“When an enemy dies while affected by your Soulblaze, nearby enemies each gain up to 4 stacks of Soulblaze. They cannot gain more stacks than the dying enemy had.”
The tooltip of Wildfire is very clear and unambiguous in what it states it does, but in reality it does not function as it implies, nor has it for quite some time. Envision the following scenario…
Enemy A and Enemy B stand side by side. Enemy A has 8 stacks of Soulblaze, and Enemy B has 6 stacks of Soulblaze. Should Enemy A die, Wildfire would activate, giving Enemy B up to 4 stacks of Soulblaze. (But no more than the total stacks of Enemy A. In this case, 8). Given this scenario - and by the nature of the talent’s tooltip - you would expect to see Enemy B gain 2 stacks, leaving them with 8, as they cannot have more stacks total than Enemy A did when it they died.
In reality, Enemy B gains NO stacks, as there is a hidden limitation upon Wildfire that restricts it from creating more than 4 total stacks of Soulblaze on an enemy. In fact, Wildfire will not even refresh the Soulblaze duration of Enemy B, and Enemy B will be left with the original 6 stacks they had, which will naturally expire only moments later…
This leaves the talent in a borderline useless state. Soulblaze stacks at lower numbers do such minuscule damage due to their exponentially stacking properties that a maximum limit of 4 stacks from the Wildfire talent leaves most enemies suffering Soulblaze tick-damage in the single digits. Even worse, it has nearly no synergy with Psyker’s other sources of Soulblaze, as those will all quickly ramp up Soulblaze stacks to 4 or higher, therefore making Wildfire completely ineffectual.
There are three options to address this that I can think of, and I’d like to hear any other proposals that people might have;
Option A, the preferred option: Disable the hidden limitation imposed upon the talent altogether, enabling it to work exactly as it’s current tooltip states it does. Allow Soulblaze stacks to spread from Wildfire without the arbitrary (and hidden) 4 stack limit, and allow the current limitations already present on the talent to keep it in check. This would serve to make the blessing far more interesting all around, and any potential balancing issues resulting from this could be easily resolved with slight numerical tuning (i.e. from 4 stacks transferred down to 3 or even 2).
Option B, the compromise option: Keep the blessing as is, but when Wildfire attempts to spread to a target with 4 or more stacks, instead of the talent doing nothing, make it so the Soulblaze stacks are refreshed. This solves the frustrating problem with the talent where even after getting several activations of Wildfire, the Soulblaze lifespan for surrounding enemies will abruptly stop altogether. This is probably the safest change, making the talent far less frustrating to use despite doing little to alter the balance of the talent as a whole.
And Option C, the easy option: Simply include this hidden limitation in the talent’s tooltip so players can make an informed choice when selecting it for their build, instead of unknowingly wasting points on what is currently a trap talent.
All around, the Wildfire talent is in a really really bad state, and I urge Fatshark to please do something to improve it’s situation, even if it’s as simple as adding more clarity in it’s tooltip as to it’s true function.