The Pyromancer has that literally in her lv30 talents. And i know, its kinda stupid to just copy a talent but its for a class who highly need high Overcharge. So i had no choice to copy that. Its one of the best and easiest way to improve Unchained Melee Power, besides the thing that i wrote that she gain unstoppable attacks too…but with half the duration and the downtimer that you lose your Overcharge for balance.
But at least someone understood a few of her problems i wrote about.
I actually love the synergies her talents provide they are just not as malleable as other careers. Chain Reaction sucks, Outburst is niche and mostly a gimmick (but fun) so serious builds always go Frenzied Flame.
Numb to Pain also sucks, Conduit is again more niche, and Dissipate is legitimately awesome so again serious builds typically choose Dissipate.
I like all of the level 25 talents but again Abandon is probably the best 90% of the time.
I love the level 30 talents too, I always go Bomb Balm or Wildfire.
I love running a conflag staff or coruscation staff and flail with her and just being a staggering tank for the team.
Really only need minor tweaks to the talents to make more playstyles viable. Someone on here spoke against burn dots since that overlaps with BW but Unchained already has 2 interesting talents to go with burning so if they were just buffed a little the Outburst playstyles could be more viable, and Outburst already is fun.
I see her as Sienna’s Tank class and what I would love to see is an interesting shield weapon for her. Maybe a little buckler that only costs half a shield on a push like her normal Sword but has more stamina to allow more pushing for Outburst. Maybe that and some single target damage weapon similar to the crowbill so that you can be burning the chaff and then bonking the elites. A new weapon like that could breath a lot of life into the career and if it was available to other sienna careers then it offers many times more new possibile playstyles than reworking one talent on one career.
IMO the only talent that needs changing on Unchained is Chain Reaction. Not only is the description super vague on what the talent even does, it doesn’t even fulfill its intended purpose. If online info from multiple sources is to be believed, it only staggers. Does no damage. Does not apply burn. Which means it does not cause a chain reaction. It’s also redundant because all the weapons that have an easy time applying lasting burn already have good crowd control (Flame Sword, Beam, Fireball, Coruscation, Flamestorm). If it applied burn on its own, it could be an interesting option to upkeep Enfeebling Flames on builds that don’t feature much burn outside of stuff like Wildfire and a melee attack that’s too deep in the combo chain (Crowbill for instance).
Outburst is a solid talent as it creates safety for unsafe weapons like Crowbill due to the enhanced push, plus it gives easy access to a source of burn if you want to make use of Enfeebling Flames but don’t want to dedicate weapon slots to it. Numb to Pain could maybe use longer duration so that it’s easier to carry over from ranged to melee combat. As it stands it’s primarily useful for making sure you don’t blow up to a random poke while you’re running around with your staff out casting. Then again, buffing it to 30 s would make Unchained maybe a bit too immortal. 15 % damage reduction and 50 % less overheat generation from Blood Magic together on the same talent is insane, considering Unchained primarily dies to overheat, not health depletion. Cutting that overheat in half is kinda gross. If you have quick fingers that talent can do more for you than the other two lvl 20s combined. It’s mainly just pain in the ass to upkeep.
I’ve reconsidered and realized that some of the changes were a bit excessive. So I’ve made a few minor adjustments, but the core criticism and rework suggestion remain essentially the same.
CHANGES
Living Bomb:
Cooldown 120s → 90s, increased stagger for monster, radius 5 → 6m.
Explosion burn damage 11.5 → 60. Clears only 50% / 20 Overcharge and cancels Explosion from Overcharged.
CHANGED (Decreased explosion burn damage from 30 + 50 over 5s → 60)
(The fire damage should be calculated with your “Unstable Strength” BEFORE it gets cleared due Living Bomb.)
CHANGES
Unstable Strength:
Increased melee power on high Overcharge by up to 60%. → Increased melee power and all of her burn damage (excluding her staffs) on high Overcharge by up to 40%.
CHANGED (Power decreased from 45% → 40%)
(I reduced it because her burn damage is now included and her burn damage overall is increased. Also she got some more talents for her melee potential.)
Overcharged Explosion:
- Damage reduced from 25.5 → 20 but gets increased by “Unstable Strength” now.
- I didnt find it anywhere but IF the radius is 5 meter, then: Radius 5 → 6 meter.
Level 10 CHANGES
Frenzied Flame: Increases attack speed by 15% while at or above 50%/20 Overcharge. → Increases attack speed by up to 20% while at or above 75% / 30 Overcharge.
(4% attack speed per 15% / 6 Overcharge. The attack speed is a bit higher because i reduced her “Unstable Strength” but it needs a higher Overcharge too.)
