Midnight: Devastation's Darkest Hour?

[Sei-2192735 (Sei)]

@Dydymus-malganis

Again, Pyre was never equal-or-better than Disintegrate in pure single-target, for any build, ever. If you want to continue arguing that it was, you’ll need to provide some real data to prove it.

But I won’t argue it anymore; whether you’re right or wrong about the history, you’re entitled to want a Pyre-only build in the future; I don’t think it’s a great goal or likely to happen, but we both need Pyre to not suck at 2 or 3 targets first anyways.

Again only 2 builds were ever viable in ST. Neither existed during season 2 WW, so season 2 isn’t relevant.

The reason season 3 WW was viable for pyre was because the twin flame damage (double buffed) from the set was so OP (approx 3.8 disintegrate dmg) that proc’ing essence bursts and spending them with pyre was dealing as much dmg in Single Target as your standard disintegrate rotation. The cast time difference between pyre and disintegrate was the key to making work. You could generate and expend your Essence Bursts sooo much faster with pyre as a main spender which it made it worth it.

It was a niche build, only a few people ran it and it was only possible because of the ludicrous season 3 set bonus which relied on essence burst to deal UNGODLY damage. It unbalanced the class entirely and we saw an opportunity to use it for a new build. Kinda looked like the lazy man’s Snapfire (withouth the Snapfire), it was still heavily proc realiant (so hit or miss) but less so in regards to positioning with the occasional Firestorm peppered in.

It’s not the end of the world that you didn’t know about it and not something that I want to fight about either, but the build existed and worked.

The first ever pyre build was old Snapfire, which allowed an instant cast of Firestorm at double damage which at the time was equivalent 3.4 disintegrates. But you needed to cast living flame or pyre to proc it. Meaning you had to spam pyre and living flame to make it work. You also were to reliant on procs and positioning because all your dmg was in Firestorm. As long as your target stayed put, you were fine, otherwise you would lose out on so much dmg, so it was hard to play. Over time, they substantially nerfed Firestorm dmg and they eventualy removed Snapfire entirely so the build doesn’t exist anymore.

No need to get upset about it though. It is what it is. I do miss playing them alot though, they were fun.

[FyreFiend-2970965 (FyreFiend)]

@Ysondrius-durotan

Again only 2 builds were ever viable in ST. Neither existed during season 2 WW, so season 2 isn’t relevant.

I brought up Season 2 because it’s when Flameshaper first became viable for Devastation (after Engulf buffs), and when players first started piloting Flameshaper builds that dropped some Disintegrate talents that were usually seen as critical. There was actually more build variety for Flameshaper in Season 2 than Season 3, because the Jackpot tier set made good use of talents like Eternity’s Span.

@Ysondrius-durotan

The reasons season 3 WW was viable for pyre was because twin flame bonus (double buffed) from the set was so OP (approx 3.8 disintegrate dmg)

You’re talking about Essence Bomb from the Season 3 tier set. It was a good set, and fun! It was not “OP” (Dev was comfortably middle-of-the-pack for raid damage) and “3.8 disintegrate dmg” is a totally made-up number; a quick glance at any combat log or even the tooltip on wowhead is enough to prove each Essence Bomb did much less than one Disintegrate in single-target.

@Ysondrius-durotan

that proc’ing essence bursts and spending them with pyre was dealing as much dmg in ST.

This is completely wrong for a simple reason: You don’t have to fully channel Disintegrate; you can stop the cast as soon the first GCD ends. It was a well-known optimization to clip Disintegrate during Inner Flame (the 12-second buff you got after casting Engulf, which ALSO increased the damage of your dots, including Disintegrate). This also didn’t add much and was only really worth doing during Dragonrage with two overlapping stacks of Inner Flame. Casting Pyre instead of a clipped Disintegrate to spend Essence Burst in single target would do less damage to the target, and lose all the secondary effects of Disintegrate (Catalyze, Scintillation, and especially Causality), for the same number of Essence Bombs.

