You are wrong.
Unchained is amazing, not a single one of her talent is bad.
The main thing that makes pyro melee so much better than UC is that siennas best melee weapon (crow bill) actually performs better with crit than it does with power. For example, a light attack on a CW does like 5 damage and a crit does like 25 damage. So a crit gives you 500% damage while UC buff gives you 60% damage. There are various other scenarios like that. Not to mention the stagger crit provides and the attack speed. Pyro on C3 can stunlock a CW. All that to say, UC sucks. Competing with BH for worst career in the game. Also, crow bill needs ok kill to gen temp.
1 Like
You covered a part of what I wanted to say already. In my opinion the risk/reward is fine currently for Cataclysm. If it was easier before 2.0 it wasn’t high risk/high reward but average risk/high reward which would explain why she was popular then. For this reason it is not possible to reduce the time on Living Bomb as it would again make the acive skill to available and reducing the risk significantly while still providing the high reward.
This said Living Bomb could live with some tweaks to improve although on the paper it isnt that bad. If we just take the active skills listed above without the Enhancement then we have:
- Ironbreaker: 2 effects - endless stamina and taunting enemies
- Mercenary: 2 effects - stagger and team THP
- WHC: 2 effects - stagger and increased team crit
- Unchained: 3 effects - stagger, damage and overheat reset (equal to ammo replenish)
So Unchained has more effects than other active skills. It is just that beside the overheat management the other two effects are rather weak. Especially the damage is a bit meager. So this is the point where it could be changed a bit.
As for the level 30 talents. I still stand to the point that Fuel to the Fire is fine. I tested it the whole evening and it boosted my damage numbers quite a bit. Living Bomb is up in 2 minutes. This means it is basically available at every horde. However, you need to be a bit more pro-active and maybe trigger the active skill before you overheated. Which means the risk is rising again and you are actually playing on a knife’s edge. Still it works pretty well. In it is current form Fuel to the Fire is an equally viable alternative to Bomb Balm. The extra THP from Bomb Balm is not needed if you manage health a bit better and your team is often spread out so that team mates rarely benefit from it anyone. It is like a consolation prize nobody gets.
This said, it is strange that Sienna’s melee class has no active skill enhancement which emphasizes this aspect. But if we have to change one skill no matter what why not take the one noone likes anyway: Flame Weave. Remove and replace it with something like Burn Out or Implosion where you get an insane damage buff in melee and attack speed but you burn down health and you cant neither block nor cast spells during its duration. There are different possibility how to do this exactly to avoid it being to strong. No point in going details right now.
All in all, Unchained is in a good place and has different interesting choices and builts. There are like about three talents which would have to be adressed: Searing Grasp (my suggestion: Increase all DoT effects in time), Chain Reaction (my suggestion: damaging for more than 80 % of total health can cause explosion and explosions damage nearby enemies) and Flame Wave (just replace it with something else). Enfeebling Flames might be adressed if nothing is done with Searing Grasp. Living Bomb is boring but it is an utility skill and with Fuel to the Fire it has a real game changer enhancement. Still replacing Flame Wave with a melee orientated enhancement might be more interesting.
Interesting way to buff some level 30 talents and encourage active career skill use would be to have additional effect to give significant cooldown reduction if the skill is used before going over the limit.
I would definitely at least try out UC with Flame Wave if it also dropped the cooldown to something like 30 seconds if used before going over the limit.
And 50% extra damage reduction, for a total of 80%.
That is an extremely low cooldown. No, living bomb would be too busted if it even went down to 1 minute 30 seconds like Mercenary’s or Witch Hunter Captain’s, because then its main use of quickly saving you from overcharge would be too easily accessible, too good for Unchained, taking away most of the risk. It just needs to do -more-.
Flame Wave should boost the damage and stagger of Living Bomb on top of its current use of boosting the radius.
I really appreciate someone making a post of such high quality. It can’t be stressed enough how good these suggestions are, and yet, I’ll add one or two cents of mine to the table while I’m at it:
- How about making Flame Wave base damage/stagger scale with Unstable Strength’s provided melee boost? I mean, making the talent a good all-rounder is alright if things go south, but I feel like, even for an ult with 120s CD, this would essentially 'splode half a horde if done correctly with no effort whatsoever.
(BUT HEY, BW does that every minute with Kaboom)
- Surprisingly I saw no suggestion about Numb to Pain being written, and I feel like it’s really lacking when compared to Dissipate and Conduit, since UC does a good job soaking damage via Blood Magic anyway, so stacking damage resist isn’t exactly worth it for a price of essentially venting away HP, especially since it doesn’t affect the overcharge damage she takes.
You mentioned how UC struggles with received overcharge damage as it’s not reduced by any damage reduction, which is a problem, true, but making it a part of Numb to Pain would actually make that talent somewhat competetive. The other, purely optional addition could be making it increase UC’s overcharge meter to 50, like her old Lv5 talent used to provide.
That’s all from me. Great effort - I hope this gets noticed by FS.
