket 33% Curse Ressistance + 5% Movement Speed | Shrapnel