Power Changes Discussion Thread

kaiserin · November 2017

Please discuss all power changes relating to the recent PTS update here.

Power Changes (Misc)
Energy Slide

Reduced the power cost penalty.
Now falls somewhat slower.
Corrected some animations.
New Advantage(2): Energy Rush. Increases your power recovery and equilibrium while using Energy Slide and you are out of combat.

New Power: Scorching Slide

A fiery version of Energy Slide. Available in the Blazing Lockbox.

Expulse

New Advantage(2): Creates a pyre patch around your Rune.

Moonstruck

New Advantage(2): Creates a pyre patch around your Rune.

Incendiary Grenade

The Scorched Ground advantage has been brought back. Creates a pyre patch at your target.

Incendiary Grenade (Device)

Updated FX.
Now applies a pyre patch.

Phoenix Tear (Device)

The phoenix wings now fade out instead of instantly poofing.
Adjusted activation visuals to have more color saturation.

Rocket

The Scorched Ground advantage has been brought back. Creates a pyre patch at your target.

Chill

The way Chill is applied has been changed. Instead of there being multiple different types of Chill (there were a total of 4 that various powers could apply), there is now 1 that can scale with the rank of the power. This is mostly a backend change to allow us to more easily have powers apply this effect.
Optimized Chill's snare effects as it was taking up more resources than it should have been.
Comments: We are aware Chill can only stack 3 times total. However, this is not something easily changed as it will cause other Ice powers to stop working properly. This will be addressed when we are able to address Ice as a whole.

Snare

Optimized the Snare debuff's effect as it was taking up more resources than it should have been.

Binding of Aratron

Tenable Bonds advantage: Fixed a bug where the heal and energy siphon were being affected by resistances and damage bonuses.

Power Changes (Fire)

Cleaned up a lot of tooltips.
Comments: Fire is going to stay a mid range set, and there are no plans to increase the range on any of the powers.
Values are still subject to being changed. The goal of any power pass is to ensure the set can be competitive with other sets, so if after testing you find something is overperforming or underperforming please give your opinion about it.

Firesnake

Updated visuals.
Firesnake now has somewhat random movements in combat so it doesn't look like a blob on a target.
Fixed a visual bug where the debuff appeared to stack more than 3 times.
Serpentine Fire has been renamed to Engulfing Flames. Increased duration to 12 seconds. This power no longer refreshes the duration of the debuff.
Can no longer critically hit.
New Advantage (2): Firesnake now follows you instead of going to a target.

Pyre

New Advantage (3): Fully charging this power deals additional damage for each of your Chill effects on the target. Consumes all Chill effects. Shatters any nearby Ice Structures for additional damage.

Pyre Patch

Made some visual changes to the pyre patch that many powers can create.
All Pyre patches now have a 10% chance to apply Clinging Flames.
A player can only have one Pyre Patch out at a time now.
Using any ability that creates one will remove any existing you have out.
This affects the following powers: Flashfire (values vary on this power), Strafing Run, Pyre, Conflagration (adv), Brimstone (adv), Expulse (adv), Moonstruck (adv), Incendiary Grenade (adv and device), Rocket (adv).

Burning Effects

Heat Wave and Conflagration are no longer considered to be Burning effects.
Clinging Flames, Leaping Flames, and Pyre Patches are considered to be Burning effects.

Absorb Heat

New Advantage (2): Any target you consumed Clinging Flames from are left Chilled.

Fire Breath

This power was using an incorrect formula for calculating its cost. This has been updated, and the cost has gone up slightly.
New Advantage (2): Applies Plasma Burn instead of Clinging Flames.
New Advantage: Refreshes your Engulfing Flames debuff.

Living Fire

Fixed a bug where the Mystic Transference advantage was not working.

Fire Shield

Now deals minor damage to attackers.
New Advantage (3): When releasing Block you now get a 50% resistance to knock. If you are affected by a hold effect, grants you breakout damage every 1 second for 4 seconds.

Fire Strike

The chance to apply Clinging Flames on this ability is now tied to the Fiery Escalation buff. For each stack of Fiery Escalation, you gain a 25% chance to apply Clinging Flames. This goes into effect on the first application of the power.
Kindling Advantage: The boosted Fiery Escalation buff will not expire upon using a fire ability if you are affected by the Immolation active offense.
New Advantage (2): Refreshes the duration of Engulfing Flames.

Fiery Form

This passive now grants you additional fire damage bonus for every one of your clinging flames within 50ft of you (up to 10 stacks).

