Was thinking about Fire Nova ability and was wondering how you guys felt about the ability.
At the moment I feel that it does not really shine in any content and it does not alter/affect our gameplay that much. But how would you guys feel with these changes?
Fire Nova replaces Chain Lighting for enhance.
Gets a 2 seconds casting time and loses its cool down.
Deals reduced damage to more than 8 targets (soft caped at 8).
Is affected with MSW and ofc its damage is rebalanced.
Interacts with Crash Lightning and Ascendance the same way Chain Lightning was and talents that affected CL also affect FN.
This would in practice turn FN into a spender that you use instead of CL. All interactions would remain the same, but the damage profile would change (more aoe focused, less cleave).
Ofc tuning would be so that FN talent would be taken on heavy aoe (4+), but CL would still be better at lower target cleave (2-3 targets).
I actually like the idea, but with some changes. Make fire nova be a spender with a CD same as ele blast, so it effectively replaces ele blast for aoe situations, with fire nova doing uncapped aoe damage like elemental’s earthquake so they stay competitive in big pulls.
Another option i would REALLY love, is to make fire nova a passive ability to help reduce enhance button/GCD bloat. Something like, when you hit a target with lava lash that already has flameshock active, you trigger a fire nova that damages all nearby enemies, or something. Again the focus being on a source of uncapped aoe damage so we dont plummet in dps as much compared to everyone else during bigger pulls
Yeah that was my thinking for trying to replace Chain Lightning with Fire Nova. I felt that it is high impact enough that being passive would feel abit weird, and could work as a finisher.
In that regard replacing CL felt like the obvious thing for me, but I can see how someone would want to keep both spells.
I do like the idea of replacing CL entirely with FN, give enhance and ele more distinct personalities rather than both just using tons of CLs. But it would end up with FN being great for say 5+ but CL being much better with fewer targets, meaning youd still need to have both buttons at quick access, thats just adding another button to enhance that they reaaaally dont need. For it to replace CL entirely it would need to be viable for lower and higher target counts
Not really the case if that is a talent. In practice you would take the talent for heavy aoe where it would be a dps gain, and for ST/low cleave you would instead forgo Fire Nova entirely.
Cant say Im a fan of designs like that. You would be swapping out hailstorm for it, for it to be worth the the big loss in dps on regular packs 6 or less etc, and for single target as well, it would have to be a huge buff in damage for like 8+ packs scaling higher the bigger the pull which would just make it extremely niche, maybe for specific raid pulls where you can swap it out but not for mythics.
Part of the goal is also to try and reduce the button/GCD bloat of enhance which is why I like the idea of it being a passive