Pyromancer Rework

I’m not a Sienna main, so I’m probably not the person best suited for this, but I want to start a discussion on Sienna’s general status by saying this:
I think the Pyromancer class is the class with the worst defined identity/role in the game, and her current melee niche is ill-fitting her. Unchained should be the only class without overcharge slowdown, and the talent which gives her attack speed on high overcharge is doubtful at best.

A brief history of the class: when the game launched BW was designed around control (automatic venting inbetween casting, block cost, crowd control ultimate), pyromancer was the “dps caster”, with high overcharged increasing crit chance substantially, and the burning head ultimate. Unchained was focused on staying on high overcharged and going melee.
Way back then, Pyromancer could use the crit properties of the staves to great effect, being able to sustain a level of spam unmatched by her other careers. This, coupled with the increased damage of a crit, made her something akin to a “ranged unchained”: she could get close to max overcharge to dish out some very high burst damage, albeit at a greater risk of exploding than unchained herself.
Unless I’m mistaken, the attack speed talents (her current niche) came after the general nerf to range careers spams, to give her something back. This and the following changes, besides being ill-fitting, never gave her a clear role compared to other Siennas.

Back to the roots: Looking back at the presentation for the character Dev Blog - Sienna Fuegonasus — Warhammer: Vermintide 2 this was meant as the core of the career:
Only by channeling her wildness into tightly-focused castings can she hope to keep control of the power blazing within. As a Pyromancer, Sienna is a ferocious single-target annihilator, specialising in incinerating the hardiest of enemies at a brisk pace, one at the time.
This was arguably true back then, but as far as I know it’s been lost amidst the patches.

I believe the class should return to her roots as the monster deleter Sienna, the scarily focused DPS career akin to bounty hunter and huntsman (or even shade), where Battle Wizard is fitting as a jack of all trades with a lower damage ceiling.
BW is in a great place at the moment, thanks also to better THP talents, so my suggestion is to start by giving Pyromancers the passive for faster casting time BW could live without (or maybe restricting that to CC staves like conflagration for BW, and giving it to pyro for beam/bolt).
This would increase her dps against single targets and at the same time reduce BW’s a bit.

I’d also change her ulti somewhat: either increasing its damage substantially, or changing it altogether. Maybe some inspiration might be drawn from this part of her characterization: “she relies too much on instinct and too little on her lessons”. Sadly at the moment hers is the least instinctive of all her ultimates, requiring planning/aiming for the most part.
I’m not Fatshark though, so I don’t have their inventiveness: I do think her ultimate talents are good, but the ultimate itself is lacking. I think it shouldn’t work like waystalker’s ultimate, I think it should either work like BH’s, or offer some panic button, or it could even do something unique like disable and damage a single enemy, monsters included, something like a pillar of fire a la deepwood staf? but bigger, darlings!

Overall, I think part of the reason why Sienna’s so hard to balance is that every career gets access to all of the staves, making them quite versatile and making it very hard to predict all possible interactions. A solution to this could also be to limit some staves to some careers, but I can see how this might be controversial. I just thought I’d mention it.
Regardless, I think her identity is well illustrated in the blogpost above. I now bow my hat to Sharks and Sienna’s mains.

TL:DR: read the bold

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@Aqshy Thought I’d ping you, if nothing but for your name :wink:

Pyro’s intended role seems fairly well defined to me: ranged backliner dps.

It’s just that it shares that role with Battle Wizard; which does everything Pyro does, and more, so much better in practice due to the amount of synergy BW has within its own talents and with Sienna’s weapons.

I don’t see how Pyro can remain a ranged focused career so long as BW exists in it’s current iteration. Either they both need massive changes simultaneously or the melee niche needs to be opened up and expanded upon so Pyro can be something more unique and stand on its own merits.

Which path is best to choose is also not really worth considering for us players now though. Knowing that Sienna’s fourth career is on the horizon and that we have no indication as to what direction Fatshark will go with it.

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I’ve long wanted to experiment with just swapping their ults. BW’s toolkit is far more conducive to being a ranged spammer while pyro’s toolkit is better suited to be a frontline/melee dps (like WHC or merc or something). I think just swapping the ult fixes both classes.

That’s certainly an interesting idea. A lot of BW’s cheesiness is wrapped up in Burnout and Famished enhanced Fire Walk dot.

I guess I see Pyro’s role as glass cannon? With the option to spec more for melee or ranged as you prefer. Of course she has a number of uncompetitive talent rows that limit her options, but she’s hardly unique in that. BW either dots or goes full charge with volcanic, while Pyro is mostly just spamming.

I wouldn’t mind seeing her better differentiated from BW, but I also can’t say I dislike her current shtick.

Regarding overheat slowdown it feels like a gameplay relic that doesn’t really fit in V2 for me, though if there’s anywhere it’s still appropriate I’d say Battle Wiz who’s all about control and has no particular reason to go to high overheat fits well with it where the other 2 don’t. If Volan’s were removed you’d need to give her something very significant in return in order to not dumpster her. Honestly she’d need a really wide sweeping rework and be completely redefined. I’m not terribly sure that’s worth it or at all likely at this point.

I’d agree with that in basically every instance except coruscation, which I’d say Pyro uses very noticeably better. Pyro spamming coruscation primary feels DAMN good to me.