Immolation

Now has a chance to apply Clinging Flames to attackers.
Blazing Body advantage now has a chance to Stun targets affected by Clinging Flames. Increased advantage cost to 2 points.

Conflagration

Reduced damage to fall in line with other area effect powers.
New Advantage: Chance to apply fear.

Rimefire Burst

Reduced range to 50' (from 60') to fall in line with other Fire powers.

Fireball

Unstable Accelerant Advantage: Now only affects your Burning effects.
New Advantage (2): Has a scaling chance based on charge time to apply Negative Ions.

Heat Wave

Engulfing Flames advantage: Now applies the Engulfing Flames debuff instead of a unnamed debuff.
New Advantage (2): Heals you a small amount when maintaining this power. Removes a small amount of energy from the target.

Flashfire

Can no longer get a critical hit.
Damage now scales off of your crit and crit severity.
New Advantage (3): Flashfire now refreshes Engulfing Flames on activation and when the Pyre Patch persists for at least half of its duration.
This advantage also causes all other Pyre Patches to refresh Engulfing Flames if they persist for their entire duration.

New Power: Flame Prison

Maintained area effect Incapacitate. 15 second cooldown.
Chance to apply Clinging Flames.
Advantage: Chance to apply Engulfing Flames to targets. This chance is increased if targets are affected by Clinging Flames.

New Power: Nova Flare

Ally Heal. 3 second cooldown.
Applies Fiery Escalation to you for a short time. Heal increases the more stacks of Fiery Escalation you have on you.
Ranking this ability lowers the base value but causes the heal to hit multiple times.

New Power: Incinerate

Single target ranged damage.
Applies a boosted version of Unstable Accelerant while being maintained.

New Power: Meteor Blaze

Ultimate. 90 second cooldown.
Available in the Blazing Lockbox
Deals damage in a area effect.
Knocks Down all targets.
Leaves behind a Pyre Patch.

New Power: Rise from the Ashes

Ally ressurrect.

New Power: Fiery Will

Ranged toggle form.
Scales off of Recovery.
Triggers off of Burning effects.

Archetypes
The Inferno has had its diminishing returns corrected.
New progression path:

Level 1: Throw Fire
Level 1: Fire Strike
Level 6: Fireball OR Fire Breath
Level 8: Fiery Form
Level 11: Heat Wave OR Flame Prison
Level 14: Fiery Will
Level 17: Incinerate
Level 21: Fire Shield
Level 25: Thermal Reverberation
Level 30: Conflagration OR Pyre
Level 35: Immolation
Level 40: Flashfire OR Firesnake

Please format any bugs you find in the following format:
Bug
Where it happens
What happens

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Please format any suggestions you have in the following format:
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aiqa · November 2017

Bug
Engulving Flames sometimes drops down to 2 stacks
Meteor blaze starts with 2/5 adv points at r1
Fiery Form lacks a status icon
Nove Flare ignores LoS
Incinerate beam VFX is 2d

Spinning Embers gives your character a headlight (see light spot on the wall)

My dps with incinerate. Firesnake only used to apply de debuff, Flashfire to refresh those.

When adding hydra (seems I got a bit lower average incinerate hits on this one)

nightr0d · November 2017

I got similar numbers to aiqa so the dmg is not bad.

Nevertheless, It feels similar to electricity now (maintain dps power + power that applies debuff + power that refreshes debuff). Not necessarily a bad thing but I feel like fire should have a bit more identity.

I'm not exactly sure what the difference between fire, electricity and wind should be (game play wise). Ice is quite distinct fundamentally with the Ice Object shatter mechanic so I guess it's fine.

Oh and Fire Form's 5% dmg buff per stack of clinging flames in 50ft radius scaling 10x times is a bit odd. I think it's meant to make fire more distinct by having higher AoE potential (applying CF on multiple mobs then using conflag to max dmg). But it's quite situational I find.

Overall conclusion: Damage is good but the set does not feel different enough from electricity.

ph0toncann0n · November 2017

Bug
Fire Snake under power selection claims to provide Engulfing Flames as a 6% debuff, but upon selecting the power and attempting to apply ranks, it claims to apply a 5% debuff. The Elemental Debuff % also changes.

Here's the before:

...And the after:

Also Meteor Blaze needs Jesus.

sergeantmahoff1 · November 2017

Well, I'll be the first to say that (and this is a bit early so bear with me here.) this is kind of a brutal nerf to fire.

