What if the amount of heat required to obtain max stacks of Critical Mass was reduced slightly? Could that make Volan’s less integral/less of a must pick?
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I think the problem there would be the pyromancer would anyway want to keep using spells beyond that point to benefit from the increased crit chance.
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Volans Doctrine should be one of Pyro’s passive perks.
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what kind of crit can have enough damage or staggering to CW or storm vermin? the bolt? or the fire ball? they are so useless with their cost ,while volcanic can kill them easily.
what kind of crit can have enough damage or staggering to the crowd? with out crit we can also do it.
TBH, ranged crit on pyro now is totally a rubbish, especially the skull is another rubbish compared to elf.
Overcharge slow is a painfully unneeded and outdated mechanic in general. As can be evidenced by how Fatshark keeps adding talents to circumvent it.
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I dunno all the breakpoints, crits are a bit of a pain to test, especially stagger breakpoints. From messing around with creature spawner it would seem crits even without Hunter or power investment allows coruscation primary fire to one shot everything up to but not including a wargor/CW on Cata. Crits also allow it to do respectable damage on super armour whereas without them the primary fire does 0 damage.
Pyro obviously isn’t going to compete against volcanic BW with bolt, because volcanic is dummy strong for bolt. I don’t think that comparison really says anything TBH.
I’m not sure but I think Pyro’s crits make her out damage BW with fireball uncharged alt fire spam, for fully charged fireballs obviously it will lose to volcanic.
Proccing Hunter is also pretty big for Pyro’s melee, while heat sink lets her spam a lot more than BW, both factors I would consider pretty impactful.
Flaming skull everyone agrees is rubbish, but generating temp health with it does let you vent more and have higher uptime which is pretty nice. Not defending her Ult though, it’s pretty bad, that’s a separate issue to whether or not her crits are impactful though.
no, a hungry flame can easily kills armor.
My suggestion is crit of staff can have some more effect rather than just more dmg. for example it can be a double (just like chaos waste) or have a larger range. now the crit of staff is too weak compared to pure damage like valcanic and hungry flame.
Overcharge slowdown feels ok on battle wizard but I don’t get why a class that benefits from high overcharge gets punished so hard for it.
You can kinda make fleet flame work, but it only really works with swift slaying which basically ends up being a zero sum game with overcharge slowdown.
If pyro got significantly increased damage on high overcharge, such that the slowdown was a “you’re slow but if you hit something, ooh boy” then I could see some interesting gameplay come out of it but it just doesn’t seem like crit chance is worth the trade. Unless you have volan’s.
IMO the high overcharge thing is a nice unchained feature. I’d like to see pyro get a different identity.
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what they need to do for the pyromancer is giver her another 2 more passives.
- 15% heat reduction
-5% crit
i still think she needs more crit for her crit build.
Maybe Pyromancer could use a 5% crit chance as a passive for her class. Or maybe give her 2 charges of her ult though that would need to be balanced.
I agree that Pyro is definitely the weakest of the 3.
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I think pyro’s f-power needs a buff…maybe make blazing echo (crits refund cooldown) baseline and add a new talent. Maybe that’s too powerful, but something needs to happen for that F-power.
I also suggest adding a new perk: “Hot Blooded - +10% movement speed” This will add a bit to survivability and playstyle, without making her tanky or ratcheting up the damage too much.
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I’ve actually had the same thought. Main problem I see is how much temp health you could potentially generate with Bonded Flame.
My preferred idea at the moment is for it to get a smallish explosion effect at whatever enemy it runs out of cleave on.
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Yeah, Burning Head works amazingly against unarmoured enemies but the moment it encounters a SV or something it fizzles out. I like the idea of it exploding on the final enemy, but really it just needs something, anything, to give it a purpose beyond spam / THP for venting.
As I posted in another thread, imo one of the other biggest problems with Pyromancer is while Battle Wizard has these nice, neat, themed talent tiers leading up to her ultimate talent tier - level 10: direct damage vs modifying burning, level 20: improving her tranquility passive, level 25: themed around igniting and striking enemies - Pyromancer’s tiers are are disjointed, jumbled mess since they did the rework and got rid of the OC themed tier.
Unchained’s talents are kind of inbetween the two in the theming respect but it doesn’t matter so much for her as she has a lot of interesting talents (even if some are weaker and could use adjusting).
