You’re missing the point wildly, did you read past the first line of the post at all?
Pressure from fireball and pillar of fire is there sure, en masses especially.
What else compared to other weapons outside of that little closed War PvP box that you’re in does it offer.
Spear has great utility across the board and hard hitting abilities. So does hatchet and other weapons.
What does incinerate and meteor shower offer other than a crazy long cast time and high risk for low reward.
especially when you can get perks like rogue on spear, or the point being other weapons like GA, Spear, WH. all of their abilities are viable in some sense for some scenario. Firestaff has some abilities that are seriously lacking.
the 2k crit fireballs on medium armor / light healer with fortify?
we have 0 rends in our kit
25% empowerement ( 5% if u didnt take dmg in last 3 sec, 5% if above 50% mana, 15% if below 50% health )
and just 10% fortify ( 10% for 2 sec )
compare that to spear
30% rends
51% fortify with weapon perk
ton’s of empowerement
ton’s of cooldown reduction
agility of a god, with 150 dex perk and bow/hatchet …
I understand full well what the point is. I think firestaff is very good, despite a few abilities. Every tree is like that if you’ve been paying attention at all. Weapons also have their niches they excel in. I feel like I shouldn’t have to break it down but here we are comparing melee weapons to magical ranged weapons lol
FT is a meme and a completely dogshit, let your little sister play the game type of ability.
I would much rather see it reworked completely into something like a 2 sec, big cone burst ability that locks you in place ( + grit armor perk like incinerate) and detonates burn stacks you applied previously but not instantly - over time.
Similar to what FnF does on blood tree rapier. High risk with high reward.
exactly! bird, look how they reworked bow. changed abilities outright made it easier to auto, the haste it gives you is incredible, can pair with a lot of different weapons and has synergy with them. Fire staff is handicapped to using a few weapons with synergy, which most have been nerfed (ice gauntlet, void)
firestaff is a good weapon but is underwhelming compared to the rest. no cc, no rend, no knock downs, no stagger. It can use a tweak like how the bow got. they scrapped a whole ability for the bow they have the ability to do that for the firestaff as well.
Truth is, the firestaff tops damage charts. It may be useless damage but that is the reason why the firestaff had so many nerfs on that first balance patch after release and why changes are slow to come by. That is how I believe the developers see it.
Ironically it doesn’t have as much kill pressure because other weapons deal higher single target damage with just their regular attacks and/or inflict significant damage at a faster rate.
Check out any of bert’s videos. Because of his consistent aim, he actually does rack up high kill counts, but most people don’t have this kind of accuracy and thus consistent enough damage enough to kill. I can’t help but think if he used a musket or bow how much more he’d accomplish with precision weapons instead of AOE, but his bow is level 10.
The thing is firestaff is something that the more people you add the more oppressive it becomes, the devs are not balancing for 1v1 regardless of what anyone on the forums says.
The game is balanced probably around 3v3 and then war scenarios/group play.
5 coordinated fire mages all fireballing the same target/clump and that clump is pretty much toast.
10 fire mages that clump is even more toast etc etc you get the idea. From that perspective it is fine and performs it’s job which is why they haven’t addressed the other abilities but there is just no denying meteor shower and incinerate are very bad.
Flamethrower is cool but tbh with a healer pocketing someone, 9/10 in arena you just get punished by good bruisers trying to use it.
It is some meme OPR stat padder shit, however the cleave is good for dungeons and with a burning ring, burning perk it does ramp up well and can’t be ignored.
this is not about the firestaff not being viable. It is but some tweaking would put it on par with other weapons that were tweaked like the bow. The bow had a whole skil redone. There is no reason the devs cant do that to the firestaff. I prefaced this topic on the fact I freaking love the firestaff and have been using it since beta and its good. Just some tweaks would have it go a long way.
I know what you mean, it could use some improvements in handling.
The reason why everyone likes fireball is because it has such a short animation that it easily weaves between attacks (it’s also easy to land). In other words, it doesn’t slow the player down and actually maintains or increases dps.
Although Pillar of Fire’s animation continues to receive buffs to its cast speed it still is only marginally better than a heavy attack outside of hitting more than one target.
Heavy attacks deal 140% weapon damage and gain a 10% bonus from 100 INT and enchanted, coming out to 168% weapon damage.
In single target scenarios, Pillar of Fire (170% weapon damage) needs to crit, hit a full health target, or hit more than one target to make it worth casting, but because of the inane design of having to place a “zone” for it to spawn from, not only is it slow to use but uncomfortable to mix in attacks.
I believe this was realized, so Pillar of Fire’s attack animation was made quicker and was made so you can walk while targeting.
But honestly this was lazy and insufficient. What should be done is the endlag of the cast be reduced, as players now still have to roll to cancel the endlag.
Or even better, the whole “zone” placement casting should be removed, and the pillar of fire should spawn on buttonpress, directly on the crosshair. There shouldn’t be a second step after pressing the skill to place down where it spawns. Obviously the pillar should spawn slightly slower as originally released so there is some counterplay.
This would allow players not have to switch aiming from regular attacks to Pillar of Fire as excessive it is now and make the cast as quick as Fireball. Transitions between skill use and regular attacks would be smooth and not lower damage output over time when attempting to use Pillar of Fire.
See how Poison shot, Penetrating shot, or Explosive shot easily flow from regular attack to skill use (known as an auto attack reset)? That is how abilities on the firestaff should perform, not just fireball.
Well that is one point, but the thing with pillar is that it’s not meant to be single target.
PoF is capable of cleaving and hitting 2-3 targets in a clump. One standard heavy attack cannot do that so you need to include that in the math. It’s really the equivalent of 3 heavy attacks.
You can also heavy attack into a pillar for faster DPS on a single target.
Just something I remembered so tbh Pillar is in a fine spot.