This is my DPS on PTS with fire. I used heatwave to apply and fire strike to buff incinerate and refresh engulfing flames.

Here it is on live. Now, before people say that I'm buffing my DPS with hydra, it's worth noting that I used the same gear pieces, however my PTS mods were all R9, and my live mods are all R7.

Conflagration on live beats out Incinerate on the PTS right now. Engulfing flames is kind of a weak alternative to what heatwave gave, and add onto that, fireball no longer buffing the damage on certain attacks hurt pretty bad too. All in all, I don't feel like fire should do less than electricity at its max range. Now again, its uber early (like, literally a few hours after the first patch.) but I just feel like these are things that should be talked about.

Oh, and its not a big issue, but I'm also gonna miss how much managing old fire took. The 7k DPS parse involved a lot of cooldown managing. I welcome anyone to try it out on live if the can, but. Yeah. Fire got nerfed pretty hard with what's on the PTS currently. And yes, again. I know my PTS parse doesn't have hydra, but see above. It wouldn't have added much in the first place.

Suggestion
Bring back the way the old heatwave debuff worked but just name that Engulfing Flames.

Suggestion
Unstable accelerant should buff the damage of the fire attacks like it once used to, but should be removed from Incinerate, and solely be on fireball.

Suggestion
This one's not really a big deal, but maybe incinerate could have the same SFX as fire breath instead of conflagration.

lezard21 · November 2017

Suggestion
Meteor Blaze needs to be a lot bigger if it's gonna be an Ultimate!
Otherwise it ends up looking like a flop like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdTekqoZjKc

xrazamax · November 2017

Okay so Scorching Slide looks pretty awesome, but is there a possibility to have the flames that initially come out of your hands during power activation continuously come out? It looks so cool!

pantagruel01 · November 2017

Hm. Comparing basic dps powers (I don't have heavy buffs here):
lightning arc: 100' self-root. 1345 dps, or 1614 dps vs negative ions.
incinerate: 50' self-root. 1390 dps. Debuffs resistance to burning effects by -100%, so the real effect will be about a 35% increase in damage from burning effects. My burning effects add up to 248 dps, so it's worth an additional 80-90 dps, total worth 1480 dps.
2 gun mojo: 50' mobile. 1434 dps and applies furious, which is worth about 30 dps for the crit boost and 50 for the healing. Total worth 1514 dps.
There's a reasonable argument for lightning arc being overpowered, but incinerate seems underperforming, probably because debuff resistance was ignored when considering its effects.

Unknown · November 2017

This content has been removed.

lunnylunny · November 2017

Any chance we could get some more, even if small, interactions between Fire and Sorcery?
Just an admitedly selfish question of mine, really would like my pyromancer lady a mix of the sets.
It's fine if you don't, really, as long as the fire tree gets some good love.

aesica · November 2017

In no particular order:

Nova Flare: I really like this ability for what it could be, but there's a few things I wanted to bring up about it:

The default color for this is...green?
Also, it doesn't target the player, just others. This seems to apply to not only the targeting, but also, the healing effect excludes the caster. If this is intentional behavior, it's rather unfortunate.
An advantage to apply something like Illumination/Light Everlasting to the target and nearby allies, and/or illuminated to enemies near the target would fit this power's theme really well.
The window in which a player can use other abilities without losing their stacks seems a bit too short. Should it be using Fiery Escalation, or its own buff with a slightly longer (~9-12 sec) duration?

Fireball - Charged Attack: While it's nice to see cross-framework interaction, I'm not seeing a lot of use for this advantage. A better approach might be to have it also utilize circuit completion somehow, such as dealing an extra burst of damage and consuming ions if present or applying a damage over time that arcs each tick or something similar, but if not present, it applies ions as it does now. Or something like that. Simply applying NI doesn't really do anything meaningful on its own when other powers do it so much better.

Fiery Form: I'm a bit worried about the precedent being set by the change allowing Clinging Flames to pile on an even bigger bonus. One thing I've always liked about passives is that they're flexible. In this case, I could choose either Fiery Form or Ice Form and get the same basic damage bonus. The choice lies within the secondary bonuses being offered as well as whichever fits my theme better. Unfortunately, now I'm being strongarmed into using Fiery Form because it technically gives a bigger damage bonus. Please consider changing the clinging flames damage bonus part into something unrelated to dps, like maybe a small self-heal that scales with clinging flames applications or when you stand in (friendly) fire patches. Something like that.

