Am I the only one that likes her ult? The only complaint I have about it is the cooldown.
Reducing it down to 40 seconds would improve her ranged uptime with Exhaust & Bonded Flame and Blazing Echo would just be more forgiving on non crits.
Issue is just that you can reverse the argument and say that its not a problem with either components of the build since they are not problematic when apart. And that nerfing them would hurt build diversity.
That deal goes for a lot of builds in this game, or so i was told.
That is essentially a rework though!? You do not have to remake it all from scratch to call it one, just a few replacement talents/big changes and maybe a new passive/sub passive and it´s a go.
As for not being bad goes, really? BW has at least one talent and that passive of hers that makes her noticeably better at ranged business if she wants to commit to it. That due to faster spell charges, more ranged uptime and more damage buffs.
Pyro? Up to 30% crit chance for having high overcharge? When she has that high overcharge she cant shoot freely so she ends up benefitting more in melee but then she is competing with the BW firewalk and unchained package.
I cant imagine a pyro being better than either of those, BW damage scales exponentially with enemy horde density while UC…depends on build but is also very strong.
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Eh we just disagree on semantics then. Well I don’t really think she needs her passives adjusted either but whatever.
My point wasn’t so much about nerfing that build as it was to point out BW is only good in melee with that one build. Pyro most likely uses every other melee weapon significantly better than BW, so I don’t think you can say that BW generally melees better or even on par in any sense.
Hence why I said one of her main problems is she is outcompeted. BW is extremely strong though and UC is quite the powerhouse too, so being worse than those two in most cases still in no way makes the character necessarily bad. Compared to the content itself (as opposed to other classes) she’s pretty damn competent. Just saying you wouldn’t need to do much to her to push her from solid to very strong.
Melee Pyro is a lot of fun, but that’s because melee is the only thing left that gets highly visible benefits from her shtick of getting increased crit chance with heat.
I think just changing one or two talents, Heat Sink, and her ult would be enough.
Her ult should either have a lower cooldown or be coded to actually be reliable instead of chaotic, such as discriminating targets so that it always tracks a pecking order of targets when fired blind, that being Specials > Elites > Horde > Boss, and not vanishing after colliding with an object so often.
I don’t care for Ride the Fire Wind as a talent. It just doesn’t do enough for her ranged power. Sometimes you’ll kill a Stormvermin with a fully charged fireball once every 40 seconds, that’s kind of it. On the Precipice requires more management than what Pyro can reasonably benefit from. A caster Pyro is still better off with Deathly Dissipation over On the Precipice, but that segways into the other issue.
Pyro is a better glass cannon melee career than a special killer. All of her staffs excell versus hordes and I already mentioned that her passives visibly affect her melee nicely. But against specials she’s competing with 3 players who have better tools for the job. At Cata, everyone is on special duty and Pyro just isn’t going to kill anything before it’s shot up full of arrows and bullets. Pyro is better at racking up friendly fire damage from trying to fulfill her backline identity than she is at actually killing specials.
Make ranged attacks effected by critical hits. The only one Pyro gets a benefit from is Hunter. Heatsink does not enough to be valuable and only two talents take advantage of her crit chance (fleetflame and Blazing Echo).
There’s definitely stuff here that makes Pyro fun to play, but as far as an elite and special killer identity goes, I don’t think she’s very competitive.
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Pyro legitimately has some of the worst designed talents in the game.
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Pointless randomness?
Incanter’s FlowRide the Fire Wind & Blazing Echo. -
Fossil talents from 1.0 that literally haven’t been useful in years? Martial Study & Exhaust.
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Restrictive trigger conditions that make no sense and border on unplayable? Spirit Casting & On the Precipice.
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And a worthless speed boosting talent because WoM was lousy with those things for some reason.
Pyro’s design is like BH’s, completely propped up by her passive and 1-2 talents.
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But is she actually good at melee? Pyro being better at using weapons that arent flame sword compared to BW isnt actually saying much.
How so? She doesnt handle ranged too well, isnt a particularly good melee and she doesnt pack a bag of utility either. I think the only thing she does is AOE…but that isnt by the virtue of the class pyromancer, that´s just the weapons.
What does the class offer to mark her identity? I do not see anything that stands out.
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Martial Study can be merged into One with the flame, for 3% attack speed per stack.
