Ignite

As far as I know, Ignite currently triggers whenever you crit with fire damage or with the Chance to Ignite support gem, and it deals damage over 4 seconds.

However, if you ignite the enemy again the old ignite is replaced, thus negating any additional damage. This problem is really evident with fast hitting skills(such as Firestorm), and actually make investing into cast speed more like a drawback than a bonus.

My suggestion is to make Ignite stack:
Whenever an already ignited enemy is about to be ignited again, add the old, undealt damage to the damage that the new ignite is supposed to do.

Not to mention that Ignite could also use a duration reduction, since most enemies die within 4 seconds anyway.

There's a reason fire damage is associated with strength and not dexterity - this behavior is intentional, I think, where only the highest-damage burn is applied at any given time. Think of it this way: you can't make a candle burn twice as fast by holding a lit match up next to the wick.

(original example: lit match, meet bonfire)

Real-life examples in a fantastic game are pretty idiotic, don't you think? :P
Anywho, if I have an ignite that deals 100 damage, and right after that one that deals 10, the one that deals 10 is kept, not 100(as far as I know).

So maybe don't rely on burn damage when you're using fast-hitting skills? That should become less of a problem when there are more fire skills in the game.

I really don't think the concept should be changed much. I like that there's the potential for natural variations that flow on from your choice of skills, like perhaps fire witches will have less of a tendency to use faster cast gems, instead using that slot for something else.

If you want to cast quickly and get full benefit from it, there are plenty of other skills you can use (ice, lightning, and whatever other damage spells might arrive).

No, Gus, that's a horrible argument. Fire crit effect must suck because its flavorful and special?

The hell?

You can't AVOID spamming fast fire crits as a spellcaster. To do so is to ignore a full 2/3rds of your damage scaling.

Yeah, but then why did the developers designed fast hitting fire skills such as Firestorm, which make Ignite completely useless? :P

GGG can't do everything at once. Ignite effect balance is on low priority right now AFAIK.

Yeah, there's no hurry for it to be balanced, Fire is still very much viable ;)

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konfeta wrote:

No, Gus, that's a horrible argument. Fire crit effect must suck because its flavorful and special?

The hell?

You can't AVOID spamming fast fire crits as a spellcaster. To do so is to ignore a full 2/3rds of your damage scaling.

I didn't say, nor do I mean, that burn "must suck". I just think the concept of fire causing a non-stackable damage over time effect is fine. With the concept in place you can change things around that.

I just think making it stackable essentially makes it almost not there as an effect at all - it's just more damage added with each spell-cast. I mean Illedran specifically says the problem is with hitting something fast, repeatedly. My thinking is "Well why are you trying to hit fast, repeatedly, with what you know to be a non-stacking damage over time effect? How do you expect that's going to turn out?" To me it seems like a strategy failure as much as anything else.

Or rather, something that I'd like to be possible as a strategy failure. I know it's not, at the moment - like you say, Illedran, fire is viable as is. And like you say, konfeta, at the moment casting more slowly is a massive damage loss in all cases. But I'd prefer that was changed, so that it's possible for burn to be a significant part of a skill's damage, even the major part on some spells. (perhaps you could encourage this by first increasing burn damage if necessary, then upping the crit chance but penalising crit damage on some fire skills? I don't know)

Basically I think it would be entirely healthy for the game if it was considered okay for different types of damage to encourage different types of gameplay, rather than just everyone stacking as much fastcast as they can and spamming the hell out of everything regardless of what "everything" consists of.

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GusTheCrocodile wrote:

"Well why are you trying to hit fast, repeatedly, with what you know to be a non-stacking damage over time effect? How do you expect that's going to turn out?"

Well, you know, we have Fireball, which is not really AoE, unless you have Multiple Projectiles, and Firestorm, which lands a fireball each 0.12-0.15 seconds. There are not really many other choices for AoE fire. Not to mention that since crits are calculated per cast(not sure), enemies are damaged 8 times by Firestorm, but only the damage of one single Ignite(the last one) is kept.