Fire Patches: I love that these are being made more widespread. Any chance this could be added to Vengeance and Condemn as well?

Heatwave: (And similar powers, such as Binding of Aratron) It'd be nice if these powers could continue to dealing damage/being maintained even if the target breaks free or is immune rather than abruptly interrupting the maintain early. Continued attempts to hold per tick would be suppressed, but it would allow the damage portion to continue and specifically, it would make the healing advantage far more useful than it is right now.

Incinerate: As someone else mentioned, the beams are 2D and appear flat at certain angles. Aside from that, they look more like lasers and less like beams of fire. The beams could really use some wispy stuff traveling along them, kind of like what Soul Beam has, but more wispy. Or wavy. Or something to make them appear a bit more chaotic.

Meteor Blaze:

There seems to be some sort of phantom advantage points invested in this ability from the moment you buy it. This prevents me from getting Rank 3.
The effect seems rather lackluster for an ultimate. This would be a lot better with a 100% CF apply and either applied something like Overpower or had better raw damage. It'd also be cooler to have several meteors rain down over a second or two instead of just the 1. (Adjusting damage accordingly, of course)

- - -

Overall, I like it, however I noticed that several tooltips are wrong still. For example, the form works fine with burning effects, but the tooltip talks about arcing, negative ions, and completing circuits.

Also, even though I doubt this will bear any fruit, I'm going to go ahead and beg anyway because using orange ego blades as a knockoff version is utterly killing me:

I'd practically kill for a flame sword power, ideally a combo or Eye of the Storm style maintain with some sort of utility. I realize the primary theme of the framework is (short-medium) ranged, but as many melee sets have 1-2 ranged utility powers, it'd be great to see something like this show up in some form or another. We can summon them as pets, so why not let us wield them as well?

sergeantmahoff1 · November 2017

gradii said:
Using an inferno AT to get 7k dps with fire doesn't really convince me it's a nerf to fire. I like most of these changes, aside from not increasing the freaking range. A set which has a pitiful range for a RANGED set had better have some REALLY good aoe to make up for it.

Except that's not an inferno AT because inferno ATs don't have Hydra.

nightr0d · November 2017

pantagruel01 said:
Hm. Comparing basic dps powers (I don't have heavy buffs here):
lightning arc: 100' self-root. 1345 dps, or 1614 dps vs negative ions.
incinerate: 50' self-root. 1390 dps. Debuffs resistance to burning effects by -100%, so the real effect will be about a 35% increase in damage from burning effects. My burning effects add up to 248 dps, so it's worth an additional 80-90 dps, total worth 1480 dps.
2 gun mojo: 50' mobile. 1434 dps and applies furious, which is worth about 30 dps for the crit boost and 50 for the healing. Total worth 1514 dps.
There's a reasonable argument for lightning arc being overpowered, but incinerate seems underperforming, probably because debuff resistance was ignored when considering its effects.

Thing is because of the innate -100% of Incinerate it actually encourages piling up dots from Flash Fire and Fire Snake. With those powers added and some of their adv maintaining stacks (I forgot the names but if I remember correctly I got 2 stacks of clinging flames running with 1 stack from the patch from flash fire and the dmg from flash fire dot + fire snake debuff and dmg). Basically I used Incinerate + Flash Fire + Fire Snake and that gives some nice numbers.

Overall the single target dmg of electricity is higher but the AoE dmg of Fire is definitely higher due to the dots + debuffs and Fire Form 5% buff per clinging flame innate adv. So overall they are similar but Fire is more tweaked towards AoE while electricity towards single target. The difference is not that big though. At least from my initial impressions that is.

P.S: Don't forget to add the 5% dmg buff from Fire Form into the calculations since, if you apply clinging flames to 1 target you get the buff. So the overall dmg of Incinerate increases a bit.

servantrules · November 2017

I hope Fire Strike's base damage has been upped slightly to bring it in line with Electricity's potential DPS. Keeping range shorter is fine if it's compensated with commensurate damage.

criswolf09 · November 2017

I have some questions regarding the debuffs of the powers:
1. About Engulfing Flames: Is it supposed to stack up to 3 times to lower the fire dmg resist of the enemy by 18% and an extra 6% against elemental dmg?
2. About Unstable Accelerant: What is its specific value and now what does this effect do?

legendarylycan · November 2017

while you're changing conflagration, can you also change its channel animation? the head wagging part of it looks really stupid

chaosdrgnz43 · November 2017

Moonstruck having the pyre adv is strange. I mean it's MOONstruck not SUNstruck. Same goes for Expulse.

