How to make this Hero Great Again?

After playing this hero for a bit, I just can’t help but feel certain talents are out of place on some careers, and just lock you in to a certain play style, which limits my personal enjoyment.

Personally, I think the Lingering and Famished Flames synergy was fantastic and a lot of fun, unfortunately those days will not return, but that doesn’t mean Sienna shouldn’t get a bit of an upgrade.

  1. Unchained: Give her the talents THP on Kill, Smiter, and include Wildfire’s attributes to Living Bomb as basekit, and instead rework Wildfire to apply Famished Flames. I’m not suggesting you take Famished Flames off BW, I mean we take the effect, the bonus to 150% burn damage, and apply it to Wildfire, meaning, an increase to burn damage for the duration of Living Bomb, and possibly double the duration burning of targets.

Reason is that Unchained is a powerful melee class with an somewhat underwhelming ult that is mostly used as an emergency vent. My hope is that with these changes, Living Bomb on it’s own will be more than just an emergency vent, and with the new Wildfire talent, Unchained is granted an offensive talent.

  1. Pyro: Give her Assassin, THP on crit/headshot
    She is the Sienna’s most crit focused career, and it’s surprising to me she does not have these talents available to her. For comparison the Shade has Khaine’s Thirst, Black Vigour, Smiter, and Assassin to choose from, and I believe the Pyro should have the same options, even if she may not necessarily need it, I think it would be complimentary to her career that is designed around crits, and for that reason, should have it.

  2. Battle Wizard: Make Volcanic Force a passive on BW
    BW has great T2 choices, it’s true, but she lacks the DPS of Pyro and toughness of Unchained.
    Tranquility is a nice passive to have, but it isn’t as interesting as Pyro’s critical mass, or Unchained’s Unstable Strength. Tranquility should be the talent and Volcanic Force be the passive.

Also, lingering flames needs a rework, it was great on famished flames but that combo is no longer possible, so it just seems “meh” now.

P.S Slightly off subject here, but should a Fatshark dev reads this, any chance we could get a young Sienna skin? I’d buy that.

Edit: For any late readers, there have been a lot of edits inspired by the feedback and criticisms from the comments, so what you’re reading is very different to the first draft.

2 Likes

Can I ask how nerfing Unchained and Pyro would make them stand out more?

  • Famished is a net DPS loss in melee on anything that isn’t firesword/dagger H1 spam
  • Lingering is also a net DPS loss
2 Likes

Given that these are your only two complaints, I can only assume you agree with everything else.
I’m happy to address your criticisms though.

  1. Unchained
    While Famished Flames is a loss in damage to non fire weapons, it isn’t without the gains of the 150% burn damage which has synergy with unique Unchained talents to which I believe will be a fair trade off to the 30% melee damage reduction, however, if this debuff does actually hurt Unchained substantially, (which I doubt without a proper field test) but in the event it does, the 30% penalty could always be removed,

To list the gains on Unchained having Famished Flames as a passive.

  • A massive buff to her ultimate power.

  • Synergy with “Outburst” (likely to grant her lethal pushes combined with Famished)

  • Synergy with “Chain Reaction” (burning enemies will die faster granting more use from her talent.)

  • Strong damage buff to all of her fire staffs that apply burn

  • Strong damage buff to any fire weapon that applies burn

Because of all her net gains from Famished Flames passive, I believe the 30% damage reduction to non burn damage will be an equalizer to balance things out. She can apply massive burn damage naturally at a slight cost of melee damage, but given she is strong in melee already, I do not believe this will hurt her substantially.

  1. Pyro
    Pyro has a lot of power and critical hit boosting talents which will increase burn damage, and because Lingering Flames applies until death, she’ll be able to apply burn damage just by lighting her targets on fire, giving her DPS without the need to directly attack her targets.

