Everything you said can be done with another weapons and being more effective.
“Comboing people so fast they don’t know with spike”… that’s not a combo, that’s one ability and you have to do it literally perfect and sometimes still have RNG, the BB have the azoth blast that have even more damage and you only need to click the ability and its 10 second cd… flamethrower is good making presure yes, you have to be in melee and have no fortify like the BB, and also you walk slow, they dodge somewhere else or take the rapier and bye bye.
Anyway, im not saying you cant play fire ice mage and be competitive, im saying its much harder than other weapons, while at it best performance is not even close to that other weapons, and we dont want to nerf any other weapons, just give us more burst.
Here some ideas, remake pillar, that ability is kinda useless, hard to hit, small range and less damage than a hatchet auto attack.
Change critical damage multiplier from 1.25 to 1.35 (rapier or hatchet have 1.4 and only spam auto atks)
Dont make spike to be RNG, sometimes we hit it perfect and only 1 spike lands the target. Don’t make it that powerful like it was, but at least dont do it RNG, its the only way to compete against these azoth blasters out there.