Nova Flare powerhue should be just yellow or orange since it's just fire. Green would make it look like Infernal Supernatural (unless that's intended), or the flame is triggered by barium for some reason.

miafox · November 2017

So apparently my last comment was too daunting that it was deleted, so i'll make it more relevant to the fire changes.

Why is conflagration needing to be reduced in damage, it's -supposed- to be a high damage mid-range AoE, not the exact same as everything else, you're taking away the entire point of fire tree along with the DoT's not being able to crit anymore.

Overall I look at these changes and right away it looks as if most of them were almost completely unnecessary.

I'm just saying, Gadgeteer does need more attention from you guys..

pantagruel01 · November 2017

So, I tested the value of fireball w/unstable accelerant. My simple test:
Target villain-rank (33k hp) test dummies in PH (group of 3 level 40). They have no debuff resistance and are tougher than most open world mobs, so if fireball isn't better on them, it isn't better ever.

Test 1: flashfire, conflag until dead. Total time to kill: 9.3 seconds.
Test 2: flashfire, fireball, conflag until dead. Total time to kill: 11.9 seconds.

Well, that looks pretty terrible, but the test is short enough that randomness matters. Also, pyre patch was not affected by unstable accelerant, which I assume is a bug. So, doing some theory crafting:
My expected dps is about 3400 per target from conflagration, 315 from pyre+clinging flames. Thus, expected dps is 3715.
A fireball tap costs me 0.67 seconds (and thus about 2300 damage from conflagration), but increases my subsequent dps to 3870. It also directly does about 2k damage to the primary target, 1k to secondary targets.

After 3 seconds, from ff/conflag: 10,200 damage from conflag, 945 from pyre+CF. Total 11,145
After 3 seconds, from ff/fb/conflag: 7,922 damage from conflag, 1,260 from pyre+CF, 2k/1k from fb. Total 11,182 to primary, 10,182 to secondary.
After 9 seconds, from ff/conflag: 30,600 damage from conflag, 2,835 from pyre+CF. Total 33,435
After 9 seconds, from ff/fb/conflag: 28,322 damage from conflag, 4,096 from pyre+CF, 2k/1k from fb. Total 34,418 to primary, 33,418 to secondary.

Taking 10 seconds to break even is... not worth 1 power point and 4 advantage points.

Next, I tested incinerate on a regen dummy, to see how much the Unstable Accelerant debuff is worth. On top of 3 stacks of engulfing flames, the regen dummy's resistance went from -1% to -20%. It was thus worth 23 dps in my test; if pyre were fixed it would have been worth another 45 dps (total dps was 3,957), or a hair under 2% increase to the effective dps of incinerate (note: I think the tooltip is wrong and unstable accelerant is actually -50% for incinerate, not -69/83/100%).

Hm. It appears that neither clinging flames nor pyre patch scales with forms. This may in part account for underwhelming performance.

avianos · November 2017

Suggestion: Give Flashfire the Restoration ADV for more Utility values

Fire Breath
This power was using an incorrect formula for calculating its cost. This has been updated, and the cost has gone up slightly.
New Advantage (2): Applies Plasma Burn instead of Clinging Flames.
New Advantage: Refreshes your Engulfing Flames debuff.

Sidenote but its important
Can the Visuals for Fire Breath and Fireball be looked up? It use a lot of Visuals resources and can cause framerate issues to the people near it (and even to the user)
It's not as bad as Hurricane but it's noticeable

Chill
The way Chill is applied has been changed. Instead of there being multiple different types of Chill (there were a total of 4 that various powers could apply), there is now 1 that can scale with the rank of the power. This is mostly a backend change to allow us to more easily have powers apply this effect.
Optimized Chill's snare effects as it was taking up more resources than it should have been.
Comments: We are aware Chill can only stack 3 times total. However, this is not something easily changed as it will cause other Ice powers to stop working properly. This will be addressed when we are able to address Ice as a whole.

Glad to hear official words about the issue with Chill, this also confirm that ICE will get a properly revamp someday

jaazaniah1 · November 2017

Please! Yes!

shadowfang240 said:
while you're changing conflagration, can you also change its channel animation? the head wagging part of it looks really stupid

aiqa · November 2017

Just to compare the fire dps in my other post, here are some other parses with other sets(using the same build).

