Is there any reason why improved scorch only lasts 8 seconds other than to be slightly annoying? Similarly, why does bone chilling only last 10 seconds?
Both are triggered by your main filler with fairly short cast-time. So it requires no real active input to get stacks, it just sorta happens, and under normal circumstances you’ll be at max stacks quickly. But at 8-10 seconds it’s very easy to lose to (de)buff if your filler rotation gets interrupted/altered by anything (mechanics, boss flying away, combustion, etc.). Which is just kind of a nuisance, especially as you don’t really lose the buff due to mistakes, there isn’t a whole lot you can do when a boss flies away to do a deep-breath or some similar mechanic.
So does anyone have any explanation as to why their durations are so short? What’s the point other than to be slightly annoying?
But what’s the point of that, other than being mildly annoying?
You never activly manage the (de)buff.
It’s applied by a filler spell you’ll be casting frequently within that 10s window anyway, so it never affects your rotation.
It’s more engaging than a talent that gives you a 5% buff to everything with no requirements.
It’s not like they’re the only passive maintenance buffs in the game, there’s stuff like Fury Warrior’s Enrage - a core part of their spec and mastery that has nearly 100% uptime passively and Burning Wound for DH’s which gives you a permanent passive DoT effect that boosts the damage of certain abilties.
They could’ve just given us a talent that buffs all our damage by 5% at all times but instread they maintained the previous interaction that would force you to occasionally use a slow in situations you might not otherwise.
Honestly, the only time I realize it exists is when I realize it dropped off. Which isn’t exactly positive engagement.
Neither burning wound nor enrage need to stack though, they’re immeadiatly back up at maximum potential once the interuption is over. Not that they are necesarly interesting, but at least they’re not activly annoying.
Which is what bothers me.
On the one hand it has a short duration, and requires stacking. Implying there should be some sort of gameplay loop around them. But on the other hand its applied by basic filler spells you’ll constantly be spamming anyway, making it little more than a passive.
Which means we have all of the downsides of a stacking buff that needs to be managed, but none of the positives.
So what is the idea behind it?
If it’s just supposed to be a passive buff, why not make it last longer, make it less impactfull (a flat 10-12% damage increase is kind of big for a “passive” buff), or at least remove the need to stack so it doesn’t take so long to reapply?
And if it’s supposed to be something we actively manage, then why is it maintained by filler spells? That completly removes the need for any active engagement.
Just because you don’t doesn’t mean other people don’t. Worth tracking if you have 2-3 targets or in pvp when your setting up for a kill. Even on a single target raid boss in execute, its prob worth scorch weaving every so often to keep it up during those long skb combustions.
How often do you find yourself in a situation with 2-3 targets all below 30%, all important enough to apply improved scorch to, and all living long enough for that be worth the effort?
During an execute you’re using scorch by default as your filler, so again, no active management.
This is about the only situation in which there is some active management going on.
Two issues though.
It interupts the smooth combustion flow of purely instant casts, which isn’t particularly great.
and
This works for one build. What about every other possible build? Have we already reached the point where builds other than SBK are no longer even considered?
And lastly; none of this anwsers why bone chilling is designed the same way, with the same issues and lack of (positive) engagement.
Any council style boss fight, theres one in one of the new dungeons with 3 targets who all enrage when one goes below 20%ish. There’s at least one every raid tier I think.
Was thinking of bone chilling here.
Thats why it’s not a great choice and isn’t a great talent anyway while skb is meta.
I don’t think we’ve ever had a council fight where you actually want to spread out your (individual) damage evenly during the enrage. You nearly always focus 1 down, before moving on to the next (at least you as an individual player, the raid as a whole might split their focus)
Regardless though, even if take this example at face value; that’s 1 fight out of 12 per raid. And maybe 1 dungeon boss out of what, 30 across all dungeons? Where this talent provides some kind of active gameplay in current PvE content. That’s some terribly niche design for a talent. And it’s not like we’re having high standards here.
When are you not slowing in PvP? Outside of being stunlocked, or the enemy managing to get out of range or something you should nearly constantly be spamming spells that slow causing bone chilling to be up nearly a 100% of the time without any thought or effort.
Then why does it exist if it isn’t even good (both numericly and gameplay wise) in the one build where it actually impacts active gameplay in some minimal way?
Good god, why do you care so much about an optional talent. Gives you some extra execute if your not playing skb. Not the biggest problem with the tree is it.
There’s only 2 viable raid builds and both use skb and the most viable one is just SL season 3/4 fire mage with firestarter. The other one is just a mix of 2 SL leggos that both saw play in SL.
