So after the first rounds of M+ and dummy dome testing, as Flameshaper, I have changed some of the opinions and have observed some new things. If I dont mention something here then one can assume that I still hold the opinion mentioned above or in the linked posts. I can report the following things:
Red Spells
All red spells other than Fire Breath are just weak.
- Pyre does very little damage and is completely outclassed by Disintegrate with Scintilations and Shattering Stars. This leads to Pyre being pushed to 4 or more targets WITH VOLATILITY. This is worse than Pyre has ever been.
- Living Flame feels weak and should really get a boost to its damage. Fire Torrent should apply to it and Twin Flame should gain all Living Flame damage increases. It just feels right to have the majority red hero talent have more powerful red spells than Fire Breath.
- Firestorm, or rather Feed the Flames is completely inaccessible because of the talent position and the requirement of the tier set to spec fully into Shattering Stars and Eternity Surge. This just feels bad because the entirety of the red talents are already rarely picked and now its just completely unreasonable.
- Unbound Flame is the least bad of the bunch. Its new, its a great addition, but it could do more damage for being attached to a 2 minute cooldown. Right now it accounts for 3% in Single Target and I would prefer it being closer to 5%. This can be achieved with just buffing the damage or increasing how many charges we get which also helps the essence economy (which is a major problem for Scalecommander)
Most of these can be solved with buffs and slight redesigns and would help alleviate the common feeling that “Flameshaper just feels like having no hero talent”. Additionally I am of the opinion that the tier set just goes way too hard into Eternity Surge. Flameshaper has NOTHING in terms of synergies with it and I would really prefer if the tier set did incorporate some red elements to balance out the overwhelming amounts of blue.
Blue Spells
Blue spells are in a really good spot right now damage wise but the way they do damage is just completely whack.
- Disintegrate does comparatively little damage. Most of its damage is tied to Scintilations procs and the Shattering Stars that come with it. This turns the spell into a gambling tool and this has a massive variance (especially in low target cleave). This just feels horrendous because you can simply do nothing about it and are at the mercy of a 15% proc chance. Disintegrate should account for way more of its damage and Scintilations should also scale down Shattering Stars or just dont proc them alltogether.
- Eternity Surge feels amazing right now. You are finally incentivized to uprank it to match the target count and it hits hard. The only problem is that Flameshaper still has no synergy points with Eternity Surge and as such half of the talent tree is just adjacent instead of synergistic. I would love to have Eternity Surge interacting with Consume Flame to incorporate some blue synergies into Flameshaper.
Black Spells
Deep Breath is still too weak for FS to be ever casted outside of utility reasons. Its honestly a shame because I would like to have another component to the AoE rotation.
To become a bit technical:
Deep Breath currently has around half the DPET (Damage per execution time) of Pyre with Volatility. This metric does not include things like Causality which further tips the scales in favor of Pyre. The long cast time (at least 2.2s) and very mediocre damage combined with the complete lack of synergy just destroys any chance of Deep Breath ever being remotely relevant.
Talents
The tier set just murders all talent diversity because it requires a whopping 5 talent points to be invested. This hurts Scalecommander the most because it has to drop Power Swell and is in turn suffering from a very poor essence economy. For Flameshaper it just locks the entire left most row from being accessible since you cannot afford to drop the 5 talents.
Tier Set
Its just so blue. There is just no reasonable red synergy. Even the increased Causality Cooldown Reduction just favors Disintegrate because it doesnt need 5 targets for maximum effectiveness while also benefitting from the 2pc bonus. It should honestly get some red synergy.
Dragonrage and Apex
The ramp is still a major pain in M+ because starting to do real damage after 20s is just not reasonable. It should be at least 1 or 2 stacks shorter.
The overall duration is less of a problem now but is still annoying. Its still about 10s too long in total.