Lightning (edit: updated with parse from live)

tk

tgm (note this is with adv, would be 6061-(5420-5420/1.08)=5659 at r3)

revanantmorituri · November 2017

kaizerin said:

Power Changes (Misc)

Energy Slide
Reduced the power cost penalty.

Now falls somewhat slower.

Corrected some animations.

New Advantage(2): Energy Rush. Increases your power recovery and equilibrium while using Energy Slide and you are out of combat.

Has Energy Slide been fixed so that it works underwater now? Currently on live using this movement power underwater (say Lemuria) does not boost your movement speed.

kaiserin · November 2017

avianos wrote: »

Can the Visuals for Fire Breath and Fireball be looked up? It use a lot of Visuals resources and can cause framerate issues to the people near it (and even to the user)
It's not as bad as Hurricane but it's noticeable

So I looked at these two powers on all ranks and they're not that bad resource wise. Firebreath could be cut down a bit if the auras were removed (if that's something players would want), and fireball could maybe get a couple draw calls removed. This won't make a big difference though, so curious what you're seeing.

flowcyto · November 2017

RIP Conflag spam (at least for single targets). I kinda liked that plastyle, but I understand re-balancing it.

I'll first just check how all the various Pyre Patch powers are faring (sans devices):
"Flashfire (values vary on this power), Strafing Run, Pyre, Conflagration (adv), Brimstone (adv), Expulse (adv), Moonstruck (adv), Incendiary Grenade (adv and device), Rocket (adv)."

Typos: Nightmare & Daybreaker advs on Moonstruck & Expulse mention fully charging the power, when they are instant. Inversely- Brimstone's Aftershock adv and Rocket's Scorched Ground adv don't clarify that it takes fully charging them (in the yellow text portions, at least).

I'm trying diff combos of the patches, and it seems for the most part that they all are cancelling each other out properly. Also most of them seem to proc TReverb and Fiery Will properly.

Bug: The Pyre Patch from Strafing Run doesn't always seem to properly deactivate a previously-laid patch from a diff source (though it does deactivate its own when another patch is placed after it).

Bug: Strafing Run's pyre patch adv doesn't seem to proc Fiery Will (maybe cause its a separate entity), and it also sometimes doesn't reliably proc Thermal Reverb (this may be range-related).

Bug: Fiery Will seems to have most of Power Source's tooltip and description (sans the Rec scaling bit).

Oh, I know its unrelated, but mine as well quickly throw it in while we're here:
Bug: Seraphim's Balance adv seems to not be working properly.
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/championsonline/#/discussion/1209863/seraphims-balance-adv-is-not-working/p1?new=1

That's it from me for now. Hope to look into more stuff in the future, as the changes look neat overall.
(also seems a bit weird for Pyre to shatter ice instead of melting it, but oh well

)

avianos · November 2017

kaizerin wrote: »

So I looked at these two powers on all ranks and they're not that bad resource wise. Firebreath could be cut down a bit if the auras were removed (if that's something players would want), and fireball could maybe get a couple draw calls removed. This won't make a big difference though, so curious what you're seeing.

From my experience from many pugs the explosion visual from fireball cause a noticeable lagspike in melee range, noticeable when the user tap spam it as well
Here is some pictures with FPS taken if this can help

Fireball's once it hit the enemies

Relate note, Should Launcher explosion from Power Armour also cause the same lag

Firebreath's visuals overloard framerate is noticeable for melee range and when the player is moving while using it.
Also can happen when enemy NPCs are using it against you

Side note: in the second image I have removed my characters' Auras. There is no other visual effect except of the power itself

Extra just for comparison, Hurricane FPS

aesica · November 2017

On the topic of Fire Breath, how likely is it that the visuals could be reevaluated and possibly updated? The current Fire Breath looks more like an orange dirt cloud than actual fire--something that could probably be fixed by not making the visual effect look so shadowy. Fire emits light, after all, and if changing the color of a fire effect ceases to make it look anything remotely like fire, there's something wrong with it.

nbkxs · November 2017

Please remove the pyre patch created by the meteor ult. This cancels the debuff refresh from flashfire, and greatly interrupts the rotation, having to restack the debuff.

legendarylycan · November 2017

or better yet, since it's an ultimate and thus is only going to be triggered once every 30 seconds at best (if under the influence of a strong AOAC aura)...make the pyre patch created by the meteor exempt from the replacement rules of other patches and vice-versa

magpieuk2014 · November 2017

Suggestion
Could you make Fireball's adv (amongst others) cause Fear, rather than negative Ions/other elemental debuffs?

