I think the fire sword could use some love. But before i make my suggestion on how to change it, i first wanna talk about sienna in general.
When i first saw her three careers with all their passive and active abilitys, i thougt the battle wizard will be ranged focused, the pyromancer a mix between range and melee with focus on elites and unchained a melee monster. But in my opinion as it is right now, all three careers play best when focusing on range (Pyromancer the most because of high crit chance). I was quite disappointed when i played unchained the first time. I didn’t really play her much different then the other two careers. She is more porefull in melee. She is insane tanky and the damage buff on high overcharge is noticable to. Still i mainly use her ranged maybe because of her melee weapon options.
My suggestion on the fire sword should change that.
I think i would be nice if the fire sword would deal more damage the more overcharge you have. On max overcharge (when the bar is red) it should deal a lot of damage even against armored enemys.
Additionaly it should get an alternative attack like the pistol shot on rapier, that creats overcharge. This way you could stay in melee with constantly high overcharge by using the alternative attack from time to time. Downsight would of course be that you are only a few hits away from exploding. This way unchained would change from a tanky ranged/melee career to a melee glasscanon just by using fire sword. I personally would really enjoy the high risk high reward gameplay. Other sienna classes couldn’t use that mechanic as good because of the debuff they get, if they are at high overcharge.
A melee weapon that actually generates overcharge could be, in general, an intersting concept, but it would need to be supremely powerful or become more powerful with high overcharge. If the flame sword is the right candidate for that, I don’t know. Certainly not in its current state.
The problem with the flamesword isn’t necessarily its inability to deal with armour or, god forbid, super armour, since it is an absolute CC and horde clearing beast and probably one of the best weapons at that. Even though the sweeps are on the heavy attacks, which is always a bit problematic for CC, it has very high speed, wide sweeps and good cleave, it staggers like all hell and deals good damage, though that comes from the DoT. Only thing I’d like to see change is that the first charged attack (the claw) should deal the same damage as the sword. It is one of the few weapons where one sweap attack deals significantly less damage than the other, even though they are both charged attacks.
The problem with all of Sienna’s melee weapons is that she has, basically, just ONE ranged option to deal with armour, being the bolt staff, and even at that, the staff is not particularly good. It is not bad either, but the charged bolt does not deal too much damage (except for crits, those hit like a truck) and generate massive amounts of overcharge. Sienna has only one and a half options against armour: The mace has good armour damage on headshots and a favourable attack pattern to do that, but it is less than optinal to control hordes (rightfully so). The other “half” is either the dagger, that deals armour damage on the stab, the push stab and the second heavy attack, or the 1h sword, which deals armour damage on 3rd light attack in the chain and at least some damage on sweeps. Pyro could somewhat compensate with burning head, but that clears 1 armoured enemy tops and tends to be unreliable at times.
I run flamesword with bolt staff and if you got a good setup, you can realize how potent this weapon is. It makes Sienna virtually untouchable in melee, and with stacking some attack speed (there are only a few break points worth hitting) and swift slaying, you can single-handedly obliterate hordes, they just melt, literally.
The flame sword is unspeakably bad. I think that somebody at shartfart had their SO stolen by a flaming sword. There’s no other explanation for how laughable this weapon is. I think I could keep it at this: they made Falchion penetrate armor (falchion being one of V1’s most powerful weapons that, gasp, lost a little bit of its luster moving into V2). A FLAMING SWORD THAT’S ALWAYS ACTUALLY BEEN KINDA BAD EVEN IN V1? Nah, let it clink off armor. Who needs that?
Oh, and it deals the same damage as the regular sword. You only get a DOT on one of its attacks (in V1 you at least set things on fire with the stab). All you get is a poor imitation of what shields do for its charged attack.
People who say that it’s good at CC should really play with the regular sword and go use its charged attacks instead - you’llbe surprised to find out that not only do you control almost just as many targets, you actually get to KILL a lot more of them. Anything the flame sword does, the regular sword… also does. But the charged attacks are faster. And the third light swing lets you get much easier headshots instead of being an awkward stab.
I’d really love if it did something with overcharge. Duping Unchained’s ability onto it would be ridiculous and probably too broken, as in, the devs would implement it in the worst way possible. I’d like if all of its attacks had a DOT when you’re above half overcharge, but that’s also too difficult to implement. It also did always seem like the most obvious weapon to add a special attack button to, but it’s clear they want to pretend that was never a feature.
As it is? At least make its light attacks a little bit hurtier than the regular sword’s. And let it penetrate armor. Or let it hit more targets. Basically, do anything that doesn’t make the torch from Blightreaper seem like a superior weapon.
While I don’t share your sentiment about the flamesword being bad (it can supplement bolt staff very well, much like 1h sword can), I do think adding a some kind of “charging” feature on the flamesword with special attack button would be neat. Charge up sword so that it burns bright white, gain alot of overcharge, sword deals more damage, deals DoT on every attack and penetrates armour. Seems easy enough to implement and would give the weapon more personality.
here comes JLB with more flaming!!! (pun intended) everything is bad! everything is laughable! nothing is fun in the game!
i agree! the wizard’s longsword sidesweep is really satisfying for clearing space. pretty fun to use unfortunately her staffs already clear horde very well.
i really like the flamesword but wish it did more damage to armor (feel like i have toheavy strike a chaoswarrior on high overcharge as unchained x20 times before it dies). i love it’s movesets, but can’t choose it over the mace because i need to deal with armor quickly, sadly =(