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.
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.
EDIT: Damage over time is the same as burning damge, to my knowlege (it also affects shadow dmg over time and maybe poison ) but ive never tested into that area so im sure its weird in some way
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.
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
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
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!
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.
Me = 260% baseline
3.60 x 1.5 - 1 = 440% conjuration
This checks whith the stat sheet. The same math applies to:
Vulne with frozen fate board, stormswell, iceblade aspect, 1.2 modifier
Crit with devouring blaze, 1.5 modifier
Other examples but i making coffee first
I was (kinda joking but now curious) asking if burning instinct didnt account for damage over time in with the burning damage/fire dmg over time.
If it did play out like that, it could be that you want only to focus on the ones that burning instinct multiplies to, if my understanding of burning mechs are in right direction. Robot ninja gave example restated below.
Edit: if you notice deviations from above, plz say because fix stuff gud👍
Edit2:
I didnt consider if those stats could affect tic rate/duration, did i understand that correctly? That would be really cool.
I can try testing this more after work today if I have the right gear; going to take a bit of consideration to set it up properly I think, will edit in test details here.
This is a cool topic as i havent dealt with burning dmg since s1 era and i dont think i did it correctly either.
I did test my build in PVP (w/o searing heat) against what i consider the most difficult / tanky of barbs the other day, and i was able to beat them handily. Some of this was due to some due to minor optimization tweaks but i would suspect that if Searing Heat was meaningful damage for a FW sorc, i would have noticed it. Prior to my optimization tweaks, the PVP runs against these specific thorn barbs always ended in a stalemate (ie: no winner after 5 minutes).
) but ive never tested into that area so im sure its weird in some way