Outburst: Pushing an enemy ignites them, causing damage over time. Heavy attacks make the next push arc 70% wider. Burn damage increased from 12.75 over 6 seconds → 15 over 6 seconds.
CHANGED (Burn damage decreased from 18 over 6 seconds → 15 over 6 seconds)
(The burn damage is a bit higher and gets even higher with “Unstable Strength”.)
Scorching Weapons (new): While at or above 50% / 20 Overcharge, light attacks ignite for 3s, 8 burn damage/sec.
CHANGED (Burn damage decreased from 10 over 3 seconds → 8 over 3 seconds)
(A new talent because the old “Chain Reaction” is now a level 25 talent. This new talent shall give Unchained the ability to ignite enemies without a staff, Living Bomb, or a push from “Outburst” from the same row. Also some good damage, because you lose the attack speed from “Frenzied Flame”. New attacks on an already burning target only refresh the burning and doesnt stack.)
Level 20 CHANGES
Dissipate: Block cost is reduced by 50.0% when Overcharged and blocking attacks vent Overcharge. → Block cost is reduced by 50%. Blocking attacks vents Overcharge when at or above 37.5% / 15 Overcharge.
(This should fix the small “problem” that you could lose all your Overcharge when you have to block but want to fight back.)
CHANGED
Conduit: Increases the rate of venting Overcharge by 30% and reduces damage taken from venting by 50%. → Increases the rate of venting Overcharge by 25% and reduces damage taken from venting by 35%.
If she is exploding due Overcharged, and doesnt have her career skill up, she now nonstop vent to stop it but without the reduced damage to herself. In fact, it costs her permanent health double of the amount of the vented Overcharge until she reach 50% / 20 Overcharge. This effect has a 120 seconds cooldown.
(Because of her loss of “Abandon” which trades health with cooldown reduction to get her career skill fast to prevent her death from exploding due Overcharged, i reduced the values for a new effect which stop the explosion but it costs health now just like Abandon did. Also she cant stop the venting then, she HAS to vent until 50% / 20 Overcharge but she cant die from this effect. It has cooldown too for better balance.)
Numb to Pain: Reduces damage taken by 5.0% and overcharge generated by Blood Magic by 16.6% for 15 seconds after venting. Stacks up to 3 times. → Reduces the damage reduction from “Blood Magic” to 35%, but no longer converts damage taken into Overcharge.
(The old Numb to Pain is nearly unplayable. It forces a melee class to pull out the staff every ~10 seconds to gain Overcharge and vent it for a 15-second buff. The buff is strong - nothing bad to say about that - but it disrupts the gameplay heavily. Thats why nobody played it. This new talent is far less complicated.)
Level 25 CHANGES
Enfeebling Flames: Burning enemies deal 30% less damage. (No changes.)
CHANGED Abandon → Chain Reaction
Chain Reaction (from lv10): Burning enemies have a small chance to explode on death, staggering enemies nearby.
(40% chance to occour and the burn must come from Sienna but she doesnt need to do the last hit. Stagger diameter increased from 4m → 5m. Now you can choose between stagger or less damage from this talent row alongside with your two burning sources from level 10 or your staffs, “Wildfire”, or just do more physical damage through “Fire Engine”.The stagger power should normally only stagger Infantry but with your higher power from “Unstable Strength” up to Elite and Berserker but never Chaos Warrior. This stagger effect doesnt give you themporary health anymore with “Second Wind”)
(The old Abandon is gone mostly because of the lower career skill cooldown, and some adjustments of the level 20 talents.)
Fire Engine (new): “Unstable Strength” now goes up to 60%. But “Unstable Strength” doesn’t increase your burn damage anymore.
(I increased her overall physical potential and burn damage, and let it benefit from “Unstable Strength” but reduced it to 40% for balance. With this talent, you get back the lost 20% but deals no longer increased burn damage.)
Level 30 CHANGES
Fuel for the Fire: Each enemy hit by Living Bomb increases power by 5.0% for 15 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times. → Living Bomb no longer clears Overcharge. Attacks cannot be interrupted for 8s. Cannot explode due Overcharged during this time. Each hit during effect reduces Overcharge by 20% / 8 after effect ends to cancel the explosion.
(This effect makes her the unstoppable(or in other words, she cant get staggered or pushed back but still grabbed from Chaos Spawn for example) melee class she supposed to be because she can attack freely and with full potential but clear easily all the Overcharge after the time to add a downtime after this rage. But she can still die when health goes to 0.)
Wildfire: Living Bomb grants Sienna a scorching aura that ignites nearby enemies for 10 seconds, causing damage over time. Increases the stagger power of Living Bomb. → Its explosion changes to a fire aura for 10 seconds in an 6-meter radius.