For Pyromancer I’d reorganise her talents like so (some might need a rework and/or buff anyway, like the bland 5% AS one, and maybe the 15% ranged power at over above critical OC one, but this’d be a start):
Level 10: Theme: General boosts
- Ride the Fire Wind - 10% Ranged Power
- Martial Study - 5% Attack Speed
- Fleetflame - 10% Movement Speed
Level 20: Overcharge boosts
- On the Precipice - Critical Mass also increases ranged power by 3% per 6 overcharge and stacks up to 5 times (15% ranged power).
- One with the Flame - Critical Mass also increases attack speed by 2% per 6 overcharge and stacks up to 5 times (10% attack speed).
- Spirit-Casting - Critical Mass increases critical chance by 8% per 6 overcharge and stacks up to 5 times (40% critical chance at 5 stacks as opposed to 30%, the same as it is now with Critical Mass + Spirit Casting).
Level 25: Resource Management
- Deathly Dissipation - Killing a special will prevent you from overheating for 10 seconds, killing an elite will prevent you from overheating for 3s. (Added the latter as per dannylew8299’s suggestion in this thread to make it more competitive with Volans).
- The Volans Doctrine - No longer slowed from being overcharged. (Adelion suggested a rework to: Killing an elite in melee removes overcharge slowdown for 6s and overcharge can’t decrease in that time. This would give Unchained back some of her uniqueness with ignoring OC slowdown altogether but still give Pyro a solid, melee build option. imo 6s might be a bit short for lower difficulties, possibly would need to be a bit longer. On Cata 6s works perfectly thanks to mixed hordes).
- Soul Siphon - Killing a special prevents THP decay for 10s, killing an elite prevents THP decay for 6s (current Soul Siphon is kinda underwhelming vs the alternatives, it needs something).
Level 30: Ultimate
- Bonded Flame - Burning Head grants 35 temporary health when used.
- Blazing Twins - Burning Head now unleashes two fiery projectiles instead of one.
- Blazing Echo - Burning Head critical hits refund its cooldown.
Having both Blazing Echo and Blazing twins as options makes little sense to me. With pseudo random crits you rarely get more than 1 free Ult consecutively, which makes blazing twins mostly just a more reliable version of blazing echo.
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That’s weird, I have had quite a few double ults and more at high OC. The pseudorandom distribution seems to glitch out hard a fair bit and give you three, four, five ults in a row, like you get with consumables’ dupe traits. Ofc sometimes you get none.
But right now you can make that same argument for THP on ult and vent on ult - vent on ult is one free vent, THP on ult gives you enough THP to vent several times. It is flat out better to take the THP than the vent.
I think having a guaranteed double skull and the RNG extra skulls would be a more interesting choice for people who want a guaranteed reward vs a risky one. Double skulls can be overkill too, sometimes you want a few skulls spaced out over time.
No matter the case, the vent talent needs to go and be replaced with a useful alternative.
Oh I certainly don’t disagree with that. Why you would want your Ult to vent overcharge at all on a class like Pyro is beyond me. That one definitely needs to go.
Regarding blazing twins vs blazing echo, your experience doesn’t really line up with my understanding of how pseudo random crits work, but I’ll take your word for it that it can sometimes be generous.
My other problem with your rework is you will still inevitably see Volans Doctrine picked 95% of the time, and nerfing that talent at all is definitely a nerf Pyro does not need.
Honestly I am increasingly coming round to the idea that overheat slowdown is an outdated mechanic with little place in a game as fast paced as V2. It makes sense on BW, and honestly she desperately needs some kind of weakness to help keep her in check, but currently for Pyro the cost of being at high heat is too large, to the point that without Volans you’d be an idiot to ever let it get that high. The slowdown costs you more DPS than you get from the extra crit chance, so in effect it’s not risk vs reward, it’s just a soft cap on your overheat bar you should never realistically cross.
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I have no idea how FS code it either, I have long suspected many dupe probabilities in this game either have the wrong chance inputted for the distribution or the distribution itself is off in general. You get random bursts where you use like 5 bombs, heals or potions in a row fairly frequently.
Last few runs I used Burning Head (I had Spirit Casting too for reference) I had several times it only popped once or twice, but then quite a significant number where I got four or five ults in a row. I guess it’s not too unlikely since you have 5% base crit + 25% from OC + 10% from SC = 40% (50% if you have 10% crit on items outside the wastes), but I mean even with the 25% dupes in this game you get an oddly large number of times where you get an absolute ton of dupes in a row after getting nothing for a bit.