It's just that Fire is, perhaps, the universal fear - every animal runs from it - so perhaps more appropriate than specific set debuffs? If you want to make more powers work in combination other sets then a series of on-next-hit repurpose powers would be better.... (but we'll save those for the Gadgeteering revamp).

aesica · November 2017

nbkxs wrote: »

Please remove the pyre patch created by the meteor ult. This cancels the debuff refresh from flashfire, and greatly interrupts the rotation, having to restack the debuff.

Can't really log on and check right now, but would adding an immediate refresh to Meteor's initial hit fix the problem?

xrazamax · November 2017

Couples of powers, such as Fiery Will's' description says that it triggers off Negative Ions . If Master Iroh taught me anything, it is that Lightning is just next level fire.

Suggestion: Scorching slide is cool. It shouldn't be too much trouble to make a version of it that behaves like Ice Slide though right? Let that fire fly. get it? like the bug? fireflies?

nbkxs · November 2017

aesica wrote: »

nbkxs wrote: »

Please remove the pyre patch created by the meteor ult. This cancels the debuff refresh from flashfire, and greatly interrupts the rotation, having to restack the debuff.

Can't really log on and check right now, but would adding an immediate refresh to Meteor's initial hit fix the problem?

That might work, it depends on how far along flashfire was on the cool when the meteor hit.

spinnytop · November 2017

magpieuk2014 said:
Suggestion
Could you make Fireball's adv (amongst others) cause Fear, rather than negative Ions/other elemental debuffs?

Would be fine as an addition, but not a replacement. Fireball applying ions is a very interesting addition to the set I plan to take advantage of.

kaiserin · November 2017

aesica wrote: »

Nova Flare: I really like this ability for what it could be, but there's a few things I wanted to bring up about it:
The default color for this is...green?

Fun fact: Nova Flare's visuals was originally made for the Wil-o'-the-Wisp power. However, we didn't feel the visuals matched up for Infernal, so another version was made that's used in game now. The old fx was more fitting for fire, so it was re-purposed as Nova Flare. The default colors didn't get changed though, whoops!

xrazamax · November 2017

kaizerin said:

aesica wrote: »

Nova Flare: I really like this ability for what it could be, but there's a few things I wanted to bring up about it:
The default color for this is...green?

Fun fact: Nova Flare's visuals was originally made for the Wil-o'-the-Wisp power. However, we didn't feel the visuals matched up for Infernal, so another version was made that's used in game now. The old fx was more fitting for fire, so it was re-purposed as Nova Flare. The default colors didn't get changed though, whoops!

But green = healing! Everyone knows that!

chaosdrgnz43 · November 2017

xrazamax said:

But green = healing! Everyone knows that!

Let's leave the green flames on the infernal supernatural set. Let fire have it's own powerhue.

guyhumual · November 2017

since we're "fixing" energy slide now, can we swim with it underwater yet?

magpieuk2014 · November 2017

Would be fine as an addition, but not a replacement. Fireball applying ions is a very interesting addition to the set I plan to take advantage of

Happy to share....

Perhaps it could be added to the Ultimate, to make that more of a utility power rather than pure DPS - being bombarded by flaming meteors is quite frightening, after all. It could be an AoE Damage power that has a 100% change to apply Clinging Flames on first hit and Fears/Stuns its targets. You could then have an advantages to add a Pyre Patch and another to make into a Meteor Shower - rather like Orbital Cannon's Anvil of Dawn adv, your target would be hit by a series of flaming meteors over 15 seconds or so.

sergeantmahoff1 · November 2017

So coming back again with another comparison between current live vs. PTS. Conflag vs. Incinerate alone this time. Due to my limitations on live, the conflag parse only has R7s, but the incinerate parse has R9s. Same Ego primary geared for ego setup on chilled form with Guardicator however.

Incinerate's damage is pretty low compared to conflag's, especially factoring in the fact conflag is on R7s whilst Incinerate's on R9s. This was without debuffs and without buffs of any kind. Started both parses with 8 stacks of concentration, and this is what I got.

Now like I said before, we could try bringing back how old heatwave's debuff worked (stacking to six with 10% fire resistance ignore per stack) and having fireball's unstable accelerant function how it did with conflag with incinerate while also removing unstable accelerant from incinerate, but in addition to that, I think that incinerate needs a slight damage buff here. Otherwise it'll stay weaker than lightning with no reward despite being a mid range damage set. Considering you can get 7k+DPS with it live right now without even using living fire, I'm gonna reiterate that PTS's numbers just feel like a nerf to fire at the moment.