Interesting idea. Flaming head would probably still need a buff, and usually Pyro would still have a temp health ult option since that feels pretty core to her spammy, vent based ranged playstyle. Or a more interesting alternative that facilitates that in a different way. Not really convinced swapping ults on its own would do a whole heap other than make BW a bit less insane (which is good, don’t get me wrong).

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I’m not convinced either. Just want to try it. Would probably also need some tweaks to the melee toolkit to make it work completely.

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Just curious, in your groups’ modding adventures, is swapping ults something that would be possible to do through modding or is that outside the scope of what you guys could work out how to do?

Could definitely be done I think. Just never messed around with it.

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Thank god for coru bonfires not being affected by Famished Flames. :rofl:

What I was actually thinking about in that passage was that BW does ranged damage better and also does control better because Fire Walk is kinda insane.

Edit: Just realized I completely forgot to mention that I would like to support @alsozara’s positions re: A) Pyro should be turned into a glass cannon with melee and ranged options. B) Heat slowdown feeling really out of place in the modern game. Only engi and BW are really effected by it anymore. Volans and IB’s talents are no brainer picks and more of a tax than anything interesting.

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This pretty much sums her up. You can do insane damage as her, but need to get used to spamming range in high density.

She also only has 1 perk right now. Movement speed? Dodge Distance? Extra Dodge Count? Heal increase?

The real issues with Pyro are that she has about 3 questionable Talents. And the 5% AS maybe being questionable? I’d recommend the 10% crit for Melee over 5% AS, due to Elite damage. And that there’s Talents that are too good, so they make the rest non-competitive.

I’d prefer to see her get more mobility and maybe heal increases, which would make her unique as a Wiz Career, and a bit more unique in general.

The Volans Doctrine outdoes Fleetflame, because of Movement Speed slowdown from Overcharge.

Soul Siphon was already weak compared to Volans Doctrine, but Venting not being affected by DMGR made it even more pointless.

Bonded Flame outdoes Exhaust for the same job.

Blazing Echo is good if you have a team that can support you being suuuuuper squishy. Merc/SoTT/WPoS to shield Venting.

I´d hesitate to call BW well balanced, but, i do agree that present pyro doesnt feel like she makes a lot of sense thematically.

She is supposedly the most controlled iteration of Sienna, one that´s focused on (magic) ranged works too. But her actual gameplay is staying high on overcharged delivering critspam attacks mixed with self damaging vents. When she isnt actually just staying high overcharge and running into melee rather.

So much for that 10% bonus ranged damage? …Not that it ever could compete with BW and the burn damage boost.


So well in short, i find it a bit bad that the most wizard like version, with the ranged boost, is more rewarded for running into melee than she is for using magic consistently. And her ability is rather lame for a powerful fire wizard too, too crit reliant and its targeting is wonky as heck.

And damn, no matter how good she is at melee she´ll just be worse than BW due to ability difference impact in a large fight. She might outperform UC in a damage contest thanks to the crits but…that kinda just highlights how lacking of an identity that she is.

Why is the intended ranged specialist competing in melee acting like she´s a WHC/shade - style damage dealer?

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I never understood why BW got Volcanic Force, when I first read that talent’s desc I thought it was going to go to Pyromancer - when BW got that it both made her better with fire dots (as was already the case and is fine) but it made her better with bolt staff and other ‘traditional’ pyromancer staves too - she has better DD thanks to that.

Without that sort of boost pyro will always have worst direct damage, unless FS can find her another niche. I just found it a very weird choice.

BW has nice themed talent tiers, something which current pyro lacks.

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Finesse boost applying to sienna burning effects would help.

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Yeah this hits on a lot of the problem. Crit does almost nothing for most staves. The only staff that really benefits from it is bolt and BW’s toolkit for bolt is miles better as it is. If the crit thing is going to remain as pyro’s gimmick, then the staves need better interactions with crits via finesse multipliers, DoT crits, etc.

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Controversial or not, I think that’s the only way to differentiate her careers (short of completely overhauling them). I don’t know why staves weren’t limited all along, to be honest. The most obvious division would probably be something like:
Battle Wizard: Fireball, Conflagration, Coruscation (even more controversial to limit than the rest, since it’s paid DLC)
Pyromancer: Fireball, Bolt, Beam
Unchained: Fireball, Flamestorm. Maybe limit the Fire Sword to Unchained, too?

As for her fourth career, which is obviously going to be some sort of ‘Myrmidian Commander’ party-buff specialist, maybe it could have access to all of them? Both because of the cosmic law that says paid DLC has to be overpowered, and because she would mostly have buff/support abilities anyway. The latter means that she wouldn’t be able to use the staves nearly as effectively as the DPS specialists, and versatility would fit the fluff of her new career.

Unless she gets some sort of Dhar Witch career instead, in which case you could just palette swap all her fire SFX to be a spooky black/purple color and give her access to all the staves anyway. Dark Magic users aren’t exactly famous for practicing restraint.

I’m really hoping the new sienna will be a “melee only” career, so we can go full melee round.
Quotation marks are there because i’d be surprised if her ulti didn’t involve some kind of ranged thingie, but considering the career is meant to be a knight, we can hope.

Please no. There are already too many melee only careers.

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Having Slayer was interesting. Adding Grail Knight was fine-ish. Warrior Priest was worth just to get a long requested and really cool Warhammer-y career. But a fourth melee only career would definitely be jumping the shark.

Yeah the issue is that the more melee-only careers you have, the more likely it becomes you can’t play the career you want in a cohesive group.