@Ysondrius-durotan

The cast time differential between pyre and disintegrate was the key to making work. You could generate and expend your Essence Bursts sooo much faster with pyre as a main spender that it made it worth it.

Again, simply false. There is no “cast-time differential”; you can only cast one spell per gcd, but you can stop Disintegrate after one gcd and cast your next generator instead. Casting Pyre is worse in every way than casting ‘half’ a Disintegrate in single-target.

@Ysondrius-durotan

It was a niche build, only a few people ran it and it was only possible because of the ludicrous season 3 set bonus which relied on essence burst to deal damage ungodly damage. It unbalanced the class entirely and we saw an opportunity to use it for a new build.

Sounds like you didn’t read the tier set. As a reminder, Essence Bomb ONLY triggered during Inner Flame, and ONLY from spending Essence Burst. Why exactly were you pressing Pyre while Inner Flame was not active? And why would you spend regular essence on Pyre instead of Disintegrate? You were already losing damage by spending Essence Burst with Pyre during Inner Flame instead of a short-casted Disintegrate!

@Ysondrius-durotan

Kinda looked like the lazy man’s Snapfire, it was still heavily proc realiant (so hit or miss) but less so in regards to positioning with the occasional Firestorm.

It’s good you mentioned Snapfire, because it’s the ONLY benefit you got from casting Pyre that you didn’t get from a clipped Disintegrate. The argument you should be making is that spamming Pyre, even though it did less damage, made up the difference with Snapfire procs.

Against two targets this is actually true, at least if you talented all the way to Feed the Flames; it’s what made the Feed-the-Flames Flameshaper build competitive with Disintegrate-based Scintillation builds on 2-target boss fights, starting in Season 2.

@Ysondrius-durotan

The first ever pyre build was old Snapfire, which allowed an instant cast of Firestorm at double damage which at the time was equivalent 3.4 disintegrates. But you needed to cast living flame or pyre to proc it. Meaning you had to spam pyre and living flame to make it work.

You’re making up numbers again; one Firestorm was nowhere near “3.4 disintegrates” even with the +100% Snapfire bonus AND the bonus from Scorching Embers. According to Wowhead changelogs the base spell power coefficient of Firestorm was 198.72% in War Within, the coefficient for Disintegrate was 475.53%; even if those tooltip numbers don’t reflect aura buffs it was never 3.4 Disintegrates.

Against only one target there was no comparison between Pyre - even with Snapfire - and Disintegrate. The 15% proc chance of Snapfire gave you about 1 Firestorm every 6 Pyres; for the same 12 Essence you could cast 4 Disintegrates, which would do way more damage and reduce your empower cooldowns a lot more.

There was a build that played Snapfire in single-target. The two best Flameshaper builds for raid differed entirely on that point! You could either play Iridescence (boosting Engulf damage) or spend that point on Snapfire. But that wasn’t enough to justify pressing Pyre instead of Disintegrate; you were already casting Living Flame as your generator, and got some free Snapfires out of it, in between spending with Disintegrate.

@Ysondrius-durotan

It’s not the end of the world that you didn’t know about it and not something that I want to fight about either, but the build existed and worked.

Please don’t patronize me if you’re going to be this wrong. We didn’t all miss the secretly-competitive-Pyre-only-build-that-nobody-knew-about because we’re sheeple who follow guides. This was tested and proven wrong.

Once again: If you pressed Pyre in single-target, no matter what build you ran, you only managed to do less damage than you would have by pressing Disintegrate with the same build. If you managed to achieve your goal (killing the boss, timing the key, etc) anyways, and you had more fun this way, then I am honestly happy for you.

But it was never “competitive” or “comparable to Disintegrate” in single-target. That’s not coming back, because it never existed. And removing another button (Disintegrate) from Flameshaper so you can press Pyre in single-target instead would NOT make this class better for me.

