Pyromancer Class Revamp!
I don’t play PvP, I only play PvE so please disconsider this if you care for PvP.
Hello, it’s no news in Klaipeda’s skies that there’s a lot of people complaining about the way that the Pyro class works on this game. I came here with a text that is meant to be two things. First, just a dream, because I have no serious hope of these changes being implemented, or my opinion being listened to, and second but not less important, a suggestion, because even if I’m hopeless I’m also a fool and I had fun theorycrafting this and I believe that nothing will change if we don’t at least try.
My higher leveled character is still near its 180s, I know is not that much, I am aware that we will have to face 200k+ HP mobs when we move forwards, but although this is a fate that I have yet to experience, I will take this in consideration on my following suggestion in a way that makes Pyro still viable but not so ridiculously strong that other classes that were meant to be stronger have they lightspot stolen. This is something hard to measure, should a, example given, Warlock c1 be stronger than Pyro c3 just because it’s a rank 7 class? You need to sacrifice just one circle for WLc1, while you need to sacrifice three circles for Pyro c3 which starts at rank 2. Considering that, I expect some opinions to diverge, and also considering that with the new Rank 8 the powercreep will be even greater, I will try my best to find a balance between both.
These suggestions are taking in consideration the actual state of Pyro skills in iToS as of 09/19/2016, if you are reading this in a far future, you may find some innacurate data. Anything about the skills not mentioned here is assumed to stay the same.
By far the most suggested change from us since the Beta period, which IMC never listened to, is to create an attribute that stops Fireballs from being knocked away. Therefore, I will consider this a NO from IMC and I will use a different approach to try to improve the class. Keep in mind I will try to take in consideration everything that I heard on the forums while doing this, but I will also try to make it so it gets the essence of teamplay in a new and insteresting way.
Fireball:
• remove the attribute Burn Debuff.
• increase the range this skill can be knocked back with an attribute, make it so a player can cast if from far away and throw it at enemies at a safe distance. This attribute will be toggleable.
• add a new explosion attribute, after being thrown, when colliding with an enemy this skill will explode at 50% chance, the explosion will apply all remaining hits (fast, true multi-hits) from fireball at once in a small AoE and vanish. Allies that throw your fireball will have 100% chance to trigger this effect.
Clarification: I believe that if IMC were willing to remove the knockback from this skill it had already plenty of time to do it, and one of the biggest problems with Pyro falling off late game is that, despite its high damage potential, Pyro’s Fireballs are sabotaged by others players, even if unintentionally, and even when they are not, it takes too long to deliver all the damage it is capable of. These changes turn that problem into an advantage, and Pyro benefits more from the teamplay with it. This is also a solution that does not conflict with Linker class, as you will still be capable of linking Fireballs and using them the way we know now, but be aware that the fireball will be gone when the effect of the new attribute is triggered.
Fire Wall:
• duration increases with level, just like Fireball and Cryomancer’s Ice Wall.
• add base damage to this skill, I guess 100 damage per level is neither too weak or strong, considering it has no Overheat and has 45 seconds of cooldown.
• add knockback to this skill, enemies hit, except elite and bosses, will have a 50% chance of being knocked back.
Enchant Fire:
• duration remains the same.
• remove the decreased fire property resistance attribute.
• while maintaining its actual effect, this skill now also increases all Fire element property damage by 1% per level.
• add new attribute which doubles the SP cost of this skill, but makes all Fire element skills from players that have this buff have a 10% chance by attribute level to burn enemies. Max level 4.
• enhance the party buff range of this skill, and add a toggleable option to buff only yourself or also the members of your party that are inside the range, similar to Archer’s Swift Step attribute.
Clarifications: all Fire element skills means that skills outside of the Pyromancer’s tree like Meteor and Prominence will be subject to the effect too.
Flare:
• this skill is only available at circle 2 now.
• change the way this skill works completely and remove all its previous attributes.
• what it does now is reduce the Fire property resistance of monsters hit in an area by 10% per level and your entire party by half that value, with the max level locked at 5.
• now this skill has the visual range of Plague Doctor’s Pandemic at level 1.
• add an attribute to increase its range by 20 per attribute level with a max level of 3.
Clarifications: even if you use Necromancer’s C2 or C3, you cannot level the skill Create Shoggoth past level 5, so this is nothing new, just uncommon.
The reason it affects yourself and your party is to not just make a very good imbalanced braindead skill without downsides. There are times that you will want to use it, and times you won’t. And with a good party they shouldn’t even mind the downsides most of the time. Aukuras increases Fire Property Resistance by a flat 14*3, Safety Zone, Mackangdal, Sterea Stooth, Statue of Goddess Ausrine, Cleric are your friends, pick your poison.
Flame Ground:
• increase the range of this skill considerably at each three levels. Allow it to have a relatively big area at max level.
• add new damage interval attribute that decreases the interval of Flame Ground’s magic circle by 0.3 seconds.
Clarifications: It’s a ground magic circle, this skill will keep not being able to hit flying type enemies, was never meant to, I know that this skill hits takes too long and that 0.3 seconds sounds a very low value, but just look at Cleric’s Cure attribute. I believe it is enough to be good and useful, not as a main damage dealing tool, but as a burn spreading tool on non flying enemies. Contrary to Elementalist’s Frost Cloud skill that is really strong, I am not aware of AoE Attack Ratio limits on this skill, please correct me if I am mistaken, but if that’s really true then it would really be an awesome burn spreading tool, all it needs is a larger radius range.
Fire Pillar:
• reduce the cooldown to 60~75 seconds.
• add new attribute that triples the SP consumption and ignores the magic defense of bosses and elite monsters.
Hell Breath:
• if for some reason the suggested changes in Enchant Fire skill are not implemented, add 30% chance per hit to burn with this skill.
• this skill now increases its range per level, with its actual known range being at level 2.
• add a new attribute that increases resistance to knockback and knockdown by 25% per attribute level, with a max level of 3.
• all hits of this skill will get a 50% bonus directly from your magic attack.
• add base damage to this skill, something similar to Pole of Agony’s damage from lv1 to lv5.
Clarifications: you are still vulnerable to being cancelled by hits, this new attribute complements what Surespell does, it does not replace it. I believe that leaving Hell Breath with Pole of Agony’s lv1~lv5 base damage will be okay, the attributes of Pole of Agony will still allow it to deal more damage and Pole of Agony will keep getting stronger with Circle 2 and 3. Remember that you don’t necessarily have to compete Pyro vs Warlock, with these changes hopefully a build with both classes on the same character, one complementing each other could be viable (think about burn spreaded kills summoning Warlock’s evil spirits for you), or maybe I’m too optimistic and naive. And while Hell Breath will still be a bit weaker than Pole of Agony, it will have a better range and lower cooldown. One is stationary, the other is a channeling skill that requires the user to be locked without performing any other actions. Both have theirs ups and downs, Hell Breath might appear stronger than Pole of Agony if both are only leveled to 5, but remember that PoA can go up to lv10 (lv15 in the future) and Hell Breath leaves you with your SP bar empty at the end, while Warlock still has its evil spirits helping him and has mana to cast more skills without the need to drink a SP potion.
Congratulations for reading this far. What did you guys think?