I also think if we were to ask the Pryo’s what they would prefer, given the choice between Searing Focus, a passive increase to range damage by 10% damage, or Lingering Flames, where Sienna’s burning effects apply until death (which applies to melee too, not just range) I believe the majority will choose Lingering Flames as the new passive on Pyro, as she’ll be able to then apply dots just by igniting targets, which plays nicely into her career archetype tbh.

  1. TL;DR/Conclusion
    That said your criticisms are valid, which is why I would like the opportunity for these changes to be tested in a public beta for community feedback first, to which I then hope will be well received by the community.
2 Likes

The DoT from unchained’s ult really isn’t that strong…even with famished it wouldn’t be great. Removing slave to aqshy also means she’ll suffer slowdown at high overcharge which is a massive QoL loss as well as a DPS loss when fully stacked on her passive. Not to mention the 30% damage loss reduces the melee bonuses by half and you won’t make any gains until you have 4 stacks.

Crits do not buff DoTs, only impact damage. Also lingering removes the ability to stack DoTs which is a massive hit to dps, especially on things like Fireball staff where you want to spam it.

idk man it just seems like a lot of anti-synergy with the things suggested here and the current kits/identities of those classes.

I will agree that Unchained should get smiter. Pyro with assassin would be a buff to her melee that while obviously a solid buff idk if it’s something she necessarily needs. Volcanic force as a passive on BW and these other changes would require 3 brand new talents for BW and idk if she needs the buff there either.

7 Likes

You’re right, it’s not, so there’s no risk of it being OP or stupidly broken, and she can run a talent called wildfire which applies dots for 10 seconds, so Famished Flames would be a nice buff overall. (Honestly, what Sienna doesn’t gain from 150% burn damage)

Now Faminshed Flames does come with a debuff of 30% non fire damage, but I’d like to remind you that Unchained also has Unstable Strength which increases power by 60% on high overcharge, mitigating the penalty on Unchained with Famished Flames.

By having Famished Flames on Unchained she will gain from the 150% increased burn damage, no doubt about that, but to address the 30% melee debuff I think there are 3 potential options here.

  1. Remove the 30% damage penalty entirely.
  2. Increase Unstable Strength’s power to 90% on high Overcharge
  3. Reduce the damage reduction penalty.

The first solution is the simplest, if the damage reduction hurts Unchained too much then we could remove it entirely. Alternatively, we could increase Unstable Strength to 90%, completely neutralizing the penalty, and further promoting Unchained to maintain high overcharge for maximum melee damage and to circumvent the debuff (which would be interesting)
Now, in the event that the 150% burn damage increase does in fact make Unchained somewhat OP, and the debuff to melee is too strong on her, then the penalty could be balanced to something more suitable.

I mostly thought of swapping out one passive for another for balance reasons, though I think it’s perfectly within reason to add Famished Flames without removing Slave to Aqshy.

Admittedly I wasn’t aware of this aspect. Lingering Flames certainly would be a double edge sword on Pyro then, she’d gain and lose something of equal value. Hypothetically, we could allow crits to effect dots (only on pyro) to make up for the loss of stacking dots, or allow pyro to have the ability to stack dots on lingering flames, essentially, what I mean, is to allow pyro to apply two types of dots, lingering flames, and the stackable dots, this would potentially double her dots dps, which very well could be op.

Personally, I always felt like these two careers were missing talents that should be on them, pyro is very much a crit focused career, and so is the Shade, the Shade has Khaines Thirst, Black Vigour, Smiter, and Assassin to choose from, and I sort of believe the Pyro should have these same options, even if she may not necessarily need it, I think it would be complimentary to a career that is designed around crits, and for that reason, should have it.

I personally believe that BW’s tier 2 talents are well designed, and would make for dynamic and interesting passives for Sienna’s careers, and for them to all be crammed into BW’s tier 2 talent tree seems to me as though they’re going to waste.