[Sei-2192735 (Sei)]

@Dydymus-malganis

You’re making up numbers again; one Firestorm was nowhere near “3.4 disintegrates” even with the +100% Snapfire bonus AND the bonus from Scorching Embers. According to Wowhead changelogs the base spell power coefficient of Firestorm was 198.72% in War Within, the coefficient for Disintegrate was 475.53%; even if those tooltip numbers don’t reflect aura buffs it was never 3.4 Disintegrates.

Again, had you tested Firestorm at the time you would have noticed that base dmg of Firestorm did exactly twice as much as it indicated on our spell tool tip. Also it scaled (over 3 times the rate) with haste, at the time, which was kind of a big deal.

Add that to the Snapfire proc that again doubled the dmg Firestorm and it scales ALOT. With just a low 20 haste ( approx a +60% Firestorm dmg) you woul deal 198.72 x 2 x 2 x 1.60 = 1271.808% spell dmg,that’s 6.4 times the indicated spell damage of your tool tip. That’s 2.677 Disintegrates at 20% haste. Now imagine 34% haste that’s 1605.65% Spell Damage (sorry that’s more like 3.38 Disintegrates, which was the damage i was doing with my haste as it was).

Had you tested in game you would have known the functional in game dmg of Firestorm. You also would have known that it used to scale exponentially with haste. So I AM NOT making up the numbers, because as we’ve both established in writing, I have tested and played the build in game. By your own admission, you have not. You’re checking Wowhead retroactively, which isn’t a bad source either, it’s the main go to, but it’s no substitute for practical testing.

Again making you aware of a build that you weren’t aware of doesn’t make me a liar. The world is a big place friend, you can’t know everything.

[Sei-2192735 (Sei)]

@Dydymus-malganis

And removing another button (Disintegrate) from Flameshaper so you can press Pyre in single-target instead would NOT make this class better for me.

Nobody said to get rid of Disintegrate. I don’t know where you got that from. I think your projecting more than I am saying. I’m opting for more options, not less.

[Sei-2192735 (Sei)]

@Dydymus-malganis

You’re talking about Essence Bomb from the Season 3 tier set. It was a good set, and fun! It was not “OP” (Dev was comfortably middle-of-the-pack for raid damage) and “3.8 disintegrate dmg” is a totally made-up number; a quick glance at any combat log or even the tooltip on wowhead is enough to prove each Essence Bomb did much less than one Disintegrate in single-target.

You had to cast two engulfs in a row (double buff), which would double the damage of Essence Bomb and also double Essence Bombs themselves, totaling to approx 3.8 disintegrate. Engulf’s cooldown also got radicaly reduced by haste (i got mine down to 14 seconds) meaning i had the buff on at least 12 out of 14 seconds. Basically it was ALWAYS on.

As we established earlier, Firestorm scaled at 3 times the normal rate with haste. The “Feed The Flame” talent allowed you to get a free Firestorm every 8 pyres (since the FINAL pyre in the count of 9 also counts as the 1th in a new count to build up for the next Firestorm)

So let’s see at 34% haste (+102% Firestorm dmg) that’s 198.72% x 2 x 2.02 = 802.82% Spell Damage for 8 pyres + you can add the Scorching Embers buff to all your red spells aswell while your at it. Consinder all those details and it was more than a match for clipping Disintegrate and you had more talent points to spend to boot! Oh and what about unfair ridiculous AoE, that’s what I ment when I said it UNBALANCED everything. You had a FREAK AoE build that was flush with any Disintegrate one in Single target.

It’s almost as if I played the build. Like I said it was fun, so was Snapfire. In both cases haste was king. All about the haste…

On a side note, before you call someone a fraud for bringing something new to your eyes, maybe consider that they might know something you don’t. My point was to share and discuss builds, in this case pyre viable builds. That’s all.

You can easily be forgiven for not knowing the only 2 short lived pyre builds in the classe’s whole existence. However, claming that I’m patronizing you while simultaneously mocking my honesty and credibility for trying to explain something you clearly did not understand, at the time, leaves much to be desired…

I wasn’t patronizing you. Can you say the same.