Engulfing flames isn't a good alternative to heatwave's debuff, and I'm not sure how I feel about it being shared between heatwave and firesnake. That pretty much just made heatwave obsolete. Additionally, I know it's beating a dead horse, but fire is just starting to feel like lightning now. Apply debuff, apply DoT, maintain attack, but now at 50 feet instead of 100. I just feel like there could be more variety. Though to be fair, most of fire on live is DoTs Debuffs and Summons and then your direct damage.

Overall, again I know it's early, but fire just feels like it's being nerfed so far.

kaiserin · November 2017

chaosdrgnz43 wrote: »

Moonstruck having the pyre adv is strange. I mean it's MOONstruck not SUNstruck. Same goes for Expulse.

lezard21 · November 2017

edit: ^^^lmao at the "shut up, it looks cool" reply

Suggestion
Since you are adding utility adv for cross frame builds, consider adding something that ties Fire with Earth (if there is ever plans to revamp this dreadful set) like inbuilt or adv Stagger.

avianos · November 2017

Suggestion: Please consider giving ELECTRIC powers innate abilities/ADVs to apply Clinging flames in order to create synergy with Electricity-Fire

My reasoning behind this is because Electricity thematically can cause Fire, both poweframes got revamped back to back and would create more elemental synergies beyond the typical Fire-Ice.
Giving Negative Ions on Fireball so far isn't really exciting
Gotta encourage the Elementalist theme

overall I like what I'm reading so far, I hope there are more

legendarylycan · November 2017

probably a bit too late to consider adding now as all new fire abilities have likely been done and locked in at this point...but in case it can be slipped in as a last-second thing or possibly as a potential future addition to the framework, i would like to see a fire nova type ability

basically, something like Energy Wave from Power Armor - no target required, charge up a few seconds and release an omnidirectional wave of fire in a mid-range PBAoE - but without the knock, obviously

i don't know if there's already a similar existing power in the fire framework...but if there is, it probably need to be buffed because i never see it in any fire builds

pantagruel01 · November 2017

shadowfang240 said:
probably a bit too late to consider adding now as all new fire abilities have likely been done and locked in at this point...but in case it can be slipped in as a last-second thing or possibly as a potential future addition to the framework, i would like to see a fire nova type ability

basically, something like Energy Wave from Power Armor - no target required, charge up a few seconds and release an omnidirectional wave of fire in a mid-range PBAoE - but without the knock, obviously

i don't know if there's already a similar existing power in the fire framework...but if there is, it probably need to be buffed because i never see it in any fire builds

Um.... perhaps Pyre?

legendarylycan · November 2017

pyre is targeted and not PB...though i suppose it could always be reworked

i mean, does anyone even really use it now?

sergeantmahoff1 · November 2017

Pyre is definitely not a targeted attack.

nbkxs · November 2017

Pyre isn't targeted, it's a burst that extends outwards.

nightr0d · November 2017

The issue with elementalist is that we have energy and elemental damage types. So unless we have a passive that buffs both that will be a problem (well NW buffs all dmg but that's not the point).

Similarly do we have fire and HW. There could be some nice synergies but there is no passive that buffs crushing&fire.

IMO the first step to increase synergies is to expand what damage types passives give a buff to. Best would be to make all elemental passives (fire, ice, toxic) buff elemental dmg and then make each passive give some other set specific or special bonuses. This should add significantly more diversity than just adding some random advantage to an out of set power like fireball and the negative ions adc.

As such IMO the most limiting factor to synergy are the passives that only buff a specific damage types. Well this is what I think at least.

example: make pestilence buff elemental & slashing or make elenctric form buff energy and fire. Of course even better would be to have passives that buff 2 or more entire dmg types such as energy & elemental & physical.

chaosdrgnz43 · November 2017

kaizerin said:

chaosdrgnz43 wrote: »

Moonstruck having the pyre adv is strange. I mean it's MOONstruck not SUNstruck. Same goes for Expulse.

Ok i admit, the expulse looks cool. But the Moonstruck looks a tad more sinister. I get it's bloodmoon but, this feels like a vampire power w/ the black/red theme. (this coming from a blackredder XP).

Thankfully, subs have powerhue option so they can make it moon-like. (Which I probably will never have)

theravenforce · November 2017

They both look awesome. For the flame effect alone on Moonstruck w/advantage, that would make me want to farm for it for next BM...