The damage definitely is there, most people are just overthinking it.
Like, the Preheat guide of using Tip the Scales for Fire Breath? That is only really good on Dragonrage (and made better with our next tier set, not our current) but casting it at level 2 instead tends to be enough outside of Dragonrage so you can get shattering star up for it, because the only downside of using a level 4 Fire Breath means you can only cast two Engulfs immediately before the DoT is used up, anything else and you miss it and outside of dragonrage bursting with double-engulfs, most of the setup for the in-between CD engulfs should be prepared passively by your normal rotation.