Pyromancer Feedback
Message #1 le 2011-1-31 @ 23:52:21 par Biz:
Un vieux post certain truc on changé depuis avec le pyro
Alright, here we go. I levelled almost exclusively as a Pyromancer all the way to 50, and here is my best analysis of every ability and spell we have. Abilities and spells are scored at the end of each entry. Please note this applies primarily to PvE play, as I have had no chance to PvP with the Pyro. Naturally this is all my opinion as well, and may not be gospel. Other people may get a lot of use out of abilities I found mediocre, or vice versa.
Abilities:
Tier 1
Improved Fireball: Increases fireball crit chance by 5/10/15%. Great starter, since fireball is the attack you will spam most often. Not 100% sure it's working as well as it is supposed to, since my fireballs don't seem to crit as often as the stats would suggest, or even noticeably more often than any of my fire spells. I don't have the #'s yet though. Still, fantastic in theory. 5/5 if it works properly.
Ignition: Decreases fire spell cast times by 4/8/12/16/20%. Solid choice, and you'll likely end up taking this on your way further up the tree as it is more useful than Fiery Concentration. 3/5
Fiery Concentration: Reduces Fireball/Cinder Burst pushback by 33/66/100. Totally unnecessary in PvE at least. The pushback you get while taking damage is very slight, and a vast majority of the mobs you fight won't even make it to you. 2/5
Tier 2
Combust: Fireball has 20% chance to do an additional 30% of its damage over 8 seconds. Mediocre. Not a terrible choice at all, but the DoT isn't noticeable for the most part. I imagine it becomes more of a factor as you build your gear (and in longer fights), but at 50 in the Droughtlands armor it is not amazing. 3/5
Improved Internalize Charge: Increase Internalize Charge's bonus damage by 3/6/9/12/15%. Useless, or very nearly useless. I almost never ever used Internalize Charge because Withering Flames is so much better. Even if you do use Internalize, 5 talent points for a situational 15% damage bonus is a waste. 0/5
Burning Bonds: Root with a short cast timer. Absolutely a must-have for any Pyro. 5/5
Improved Burning Bonds: Reduces cast time of Burning Bonds by 50/100%. Another must-have, to make BB instant. 5/5
Tier 3
Fiery Resolve: Reduces the time you are affected by stuns/silences by 10/20/30%. Completely unnecessary for PvE, likely of moderate usefulness in PvP. I never took it while levelling and I never missed it. Most stuns and silences only last for ~5 seconds, and you have better spots for your talents than a 1.5s reduction. May be different in PvP, but hard to tell. 1/5 for PvE.
Cinder Burst: High-damage, long-cast spell. Poor choice to begin with, much more useful later on once spellpower ramps up and you get access to Pyromancer's Armor. In the late game is a fantastic opener and (with Pyromancer's Armor) a useful proc. 4/5 (endgame)
Improved Grounding: Increases mana regen by 2/4/6 per second while on a ground power. Useless. 6 mana per second is quite low when you get access to the ability, and becomes steadily worse the higher up you go. The last rank of fireball costs 154 mana, which means you are getting an extra fireball's worth of mana roughly every 25-26 seconds that you stand in a ground effect. You will not notice the difference in 99% of fights, and I doubt it will help much even in endurance fights. 0/5
Tier 4
Improved Flame Bolt: Flame Bolt has a 33/66/100% chance of increasing fire damage by 10% for 10 seconds. Good ability, as the Pyromancer stacks a lot of +% modifiers to fire damage and this helps. Also a prerequisite for for the excellent Wildfire ability in Tier 5. 4/5
Burning Bright: 8/16/24% bonus fire damage at the cost of 5/10/15% less max health. Definitely worthwhile in PvE. Most fights as a Pyro will never make it to you to do damage, so your max health is irrelevant in about 90% of fights. This group of talents is one of the main reasons that melee fights never make it to you. 5/5
Fire Storm: Channelled, ranged AoE spell. I really wanted to like this spell, but every time I used it I nearly died, or did die. It does not do enough damage to kill most normal enemies outright, and you are basically CC'ing yourself by casting it. I suspect it comes into its own in a group situation with a tank that can hold AoE aggro. Everywhere else you are far better off focusing your damage onto single targets. 2/5 solo/levelling, likely higher in group content. [hr]
Tier 5
Wildfire: Your fireball has a 10/20/30% chance to make the next 3 Flame Bolts have no cooldown. Amazing ability, and because it refreshes the cooldown and gives you 3 bolts without any cooldown afterwards, actually equals 4 bolts as fast as the GCD cools down. Great for burst damage on a target. 5/5
Pyromancer's Armor: 10% chance for your fire spells to make your next Cinder Burst cast instantly. The best armor available to Pyro's. Cinder Burst at level 50 hits mobs for about 650-800 non-crit, and crits up to 1700. I do wish this armor refreshed the cooldown on Cinder Burst though, as often it will go off and CB is in its 30-second cooldown. Still, 4/5
Unbreakable Bonds: Your Burning Bonds no longer break on damage. Fantastic ability, allows you to root and hammer on any melee target. 5/5
Tier 6
Fire Shield: 30% chance on hit to spawn a shield for 15% of your max health with a cooldown of 30 seconds. Moderately useful talent. Does not provide significant protection since your health as a Pyro is so low. Will increase in usefulness as endurance gear improves, or with buffs. For me it most often ate a single hit a fight, or a hostile DoT. 3/5
Improved Ground of Power: 10% less damage taken, 5% damage bonus while standing on Ground of Power. Worthwhile talent as Pyro's will use Ground of Power a LOT. 3/5
Backdraft: Targetted AoE 3-second stun. Not useful in solo PvE except as an escape mechanic. Might be alright in group PvE, possibly decent in PvP. However, you need to take the lackluster Fire Storm to get it. 2/5 for levelling, likely to be higher for PvP CC since it's an AoE instant-cast stun.