That talent is one of the very few attempts of putting something new in the fire talent tree, it might not be exciting but at least it may be an option somewhere down the line. We need more new things, see how they land and hopefully go well with other talents. If skb gets a nerf it could be a strong talent.
Cuz I’d like fire to actually be interesting and varied again. Instead of solely min-maxing combustion uptime yet again, with only the most minor of changes from expansion to expansion.
And this talent is a prime example of everything that’s wrong with the tree;
It’s clunky with a duration that’s kept needlessly short for no apparent reason and it’s need to stack, it’s uninteresting and has no active gameplay impact in 99% of situations, and it’s outperformed by an absurd margin by the SKB build. And on top of all that, it isn’t even new, it’s a watered down version of two older talents.
We need more than just a handfull of new things & some nerfs. At this point we need more or less a complete rework if they ever want to get rid of SBK as a concept.
The 2 brothers raidboss with the conveyorbelt thingys in IF (WoD)
Generals in Castle Nathria
Pantheon in Sepulcher
The bug raid in Mop had one
Vault of the incarnates has one
There are quite a few, these are only out of the top off my head.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone actually spread their individual damage in their, aside from maybe the occasional warlock or shadow priest multidotting.
Everyone else either just cleaved, did a full on AoE rotation, or simply switched targets if one of the bosses fell behind (and if the council didn’t need to die at the same time, they often just nuked them down one at a time)
Rogue dots, hunter bleeds, warrior bleeds, balance druid dots, feral bleeds, even demon hunters kept their ventyr dot on both targets for the amoung us and have a bleed to keep up on targets now. Just because you don’t notice it…
Edit: Flame patch, sorry shaman. Evokers do too but they apply it via a frontal so not sure if that counts.
Edit 2: Even holy palys have kept glimmer up on 2 targets. Windwalker used to manually keep a debuff on targets to increase their SCK damage, its more passive now.
Well I’m sorry for not listing every single potential spec that can multi-dot & limited myself to the classics. But, regardless, my point is that noone splits their damage in the way improved scorch would force you to.
When they multidot, their primary target doesn’t change, nor does the damage on their primary target drop massivly. Usually the multi-dotting is limited to 1-2 dots/debuffs, that last 15-30 seconds, do decent damage on their own or are even their hardest hitting abilities (e.g. rogue/feral finisher move), and pretty often have extra bonus effects (e.g. generating extra insanity/energy/rage/etc. via the dots or effects that trigger based on dots such as shadow apparitions.). This often means you are easily doing 5-15% more damage per target you can maintain your dots on (compared to just single target), without your priority target dropping a whole lot. And all that, at very little effort, sometimes even with no real effort, like DH who did it without ever really needing to switch targets.
But that isn’t what improved scorch is. Improved scorch is a “mere” 12% damage increase, which is only going to affect ignite on the target you’re not currently focusing. Which practically means it’s only like a 1-2% damage increase per secondary target you maintain it on. And the with it’s short duration, you’ll need to be switching constantly, and are effectivly splitting your damage over all 3 targets more or less evenly, because you simply can’t cast more than one or two spells on one target before you need to switch to maintain the buff.
Normal multidotting leads to a damage spread that looks like 90, 5, 5 with 3 targets, and potentially even improves your single target damage by giving extra procs/resources. Maintaining improved scorch leads to a spread that looks like 33, 33, 33 with 3 targets, and has no benefit other than the ignite cleave being slightly better.
Your doing it all wrong. Your gonna be overwriting ignites (not sure if thats still a thing tbh).
Macro mouseover for scorch, just try and mantain it on target 2 with the odd mouseover every 7 secs. Very difficult gameplay and very little reward. Maybe they should increase the time on it? What do you think?
Bone chilling definately worth keeping up on 2 targets with splitting ice though, thats gonna be intense.
Scorch has something like a 1.5s cast time.
Assuming you consistently follow it up with an instant pyro, that’s 2.5-3.5 seconds filled.
Doing 2 scorches + 2 pyro is 6-7 seconds filled.
Hitting the 2nd target every 7 seconds or so with scorch is pretty much equivalent to constantly switching targets. Even with a mouseover macro.
Honestly; just make it more like the vanilla or WoTLK versions of improved scorch;
A debuff that lasts a decent amount of time & that isn’t attached to a filler spell.
That’s all that’s needed to remove the major complaints I have.
The only advantage bone-chilling has is that it’s a personal buff, so at least you don’t have to worry about multiple targets. But similarly, it shouldn’t be on a filler spell, and it should have a longer duration. And preferably not be 10 freaking stacks. Takes ages to ramp up to full power with 10 stacks.