So with the possibility of having these talents being new passives for Sienna’s careers in mind, the talents don’t actually need to be on the careers I suggested, for example, we could give lingering flames to BW, Volcanic Force to Unchained and Famished Flames to Pyro. Though, personally I think the original careers I suggested we put them on, might be the most well rounded and balanced, though possibly in need of some tweaking, but I’ll admit that maybe lingering flames isn’t best suited on Pyro, if it’s going to hurt her overall performance. In which case, it might be best to put Lingering Flames on BW and Volcanic Force on Pyro.

This is the obvious problem from the whole suggestion, I don’t think it’s necessarily a serious issue, as I believe if FS had issue, or lacked the interest to invent new talents for BW, they could always recycle old T2 BW talents that were put on cold storage somewhere. At least as a temporary replacement.

This opinion is definetely valid, as those two talents had crazy snyergy and that just feels good. But I think most people agree with me, that this is not a healthy playstyle for the game. It made her WAY to powerful on terms of just kiting everything, that ain’t a boss, until it’s dead. That wasn’t fun to play with, when on her team. I agree, that lingering feels completely useless, as it is now, but I feel, that some of your proposed changes don’t seem to contradict other talents or the general playstyle of that career.

THP, on Kill and Smiter is definetely needed on unchained. I think it’s baffling, that the career, that thrives of melee powr increase (i.e. directly the power to kill something on the first hit), doesn’t get those. I feel like famished flames is part of the core identity of BW now and that should stay this way, if it is to be implemented in the current way. I agree, tho, that with all those bruning talents unchained has, that don’t have any sanyergy with her increased melee power, she sohuld have something to increase burn. Making it an optional talent, to lose the increased melee power and gain up to 150% increased burn damage, depending on overcharge stacks (counted the same way, as hers are now) would be a good idea. Removing Slave to aqshy makes unstbale strenght useless tho. That doesn’t make sense to me.

Lingering Flames doesn’t make any sense on Pyro, as she works best with Fireball staff and Bolt Staff, both of which would just be nerfed by this change. As for the other talents, I wholeheartedly agree, she should have those melee talents instead. Also the 10% Ranged Damage increase in nice to meet breakpoints. As Pyro is one of my mos tplayed characters, I have most success with her, jsut taking the stat stick talents. Enhanced Power, Searing Focus, Ride the Firewinds and On the precipe add up to a lot of damage. It may be boring, but it works well.

This is a decent line of thought, if you were to implement the changes above. That said, those changes, that would make this a good idea, are imho inherently a very flawed idea, as they clash with the gameplay of those classes. Also 10% icnreased ranged damage lets you hit nice breakpoints. I wouldn’t want to miss this.

Also I think, that BW is one of the few classes, where you truly have different talents, for different wepaons, while not truly being a choice, is something i cherish on a talent tree. This is jsut personal preference tho. I wouldn’t want to miss famished flames tho. The synergy with kaboom is jsut too great. (I think famished needs to be nerfed tho. It is just too powerful on non modded). Thus i think, that you shouldn’t remove Famished Flames and Volcanic Force as talents, but rework lignering flames, because, as it is now, it is definely not a competetive choice as you lose WAY to much dps on everything, but flamethrower. Most staffs benefit from applying multiple dots too much to be taking this away. Letting you add a few dots would make this talent propable competetive, but jsut allowing her to endlessly stack dots would propably be too powerful on bosses and lords.

Her careers, have A LOT of personality tho. (Well, at least BW and Unchained have, Pyro is kind of just a stat stick glass cannon, that can barely deal with more than 2 CWs at once with propblems against mass zerks.)

Edit: Harsh phrasing changed to something more appropriate

1 Like

I honestly feel like famished on unchained when you have talents that massively improve venting will just turn her into an ungodly queen of staff spamming whilst actually neutering her melee ability and forcing her into the same old flamesword H1 spam when she actually has to melee (losing slave to ashqy doesn’t help this).

Lingering is just a straight nerf unless you are playing in an extremely kiting heavy way, because it blocks having multiple DoT instances. So that would basically be a nerf to Pyro.