CHANGED (Chain Reaction effect is gone because its a level 25 talent now. Also it doesnt change the stagger)
(The explosion from Living Bomb changes to a strong fire aura but keeps its initial stagger. Damage per tick increased from 2 per 0.5 seconds for 10 seconds → 2.5 per 0.25 seconds for 10 seconds. So a total damage change from 75.75 (10.75 initial damage plus 40 pure damage and 25 burn aura over 10 seconds) → 100 (100 in 10 seconds) pure burn damage. This change should make this talent a valuable damage option to be the fire force she suppose to be while not being hard-focused on melee attacks themselves - just some Overcharge. The damage of the fire aura should be calculated with your “Unstable Strength” BEFORE it gets cleared due Living Bomb.)
Bomb Balm: Living Bomb restores 30 temporary health to allies. → Living Bomb restores 30 temporary health to allies within a 12-meter radius. Clears all Overcharge now. When used while exploding, it changes the restored health to 10 permanent and 20 temporary health to allies.
(Some permanent health instead of THP when used while exploding. Especially good when using “Conduit”, because it consumes permanent health to prevent your death from exploding.)
Yeah she can reach the one of the highest melee power level. With the right talents and item properties she can stagger chaos warrior out of their overhead attack animation with her flail on cata. Imo she is a melee monster.
I like the idea of overcharge granting increased DoT, however, adding melee DoT power to a 40% Melee Power bonus is going to make weapons like the Flame Sword just way too powerful compared to other melee options, and you can already spam it’s Heavy 1 attack.
I like Overcharge as a 60% melee power bonus, but I suggest replacing the obvious dead talent Numb to Pain with one that allows for a more DoT-style build by having it trade melee power for a general 30% power bonus (which works for DoT, ranged, and melee)
I like the suggestion to move around Chain Reaction and replace Abandon with it, then cleverly make Conduit have an effect to compensate for it. Putting Chain Reaction at level 25 allows you to stack it nicely with other talents, so that’s a neat idea.
These ideas work together to fix a couple dead talents, but I don’t know about changing more than that, or what exact numbers would work.
I use this talent a lot, it’s always my pick for level 20. I like it to fully remove overcharge, and I use it to remove overchage. Getting overcharge isn’t an issue. The only situation in which I can’t switch to my staff and spam it if I lose all my overchage is when I’m surrounded, and in that case, I’m going to take damage, which then gives me overcharge. You’d be effectively nerfing the talent.
UNCHAINED
TALENTS
Level 10
Outburst:
Pushing an enemy ignites them with a dot (damage over time for 6 seconds). Heavy attacks make the next push arc 70% wider.
damage stacks up to 3 knockbacks.
(when pushing add visual effect of fire around sienna equal to push and block angle)
Chain Reaction: Burning enemies have a small chance to explode on death. Add 5 damage to the explosion.
Level 20:
Dissipate: Block cost is reduced by 50.0% when Overcharged and blocking attacks vent Overcharge.
Cooling the overload with interlocks reduces the pump-live interval by 1 second for every 10% of overload cooled.
Conduit: Increases rate of venting overcharge by 30.0% and reduces damage taken from venting by 50.0%. While Venting Overcharge deals area damage around Sienna. Sienna receives 30% less damage from enemies while it is cooling down.
Numb to Pain: Reduces damage taken by 5.0% and overcharge generated by Blood Magic by 16.6% for 25 seconds after venting. Stacks up to 3 times.
Level 25:
Natural Talent: Reduces overcharge generated by 10%. while live bomb is ready the maximum power is increased by 10%.
Enfeebling Flames: Burning enemies deal 30% less damage.
Each enemy killed while burning increases the damage and explosion radius of the living bomb by 2%.
stocks up to 50 times.
(using a live bomb consumes all stocks)
Level 30
Fuel for the Fire: buff/rework -35% cooldown, each enemy killed by this skill reduces cooldown by 5%. Increases live bomb damage by 20% for every 10% overload.
Live bomb remove only 50% of the overload.
Wildfire: buff, living bomb grants a fiery aura that sets nearby enemies on fire for 10 seconds and For each enemy hit by a living bomb, the duration of the fire aura is increased by 0.5 seconds.
I am incredibly glad to see some love for Unchained and although she is fun even in this miserable state that she is in currently. I do hope they give her some proper changes and make her the crazy frontliner she was always meant to be.
As for my suggestions, a lot of comments here seem to say have more or less on what I had in mind. Just that I do wish Abandon was base kit instead.
That fits well with my experience.
I think what’s different about Unchained compared to most other careers is how stark the difference is between the good-pick Talents and the bad ones.