How so? You have such a high crit chance at high overheat on Pyro you have perma Swift Slaying + very good melee damage, and you have other talents to boost AS in the upper tiers. Right now there’s zero tradeoff on Pyro for having high OC since you can ignore OC slowdown outright, but that’s what Adelion’s adjustment would solve imo.
With THP on ult you can vent quite easily on the class.
Pyro’s main problem is her talents don’t offer her much of a niche when it comes to ranged. BW can adjust her burning and that’s fine, but BW can also take Volcanic Force and hit breakpoints Pyro has no choice of reaching on weapons that used to be iconic for her (namely Bolt staff). I don’t think the solution to that is having no OC slowdown, that’s more like a bandaid at this point, what Pyro needs is a rework of her talents and more that benefit her at ranged - On the Precipice could do with giving her a better power increase for OC than 15% if needed I guess. Ride the Fire Wind I’d like to see be more consistent e.g. 10% power outright no fluctuation and it’d be a much better pick.
Pyro does much better with Heat Sink than BW/Unchained, with the Coruscation staff you can absolutely spam it. Deathly Dissipation is still very good on e.g. Bolt staff, just everybody takes Bolt BW atm thanks to Volcanic Force + Rechannel. I’d rather see Pyro get a different but solid ranged niche back as an alternative to BW than FS focus on building her entire playstyle around Volan’s even harder.
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I should have been clearer, I meant critical overcharge mostly. A reminder, at critical overcharge you are at -25% attack speed, -15% dodge range, and -15% movement speed. Your attack speed talents in no way overcome this defecit. At high overcharge you are still dealing with -15% attack speed. So to go from high overcharge to critical, you are losing 10% attack speed (only 8% if speccing one with the flame, as if that 2% realistically makes any difference), as well as the huge defensive losses in dodge range and movement speed. Please explain to me how 6% extra crit chance could possibly be worth that defecit. I’m not sure exactly how attack speed affects all of the staffs (I can say it definitely has a big effect on the primary fire rate of coruscation, thereby you objectively lose more DPS with coruscation primary fire than you gain by going from high → critical overcharge), but I cannot possibly imagine how it could be worth it to be at critical overcharge without Volans, you would most certainly never go into critical range if you thought there was any chance you would have to enter melee combat shortly - which happens all the time even as a ranged class unless in a very coordinated group - and it would still be extremely questionably worth it even if you’re just spamming your staff from range. You would be putting yourself in an extremely bad spot for very minimal benefit.
No, realistically critical overcharge just ceases to exist as a real option without Volans. There’s no balance there whatsoever, no risk vs reward, just a needlessly restrictive mechanic. UC shows how you can do risk vs reward right. Overheat slowdown is in itself a design failure. Take Volans away from a Pyro build and you now just play the game of doing your best to stay around high, but never critical overcharge. This isn’t even going into crit chance softcaps introduced by pseudo random crits that makes going over a certain crit chance questionably beneficial to begin with.
I know I’m not addressing your other points here, but frankly I see little point with such a fundamental disagreement on her core mechanics. You can pitt whatever talent you like against Volans, it won’t get picked. You can nerf Volans to address this issue, but effectively all you’ll do is drag a middle tier class down to low tier. For the sake of what, thematic consistency?
I don’t think that’s even true. Firstly, in a complex situation with a lot of threats around that need eliminating quickly, it is by no means impossible to accidentally overcharge yourself and straight up die on the spot for that mistake. Secondly, you are forced to either put your ranged weapon away and wait, or sacrifice health/leave yourself relatively vulnerable (yes you can dodge while venting, but we’re not gonna pretend that’s nearly the same level of safety as having your melee weapon out and ready to block) to regain your ability to shoot quickly. Of course there are ways around the health loss with temp health, but managing that resource is itself part of the charm/mechanics of Pyro compared to other ranged classes. It’s not like other ranged classes don’t also get unlimited ammo with an equivalent downtime/vulnerability period of reloading (actually bows don’t even have this much of a drawback).