Anyhooooo, I hope this clarifies everything.

[FyreFiend-2970965 (FyreFiend)]

@Ysondrius-durotan

base dmg of Firestorm did exactly twice as much as it indicated on our spell tool tip

I quoted the tooltip numbers from Wohead simply as a baseline for extrapolation, because they exist for anyone to see; as I mentioned, they might not include aura buffs (the tuning changes seen in hotfix patch notes that were applied through the hidden buff on each character for your spec). Also, every spell does “more damage than the tooltip says” - that’s how secondary stats work.

@Ysondrius-durotan

it scaled (over 3 times the rate) with haste

This is just false. Haste increases the tick rate of Firestorm, just like a dot - that was actually added in War Within - but there was no magical 3x multiplier. Firestorm only “double dipped” haste in the sense that casting more spells in the same amount of time generated more Snapfire procs, while also increasing their damage by the normal amount.

@Ysondrius-durotan

That’s 2.677 Disintegrates at 20% haste. Now imagine 34% haste that’s 1605.65% Spell Damage (sorry that’s more like 3.38 Disintegrates, which was the damage i was doing with my haste as it was).

More imaginary numbers. We have combat logs - actual, recorded data - that show exactly how much damage these abilities dealt, and they don’t match the numbers you’re presenting. The cost (what you lost by casting enough Pyres instead of Disintegrates to trigger a Snapfire and/or Feed the Flames) was much more than what you gained.

@Ysondrius-durotan

You had to cast two engulfs in a row (double buff), which would double the damage of Essence Bomb and also double Essence Bombs themselves

Essence bomb damage was not “doubled” you just got two bombs per essence burst spent. And high uptime of Inner Flame was a buff to your Disintegrate (which counts as a damage-over-time effect). Nothing you have said here changes the fact that it was more effective to trigger Essence Bomb with Disintegrate than Pyre in single-target, and there was no benefit to spending regular essence with Pyre. Your only argument is Firestorm, and you keep saying it did far more damage than it actually did.

@Ysondrius-durotan

Oh and what about unfair ridiculous AoE, that’s what I ment when I said it UNBALANCED everything.

Flameshaper Devastation was among the top specs for AoE damage in dungeons, but there were many competitive specs and a few that could beat it, while also having better boss damage. We were strong, maybe top 5, but not uniquely overpowered.

Again, many of us played the build you’re talking about; it was not necessary to deliberately press the wrong button in single-target to play this build, and playing it the way you did would do less damage.

@Ysondrius-durotan

I have tested and played the build in game. By your own admission, you have not.

@Ysondrius-durotan

making you aware of a build that you weren’t aware

@Ysondrius-durotan

You can easily be forgiven for not knowing the only 2 short lived pyre builds in the classe’s whole existence.

You keep saying this like I didn’t play hundreds of hours of M+ across both seasons with exactly the builds you’re describing, along with every other possible Flameshaper build. I automatically log all of my keys, and although I don’t upload most of them, there are many more public logs available from other players.

The Snapfire / Feed the Flames build was viable for keys, with somewhat lower single-target damage in exchange for more aoe; but it was still better to Disintegrate in single-target with that build. I even said clearly that I did test the Pyre-on-single-target strategy - mostly to confirm how bad it was.

I don’t doubt that Firestorm-based, heavy-aoe-focused Flameshaper builds existed and were viable and fun. I played them. A LOT. But it was not true that playing this build made pressing Pyre more effective than Disintegrate in single target; the strategy of casting Pyre in single-target was always incorrect, even for those builds. If you chose to do this, you chose to do less damage. That might still be “viable” if the dps check you needed to clear was low enough. But it was not “competitive” with casting Disintegrate.

@Ysondrius-durotan

My point was to share and discuss builds, in this case pyre viable builds. That’s all.

The only thing I dispute is that the way you played those builds did as much damage in single-target as you claim it did. Unless you can prove your claim with actual logs showing “competitive” damage, I won’t engage with it anymore. (And I didn’t want to argue about this, we are way off-topic, but I take offense to being called ignorant.)

