With the upcoming “nerf” to Incinerate not being able to get a guaranteed backcrit anymore, the ability will drop from an already underperfoming ability to almost unusable. Although it is dealing a decent amount of damage, it is not only incredibly hard to hit due to the limited range and the insanely long windup time, it also does not have grit and the low amount of pushback makes it so people can easily hit back while you’re still stuck in recovery frames, unable to react.
Incinerate was already the least favorite of the secondary abilities next to fireball and burnout as both Pillar of Fire and Flamethrower are way more consistent, but with the upcoming patch it will definitely need a couple buffs to find it’s way back into people’s builds.
First of all, it should definitely have grit so that people can atleast bridge the incredibly long casting animation without getting interrupted constantly. Additionally I recommend to add a large amount of stagger to the ability in order to prevent people from simply basic attacking you while you’re stuck in recovery frames.
These two changes would make a huge difference and really help to make Incinerate a viable choice in the Firestaff kit. If these don’t prove to be enough though, shortening the cast animation might be an additional route that could be explored.
Meteor Shower is another ability on the firestaff that definitely needs some help. I know it got some really slight buffs on the PTR, but every firestaff player will tell you the exact same thing. Meteor Shower is going to be completely useless until they decide to rework how the skill works. The main issues are the lacking damage (even after the buffs still super underwhelming), the low range and most importantly the channeling cast.
Considering how fast paced the combat in New World is, channeling abilities are a really outdated concept and should not be in the game, period. It makes you incredibly vulnerable to stand still and if we’re honest the damage is way too low to compensate for that risk.
Comparing the ability to Ice Storm, which not only applies a slow, deals more damage, doesn’t need to be channeled, persists after swapping weapons and can be combo’d with passives like heavy freeze, it quickly becomes obvious how bad Meteor Shower actually is.
To get this ability back into viable territory, we first of all need to get rid of the channeling part. It simply needs to be a cast you can throw down and leave it. Additionally it needs some extra Utility, which is why I recommend it should apply burning stacks each second that somebody is in the area. Alternatively (and this is just a wild idea on my end) the entire ability could just be replaced with a single meteor that deals massive damage after a delay. Either suggestion could work fine to make Meteor Shower interesting again.
Ultimately I don’t have the perfect solution, but those two abilities badly need some love. Otherwise the only firestaff build you’re going to see in the foreseeable future is going to be Fireball, Burnout and Flamethrower.
Only tweaking numbers is just a super lazy approach and it would be awesome if the developers would just listen for once when it comes to ability reworks.
