So I wanted to try and give my review/impressions on where the Fire staff stands today after 1.1.
Fire Ball: First of all, I personally feel the changes were not needed. As much as AGS tries to convince people Fireball never was actually doing critical attacks. It was. We spammed it on cool down for big booms. The changes to Fireball really hurt hard. Now it is weaker than a normal heavy attack, and even weaker than a light attack that crits. Really only worth using for it’s splash damage, other wise totally useless.
Pillar: We all knew the double proc wasn’t as intended so the fix was no surprise. The buff given to the damage when this issue was corrected feels nice. It’s a good damage spell still. The only downside to it, IMO it that is slow to cast in pvp. You really have to guess someone’s path and lead them off, casting this spell where you think they’ll be when it goes off. It shines the most in wars when everyone is predictably standing in 1 spot. Hardest hitting spell we have in PVE and PVP.
Meteor Shower: Joke of a spell. Damage is pure garbage, very weak and slow damage. You are a sitting duck while casting. Why is this even in the game? Waste of talent points. This spell was only used for stat padding in war.
Incinerate: Works pretty good when fully treed. Has a short cast, that can be interrupted. You really have to put yourself in harms way to use this ability. With all the stuns and interrupts today, sometimes it’s a struggle to get this to go off, can be risky. This needs Grit IMO, otherwise it’s fine.
Flamethrower: Even with the recent change, flamethrower is pretty bad. The damage is weak. Fully spec’d the range is still kind of short, again you have to put yourself in harms way to use it, you also move slow while it’s active. Works OK in PVE, but really bad at PVP. I’ve been trolling people in PVP with this the past couple days and the result is almost always the same, run up on someone, open up with Flamethrower, they turn around and instantly explode me, while taking little damage from the flamethrower. In OPR, with my 320Int ive seen crits as high as 720 with average damage about 500 to as low as 300, while taking 3k crits in return. Basically does 1/2 to a 1/3 of the damage per second that any competent melee is doing in return.
Burn Out: Great ability really starts to shine when you fill out it’s tree. Only major issue with Burn out, is because it has a short casting time, is again, it’s lack of grit. I find myself interrupted quite often in wars or OPR when attempting to use this ability, due to all the war hammer spamming.
So to sum it up using OPR, since it’s the best place to collect lots of numbers quickly, Fire staff is in a bad spot in PVP. It’s damage doesn’t compete with other weapons. If you choose to backline in light armor like I do @320INT. You can expect your light attack single target left clicks to do around 1k damage, with 1.2k crits. Heavy attacks I do about 1.5k normal to 1.7k crits. If I see people grouped up, I’ll toss a Fireball at them, and splash those people for about 1k each, with a burn that does like a massive 34 damage a tick. Pillar is my big hitter, but, because the radius is small, mixed with the cast time, lag/stutters damage isn’t guaranteed. Burnout does some nice damage when people get close, if you can get it to go off.
Compared to the other back line jobs, Muskets normal attacks easily out damage our heavy attacks. Musket has a lot more range and can be boosted further, hit scan, stagger, trap, AoE, rapid fire, and for some reason, have a much stronger fire DoT, then a Fire mage can provide, as well as the potential for big head shot damage. Bow users also have a stagger, slow, nasty poison DoT, AoE, rapid fire, evade shot. As well as the potential for HUGE headshot damage.
This basically leaves mage in a weird spot, the damage isn’t enough to have a fair ranged fight with anything other than another mage. The damage isn’t enough to even move the HP bar on most heavy armor GA/WH builds. When you look at all the close range abilities, It’s almost as if the devs want us to wear heavy armor and go toe to toe with melee, or perhaps not even main a fire staff at all, only use to for light ranged damage and escapes.
This is just how I see it right now.