I started this thread to give evidence-based feedback, gathered from many hours of M+ and raid prog. One of my observations is that Pyre feels too weak at lower target counts, and Flameshaper no longer gains enough from either red or blue talents to make up for it. Retuning Pyre for lower target counts would help a lot, but I wouldn’t extend that to single-target; it is not necessary for Pyre to be useable in single-target just for Pyre-focused builds to be viable, and a build that only uses Pyre at all target counts would be less interesting.

You want the option to disinvest entirely in Disintegrate, while I want both red and blue talents to contribute to Flameshaper’s damage in meaningful ways.

[Sei-2192735 (Sei)]

“I quoted the tooltip numbers from Wohead simply as a baseline for extrapolation, because they exist for anyone to see; as I mentioned, they might not include aura buffs (the tuning changes seen in hotfix patch notes that were applied through the hidden buff on each character for your spec). Also, every spell does “more damage than the tooltip says” - that’s how secondary stats work.

-Dydymus-

I played Snapfire Late Dragonflight and season 1 WW. You didn’t test it. You’re introducing me to the “concept of secondary stats”? Lol! Gosh I never knew such a thing existed! Your trying to justify that you didn’t know the base dmg of Firestorm was actually twice as high and your scrabbling for a fake answer. Who’s patronizing who? Who lying to who?

No, that’s not how ALL spells work Firestorm was an exception and exception you didn’t know about. Your pretending…

You’re looking on wowhead again cause your ego can’t handle that you missed something. And you call me a liar while you’re revealing quite alot about yourself.

I mean dude you asked me mockingly and rhetoricaly: “Why exactly were you pressing Pyre while Inner Flame was not active?” I wasn’t… You didn’t expect an actual answer to your mockery, you didn’t even know there was one. You were openly making fun of me. Then when I provide you with an answer you didn’t expect me to give and you can’t handle it and call me a liar.

You didn’t even know you could have the buff active ALL TIME, on account of reducing engluf with haste. I must be making that up too. What does chat GTP have to say about it? Where was that in your combat logs? Tell me you’ve tested EVERYTHING lol. Sounds to me, like saying I know everything without saying I know everything.

You also didn’t even know about the functional effect of double buffing Essence Bomb and now your digging your heels.

I’m sure if you had asked alot of other actual human beings, a few of them might have told you it was possible. Again, you didn’t know, it wasn’t in your bubble. Don’t want to expand it fine…

You have the data, just accept it, or not. Live in whatever size box you want. I’m washing my hands of your denial.

At first I though your just being closed minded and a little rude, but it’s clear to me that your lying at this point just to salvage you extremely fragile ego. That I just don’t accept…

sigh

[Sei-2192735 (Sei)]

On a side note, your writing your responses with AI aren’t you? Cause you sound exactly like chat gtp, and you’re about as accurate.

[Sei-2192735 (Sei)]

@Dydymus-malganis

And I didn’t want to argue about this, we are way off-topic, but I take offense to being called ignorant.)

I know you do that was obvious by your temper tandrum. That’s on you and what is obviously an inferiority complex. There’s nothing wrong with me saying “IT’S OK THAT YOU DIND’T KNOW”, especially after you mocked my intelligence and questioned my moral integrity. It was a far more dignified response than you would have given in my stead, that’s for sure! But you couldn’t even handle that cause YOU KNOW EVERYTHING. Tssk tskk…

It’s funnny that you had already accused me stupidity and dishonesty and then you turn around and have the child like gall of crying foul. Claiming that I was insulting your for actually FORGIVING that you didn’t know (or calling you ignorant, as you put it), which is what you’re supposed to do btw, if you have morals, empathy or any ounce of decency. You forgive ignorance (including ignorant behavior) because that’s the human condition…

Again your projecting your OWN insults towards me and playing victim when I turn the other cheek. That’s an inferiority complexe bud…Ask chat gdp to bring up inferiority complexe, since it also does your thinking for you. I’m sure it’ll get at least half of the information right Well I’ve got about 4 cheeks and none left to offer you.