Tier 7
Living Flame: Resets Fire spell cooldowns, reduces their cast time by 50%, 20 second duration. Great for hammering on a target. Can refresh the durations of several useful spells. Definitely worth a single talent point. 5/5 [hr]
Spells will be written with the # of points to unlock them first.
Spells:
(0) Fireball: Good single-target dps spell, not great. Would be nice to see slightly higher base damage on it (+10% or so), and at some gear points it feels really expensive mana-wise. Still, in later levels gear outstrips the rising cost and it is the spell you will probably cast most often. 4/5
(0) Flame Bolt: Great instant-cast spell. Good damage, moderate cooldown, low mana cost. Use it every time it's up. 5/5
(2) Flame Jet: Mediocre AoE instant. Damage is low, range is short (feels like melee range), cost is high. I only ever really used it when I needed another instant-cast spell, regardless of the # of targets. 2/5
(4) Fire Armor: Lousy armor spell. 3% bonus to damage is nearly unnoticeable at any level. Pyromancer's armor is much better as soon as it is available. 0/5
(6) Internalize Charge: Chews through charge so quickly it's unlikely you'll get more than a few spells off even with a full bar. Putting points into Warlock to increase the charge your spells generate can help this, but it's still not great. Withering Flames is without a doubt a better use of your charge. 2/5
(8) Ground of Power: Great ground spell, the bread and butter buff of the Pyro. You will cast this over and over. The damage increase is noticeable, and the talents to reduce the extra damage taken really help this spell shine. Only gripe is the small size of the circle, but even that can be worked around. 4/5
(10) Burning Intellect: Solid Intelligence buff, you'll have it running all the time. Nothing game-changing, but the extra mana and damage are definitely helpful. Other casters will love you. 4/5
(12) Countdown: Single target DD on a timer. Easy to overlook. Does about the damage of two fireballs for 66% of the mana, but the timer is annoying. You don't want to open with this because you would rather fire off two fireballs at range as opposed to grabbing aggro and waiting for the global cooldown to reset. However, once you have started a fight it doesn't often last 8 seconds (yes really). Frequently all I was doing was blowing a GCD so I could put on a debuff that never had time to go off, and eventually I just stopped using it altogether. Would like to see the damage increased and/or the timer shortened. 1/5
(14) Flicker: Teleports you ahead in the direction you are facing. Useful for escapes, probably more essential in PvP than PvE. Does not free you from snares, just immobilizing effects. 2/5 for PvE, likely more useful in PvP.
(16) Ground of Control: 30% chance to stun for 2 seconds. I basically never used this in PvE simply because Ground of Power is so amazing. Totally outclassed by Ground of Power in PvE, maybe useful in PvP but I doubt any of the ground powers are really amazing since they force you to stand in one spot, and take time to cast. 1/5 PvE, unknown PvP
(18) Flashfire: Nice CC, only Pyro CC that shuts down enemy casters. Stuns you for 3 seconds, so not recommended while engaging multiple targets. Still, 4/5 if only for the usefulness of a ranged spellcasting interrupt.
(20) Burn: Fantastic anti-melee CC. Shutting down melee for 8 seconds is great. 5/5
(26) Withering Flames: The be-all and end-all of Pyromancy. In my opinion the best use of charge in the game, with the possible exception of the warlock life drain (and even that's questionable). I actually expect this to get nerfed since it is so overwhelmingly powerful. Using this I was able to solo my way through all the group quests except the last two fights of the cyclops arena in Droughtlands. 6 out of 5 points, it breaks the scale it is so great.
(32) Lockdown: Ranged AoE 90% snare. Of only moderate usefulness in PvE because Pyro AoE abilities are not sufficient to kill most monsters in the time provided, and AoE as a rule is very mana-intensive for the Pyro. Still, it has uses as an escape mechanism, and I suspect it is very useful in PvP. 2/5 for PvE, likely higher for PvP.