3 Likes
I felt like Numb to Pain didn’t need any changes because, while maybe the weaker choice compared to Conduit or Dissipate, it’s currently not a TERRIBLE choice. That’s obviously not enough, but if two of the core issues of unchained were fixed (her inability to generate THP properly, and the fact that damage reduction is applied after half of the damage is transferred to overcharge) then it’d be a much better option. On the one hand, generating more thp, and more easily, means she can easily vent at full damage without crippling herself (not exactly full damage as Numb to Pain also downgrades venting damage, however slightly) and 15% damage reduction practically on demand is no laughing matter if it also helps her not explode as easily.
So basically, it’s not so much that it doesn’t need help, but that it doesn’t need changes to itself to be competitive, only to other aspects of Unchained.
Thank you for your post and your feedback, by the way, I really hope this whole conversation gets noticed by FS.
1 Like
I wouldn’t say it’s high reward. 60% buff is pretty weak considering her lack of other damage boosts, her low crit chance, Sienna’s naturally weak weapon selection (except for the DLCs), and the fact that you have to become a 1-hit kill in order to actually get all of that 60%. In real gameplay, it’s more like 20 or 30% most of the time.
60% basically only brings her up to par compared to other classes, IMO.
Considering the massive risk of running hot enough to get the full buff, it should easily be 100% boost to be anywhere near worth it. That or the risk must be reduced so that buffed can be maintained at full power without being a 1-hit kill, as it used to be with the larger Overcharge pool.
1 Like
About the LB/Flame Wave discussion:
LB is not like other ults, and UC is not like other classes, so comparing doesn’t accomplish much. The philosophy and tactics behind using it are so much different that it has to be evaluate entirely in it’s own right.
UC has more damage resistance then any other class - 50% taken right off the top, and then Barkskin/etc further reduces the 50% that remains. This is insanely poweful, and it has an insane drawback - you can die from heat. That’s the trade. It’s a brilliant concept, IMO.
However, it means UC is essentially backwards. Instead of running at baseline power and using her ult for a boost at a critical moment, she gets her power boost ALL THE TIME and goes down to baseline power afterwards. Most characters want their Ult to be as effective as possible - UC just wants to preserve the effectiveness she already had.
No matter what effects LB has, unless it’s so powerful in it’s own right that it can nuke an entire Chaos Patrol or something, there are no changes that can overcome this basic reverse structure of the class.
Anything the talents do to LB must take into account this reverse power usage. Something like:
Fuel To The Fire - You no longer generate heat for 10 seconds, and no longer take reduced damage.
That’s a change that plays into the class’ structure - in addition to the safety valve function, you lose your greatest weakness for 10 seconds, but also lose your greatest strength. That’s the kind of tradeoffs UC rolls with. If you want to change how LB is used, then it has to change the class structure in the process of activating it, otherwise that structure will always force it to be used as a safety valve with all other effects being an afterthought.
4 Likes
The problem here is that, either intentionally or by mistake, any extra damage reduction you have does not reduce the amount of overcharge you get from an attack, as I said in my original post. This is because all incoming damage is first split in half, with one half going into overcharge and the other going into your health, before applying any damage reduction! Which is then applied to the half that went to your health. That means that while she has the potential to be tanky, the issue is that no matter how much extra damage reduction you get, you’re just going to blow up immediately.
Other than that, great post, gave me a lot to think about.
4 Likes
My suggestion: up her OC bar, dear god. 40 is too low. That or greatly reduce the amount of heat build up from damage.
Burning Dregs: if the only niche use for this skill is against elites, specials, and monsters, then it should just be that. Clears all OC after getting hit below 50% health by an elite or monster.
Alternate proposal: copy and paste Zealot’s Heart of Iron. At 50% health or Critical overcharge, Unchained becomes immune to heat build up for whatever amount of seconds while OC bar vents, 120 second cool down.
Interestingly enough, she had a Talent for increased heat capacity before the 2.0 changes - and it was practically a must-pick. It would likely be a good thing to bring the effect back, probably as a Perk so that it doesn’t overshadow anything else.
6 Likes
seems to me that Pyro got all of the talents that would have benefited UC more as UC is the melee class.
why Pyro’s talents weren’t more ranged focus is beyond me.
didnt devs advertised the whole talent rework as unique to each career? it would be kind of funny if Pyro’s melee talents were supposed to be UC’s talents but they messed up and couldn’t fix it in time before it went live 
3 Likes
If I remember correctly from the beta, it was ONE guy who did the entire talent overhaul. Nobody is well versed enough in all 15 careers to do it without getting the design documentation and being told, yeah, this is how this career should work, come up with something…
6 Likes
Pyro went from the ranged focus to the ranged melee hybrid, where her talents that benefit melee just tend to be more useful than UC. BW is more ranged focus now.
2 Likes
A few big issues that have impacted Unchained particularly hard on Cata and above (if you play on modded difficulties):
- She lost the talent to increase her max overcharge by 25%
- Increased friendly fire & damage taken on Cata compared to legend, meaning a stiff breeze sends her into overheat
- Crap tHP talents for the current iteration of the game: AKA, no on-kill, as has been touched on, which limits her weapon choices.
