Is Searing Heat Legendary Node useful for Firewall?

Sorcerer
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So my overarching question is whether Searing Heat Legendary node is useful for the Firewall Skill. I have it on my build, but the node description clearly says it is direct damage only. Obviously Firewall has indirect damage via burning DOT, but is the initial damage of the firewall direct damage? The description of the skill only includes the verbiage ‘BURN damage over X seconds’ as opposed to what fireball and hydra say, ‘…dealing X# damage’ where the words ‘burn’ and ‘over time’ are noticeably absent.

I have done my testing against the test dummy and the data points are all over the map as usual (test results below). Also, as a note, removing this legendary node has no impact to the tool tip #s on the firewall (if you trust the tool tip).

Another slightly related observation: there are ‘fire damage’ and ‘fire damage over time’ nodes. I hypothesized that the former was direct damage only and would therefore not impact firewall skill tool tip numbers (bc I speculate firewall is indirect damage only). Turns out fire damage nodes do increase the firewall tool tip damage numbers. So could we infer from that firewall is both indirect and direct damage? Or do we just ignore tool tip numbers bc they are a joke anyway?

Test Hypothesis: Searing Heat will make initial firewall tick damage increase by bonus (which for me is 30%)

  • Testing Results of first tick with Searing Heat Node (scenario 1): results on initial damage tick ranged from 389 to 1k damage to 4k damage to 10k damage to 20K damage. This is with a lot of gear off. Initial damage tick leaned more towards lower end of scale of between 1k and 4k damage. Burn damage after initial ticket was between 15k and 20K
  • Testing Results of first tick w/o Searing Heat Node (scenario 2): Actual slight improvement oddly, but this speaks more to RNG damage. Burn damage results didn't change from scenario 1.
My personal conclusion: Searing Heat does nothing for Firewall. I also continue to speculate we cannot trust tool tip numbers on skills. I would also like to think that 'fire damage' nodes do not impact firewall skill damage, and we can ignore the incremental damage reflected in the tool tip. Would like to hear what everyone else finds.

3/24 update: did some PVP against top tier barbs w/o this legendary node and couldnt tell a difference. Was able to take them out just as easily as before.

2 Likes
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I may be able to try a test on this later this afternoon. Give me a reason to log in lol.

At a glace, i wouldn’t expect firewall to benefit but we both know this game is interesting like that.

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Maxroll’s FW build doesn’t have this node taken, but I’m not sure how up-to-date maxroll builds are nowadays…

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  1. Maxroll is the best source of information there is.
  2. Searing Heat doesn’t work unless wearing Soul Brand.
  3. All information on internet including tool tips from live service games this post should be questioned!
  4. Fire damage does in fact boost fire damage and fire damage over time. This is why fire damage on ring is very, very good.
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Another interesting thing that someone pointed out was that DoT scales with vulnerable for some reason

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Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…real secrets are not permitted here Robot!

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Who knew? I think we can assume that the uber called SoulBrand pairs well with every build. And lastly, is robotninja one of your sub accounts? I read through the history and im assuming not but wanted to check.

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You would think it’s an obvious statement but then you toy around with some things on other boards and the stated affects clearly are unrelated/bugged to what they are supposed to buff.

Tactician anyone? Rogue board has lots of problems like this.

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Is Tactician still bugged?

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Unless Blizz intends 10% here to work the same way Andy’s % works, then yes it’s still bugged.

If there’s hidden caps and addition fuzzy math that is intended behind the 10% tool tip, then no it’s not bugged.

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I just asked them for an update on this bug…

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EDIT: Damage over time is the same as burning damge, to my knowlege (it also affects shadow dmg over time and maybe poison :man_shrugging:) but ive never tested into that area so im sure its weird in some way

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Ooo. This is interesting. Like how does it scale?

Darth, are you using burning instinct? Id expext that would have better results than searing, but its probably too cumbersome to path too for what it offers, lol.

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Yah, i have about 81 BI bonus damage with Occulus.

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Another unknown for me: whats the difference in ‘burning damage’, ‘fire damage over time’, and ‘damage over time’, or is there one? If no, it begs so very many questions of this dev team lol

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They are all dot but if there are different dot damage buckets with caps, it would make sense to diversify to maximize damage. This is all written in the user manual that hasnt come out yet

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Lol does the multiplier from burning instinct not take anything but strictly ‘burning damage’ into account

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Lots of great questions here but sadly I have no idea how to answer any of them because no one really understands how this game works under the hood, not even the devs. I am just glad my build works but hell if I know why or how it works, lol!

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Burning damage determines how big the bar is that drains health, damage over time determines how fast that bar drains

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Can you elaborate on your question? I do not understand. I just think of BI as some kind of multiplicative burning damage. In the absence of any guides explaining damage buckets and what DOT is vs burning vs fire DOT, i try to bump the damage bonus for this node as high as i can.

I believe in S6 they are working on standardizing naming conventions and converging on singular names (ie: instead of having both fire and pyromancy damage names, they stick with the cooler sounding name.