Here is where most Pyro's will stop in the tree I imagine, because after 35 points or so you start having to invest in mediocre abilities to unlock mediocre spells. Ability points are better spent in a second tree IMO.
(38) Inferno: Decent instant nuke, but the requirement that the target be under 20% health makes it less useful because Pyro's tend to shave off health in such large chunks that it is easy to kill a target with another type of spell. Would be more useful in extended fights if the damage was higher. Requires an investment of too many points to justify just for an instant nuke. 2/5 with a point deducted for being so deep in the tree.
(44) Ground of Strength: Immunity to CC and less damage seems great, but aside from being potentially useful in some boss fights, I can't think of a great use for this. I do not expect ground powers to be fantastic in PvP simply because they limit your mobility so much and have a cast time attached. Also requires a tremendous amount of investment in one tree. 1/5 for being extremely situational and very deep in the tree.
(51) Mass Burn: Sounds good, probably is good in PvP and handy in group PvE. In solo PvE it's not useful because of Pyro's AoE limitations. I can see this being a huge hassle to deal with in PvP. However, going full-on Pyromancer is an awful decision for anyone to make. I simply cannot recommend this to anyone under any circumstances with the tree as it is. 0/5 because the prerequisite is a tremendous amount of sacrifice due to lost potential. The ability itself probably scores a 2/5 for solo PvE and higher in group and PvP situations. If it was up to me, I'd swap the position of this and Inferno on the "roots", and boost Inferno a lot to become a class-defining single target DD spell. [hr]
Synergy with other souls (just the ones I tried):
Warlock: Good synergy as far as the abilities go, but a lot of the warlock abilities are damage over time, which means they don't mesh well with the instant gratification and short fights that a pyro-heavy build results in. However, the health buffing and draining spells of the warlock go a decent way towards combating the frailty of the pyro.
Elementalist: Great synergy with Pyromancer, and the soul I duo'ed with the most. The pet is great for as long as it stays current. The crit/crit damage abilities are awesome for boosting the instant dps of the Pyro, and the ice shield spell can be a life-saver and makes fighting spellcasters a lot easier on the health pool.
Dominator: As soon as I unlocked a 3rd soul this was it, and that was around the time the Dominator soul was available. I put no points into the Dominator, but having Transmogrify helped a lot with multiple pulls since I could almost always burn down 1 or 2 mobs before the Trans popped.
Chloromancer: Decent, but there are better souls available. I rarely ran out of health before mana as a Pyro, so I felt that the healing abilities of the Chloromancer were unnecessary and went with Dom/Ele or Dom/Lock instead.
Final Pyromancer Impressions:
The probable reason that feedback on the Pyro was slow in coming is because it's very much the archetypal glass cannon. I think people play this class and think , "Oh, a typical wizard/mage". I thoroughly enjoyed playing a Pyromancer because that high damage/high risk playstyle suits me quite well. The pyromancer is a slow starter in my opinion. It really starts to take off as you get your spellpower bonus to 80% or so, and get the deeper-tree +% damage abilities on top of that. By 45 or so I was able to take most monsters within 2 levels of myself and kill them before they could land more than one or two hits without using any CC. If I did use CC they rarely landed a shot unless they were spellcasters, and my ice shield would eat the damage.
The Pyromancer is amazing at single target DPS in any situation, especially with Withering Flames. I would like to see more damage on the Fireball spell since it is our baseline ability and it feels mana-intensive for the damage returned, but basically all the rest of our abilities feel about right. The only concern I have is that the +crit abilities from the Pyro and Ele trees may not be working, but I'll have to do some casting tests to see if my crit rate is in line with the supposed % or not.
In AoE, the Pyromancer really needs a tank that can hold the aggro off of them. They are far to fragile to regularly attempt AoE spells solo, but I imagine that Fire Storm would be useful in a group setting. The Burning Ground spell from the Elementalist tree would also supplement AoE quite nicely and I assume would benefit from all the +fire damage that the Pyro tree unlocks.
The PvE experience with the Pyromancer was a ton of fun. There are only a few instances where I felt the game was beating me up. To me the Pyromancer played the way I want a mage to play: very high damage, and the amount of risk varied with your ability to manage and use cooldowns. If I played things right and had some luck with procs I was able to take on 3-packs my level and have them all dead in about 30 seconds. If I screwed up I died horribly to one monster and its minion. Good job with a class that feels right, at least for me.
[hr]
Un nouveau post .. qui date du 31/1/2011 avec tout les modification qui ont apporter au pyro ... voici lavis dun autre alpha testeur
--- Grounds of power are useless, too much movement involved in every aspect of the game.
Even pets can't hold aggro so you end up moving around when your solo questing too.
I would suggest turning this into a self buff, or making it an instant cast.