- She’s a less effective melee combatant (in terms of DPS) than Pyro, and due to the previous points, she’s also a squishier melee combatant than Pyro is.
The first 2 points are the more important ones, as it means that Unchained will almost never actually die due to HP-related death, but instead due to blowing up. Her heat goes up entirely too quickly for how much melee combat you would expect the supposedly melee-oriented Sienna to be. And because she lacks tHP-on-kill, she can’t effectively use crowbill and single out those high-priority targets, and compliment her more effective staff options.
4 Likes
Thinking a bit more on it, it’d be a great help if she got ‘increased max overcharge’ as a perk/passive, as people have suggested, specially considering unchained LOST a passive that got turned into a talent (Blocking reduces overcharge). It’d go a long way to fixing her issues. Probably should add it to the list at the beginning of the post.
2 Likes
Well, wanted for this to disappear actually. But since it got bumped anyway I can add some additional info. Went the extra mile and installed mods just for this as I wanted to explain the difference between my and @OenKrad’s observation concerning Living Bomb.
As it seems OenKrad did not use any equipment or talents which adds bonus damage which is okay and makes sense but it should be mentioned somewhere (apology if I just overlooked it). This means Living Bomb raw does not killing anything. However, by adding of just one bonus damage for Infantry you can kill already Slave Rats. If you add more or less everything you can for bonus damage you can kill Slave Rats as well as Ungors and Ungor Archers which is still a bit lackluster but it is a begnning during hordes. Also, it damages most other horde enemies far enough that they get more or less one shotted by most weapons. So you can power up Living Bomb quite a bit.
Now the question: What is everything for bonus damage?
- Obviously the first one is the charm with Power Vs. Power vs Skaven is mostly useless in this scenario. So picking Infantry and Chaos is a normal choice.
- The second part is a bit interesting because it is the properties from the melee weapon (and not the staff/range which would make more sense). So if you add another Power vs Chaos on your melee weapon it increases again.
- Probably Enhanced Power although the effect appeared quite small to me.
- The fourth part is interesting too because it is Fuel to the Fire. The bonus damage caused by the talent is apparently calculated after the enemies are counted. This alone makes for a difference of up to 25 % in damage. Which means that Fuel to the Fire not only increases your power for 10 seconds, no it also enhances your active skill (far more than Flame Wave does although that should be the one which does it). All of this bonus also adds to the stagger power. If you add enough you can blast away Skaven Slave Rats. Not that it does matter as they are dead already. But the increase in stagger power may help against Chaos horde. I still stand to my conclusion that Fuel to the Fire is far superior to Bomb Balm.
Back to the basics again: Living Bomb does damage twice. One direct damage and one tick of fire. Looking at this and the remaining health after my tests I came to the conclusion that just one tick of fire more might enable Living Bomb - in combination with Fuel to the Fire - to kill Fanatics and Clan Rats as well.
So after playing Unchained more and more, I can only repeat that she is fine for the most part. But a change to three talents would make her various builds more wholesome:
- First change still goes to Searing Grasp. Looking at the damage numbers of a full conflag and Living Bomb with Fuel to the Fire show that just one tick more would make a stark difference. As such Searing Grasp should get in addition to its current state an increase for all DoT effects of the Unchained. It would help Enfeebling Flames, Living Bomb, all Staves and most importantly it would help Searing Grasp. Because my test showed that it is one laughable tick for pushing. This would actually a kinda powerful ability on any character with a shield weapon where you can push a lot with high push radius. Sadly, Sienne is the only character without a shield or ANY weapon which could make use of it. Just one tick is enough for many breakpoints.
- Second change goes to Chain Reaction. Tests showed that it DOES damage. But it is ridiculous low so that it doesnt much difference. And the stagger effect while fun to watch is not that helpful. So like proposed before, make Chain Reaction enemes explode if they drop below 80 % health and also let the Chain Reaction cause a bit more damage.
- Flame Wave. Just … just rework it. Seeing that Fuel to the Fire increases Damage AND Stagger of Living Bomb while Flame Wave just adds radius, there is no reason to pick it. Fuel to the Fire just wins hands down. At least Bomb Balm gives some consolation Hp although it is still the lesser choice.
So yea. Just one minimal change to Searing Grasp, one medium change to Chain Reaction and one large change to Flame Wave. Then Unchained would be in a very good spot. She is already in a good spot. Don’t see the need for more overcharge concerning that even in the low red state most horde enemies do need two hits to overheat you.
1 Like
Less useful than the other thoughtful posts here but She should be immune to lamp oil fire on the ground, and use the snap animation from bolt staff cancel to light bombs instead of a flint steel. When she is tied up she does hookrat capture/dragging audio which is weird because she says hookrat even though she is on the ground not by a hookrat.
Flail should dot ignited enemies and do more stagger, it is better feeling than Victor’s flail and one of her better weapons but could use dot where things are ignited.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 7 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.