BW: honestly volcanic is good on bolt and fireball. So you have just killed her effectiveness with other staffs which work best with famished. Sure FS could come up with new talents but I just don’t see why that is necessary. The current ones are interesting and have good coverage.

1 Like

The real issue with Sienna is the incoherence of how the first two careers are presented.

Why is “Battle Wizard” the one with the talents for strengthened spells, increased/infinite burn and only limited melee choices, while “Pyromancer” has a melee crit playstyle that goes all in on making non-burning weapons work?

At least Unchained is just a melee-focused tank beast without anything to boost her ranged spells. A bit silly that she can be a team healer as well, but at least her identity fits.

2 Likes

Conduit and Unchained’s ult (and abandon can be of help here too) can allow for pretty crazy ranged dps uptime though

4 Likes

I think that Lingering Flames and Famished Flames were made for each other, which is why the synergy was just so fantastic, but now that they’re forced into the same tier, it unfortunately lost its “wow” factor. Which is why I think it may be prudent to consider the possibility of turning these talents into passives for Sienna’s careers.

I hadn’t considered that, this may be the best approach to giving Unchained Famished Flames, as it’s not truly a straight buff, as there’s a trade off, and it would be fair to assume many may dislike the melee debuff, making it an optional talent would correct that issue. In which case I would put this talent on Sienna’s tier 4, I’m thinking putting it where Natural Talent is.

I actually agree, this was an oversight on my part, and I’ve since changed my suggestion to instead give Pyro Volcanic Force and BW Lingering Flames.

This suggestion has received criticism, so I’d ask you a question, hypothetically if Volcanic Force was made into a passive, should Searing Focus be removed or allowed to stay?

I think it’s safe to say Lingering Flames was clearly made for Famished Flames, the talent completed it, without it, it’s just a hollow shell of its former self. It’s part of the reason I was inspired to make this thread tbh. I do like the idea where Lingering Flames is changed so you can still apply more stacks of dots on enemies afflicted by lingering flames, but monsters and lords, will have immunity to this affect? That might keep it in check.

This is true, though I personally am of the mindset where these talents would just make fantastic passives, given a little work to ensure they’re put on the right careers.

It was mentioned that having this as a passive would hurt her melee, so I’ve edited my original topic to say, “make it a passive or add it to her tier 4 talent tree” this would give Unchained Players the option debuff their melee for stronger range, instead of forcing it onto her, which honestly does make sense.
I’ve heard a lot of complaint about possibly removing Slave to Aqshy if Famished Flames is added as passive, so I’ve removed that suggestion as I can see now that was just a bad idea.

This is another common complaint, so I decided to put Lingering Flames on BW and Volcanic Force on Pyro. Lingering Flames may be in need of a buff as the loss of dots is an issue that really has come to light in the making of this thread.

Taking Battle Wiz’s level 10 talents and making them passives for other careers won’t improve her at all.

I don’t want to dump on the thread completely, UC should have been given Smiter and THP on kill instead of stagger years ago. No doubt. She does have a problem with her Abandon talent dominating right now, but that’s mostly because FS hadn’t lowered her ult’s timer or made the base ult any stronger outside of an emergency vent button. If they lowered the cooldown and made Bomb Balm not apply to team (or at least reduced how much THP it gave the team) then you’d absolutely see more people bring her other excellent builds.

For Pyro, Assassin makes a lot of sense, but I gotta say I run melee Pyro a lot, I’ve loved that build since before WoM forced it as a meta choice, it is so strong that Assassin might make it OP. For the dudes out there who actually hate melee Pyro and lobby to remove her crit passive on melee, I can imagine that kind of buff would rub them the wrong way.