If you were willing to change the spell a bit more, I think it would be nice if the area of effect for the grounds were
increased by 500-1000% so they covered a lot more area. And maybe added mediocre debuff to enemies that stood in it to accompany the buffs it already gives us (Like maybe slow speed, or increase fire damage taken).
If you did this, it would keep us casting the spell under the same circumstances, but with more freedom to move around, and give the spell slightly more use.
You would probably need to lower the visual effects of it a bit though, since it would be used a lot more in pvp, and it would take up so much space.
--- Flame bolt and wildfire are weak and underpowered, in comparison to Fireball and other pyromancer abilities. The simple math of flame bolt damage divided by 1.5 sec gcd, and fireball damage divided by 2 sec cast, will tell you that.
Flame bolt and wildfire are really worth nothing more than a 10% damage buff (which is nice) , and the option to instant cast while moving (which is also nice). I just think an 8 second cooldown, that also has a proc to make this cooldown instant, should be more worth using than just for a buff.
It should either do more damage than our main nuke to make it worth using
Or wildfire should make the buff stack
I would prefer both tbh
(It isn't like pyro couldn't afford another damage increase)
--- Pyro gets a lot of aggro.
They take aggro from any pet instantly, but I'm not sure how much this is worth since I've been hearing just about everybody else is having the same problem
The real problem is that I can actually take aggro from tanks occasionally, and I have no aggro dump.
I'm well aware that there are other mage souls that have aggro dumps, but with pyromancer being the most squishy, and the highest damage, I think it should definitely have one of it's own as well.
-- Flicker doesn't go far.
Considering how far the ranges, and how fast the walking speeds are in this game. Flicker is worth nothing more than somewhere along the lines of 1 free gcd.
I do appreciate it's other escape utilities, but I feel like this aspect of the spell is extremely lacking, because by the time i turn around they're already in my face again.
Yes I could use a stun or root, but that defeats the purpose, because I could just as easily stun or root them and take one step backwards if that's all I was trying to accomplish
Which brings me to my next point
-- Pyro is squishy as ****
They have a lot of nice utility, but they're still unbelievably squishy in pvp without a healer
All of their utilities are only useful at keeping you alive in a 1v1 environment, and even then you can sometimes die when using them perfectly due to healing and damage imbalances (Between rangers and clerics and saboteurs..etc...)
Their only damage mitigation/health restoring move is a 30 second proc that's fixed at 15% of your max health.
as a pyromancer no matter who you try to attack, if they go head up with you, your lack of health and general squishiness is usually demolished before your big damage can kill the enemy
In other words.
I do a lot of damage, but I take so much more damage than they do, that I still die first.
Healers heal for entirely too much.
As a level 29 pyromancer and I can sit there and do nothing but nuke and stun a level 21 cleric, but he'll easily keep up with my damage while dishing a decent amount back at me at the same time.
In my experience, this isn't purely a pyromancer issue.
It takes about 3-5 players to take out one decent healer
Healers completely decide the outcome of warfronts, and just about all other pvp right now
This is due to a large imbalance between damage to healing ratio in the game.
But you can't make dungeons competitive and tanks useful without making big damage a factor, which requires big healing.
I understand how much work it would be to try to balance this game around pvp, and reducing healing across the board
So I suggest that you add a mortal strike effect to all pvp.
Any time you're attacked by another player, you get a debuff that reduces healing by ??%
Numbers are up to you, but the change NEEDS to be made
But I digress..
I don't entirely disagree with pyromancers being complete glass cannons, and victim to any and every joeblow that decides to kill the squishy mage
But, if you're going to make us this squishy we need an increase in damage, it's as simple as that
Considering pyromancers are completely focused on damage and nothing else, I don't see why this is a hard task to accomplish
You made it so everyone kills us fast, which is okay.
But we should be able to kill them faster
In simpler terms
QQ MOAR DMG NAO
Seriously though.
-- Withering flames sucks
It's damage is terrible.
I'd rather cast fireballs
and save my charge for revitalize
or something
That's all I have for pyro, but on a completely different note, while I have you reading this long post, are you aware how unbalaced your damage is across the boards?
Warriors and rogues are outdamaging mageslike it's nothing
And clerics are outhealing us just as easily
I'm not saying you need to run around for each soul, balancing this utility with that utility so it's not unfair and blah blah
But you could at least make it so damage is fairly distributed
Otherwise....pvp has failed...
Saboteurs stack bombs on me, and in a few gcds are prepared to one shot me with detonate
rangers or marksman or whatever hit crit from over half my health from one of their regular, on command, nukes
good (healing) clerics are impossible to take 1 on 1, and any team composed with a few good ones are completely unstoppable
I know you didn't make this game so you could balance it around pvp, but Trion you seriously need to take a step back and look at this.
PvP stops being fun when you know every time you see that saboteur, you're going to get 1-shotted.
