Fireball VFX seem to have given up the ghost.

mordekai

My Wizard uses Chill Strike on TAB, and I usually follow it up with Fireball as shooting them back to back seems to speed up the casting time.

From it's first appearance, (for which I and many other are truly grateful...) the explosion VFX has been a bit hit and miss, and often you would not see the heart burst of flames for which the spell is famous.

In the past week or so I've noticed it now hardly ever fires. If I creep up on an enemy and use Fireball as the lead in, then it is probably at about 60%. But in combat, as part of the Chill Strike/FB combo, it's below 25%

One of the reasons we campaigned so hard during Beta was because we (NWO Wizards who spent any time playing D&D in our youth) do love our Fireballs...

Can someone take a look at why this spell in particular seems so reluctant to play its VFX.

Thanks.

fns2005

For me i doesn't explode when it doesn't fire. Fireball has an awfully long casting animation that is hit or miss. Often times enemies are already dead by the time my character finishes the Hadouken motion with the arms. I use Fireball on tab and have to spam the button 3 times for it to work. Sometimes it just doesn't. If that Chill Strike, Fireball combo really does speed up the casting time that should be addressed - as we shouldn't have to rely on that to get a proper Fireball going.

mordekai

It doesn't so much "speed up" the casting, so forgive me if that was misleading.

It's more like, casting them back to back allows the FB to fire properly, rather than the button bashing you describe.
I took fireball off TAB for the very reason you suggest, and replaced it with Chill Strike because tabbing it turns it into a minor AoE.
It's a fairly stable "Starter" so when you are not effectively in combat, and have the drop on the monsters, it fires back to back pretty seamlessly. The casting animations seem to flow together better than other combos. Quite often it doesn't work, simply because CS kills the target...

I completely agree that there often seems to be a delay, or absolute absence, in Power casting with Wizard, but to be honest, Wizards are currently otherwise in a really good place, and other than the visual aspect of the spells, I don't want them faffing about with the class and buggering things up.