If you want to bring back glorious caster Pyro without being a slave to Deathly Dissipation (an excellent talent), then I’d say bring back old Heatsink as a Pyro exclusive talent (and get rid of Exhaust). Wigglemancy is already dead and never coming back due to how beamstaff works, so giving her a new version of old heatsink could let her get crazy spammy with fireballs again like people seem to want.

2 Likes

Where do I even begin with this travesty of a post?

Incan already pointed out the good points so I will now do the opposite and tell you what the bad things are.

Famished on UC? Why? Unchained is already all about staff abuse with the fireball leading the charge. This would simply mean that using your melee weapon becomes almost pointless as your staff’s dps just went through the roof. Unarmoured enemies would evaporate even quicker than they do now and the only non-boss enemy that would survive the rain of fireballs is the Chaos Warrior.

Volcanic Force as a PASSIVE? This one boggles the mind. Do you not play BW? Are unaware of the fact that with the bolt staff she can, even on cata, 2-shot headshot CWs because of this talent? Combining this with the crit coming from pyro would mean that you could 1-shot headshot CWs on the hardest the difficulty currently available outside of the modded realm.
Not to mention the boss damage. In case you are not getting this, let me put it this way for you. Imagine if Bounty Hunter’s Double Shotted Ult could be used as a normal ranged weapon. And you had unlimited ammo. And you could fire it every 2 seconds. Sounds balanced, right?

Lingering as passive for BW?!1? Dude, do you not remember what it looked like when Lingering could be combined with Famished? I will now refresh your memory.
Take Kaboom, hold block, press F. Oh, it’s not dead yet? I shall run away 'till it is indeed very dead. Fortunes of War turned into a contest to see who can hold their block for the longest period of time. Everything just died. Getting out-of-bounds and waiting for everything to turn into ash was the meta. Weaves in Season 1 were completely bonkers but it didn’t matter.
Take BW, set everything on fire and you won. Not to mention what happened when this is used in qp. You may be enjoying yourself but this build transforms the game into a walking simulator for the other 3 people playing with you.

And just so we are clear, what I have written above is NOT up for debate or discussion as there is nothing subjective about the points I have made. I implore you take go join a few discord channels and talk to people there so you may realise how SOME of your ideas would completely screw things up for Sienna.

2 Likes

Personally I find these talents to be really interesting and well build, that I just dislike seeing the only on BW, and not only that you can have the Lingering + Faminished Flames combo anymore, so I’d like to see these talents shared with her other careers that suit these talents best, and I tried to suggest the talents that work best on the careers, though admittedly I made a mistake putting Lingering Flames on Pyro as that would actually hurt her.

To me Famished Flames on Unchained, to me just makes so much sense, she doesn’t really have any talents that buff her fire magic, Famished Flames would be that talent, and it’d come with an interesting trade off by reducing how effective Unchained is in melee, for much stronger fire magic, I also think it compliments her career archetype being 'unstable"
I also think this talent would be excellent on Pyro but this thought causes me pause, as I think it might make her so OP that she’s practically a fire storm of destruction. Though, I suppose the “melee hating Pyros” would finally get what they wish for so at leas they’d be happy.

That said, maybe these talents don’t have to be passives on Siennas careers, and could be optional talents for the players to choose from, though I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hope for them to become passives as they sound like such excellent passives. The exception being Famished Flames, it actually does make sense for this to be a talent instead of a passive as some Unchained may not want to sacrifice melee power for fire power.

This could be true, but the way I look at is, Shade has Assassin, THP on crit, THP on kill, and smiter to choose from, and Shade is a high crit career too, so to me it’s strange that Pyro, another high crit build, doesn’t have these talents, doesn’t seem right to me.

Yes I do, good times tbh.
Here’s the thing, BW already has the option of Volcanic Force, Lingering Flames, and Faminished Flames for her tier 2 talents. All of these talents exist and can be run on BW, and your argument is essientially if any career were to use them, it’d be broken.
Take Lingering Flames, you make an argument that it’d be the most OP thing ever for BW as a passive, yet she can easily run it right now as a talent, ignoring Famished and Volcanic Force, and I’d argue it’s clearly not as OP as you’re trying to make it out to be, as I orginally suggested Volcanic Force should be the passive on BW and Lingering Flames be the passive on Pyro, and what people said is that it would hurt her. How can Lingering Flames be so OP and so disliked at the same time? Something doesn’t add up.