PvP stops being fun when you know that if you don't have 3 or more people helping you kill that cleric, that he will effortlessly outheal your damage and kill you
All you have to do is run some tests
And tweak some numbers
Please do it.
tl;dr - Well **** you too
Alright, here we go. I levelled almost exclusively as a Pyromancer all the way to 50, and here is my best analysis of every ability and spell we have. Abilities and spells are scored at the end of each entry. Please note this applies primarily to PvE play, as I have had no chance to PvP with the Pyro. Naturally this is all my opinion as well, and may not be gospel. Other people may get a lot of use out of abilities I found mediocre, or vice versa.
Abilities:
Tier 1
Improved Fireball: Increases fireball crit chance by 5/10/15%. Great starter, since fireball is the attack you will spam most often. Not 100% sure it's working as well as it is supposed to, since my fireballs don't seem to crit as often as the stats would suggest, or even noticeably more often than any of my fire spells. I don't have the #'s yet though. Still, fantastic in theory. 5/5 if it works properly.
Ignition: Decreases fire spell cast times by 4/8/12/16/20%. Solid choice, and you'll likely end up taking this on your way further up the tree as it is more useful than Fiery Concentration. 3/5
Fiery Concentration: Reduces Fireball/Cinder Burst pushback by 33/66/100. Totally unnecessary in PvE at least. The pushback you get while taking damage is very slight, and a vast majority of the mobs you fight won't even make it to you. 2/5
Tier 2
Combust: Fireball has 20% chance to do an additional 30% of its damage over 8 seconds. Mediocre. Not a terrible choice at all, but the DoT isn't noticeable for the most part. I imagine it becomes more of a factor as you build your gear (and in longer fights), but at 50 in the Droughtlands armor it is not amazing. 3/5
Improved Internalize Charge: Increase Internalize Charge's bonus damage by 3/6/9/12/15%. Useless, or very nearly useless. I almost never ever used Internalize Charge because Withering Flames is so much better. Even if you do use Internalize, 5 talent points for a situational 15% damage bonus is a waste. 0/5
Burning Bonds: Root with a short cast timer. Absolutely a must-have for any Pyro. 5/5
Improved Burning Bonds: Reduces cast time of Burning Bonds by 50/100%. Another must-have, to make BB instant. 5/5
Tier 3
Fiery Resolve: Reduces the time you are affected by stuns/silences by 10/20/30%. Completely unnecessary for PvE, likely of moderate usefulness in PvP. I never took it while levelling and I never missed it. Most stuns and silences only last for ~5 seconds, and you have better spots for your talents than a 1.5s reduction. May be different in PvP, but hard to tell. 1/5 for PvE.
Cinder Burst: High-damage, long-cast spell. Poor choice to begin with, much more useful later on once spellpower ramps up and you get access to Pyromancer's Armor. In the late game is a fantastic opener and (with Pyromancer's Armor) a useful proc. 4/5 (endgame)
Improved Grounding: Increases mana regen by 2/4/6 per second while on a ground power. Useless. 6 mana per second is quite low when you get access to the ability, and becomes steadily worse the higher up you go. The last rank of fireball costs 154 mana, which means you are getting an extra fireball's worth of mana roughly every 25-26 seconds that you stand in a ground effect. You will not notice the difference in 99% of fights, and I doubt it will help much even in endurance fights. 0/5
Tier 4
Improved Flame Bolt: Flame Bolt has a 33/66/100% chance of increasing fire damage by 10% for 10 seconds. Good ability, as the Pyromancer stacks a lot of +% modifiers to fire damage and this helps. Also a prerequisite for for the excellent Wildfire ability in Tier 5. 4/5
Burning Bright: 8/16/24% bonus fire damage at the cost of 5/10/15% less max health. Definitely worthwhile in PvE. Most fights as a Pyro will never make it to you to do damage, so your max health is irrelevant in about 90% of fights. This group of talents is one of the main reasons that melee fights never make it to you. 5/5
Fire Storm: Channelled, ranged AoE spell. I really wanted to like this spell, but every time I used it I nearly died, or did die. It does not do enough damage to kill most normal enemies outright, and you are basically CC'ing yourself by casting it. I suspect it comes into its own in a group situation with a tank that can hold AoE aggro. Everywhere else you are far better off focusing your damage onto single targets. 2/5 solo/levelling, likely higher in group content. [hr]
Tier 5
Wildfire: Your fireball has a 10/20/30% chance to make the next 3 Flame Bolts have no cooldown. Amazing ability, and because it refreshes the cooldown and gives you 3 bolts without any cooldown afterwards, actually equals 4 bolts as fast as the GCD cools down. Great for burst damage on a target. 5/5
Pyromancer's Armor: 10% chance for your fire spells to make your next Cinder Burst cast instantly. The best armor available to Pyro's. Cinder Burst at level 50 hits mobs for about 650-800 non-crit, and crits up to 1700. I do wish this armor refreshed the cooldown on Cinder Burst though, as often it will go off and CB is in its 30-second cooldown. Still, 4/5
Unbreakable Bonds: Your Burning Bonds no longer break on damage. Fantastic ability, allows you to root and hammer on any melee target. 5/5
Tier 6
Fire Shield: 30% chance on hit to spawn a shield for 15% of your max health with a cooldown of 30 seconds. Moderately useful talent. Does not provide significant protection since your health as a Pyro is so low. Will increase in usefulness as endurance gear improves, or with buffs. For me it most often ate a single hit a fight, or a hostile DoT. 3/5
Improved Ground of Power: 10% less damage taken, 5% damage bonus while standing on Ground of Power. Worthwhile talent as Pyro's will use Ground of Power a LOT. 3/5
Backdraft: Targetted AoE 3-second stun. Not useful in solo PvE except as an escape mechanic. Might be alright in group PvE, possibly decent in PvP. However, you need to take the lackluster Fire Storm to get it. 2/5 for levelling, likely to be higher for PvP CC since it's an AoE instant-cast stun.