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Exhaust could just do the exact same thing as deathly dissipation; halt overcharge for 10 seconds.
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I actually like Blazing Echo, it’s a little more reliable since the pseudo random distribution change. Could just slap on 10% crit chance and delete spirit-casting.
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Deathly Dissipation also has a restrictive trigger, Pyro’s not a great special sniper.
Some form of V1 Earthing Rune could be a good replacement, whether it be refunding overcharge or halting overcharge for x duration. -
Ride the fire wind + On the Precipice might help with some bolt breakpoints and meme builds.
But yeah, I agree they are random/restrictive. On the Precipice could be a stack system similar to One with the flame or just activate at maybe 3 stacks? -
Reducing Burning head cooldown would be an improvement to her sustain and ranged uptime, Blazing Echo would just feel more forgiving when it doesn’t crit.
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Not actually sure what to do with the level 25 row, I can’t see myself giving up Volans Doctrine
I have to ask though… how much of an impact do crits make for each ranged option?
Genuinely curious.
Crits are pretty nice on everything except memestorm and maybe conflag. And that’s just because the flamethrowers don’t get any bonus damage from crits and conflag is kind of a slow utility weapon.
But anecdotally I can certainly tell the difference between pyro fireball & unchained fireball. Though admittedly how much of that is down to Hunter procs is up for question.
As for talent suggestions:
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Agreed, just buffing One With the Flame sounds by 5% total like the ideal solution.
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Change Exhaust to be kinda like the combination of Ranger’s Parting Gift & Burning Dregs. Have it give a buff, with no time limit, that instantly vents overcharge the next time the player would normally have exploded. Could even just make it like half overcharge instead of fully venting so it’s a safety but not super punishing for damage output.
It still wouldn’t compete with Bonded Flame for experienced players, but it might help out players who have trouble managing their overcharge. And maybe that’s enough. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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I’m not wholesale against Blazing Echo, but I cannot endorse something that is by definition feast or famine. I guess they could steal another idea from World of Warcraft mages and make it something similar to Hot Streak. Something like:
Achieving two ranged critical hits in a row will increase the critical hit chance of The Burning Head to 100% and The Burning Head critical hits refund its cooldown.
That’s a talent design that doesn’t straight up offend me out of the box. Though given the current Burning Head AI I still probably wouldn’t play it.
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Easiest thing with Deathly Dissipation is just to make it proc on elites as well for a lesser period of time. Say what you like about her ability to special snipe, pyro is really good at murdering elites. Even like 3 seconds would significantly extend her ranged uptime.
Earthing Rune ideas sounds nice on paper, but uncontrollably futzing with the players ability to regulate their overcharge while trying to melee in Vermintide on a career that significantly benefits from precisely managing their overcharge is actually super annoying and very much no bueno.
If anything, I want something that is basically the inverse of Earthing Rune. Sienna having a special attack that let her generate overcharge is like my wet dream for unchained & melee pyro.
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The major problem with On the Precipice is that the player only gets like, two casts with the power boost before needing to do something about their heat. It’s really inflexible. If it was adjusted so players could get more casts off with the bonus it would be more appealing. Perhaps something like:
On reaching critical overcharge increases power by 15% & causes Sienna’s next three spells to generate no overcharge.
That way players can get more casts off with the power buff and it becomes easier to play around. There’s no hope for Ride the Fire Wind though. It needs to be scraped.
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I’d much rather see Burning Head have its targeting adjusted back to the way it was pre-WoM than its cooldown reduced personally. I believe the targeting nerfs are by far the most frustrating part of the ult and one of the most frustrating parts of pyro on the whole.
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The fact that The Volans Doctrine is such an amazing piece of Quality of Life seems like a pretty strong indication to me that the slowdown on high overcharge is an exceptionally outdated bit of game design that should probably just be removed wholesale.
I might have been out of the loop when it got changed, haven’t really noticed it.
Might just be extremely lucky but I haven’t had any problems with the targeting as of late.
Burning Head CD used to be 40 seconds, but I thought it was nerfed due to wiggle beam/ranged cooldown on hit, which has been fixed.
Wouldn’t Deathly Dissipation on ult be better?