So good luck in your future endeavors chat gtp boy, cause your gonna need it with that charming attitude of yours, coupled with such a brilliant and open mind. The world is truly your oyster!

[Infernoxas-1026188 (Infernoxas)]

You guys really need to stop argueing. The post is getting way too derailed and its hard to provide any constructive feedback. Especially if blizzard reads this…

[FyreFiend-2970965 (FyreFiend)]

I don’t usually post on these forums because Evoker is such a polarizing class (see: hundreds of threads about range limits, transmog, etc). I didn’t expect my initial response would trigger such a firestorm and should not have fed the flames that followed. I’ll take the heat for it so we can move on (and I will happily eat crow if anyone shows me a good log of killing a boss with only Pyre).

What I hope is useful from all this is the recognition that Flameshaper lacks identity without a strong Red spell especially in single-target. Channeling Disintegrate to consume Fire Breath clearly doesn’t resonate with players and doesn’t provide talent choices that distinguish it from Scalecommander. Firestorm no longer being useful in single-target is a notable loss for the spec’s identity and choice options.

I too wish Flameshaper actually pressed something Red and exciting in single-target; I would settle for simply max-ranking Fire Breath, but that gameplay could also be frustrating. I also struggle with Flameshaper’s lack of prio damage in dungeons; the whole spec seems tuned for mass aoe, or focused single target, with no in-between. Consume Flame buffs what we were already doing without adding anything new to our damage distribution the way that other hero effects do.

I think they made a mistake removing Engulf. They should have let Flameshaper keep its big red button for single-target and prio damage - the space not covered by other Red spells and mostly occupied by Disintegrate - but toned down the complexity and explosive power. Engulf’s problems were the scaling with number of active dots, excessive aoe burst from Consume Flame, and massive crit variance; so, remove the dot scaling and Consume Flame, and make it a guaranteed crit with a lower base damage. They could have simply made Inner Flame the new capstone, giving it less bursty aoe scaling through more dot damage and Twin Flames after each cast.

I’m still not expecting a major rework, so I just want fixes to the weakest parts: low-target -count damage, managing Consume on bosses with add spawns, and damage falloff after Dragonrage with Conduit of Flame.

[Infernoxas-1026188 (Infernoxas)]

Yup, pretty much right there with you. I also wanted to add with your post that Tip the Scales feels pretty useless for both Scalecommander and Flameshaper. From what I gather, using that with upranked firebreath is actually a dps loss because once the short DoT falls off you’re no longer making use of Catalyze and other flameshaper related talents.

I think Tip the Scales needs a complete rework. Staying with the bronze theme that manipulates time, a simple haste buff would be much better than what we have now. Or we can be more creative by having something like by predicting the future then having some kind of status effect be put on enemies.

[Torque-2369948 (Torque)]

@Dracnoxas-stormrage

Tip the Scales feels pretty useless for both Scalecommander and Flameshaper. From what I gather, using that with upranked firebreath is actually a dps loss because once the short DoT falls off you’re no longer making use of Catalyze and other flameshaper related talents.

yea, tip the scales has always been a bit suspect to me. for fire breath I think it should make the initial damage of a rank 5/6 with the dot longevity of a rank 1 and for es it should scale the damage higher for fewer targets. should always be a value add rather than a mediocre convenience button.

or idk, something to that effect

[Sei-2192735 (Sei)]

@Dydymus-malganis

They could have simply made Inner Flame the new capstone, giving it less bursty aoe scaling through more dot damage and Twin Flames after each cast.

They did incorporate it, at least partially so, that’s what the twin flame effect is… It’s a highly nerfed version of the Essence Bomb it fired out, without a double buff effect or increasing your essence burst generation by 100% at the same time.

Since they decided to remove engulf entirely, they couldn’t tie the buff to it’s cooldown, so instead they made it baseline and much much much weaker.