Tier 7
Living Flame: Resets Fire spell cooldowns, reduces their cast time by 50%, 20 second duration. Great for hammering on a target. Can refresh the durations of several useful spells. Definitely worth a single talent point. 5/5 [hr]
Spells will be written with the # of points to unlock them first.
Spells:
(0) Fireball: Good single-target dps spell, not great. Would be nice to see slightly higher base damage on it (+10% or so), and at some gear points it feels really expensive mana-wise. Still, in later levels gear outstrips the rising cost and it is the spell you will probably cast most often. 4/5
(0) Flame Bolt: Great instant-cast spell. Good damage, moderate cooldown, low mana cost. Use it every time it's up. 5/5
(2) Flame Jet: Mediocre AoE instant. Damage is low, range is short (feels like melee range), cost is high. I only ever really used it when I needed another instant-cast spell, regardless of the # of targets. 2/5
(4) Fire Armor: Lousy armor spell. 3% bonus to damage is nearly unnoticeable at any level. Pyromancer's armor is much better as soon as it is available. 0/5
(6) Internalize Charge: Chews through charge so quickly it's unlikely you'll get more than a few spells off even with a full bar. Putting points into Warlock to increase the charge your spells generate can help this, but it's still not great. Withering Flames is without a doubt a better use of your charge. 2/5
(8) Ground of Power: Great ground spell, the bread and butter buff of the Pyro. You will cast this over and over. The damage increase is noticeable, and the talents to reduce the extra damage taken really help this spell shine. Only gripe is the small size of the circle, but even that can be worked around. 4/5
(10) Burning Intellect: Solid Intelligence buff, you'll have it running all the time. Nothing game-changing, but the extra mana and damage are definitely helpful. Other casters will love you. 4/5
(12) Countdown: Single target DD on a timer. Easy to overlook. Does about the damage of two fireballs for 66% of the mana, but the timer is annoying. You don't want to open with this because you would rather fire off two fireballs at range as opposed to grabbing aggro and waiting for the global cooldown to reset. However, once you have started a fight it doesn't often last 8 seconds (yes really). Frequently all I was doing was blowing a GCD so I could put on a debuff that never had time to go off, and eventually I just stopped using it altogether. Would like to see the damage increased and/or the timer shortened. 1/5
(14) Flicker: Teleports you ahead in the direction you are facing. Useful for escapes, probably more essential in PvP than PvE. Does not free you from snares, just immobilizing effects. 2/5 for PvE, likely more useful in PvP.
(16) Ground of Control: 30% chance to stun for 2 seconds. I basically never used this in PvE simply because Ground of Power is so amazing. Totally outclassed by Ground of Power in PvE, maybe useful in PvP but I doubt any of the ground powers are really amazing since they force you to stand in one spot, and take time to cast. 1/5 PvE, unknown PvP
(18) Flashfire: Nice CC, only Pyro CC that shuts down enemy casters. Stuns you for 3 seconds, so not recommended while engaging multiple targets. Still, 4/5 if only for the usefulness of a ranged spellcasting interrupt.
(20) Burn: Fantastic anti-melee CC. Shutting down melee for 8 seconds is great. 5/5
(26) Withering Flames: The be-all and end-all of Pyromancy. In my opinion the best use of charge in the game, with the possible exception of the warlock life drain (and even that's questionable). I actually expect this to get nerfed since it is so overwhelmingly powerful. Using this I was able to solo my way through all the group quests except the last two fights of the cyclops arena in Droughtlands. 6 out of 5 points, it breaks the scale it is so great.
(32) Lockdown: Ranged AoE 90% snare. Of only moderate usefulness in PvE because Pyro AoE abilities are not sufficient to kill most monsters in the time provided, and AoE as a rule is very mana-intensive for the Pyro. Still, it has uses as an escape mechanism, and I suspect it is very useful in PvP. 2/5 for PvE, likely higher for PvP.