So yeah, I kinda think overheat slowdown is a dumb relic from V1, and the more I think about it and actually look at the numbers, the more I think it serves no good function and just imposes artificial restrictions. While I don’t think Pyro is a bad class (again, just middleish of the pack, though I’ve also seen experienced players rank her close to the bottom), I absolutely cannot abide any suggestions that would amount to nerfing her.
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Yeah I’ll say I do agree the shift to critical overcharge is too sharp, you get penalised way too much for that last bit on the OC bar - perhaps reducing the threshold for the Critical Mass stacks a little would help with that, so you can get full benefit while having a little wiggleroom in which to juggle and manage your heat. That or the final stack of critical mass would need to come with a way bigger bonus.
But up until Critical Overcharge I think you’re exaggerating the downside of reduced AS on her defensive capabilities a lot. Talking Legend and Cata, even at critical OC, I can defend myself perfectly fine on BW and Pyro without Volan’s, even without ult use. It just requires much more careful timing and push management. I can’t speak for everyone - but neither can you without doing a poll or survey - however I’d take Deathly Dissipation over Volan’s if they were in the same tier. Granted, it’d be a bit weapon choice dependent, on some staves/melee I might take one or the other depending.
Also, with Swift Slaying you have outright 20% AS back, constantly with how high Pyro’s crit chance gets, that’s leaving out properties and talents if you don’t take any AS ones.
Beyond that, Pyro has way better venting potential than BW thanks to the THP ult. I vent all the time on Pyro to get more casts in, before Volans I’d sometimes vent for melee safety too if I had a staff with bad clear. It’s pretty easy to generate THP on her.
On top, most of Sienna’s staves have amazing horde clear. Only really bolt staff comes to mind as a problem if you aren’t somewhere where enemies are forced to come at you in a line, I can’t comment on beam as I’m not a fan of how that staff plays so I don’t use it myself, the rest I know for a fact have good enough horde clear or control that I’m generally facing very limited numbers of enemies at any given time. Coruscation especially on Pyro with Heat Sink and venting absolutely annihilates hordes and unarmoured elites.
Looking at all that, the slowdown is perfectly manageable. You make it sound like you have no options, can’t see ahead and vent before enemies reach you in melee if you need the AS over the crit, and like you’ll be facing the full force not softened up by staves.
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So, having tried to slog through the thread and being thwarted by unstable internet multiple times:
Is there any reasonably summary of what people sort of agree on?
As far as I can tell, it’s mostly that she’s a bit underwhelming compared to the alternatives?
Also, as a sort of suggestion (of which I’m sure you’ve seen too many already in this thread):
- Reduce heat generation reduction of deathly dissipation to 80%, with 3 second duration on Elites and 10 on Specials;
Switch its place with Fleetflame - Grant dodge distance to fleet flame in addition to the movespeed
- Add 1 max stack to Soul Siphon
- Add reduced projectile scatter to Searing focus - it fits the name
(not as extensive as Drakonhammer’s suggestion, but, to be honest, his message didn’t even load before I wrote this. Looks pretty similar in places.)
That would allow her to still manage heat with deathly dissipation, or, if you don’t want any, take the -20% heat trait(thermal equalizer) on the staff to have what you had so far, plus some elite-killer bonus.
You could also use deathly dissipation with On the Precipice or One with the Flame, easily maintaining the high heat to get the bonus, and you’d still be able to use Volan’s with the attack speed bonus, but would also have the option to instead opt for increased combat mobility, where at least I rate dodge as often more reliable than movespeed.
If still having some overheat on dissipation would be too big a disadvantage, I suppose it could add 3 seconds of “can’t go critical” to it.
Extra charge speed to either one with the flame or ride the fire wind, as suggested above, would certainly also be neat.
I also think it’d be nice if Ride the Fire Wind, which I personally love as a concept but don’t think very good, would be a tad more interactive. Like, say, reducing stacks slowly when venting, so you could push back reaching the cap to have that power when you need it most. Or making her vent faster when at low stacks to create a cadence of casting and cooldown.
Thinking about the discussion back when with unchained ulting losing all her bonus power when she might need it the most, Maybe do the same solution for exhaust?
F.Ex., could change it from 100% instant vent to 25%, with an extra 10% per second for 5 seconds, doubled if you don’t cast. So you could easily get to 0 with a second break, but you could also use the auto-vent to snap off one or two extra shots with still some of the crit bonus, and still come out at a manageable level, potentially low enough to vent the rest manually. I guess that would be too much of a hassle?