It’s true this talent does exist and allow the player to do these things, but BW is currently able to run this Volcanic Force and roll the crits, to 1 shot a CW. Pyro’s main advantage is the ability to roll crits more often, but in order to deal maxium damage, she has to charge the shot and land a headshot, which is not always going to be an easy thing to do on Cata, which I think will reward the high skill play, though it certainly could be OP on her, again I originally figured lingering flames would be best, but people said it’d weaken Pyro, so it’s interesting to hear another voice say Lingering Flames is not only good but OP, it’s a bit of contradiction here, as I was hoping to tailor the suggestion based on the feedback, but the mixed messaging certainly hasn’t helped that. It sounds like the problem child with these changes would be the bolt staff though, and maybe that could be addressed in some manner.

You’re the first person to say that you think Famished Flames would actually be good on Unchained, and not only good, but potentially OP, so again conflicting feedback here.
Personally I like the idea that Unchained would have stronger fire magic at the cost of weaker melee.

Just seems like unnecessary power creep, buffing careers that don’t need buffing.

Small changes here and there would be nice, e.g Smiter on UC and another revisit to circumvent the band-aid talent known as “Abandon”.

7 Likes

I find it fascinating that the very first comment to my proposed changes was “Why do you want to nerf the Sienna’s careers?” and now I’m hearing people argue that these changes would actually make her OP.

It’s curious that people have such mixed feelings about Senna.
I honestly don’t know what to make of it.

It’s just dependent on what build/weapon, Famished on UC would probably be OP in combination with Firesword or Dagger, it would also boost Living Bomb and her ranged weapons with the exception of Bolt Staff. Probably a net DPS loss if you’re playing a heavily melee focused UC.

Lingering is kind of weak on it’s own but pretty cheesy.
It would be a nerf if Famished flames and Volcanic Force were removed from BW.
Generally a boring way to play too.

It’s really build dependent and what talents stay and go.


Some of the reasoning/choices don’t really make sense tbh.

Why give UC Famished when she is mostly a melee focused career?
Why give BW Lingering and not Volcanic Force? BW can boost spell charge speed.

Wouldn’t Lingering have greater synergy with Enfeebling Flames and Chain Reaction on UC?
(Could just be another OP combination again)

If Pyromancer were to be given a new passive, I wouldn’t want it to be any of the above 3.
Ideally something to play off her high critical strike chance.
e.g Ranged critical hits split projectiles into 2.
(Hail of Doom from V1, could be OP considering her high crit rate.)

2 Likes

I have to say, that was a good break down of everything.

Originally, I did, but I opted to change it due to the feedback of lingering flames being a nerf on Pyro.
I have to say your suggestion does make the most sense, so I might edit the main topic with your suggestions in mind.

While I would like to see Faminished on Unchained, I think you’re right that Lingering Flames, if it were to be made a passive, may be best suited for Unchained, and Volcanic Force on BW, I also think you’re right that Pyro probably shouldn’t get any of these 3 talents as she already does have 30% crit passive on overcharge as is, and anything added to that risks her being OP.

Putting aside these talents, there is a silver line here, generally I’ve noticed that most feedback is in favor of Unchained getting talents such as Smiter, and possibly Assassin on Pyro, so there appears to be some consensus here which is good to see.

I mean, people have been saying that for forever. It’s just it’s not exclusively an UC problem. Stagger talents in general need a lot of work.

That would probably be too strong honestly on a class that can have upwards of 50% crit chance. If she didn’t also have great ranged DPS it might be fine but as things stand that might just be too much of a buff.