Here is where most Pyro's will stop in the tree I imagine, because after 35 points or so you start having to invest in mediocre abilities to unlock mediocre spells. Ability points are better spent in a second tree IMO.
(38) Inferno: Decent instant nuke, but the requirement that the target be under 20% health makes it less useful because Pyro's tend to shave off health in such large chunks that it is easy to kill a target with another type of spell. Would be more useful in extended fights if the damage was higher. Requires an investment of too many points to justify just for an instant nuke. 2/5 with a point deducted for being so deep in the tree.
(44) Ground of Strength: Immunity to CC and less damage seems great, but aside from being potentially useful in some boss fights, I can't think of a great use for this. I do not expect ground powers to be fantastic in PvP simply because they limit your mobility so much and have a cast time attached. Also requires a tremendous amount of investment in one tree. 1/5 for being extremely situational and very deep in the tree.
(51) Mass Burn: Sounds good, probably is good in PvP and handy in group PvE. In solo PvE it's not useful because of Pyro's AoE limitations. I can see this being a huge hassle to deal with in PvP. However, going full-on Pyromancer is an awful decision for anyone to make. I simply cannot recommend this to anyone under any circumstances with the tree as it is. 0/5 because the prerequisite is a tremendous amount of sacrifice due to lost potential. The ability itself probably scores a 2/5 for solo PvE and higher in group and PvP situations. If it was up to me, I'd swap the position of this and Inferno on the "roots", and boost Inferno a lot to become a class-defining single target DD spell. [hr]
Synergy with other souls (just the ones I tried):
Warlock: Good synergy as far as the abilities go, but a lot of the warlock abilities are damage over time, which means they don't mesh well with the instant gratification and short fights that a pyro-heavy build results in. However, the health buffing and draining spells of the warlock go a decent way towards combating the frailty of the pyro.
Elementalist: Great synergy with Pyromancer, and the soul I duo'ed with the most. The pet is great for as long as it stays current. The crit/crit damage abilities are awesome for boosting the instant dps of the Pyro, and the ice shield spell can be a life-saver and makes fighting spellcasters a lot easier on the health pool.
Dominator: As soon as I unlocked a 3rd soul this was it, and that was around the time the Dominator soul was available. I put no points into the Dominator, but having Transmogrify helped a lot with multiple pulls since I could almost always burn down 1 or 2 mobs before the Trans popped.
Chloromancer: Decent, but there are better souls available. I rarely ran out of health before mana as a Pyro, so I felt that the healing abilities of the Chloromancer were unnecessary and went with Dom/Ele or Dom/Lock instead.
Final Pyromancer Impressions:
The probable reason that feedback on the Pyro was slow in coming is because it's very much the archetypal glass cannon. I think people play this class and think , "Oh, a typical wizard/mage". I thoroughly enjoyed playing a Pyromancer because that high damage/high risk playstyle suits me quite well. The pyromancer is a slow starter in my opinion. It really starts to take off as you get your spellpower bonus to 80% or so, and get the deeper-tree +% damage abilities on top of that. By 45 or so I was able to take most monsters within 2 levels of myself and kill them before they could land more than one or two hits without using any CC. If I did use CC they rarely landed a shot unless they were spellcasters, and my ice shield would eat the damage.
The Pyromancer is amazing at single target DPS in any situation, especially with Withering Flames. I would like to see more damage on the Fireball spell since it is our baseline ability and it feels mana-intensive for the damage returned, but basically all the rest of our abilities feel about right. The only concern I have is that the +crit abilities from the Pyro and Ele trees may not be working, but I'll have to do some casting tests to see if my crit rate is in line with the supposed % or not.
In AoE, the Pyromancer really needs a tank that can hold the aggro off of them. They are far to fragile to regularly attempt AoE spells solo, but I imagine that Fire Storm would be useful in a group setting. The Burning Ground spell from the Elementalist tree would also supplement AoE quite nicely and I assume would benefit from all the +fire damage that the Pyro tree unlocks.
The PvE experience with the Pyromancer was a ton of fun. There are only a few instances where I felt the game was beating me up. To me the Pyromancer played the way I want a mage to play: very high damage, and the amount of risk varied with your ability to manage and use cooldowns. If I played things right and had some luck with procs I was able to take on 3-packs my level and have them all dead in about 30 seconds. If I screwed up I died horribly to one monster and its minion. Good job with a class that feels right, at least for me.
[hr]
Un nouveau post .. qui date du 31/1/2011 avec tout les modification qui ont apporter au pyro ... voici lavis dun autre alpha testeur
--- Grounds of power are useless, too much movement involved in every aspect of the game.
Even pets can't hold aggro so you end up moving around when your solo questing too.
I would suggest turning this into a self buff, or making it an instant cast.
If you were willing to change the spell a bit more, I think it would be nice if the area of effect for the grounds were
increased by 500-1000% so they covered a lot more area. And maybe added mediocre debuff to enemies that stood in it to accompany the buffs it already gives us (Like maybe slow speed, or increase fire damage taken).
