Pyro main here. She is crazy strong with the right build/kits (my favs are Sword+Bolt, or Flame+Dagger). Easily the top DPS class in the game, not including boss slaying (purple pot is still pretty epic boss dps though).
Pyro’s only real problem is that there’s basically one talent build. That build is super strong, and works with multiple weapon combos, but that’s really the only build. Half her talents are pure garbage, and there’s no build variety.
So does she need buffed? No, she’s probably the second strongest character in the game (after elf). She does need rebalanced though. The talent tree is a hot mess, and even though it works REALLY well, you’re basically locked into the same talents on almost every tier. There’s no room for creatitvity.
I’m also a bit annoyed that she’s basically just “Unchained but better,” which is a style issue, not a power issue. Pyro is very strong and certainly doesn’t need a buff, just a proper balancing of her talents.
eta: Oh, and aiming her ult sucks. Seriously, it worked fine a year ago, what happened to it?
Those would be some very ineffective battle wizards.
Currently all i see is fire sword + beam bw’s, and for a good reason, the same reason actually when you saw alot of bw’s in the broken kaboom days. She is super safe, while doing great dps, it’s less extreme then purely blocking + pressing f, but it’s close.
Battle wizard isn’t the only sienna with questionable things though. Unchained, abandon + bomb balm + (talent which reduces venting dmg), is busted af, especially when paired up with a mercenary.
5% attack speed (10% crit chance is acceptable if you are good enough to never get injured), no slowdown on overheat, extra attack speed on overheat, health on Ult for durability in melee, health and stagger talents based on weapon choice. Combine with Hunter on staff and keep your heat high and you’ll cut through everything - CW are a bit of a speed bump but they still go down pretty fast.
Pyro is just not a good ranged career. Crit doesn’t synergize well with most staves. When you commit to a full charge in combat, you have to be sure it’ll be worth it, and crits are too unreliable for that.
Pretty much all staves can crit now maybe flamethrower is only it doesnt synergize well with. In the past it wasnt the case though, if your high overheat just have to vent while ranging makes it a bit more tactical but more rewarding along with talents that offset the overheat if you want a more ranged role
Well, it’s the only one that’s competitive compared to BW or UC anyway. I’ve tried other builds, they are basically just a weak BW.
I’m serious about how deadly melee crit pyro is though. Especially with Dagger or Sword, they scale crazy well with crits. I can outdps literally everything against hordes, elites go down fast, and even boss dps is comparable to something like Slayer or Mercenary (not close to shade or bh though).
Regarding staves, to benefit from the career passives, you have to use them at high heat. That means you have to Charge>Fire>Vent>Repeat. You can’t spam into a crowd- if you are at low enough heat to do that, you are just a weak BW. Pyro also lacks the heat management talents of UC (esp conduit) that would make this process easier. Also, Except for Bolt and Fireball, crits are really weak on the other staves as well, which is very limiting.
IMO the classes in general are confused with each other. BW is the nuker, Pyro is the melee build, and UC is a support build (explosion=health, wut lol?). They step on each others toes a lot, melee pyro totally out classes UC and BW totally outclasses ranged pyro. It’s just kind of a mess. Is pyro needing a buff though? No it’s very strong. Sienna in general is a convoluted mess that doesn’t make much sense, but being weak is not the problem, it’s confused overlap between the 3 careers.
What on earth will happen when she gets a 4th? Sigh.
Beam is my current favorite, easy to maintain high overheat, proc hunter and nuke crits quite well and fast. (If unaware of left click+right click function easy to overlook)
Bolts also a good choice, quick to gain hunter proc and anti armor nuke.
Fireballs great monster and horde but i dislike its FF too hard to aim around allies.
The beauty of auto crit is every melee weapon is more viable save crowbill which already ignores armor.
Bonded Flame or Exhast both make it real easy to range, deathly dissapation or on the precipice as well but yah prefer melee in melee centric game and BW does better with fully charged and faster charging so bolt is better suited for her.
I don’t think Pyro needs an overall buff (melee dps is comparable to UC), just changes to a few less useful talents, like Fleetflame and Soul Siphon.
Some ideas for Deathly Dissipation:
Killing an elite or special stops your spells from generating overcharge for 5 seconds.
Simple, but could be too much focus on chain killing due to 5s timer.
Killing an elite or special removes a fixed amount of overcharge.
Could be annoying since it would lower your crit chance.