A full 10 seconds of fixed overcharge just for using Burning head, good for both ranged and melee builds
Hmmm cooldown on melee crits? It could be good with the above exhaust idea or any ult talent.
If Pyro can somehow bump her Burning head crit chance to 55% she could guarantee a Burning Head dupe once every 3 ults. 36% chance on first use, 72% on 2nd use, 100% on 3rd use.
I can see where you’re coming from though, your idea means potentially going an entire game without consuming Burning Head.
More overcharge management talents would help it a lot yeah, might be better on level 10 row.
V1 Hail of Doom/V2 bloodshot would be pretty good for bolt, conflag and fireball.
Anyway it could be introduced into Pyros kit while remaining balanced?
I heard it was completely busted in V1 with fireball.
e.g melee crits granting an additional spell cast
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They did something to the trueflight ults to make them worse at finding things behind walls and such. And in the process completely ruined their ability to seek targets without the use of the ‘hold to aim’ mechanic, which is still pretty hit and miss. It was instantly noticeable back in the WoM beta because firing off a Burning Head directly in front of a bunch of rats had a significant chance for the projectile to instantly swerve 90 degrees towards sweet fanny adams and kill nothing.
As for the cooldown increase, again it was so long ago that I don’t remember that part of the wigglemancer nerfs. All I can say is that I played quite a bit of pyro in the period between the wiggle nerfs and WoM and thought it was a great ult. These days it just annoys me.
I guess. I was just trying to think of something that kept the current iterations ‘training wheels’ motif, since I know there’s a lot of players that are really, horrendously bad at managing their overheat. One of my friends had over 2000 hours in the game before he learned about that manual venting even existed.
I think Fatshark have learned their lesson about the positive feedback loop created by letting careers with extremely high crit chances coexist with things that let them get even more crits. See: wigglemancer and 1.3 beta dual swords shade. A pyro version of Resourceful Combatant would probably get the exact same treatment the actual trait did; hamstrung by restrictions to the point of uselessness.
If I was to spitball a cooldown reduction talent for pyro I’d probably go with “cooldown reduction on overcharge decay or manual venting.”
My idea was that players would be able to force Burning Head crits with normal staves, because pyros crit chance means getting back to back crits is a fairly regular occurrence. Then after they’ve gotten the guaranteed value of the free Burning Head they can decide if they want to gamble with it or not.
I didn’t play V1 at a high level so I have no experience there. I do know that Blood Shot on waystalker is really, really powerful, but I’m not sure I’d call a similar dual cast talent on pyro an “overcharge management talent.”
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Removing the option to even target trash mobs with the hold to aim function from her ult would also improve her ult.
For replacing Ride the Fire Wind, I’d gladly trade raw power for some utility, like a function that allows 100% spell charge speed increase. Something like every 6th spell cast, or 1 spell every 20 seconds, or some 10 or 20 melee kills to get an instant spell charge.
Dual Cast would also be a badass replacement.
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Ah, nah just tossing out an idea.
Just thought dual cast would be awesome for bolt and conflag.
Tbh, I’m not sure what pyro needs outside of reliability changes, ult tweaks and a little more overcharge management… or a lot more.
I’d kinda like to see her synergy with beam, conflag and flamestorm improved.
Something to justify bolts long charge time.
Fireball seems fine outside of the visuals.
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Pyro is strong, a career that tends to dominate the game more than her other careers. A glass cannon, but buffing her would be overkill. If the goal is to make certain weapons more viable with her than buff those weapons in particular.
Build I tend to run is fireball dagger with maxed crit chance, crit power, and attack speed. ALWAYS be at 5 stacks of overheat with the talent that negates overcharge slowdown. THP on cleave works because she attacks so quickly. Her ult comes back fast with the high attack speed and its THP can keep her topped off.
Not much really. Her passive is very powerful and makes up for a lot.
What’s keeping the career from being as satisfying to play now as she was before is two fold: on one hand there’s the mechanical concerns about the ult and how she only really had two good talents; on the other hand there’s Famished BW who fulfills largely the same niche but does it more efficiently and safer due to how extremely synergistic her kit can be.
It’s good with dagger since it’s basically just a passive 15% movement speed because of the 10 second duration. Still a worse version of Spring-heeled Assassin and not terribly useful for Pyro’s other weapons, but it’s not bad for true solo so there’s that.
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