I’m not a high IO player or anything but this first week I’ve been experimenting playing SKB fire in keys. The difficulty with this leggo as fire unlike arcane harmony is maintaining the stacks and not letting them fall off progressing from pack to pack throughout the dungeon. With arcane harmony just as the pack is almost finished you would farm to 18 with those stacks ready to go for the next pack and you would never lose them unless you dump them with arcane barrage.
In contrast with SKB fire the concept is the same but there are three different timers you have to look for and micromanage which are:
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SKB stacks 1-7 duration which at most you have 30 seconds to increment by spending a hot streak via pyroblast or flamestrike.
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The actual SKB buff when you get to 8 that unlike stacks 1-7 above lasts only 15 seconds.
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The hot streak timer which also is 15 seconds.
To help remedy the issues described there are ways to prolong the SKB stack timer from the points highlighted. Ideally you want 7 SKB stacks and a hot streak heading to the next pack especially if combustion is on CD. So just as the pack is finished,
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farm SKB stacks to 7 or as much as you can with searing touch on last mob and try to time it so you that and have the hot streak ready to hold once the mob is killed so 30 seconds on the SKB stack timer and 15 seconds on the hot streak timer
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if you aren’t going to make it to the next mob in time, with 1 second on hot streak left empty flamestrike somewhere safe to refresh the SKB stack timer to 30 seconds if you have less than 7 stacks or convert to SKB buff if you are exactly at 7 (don’t put flamestrike on the path of a patrolling pat because I accidently pulled the gargoyle before the bridge in SD this weekend from flame patch while we were on those three mobs before the janitor lol)
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after consuming the hot streak from flamestrike hitting nothing you’ve granted yourself more time to keep your SKB stacks when moving in between packs which at most is an additional 14-15 seconds because that is how long you can hold onto hot streak without losing it
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bonus tip with the SKB buff whether you are in combat or not and you can’t get off the hard casted pyroblast in time, hard cast the flamestrike instead since it will come out faster and at least you converted the buff to mini combust
Not saying SKB fire will be the play this season but wanted to share how it is possible to manipulate and min/max SKB timers traversing through m+ by extending it’s duration. I hope it will be cause after experiencing having the SKB buff and combust both pooled together with a hard casted flamestrike for a 18 second mega combust, I never wanna go back to playing DC again in keys. 
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Great tips. I totally agree that SKB is so much more fun in keys than DC. As far as whether or not it will be the play, my hope is that it will be. Though, we will need to wait until we have 4 set bonus, but once we do, the reduced cd on Fire Blast and Phoenix Flames should hopefully be enough to push it in the right direction.
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I think a lot of people do think it will be the play after we get the tier set. Especially with urh I can’t really see disciplinary command continuing to be the go to, I already have very weird line ups with it that make it difficult to fit a second disciplinary in between combusts.
I haven’t tried any skb keys yet but I definitely will because it seems exciting.
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Yep the sheer micromanagement of the SKB stacks plays a big factor into success and keeps us on our toes always. Losing the stacks from them expiring is the worst feeling having to start building from 0 again especially when combust isn’t anywhere close to coming off CD. However on the other end being able to have some damage through manual cast RoP plus mini combust on the next pack if main combust isn’t available is rewarding and way better gameplay than hard casting flamestrike spam.
Nothing beats the 18 second soon to be 20 second mega combust from the 2 piece in terms of fun factor once we have it. Yes and the 4 piece we will able to drop so many more pyroblasts and flamestrikes in our combustion windows. Another challenge we face is not only microing SKB stacks but keeping our infernal cascade stacks up having combustions that long.
I read your thread and it got me thinking that I wish in the future they would keep this iteration of fire after the SKB buffs in 9.1 or something to keep it more involved instead of the combust and then AFK that we had in 9.0. I didn’t play from the beginning of Cata to the end of BfA so I dunno how fire now compares to the expansions in between. I’m into purely technical, high APM yet with precision timing playstyles too which SKB fire fits that profile. Give it a shot cause I know you will like it.
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I kept wasting my stacks so went with incantation for passive crit bonus damage. If raids and ST sun kings would be best, but being casual with my fire mage I just couldn’t deal with the wasted procs. I’m trying to stack crit and haste for new pieces and going venthyr. The combustion reduction conduit lines mirrors of torment and combustion to about 1 minute 30s with the crits. Outside of my burst though…I do some pretty lousy damage.
Dungeons with long travel in between such as PF or SoA it is inevitable you will lose your stacks since there is nothing to hit along the way. It takes practice constantly monitoring the stack count and judging when to convert the SKB buff on the current pack if you think you can farm it all back again from searing touch or staying at 7 or close to it while holding hot streak just as your group is about to go to the next one.
Get a weak aura to track it, but idk if it’s worth babysitting the buff too much. If/when it’s reasonable, sure, but otherwise just keep moving and you’ll get it next time.
I’m really enjoying SKB over DC, just a lot of combusts going on, esp with Urh.
You just gave me hope that I could possibly pull SKB off
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I just had a random idea based on having personal experience managing stack count for arcane harmony and SKB in keys using these same principles applied for cold front leggo and necro frost next week. Farm the stacks casting 29 frostbolts before the pack is done then opening with double orb after the 30th frostbolt maybe even triple orb with urh buff on the pack after. I don’t think there is a timer associated with the cold front stacks like SKB so it would be as easy as using the arcane harmony stacks.