So with all the crying of mage being weak, after realease of leaderboards, I decided to check fire mage.
Opinion:
Pillar of fire - spell lacks dps, it does same damage as fully charge heavy attacks. DPS can be increased by removing animation, increasing aoe range or just increasing damage.
Fireball - I would say perfectly balanced.
Burnout - Strongest spell in arenas, If not this spell nobody would play fire mage, because now you pull 1 guy away, burnout to other side of arenas. Easy 3 v 2.
Flamethrower - needs cooldowns and bigger mana consumption.
Incinerate - I would increase AOE or either make it undodgable.
Meteor shower - no idea why you have to stand in place to cast it. It should auto cast after release.
Conclusion:
Doesnt matter which weapon we take FS, IG VG, if weapon skill doesnt have crowd control(fires staff doesnt) and autoattacks does very similar damage to skills - nobody will use dmg skills, because it is just better to use utility skills and autoattack.
For weapon to work in wars it needs cc, because if you overboost damage, it will be used everywhere.
FS/IG especially with how busted flamethrower & pylon are is probably one of the strongest builds in the game for small scale PvP. It’s only bad in war and that’s solely because of lifestaff.
FS can only pair with IG to be viable IMO, so I am going to focus on this.
FS/IG is a hybrid build in a way.
Fair damage at range, can hold its own (not as good as dext of course).
Good damage at medium/short range thanks to FT/FB.
CC thanks to the IG, mostly in term of shower (which is the most in demand skill for IG)
Survivability thanks to burn out / IG entomb and shower
Spike/Pylon (depending which route you go) is what brings the IG to a higher level (as opposed to being purely a supporting cast like for BB/IG) thanks to the 360 INT.
There is space for this build, but it has to be for a specific composition and what not.
If you can make the most of your 360INT IG, there is absolutely value there.
I dont think Flamethrower is op at all. It good for killing inexperienced players, when they dont know how to handle the pressure and its good when combined with another persons cc like we see in arenas. I just dont like it from a gamesdesign perspective. I think its lazy and not engaging to use. People complain about the damage of flamethrower but dont even slot one ruby for defence, while dex weapons still hit like a truck when you slot less than 40% Thrust protection.
Asking people to use ruby just dosnt make sense. Thrust protection helps against musket, bow, spear, rapier, and even certain S+S attacks. A ruby legit protects you against only the fire staff. It’s not so simple as just sLoT RubiES brO
Flamethrower needs to go on cd after a cc or a dodge. Thats all. This spell is the only reason firestaff is broken. Fix it ags but im sure you will lol
It also protects you from the BB. Not to mention most of muskets damage is elemental and a lot of people started going for fire damage split and/or flame attun because of what you said.
Also all it takes is one ruby, not rubies, one is enough for you to laugh at FS. It makes much bigger difference than 2 or even 3 emeralds.