Scoring 2 elite kills in 5 seconds or 1 special kill stops your spells from generating overcharge for 10 seconds.
Might be okay, but again there’s an emphasis on chain killing. Too strong vs patrols probably.
Martial Study:
Live talent is a leftover from pre-WoM. Venting increases attack speed by 5%. Stacks 2 times.
Soul Siphon:
10% dmg reduct at max isn’t enough. Make it stack twice.
Fleetflame:
Critical hits increase movement speed and dodge range by 5% for 10 seconds. Stacks up to 3 times.
15% movement speed and 15% dodge range in total. 15% dodge range might be too much.
Blazing Echo:
I love it but it’s a meme. Too strong on multi-proc, too weak when it doesn’t proc.
The Burning Head can now be cast a second time within 5 seconds.
Copies BW’s Burnout talent. Probably too good, especially if The Burning Head got buffed.
The Burning Head now cleaves twice the number of enemies.
Doesn’t follow the talent theme of multiple casts.
Critical hits reduce the cooldown of The Burning Head by 15%. Can only trigger once every 10 seconds.
Copies BH’s Just Reward. Would work well but it does copy another talent.
Casting The Burning Head reduces its cooldown by 20%. Stacks 4 times. Upon reaching 4 stacks the stacks are reset to 0.
This might just encourage players to hold onto their ult once they reach 3 stacks unfortunately.
Clapping reduces the cooldown of the next The Burning Head cast by 10% per clap.
Obviously the right choice.
I appreciate what the Balance mod did for the Beam staff. Beam staff spam is much more team-friendly than fireball spam. Less friendly fire and visual obstruction.
Some good ideas. Just want to add another thought. Not being able to generate overheat for 10 seconds can leave you at low overheat and mess up your crit chance, I imagine this is an especially noticeable problem if running heat sink.
Would it perhaps be better if it just froze your overcharge bar altogether for the 10 second duration? Then if you killed a special while at high overheat you’d have 10 seconds of full crit to play with. Doesn’t help the fact that Pyro generally isn’t the greatest special sniper to begin with, but it certainly would make it more effective when it procs.
What I don’t understand is why the supposed ranged Sienna career got all of the melee talents when Unchained was the one that was advertised as the “magically melee enhanced” career.
I dunno about that. The way I see it BW is more the cast specialist, UC is the melee specialist, and Pyro is in between. The only reason UC Falls behind Pyro in melee is a lack of good stagger talents. Up to 60% melee power (AKA better cleave as well as damage) as a passive is very strong, crits are more of a generalist damage increase.
I kind of dig how Pyro and BW are both effective casters in different ways. BW just wins out because having a large benefit to flame dots and charge up weapons covers the majority of her ranged arsenal. Ideally BW wouldn’t be better with as many staffs as she is, but even then I don’t think Pyro is really starved for effective ranged weapon options.
Then let us abandon Abandon or bomb Bomb Balm Or preferably both. Not to happy with either talent. But it is another discussion and I probably prefer to leave that matter aside if we can tone down of the more broken stuff/careers in the next BBB in exchange.
Considering the insane elite density on Cataclysm and to a certain degree on Legend this would have a 100 % uptime in nearly every situations where it is needed.
This could maybe reign in the crit Monster. It is an interesting approach. Actually, this is something which i would consider potential passive for the whole career, considering how broken crit in the game is. Maybe a hybrid option like killing elites in melee will remove fixed amount of overcharge. It would emphasize her ranged nature.
As for Soul Siphon. Pyromancer shouldn’t have a damage reduction talent at all, neither should Battle Wizard. For Pyromancer consdering the insane damage output she has, she should be a one-hit wonder in both directions.
This sounds good on paper, but in practice it’s pretty miserable to play a class that gets quickly overwhelmed and has little to no hope if they ever end up last one standing. Surely the best middle ground is to give good survivability options, but have them compete on the same row as good dps options so you can’t have both at once.
For sure BW doesn’t need DR though. Great control and a great escape Ult. No need for DR on top of that.
I never really play Pyro that much but definitely didn’t give the impression of being weak. Dagger with +attack speed and mad crit chance means you just zoom around threats and wipe them out super fast, which usually results in very low damage taken. That and spamming fireball or something to keep heat level up makes a very high dps build.
Or preferably both. Not to happy with either talent. But it is another discussion and I probably prefer to leave that matter aside if we can tone down of the more broken stuff/careers in the next BBB in exchange.