My pain-points are Chain Reaction, which is cool in concept, but actually hard to spot doing anything at all, and Conduit + Numb to Pain. I have trouble getting much use out of either voluntary-venting Talent with Unchained, but their competitor, Dissipate, is iconic.
I’d be happy if Chain Reaction were souped up, and Numb to Pain made attractive enough to compete with Dissipate.
Abandon would be great as a part of the base kit.
I think there’s maybe 3 or 4 talents that could be reworked; not in a “miserable state”.
It is pretty miserable considering she has about 1.5 build variety for talents, excluding the level 5 talents. Not to mention
Compared to everyone else in the game that can at least change talents around and have fun with them, with Unchained you don’t have a choice other than playing her at her best (which isn’t really that great) or have talents that doesn’t benefit anyone and may slow down the team. Though she does need a lot of changes in order to be like the rest of the classes in the game. For now, she is good at surviving hits and not do much else other than staff spamming or try to use her melee power to the best of the player’s abilities.
If Fatshark manages to do some rework over UC anytime soon (which I don’t think it’s the case considering how silent they are about the weapon pack alone), I hope they get some inspiration from this thread and maybe some steam workshop mod.
In the end, we all want Unchained to be more fun and do better. 
I mean there are quite a few people in this thread saying they think UC is fun and very strong as is, so probably just speak for yourself here.
The thing we all agree on is there being a few talents that could do to be adjusted, and precisely one talent we all agree is straight garbage (chain reaction).
I actually use Chain Reaction because it’s fun. With it I use Flame Sword, Coruscation, and Wildfire. It’s not the most optimal build, but with so many enemies burning and dying, even if it isn’t super effective, it does add something.
Unchained came in super clutch for me many times. Honestly, the people claiming she’s weak or a liability seem pretty clueless. Unchained hasn’t been a super controversial career until recently. Darktide players going back to Vermintide no doubt. Unchained doesn’t take that long to learn, and once you get the hang of it she’s very solid. It’s mostly just people who don’t know how to manage the heat bar.
I think what it comes down to is that some want their preferred combo of talents and weapons to always be effective, otherwise it’s not “fun”. Not everything must cater to the lowest common denominator like Darktide. Unchained is still enjoyed by many players, and has been ever since I played the game.
I mean yeah something can be visually amusing while having realistically little to no real benefit. It’s not like they need to completely rework chain reaction mind you. They could probably just add a low damage, decent duration burn dot to the chain reaction explosions so it can self maintain through a crowd decently without you having to play it with a very high burn application setup. In that way it could at least offer similar enfeebling flames synergy to outburst. Just in a less melee centric, albeit less consistent way.
That would also let it, y’know, potentially cause an actual chain reaction.
Nothing to add to your second and third paragraphs because I just agree with no further qualifiers lol.
Perhaps it’s just my imagination, but I feel like I’ve found a working Chain Reaction build, even if it isn’t the best. Seems like it’s doing work, even if only a little extra DoT.
Wait did I miss an update? Are you saying it currently applies a dot? Because I was working on the understanding it does not do that. It’s just a stagger explosion. Did this change at some point?
I thought it did, now I’m not so sure. I think it lights nearby enemies on fire. Everythings on fire when I play with it though, so, difficult to say.
Quick and dirty test:
Using the Creature Spawner in the Keep, on Legend, I spawned skaven slaves beside another skaven slave. Three times I set stacks of 10 slaves afire with the dagger. They exploded next to the lone skaven slave to no discernible effect.
The dagger hitting the stack of slaves seemed to make the lone skaven flinch. I don’t think the explosion did (though it was hard to see.) I didn’t see any DoT.
Edit: (I wonder how many skaven the dagger set on fire or damaged. If it wasn’t all 10, then maybe the Chain Reaction explosion killed some of them.)
Edit#2: Experimenting with 30+ stacks of skaven slaves, I couldn’t detect a death from the Chain Reaction explosion. Whatever damage it does, it doesn’t seem to be much. And there still didn’t seem to be a DoT.
So its probably just my imagination. Looks neat though. Maybe it’s actually just been broken from the start. Bug report?
You’re very late onto this. It’s been bug reported several times. There’s also been several threads complaining about it doing literally nothing more than minor extra stagger AoEs.
Thing is there’s nothing in the talent description that indicates what it’s meant to do, it is very likely working as intended currently. I vaguely remember them increasing the proc chance way back and you’d think they’d fix it doing no damage or burn at the same time if it was intended to do those things.
So yeah I’m afraid your chain reaction build is only getting some visual flare and literally zero damage from this talent.
As I said before they just need to slap a dot on it and it’d be suboptimal but fine.