Feedback from first weekend ptr dummy dome testing:
- Apex change is good but Unbound Flame needs tuning and crit support
- Why do we keep Rising Fury after Dragonrage?
- Tier set ‘fixes’ Eternity Surge weakness, but exacerbates talent cost problems
- Many oustanding issues were not addressed; some are worsened by these additions
New Apex: Unbound Flame
This is a great addition with several advantages over Risen Fury:
- Casting Unbound Flame is more fun than passive essence bursts
- Avoids proc-munching
- Reduces the drop-off from losing Tyranny
- Can be carried into the next pull
Overall, I expect to play 4/4 apex for Unbound Flame in M+ and will get more out of it; currently I am playing 1/4 Scalecommander builds in many dungeons.
It does have a few problems:
- Direct damage seems low; less than an Azure Sweep with tier
- Missing “damage increased by critical strike chance” and no haste scaling
- New bug: Rising Fury is removed at start of combat with a raid boss, which can cause you to get no buff and no Unbound Flame charges if you open with Dragonrage (avoidable by pulling with a different ability first)
- Rising Fury still persists after Dragonrage
I am not sure why we keep Rising Fury after Dragonrage ends; this encourages spending all your Unbound Flame charges immediately. Unbound Flame is satisfying and sells the “peak” after Dragonrage better than timed essence bursts, but this keeps the difficulty of timing a 55s damage window. This may force you to choose between saving Unbound Flames for an add spawn / damage amp phase and having a stronger Rising Fury window.
This doesn’t solve the problem of Rising Fury’s damage amp being too little (15% for 2 talent points) too late (24s into Dragonrage, with only 8-12s remaining); most of the value is in the extra 20s after Dragonrage and the free essence bursts. In raids, you will still need to time the peak for optimal damage; in dungeons where fights don’t last long enough, you are spending 3 talent points to have Unbound Flame on the next pull.
This is a big improvement, but I would like to see Rising Fury’s value moved entirely inside Dragonrage, with a shorter ramp and larger bonus, or a different mechanic for the middle ranks. Outside Dragonrage, instead of splitting value between Unbound Flame and a limited damage window, more value should be attached to Unbound Flame itself or grant a buff when you cast it.
I would like to see the apex evolve more to focus on Unbound Flame, and more support for it across the spec:
- Mastery needs a buff; Unbound Flame would benefit from high Mastery builds but our Mastery is too weak to prioritize
- Flameshaper benefits from Scorching Embers and Iridescence but has no special interaction with Unbound Flame
- Scalecommander could have it consume Charged Blast
- Iridescence is difficult to optimize because of Essence Well; casting 2x Unbound Flame after Fire Breath might munch an essence burst, forcing you to cast Pyre instead
New Tier Set: Shattering Star / Causality
Gave some thoughts on the set bonuses in the main thread.
Please remove Shattering Star procs from Scintillation; they are excessive and harmful to Flameshaper’s ability to compete at low target counts with Pyre-focused builds.
Azure Sweep also needs a buff to replace the old tier set; it should still be a good pick for dungeons. This can be paired with a tier set nerf at launch to ease the transition to the new tier.
The remaining issues are all down to talent costing and our resource economy being tuned around Power Swell. I have written extensively about Devastation’s talent issues before:
- Scalecommander has zero capstone flexibility and is over-taxed by Onyx Legacy
- Too many Eternity Surge talents all amplifying each other
- Living Flame talents are non-competitive; pathing to Feed the Flames too costly
Something really needs to change, because if Scalecommander has to pick between Star Salvo (most of the tier value in aoe) and Power Swell, the hero spec dies. It’s not fun to cast 4x Azure Strikes between spenders. Flameshaper plays well with all the Blue talents plus Power Swell, but while I personally love Bue Flameshaper builds, many players don’t. I see no way to afford Feed the Flames in M+ without losing critical talents (Catalyze, Eternity’s Span, Scintillation, and Star Salvo all mandatory).
I second Gilg’s request to baseline Causality and would add Power Swell. You could plausibly delete Power Swell and buff base essence regen enough to compensate; but it works better as a core effect tied to Causality. Both these effects should be baseline, or at least much higher on the tree where they never get skipped and don’t compete with capstones.
Besides tuning essence economy, it would be good to add some separate value to filler casts; Gilg makes a good point about Azure Sweep giving cooldown reduction. We used to get more value from Charged Blast stacks on Azure Strike, Snapfire procs on Living Flame, even meaningful single-target damage from Burnouts. It should feel like you gained something from each filler cast, even if you didn’t gain an essence burst.
Some suggestions expanding on my previous posts:
- Baseline Causality and Power Swell
- Baseline Onyx Legacy or path directly to Imminent Destruction without Burnout for Scalecommander
- Combine Star Salvo and Shattering Star, or remove a talent from the Blue side to reduce the cost of Star
- Baseline Eternity’s Span; Eternity Surge (and Star Salvo) are worthless without it
- Add more connections to the talent tree, such as Volatility to Engulfing Blaze and Arcane Intensity to Eye of Infinity (Essence Attunement should be baselined since Dev has 3 essence burst nodes)
- Reduce two-point nodes; this can pay for more one-point nodes higher on the tree
- Add a damage bonus to Burnout
- Grant stacks of Feed the Flames from Living Flame casts
- Reworked Azure Sweep: casting Azure Strike makes your next Azure Strike deal more damage and hit more targets; stacks and resets after reaching maximum or when you cast a different spell; casting Eternity Surge grants max stacks