If you did this, it would keep us casting the spell under the same circumstances, but with more freedom to move around, and give the spell slightly more use.
You would probably need to lower the visual effects of it a bit though, since it would be used a lot more in pvp, and it would take up so much space.
--- Flame bolt and wildfire are weak and underpowered, in comparison to Fireball and other pyromancer abilities. The simple math of flame bolt damage divided by 1.5 sec gcd, and fireball damage divided by 2 sec cast, will tell you that.
Flame bolt and wildfire are really worth nothing more than a 10% damage buff (which is nice) , and the option to instant cast while moving (which is also nice). I just think an 8 second cooldown, that also has a proc to make this cooldown instant, should be more worth using than just for a buff.
It should either do more damage than our main nuke to make it worth using
Or wildfire should make the buff stack
I would prefer both tbh
(It isn't like pyro couldn't afford another damage increase)
--- Pyro gets a lot of aggro.
They take aggro from any pet instantly, but I'm not sure how much this is worth since I've been hearing just about everybody else is having the same problem
The real problem is that I can actually take aggro from tanks occasionally, and I have no aggro dump.
I'm well aware that there are other mage souls that have aggro dumps, but with pyromancer being the most squishy, and the highest damage, I think it should definitely have one of it's own as well.
-- Flicker doesn't go far.
Considering how far the ranges, and how fast the walking speeds are in this game. Flicker is worth nothing more than somewhere along the lines of 1 free gcd.
I do appreciate it's other escape utilities, but I feel like this aspect of the spell is extremely lacking, because by the time i turn around they're already in my face again.
Yes I could use a stun or root, but that defeats the purpose, because I could just as easily stun or root them and take one step backwards if that's all I was trying to accomplish
Which brings me to my next point
-- Pyro is squishy as ****
They have a lot of nice utility, but they're still unbelievably squishy in pvp without a healer
All of their utilities are only useful at keeping you alive in a 1v1 environment, and even then you can sometimes die when using them perfectly due to healing and damage imbalances (Between rangers and clerics and saboteurs..etc...)
Their only damage mitigation/health restoring move is a 30 second proc that's fixed at 15% of your max health.
as a pyromancer no matter who you try to attack, if they go head up with you, your lack of health and general squishiness is usually demolished before your big damage can kill the enemy
In other words.
I do a lot of damage, but I take so much more damage than they do, that I still die first.
Healers heal for entirely too much.
As a level 29 pyromancer and I can sit there and do nothing but nuke and stun a level 21 cleric, but he'll easily keep up with my damage while dishing a decent amount back at me at the same time.
In my experience, this isn't purely a pyromancer issue.
It takes about 3-5 players to take out one decent healer
Healers completely decide the outcome of warfronts, and just about all other pvp right now
This is due to a large imbalance between damage to healing ratio in the game.
But you can't make dungeons competitive and tanks useful without making big damage a factor, which requires big healing.
I understand how much work it would be to try to balance this game around pvp, and reducing healing across the board
So I suggest that you add a mortal strike effect to all pvp.
Any time you're attacked by another player, you get a debuff that reduces healing by ??%
Numbers are up to you, but the change NEEDS to be made
But I digress..
I don't entirely disagree with pyromancers being complete glass cannons, and victim to any and every joeblow that decides to kill the squishy mage
But, if you're going to make us this squishy we need an increase in damage, it's as simple as that
Considering pyromancers are completely focused on damage and nothing else, I don't see why this is a hard task to accomplish
You made it so everyone kills us fast, which is okay.
But we should be able to kill them faster
In simpler terms
QQ MOAR DMG NAO
Seriously though.
-- Withering flames sucks
It's damage is terrible.
I'd rather cast fireballs
and save my charge for revitalize
or something
That's all I have for pyro, but on a completely different note, while I have you reading this long post, are you aware how unbalaced your damage is across the boards?
Warriors and rogues are outdamaging mageslike it's nothing
And clerics are outhealing us just as easily
I'm not saying you need to run around for each soul, balancing this utility with that utility so it's not unfair and blah blah
But you could at least make it so damage is fairly distributed
Otherwise....pvp has failed...
Saboteurs stack bombs on me, and in a few gcds are prepared to one shot me with detonate
rangers or marksman or whatever hit crit from over half my health from one of their regular, on command, nukes
good (healing) clerics are impossible to take 1 on 1, and any team composed with a few good ones are completely unstoppable
I know you didn't make this game so you could balance it around pvp, but Trion you seriously need to take a step back and look at this.
PvP stops being fun when you know every time you see that saboteur, you're going to get 1-shotted.
PvP stops being fun when you know that if you don't have 3 or more people helping you kill that cleric, that he will effortlessly outheal your damage and kill you
All you have to do is run some tests
And tweak some numbers
Please do it.
tl;dr - Well **** you too