Then again, apparently Inner Flame wasn’t even OP and actually quite balanced according to those of “superior” intelligence and their chat bot buddies.

So “balanced” that people were wasting their disintegrates because it was unbalanced in the first place Einstein… It’s ok it’s not your fault, we both know that one was chat GTP.

All just so they could generate and expend Essence Bursts because Essence Bomb was our bread and butter. Which is why some of us realized that it opened up another opportunity for a 2nd pyre build and guess what? Guess what Dydymus…

But you have at least one good point, they should have never removed engulf in the first place.

Even a broken clock eh?

[Jackie-2212213 (Jackie)]

I’m not good at deciphering what class notes actually mean in regards to whether a it’s an improvement or a nerf, but I feel like these class changes posted for devastation are completely off the mark from what people, myself included, are asking for.

Talent tweaks are not likely to see me rushing back to evoker. I’m frustrated with the class/spec this expansion so far and a modification to how a few talents work (modifications apparently disguised as reworks and replacements) seem unlikely to change my feelings of inadequacy and unenthusiasm towards what before was my favorite class and spec.

Will this even change the rotation?

Like I said, I’m not very good at fully comprehending the overall effect of changes, but am I wrong in my impression?

[Infernoxas-1026188 (Infernoxas)]

We basically got engulf back. Guess thats… something? The rotation will change slightly because this new ability now gives you essence burst. You no longer passively generate it at the end of rage. I tested the ability and its doing quite a lot of damage. Kind of feels like a tactical nuke moment.

My consensus on these changes are its great for raid but doesn’t do jack for M+. It’ll be another aug season if they stay at their current state.

[FyreFiend-2970965 (FyreFiend)]

I’ll write more about it on the PTR forums once I have had time to test in dungeons. But basically: they fixed the apex, made a tier set to force shattering star / eternity surge viability, and have not done anything about the more general problems.

Unbound Flame actually matches a suggestion I made back in beta; it replaces timed essence bursts with a button that generates burst and lets you keep the charges until you can use them effectively. This should reduce the frustration without really changing the gameplay; in longer fights you will still spend the charges quickly while the Rising Fury buff persists.

They went a bit farther than I expected by making this a Red spell with guaranteed crit. It looks like they are reacting to Flameshaper feedback, trying to give us a better Red button; it even uses the Engulf icon.

So far though this doesn’t change much; it does decent damage but has minimal interaction beyond being a free essence burst generator. Flameshaper can benefit from Scorching Embers and Iridescence, but otherwise the button is the same for both specs, and it doesn’t change how Flameshaper plays.

It’s a great replacement for Risen Fury, but addresses none of the other problems, and the new tier set exposes talent costing issues around Star Salvo. I’m hoping for more talent changes and tuning, and perhaps they can build around Unbound Flame to expand on Flameshaper’s limited gameplay.

@Dracnoxas-stormrage

My consensus on these changes are its great for raid but doesn’t do jack for M+. It’ll be another aug season if they stay at their current state.

At least I will no longer tilt off the planet thanks to Risen Fury. Tuning can put either spec ahead but the Aug 2pc looks insane for SC in M+.

[MrCool-2785806 (MrCool)]

Unbound Flame : it is disappointing they reused the visuals from Engulf, which already was a low effort reuse of Pyre.
They could have made it a bit more “fiery”
Mechanically it does the job i guess

[FyreFiend-2970965 (FyreFiend)]

It looks like they blended the animations for Fire Breath (instant cast version from tip the scales) with a couple recolored Shattering Star projectiles triggering a Pyre explosion. Maybe a bit undercooked but it looks cooler than Engulf’s lack of animation and at least has a unique projectile. Will see if it stands out enough to satisfy in the middle of Flameshaper Pyre spam with Firestorm.

[Maudrid-3193506 (Maudrid)]

@Dydymus-malganis

have not done anything about the more general problems.

This seems to be the case for most classes, EXCEPT Devourer, which is absolutely wild.