Fire / Herald of Ash lackluster

Herald of Ash deals ~20% of overkill damage as IGNITE damage over 3s in a small 1m AOE radius.

Scenario:
1000hp mob.
1200hp dmg dealt.
Herald of Ash explosion goes off.
20% of 200 (40dmg) is applied as ignite dot over 3 seconds (~13 dps).
Consumes the ONLY ignite dot slot. (Enemies can only have 1 ignite on them).

Does 0 DPS if enemy is already ignited by a stronger ignite, which is 99% of the time for people running Herald of Ash.

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Lets look at Herald of Ice.

Kill freezing mob = 100% attack damage based on affixes from your weapon as 1.4m AOE explosion.
If you have lightning etc on your weapon, Herald of Ice can shock (lol).

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Two fold problem exists where alternate elements have stronger ailments.

Cold = Chill = Freeze (Instant reward, all skills synergise)
Lightning = Shock = Electrocute (Instant reward, all skills synergise)
Fire = Ignite (1 instance only per mob, 0 synergy, skills fighting with each other over ignite dominance).

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Please look at reworking fire / ignite / herald of ash.

Yeah. Ignite (and everything related to it) is in a bad place right now. As you said, every instance of Ignite is fighting against the other. You cannot stack anything, it doesn't burn for longer (like Bleeding does, I think) and the damage is usually pretty low unless the Hit damage is very high and one has high magnitude (just like any other DoT in the game, basically).

Ignite has many drawbacks, and almost no benefit compared to other DoT.

Now, Herald of Ash feels lackluster indeed, and it's because Ignite isn't that great and because HoA does not hit / does no damage per se. HoA should hit for some amount of damage and also do full damage as ignite or something like that. Even full damage as a hit (20% of the overkill damage) wouldn't be terribly OP. It certainly woudn't trigger a chain reaction kill unless you overkill a big mob surrounded by crap mobs.

Even if it did no damage per se, having it Hit could open up more support options. Right now, it's not great at all IMO.

+1

+1

All heralds = cheap design for braindead gameplay.
Must be removed from the game.

+1
I really don't know how can a designer combine:
slowest attack speed, slowest movementspeed,poor fire mech,poor armor and poor health in a class
yes,the warrior!

"

Azimuthus#1135 wrote:

All heralds = cheap design for braindead gameplay.
Must be removed from the game.

I don't know that they're going to remove them, but I do expect e.g. Herald of Ice to get nerfed heavily in the upcoming balance patch. Herald of Ash might go relatively untouched in that patch if it's not as easily abused, but I would very surprised if GGG don't reign in Herald skills in general. Temporarily disabling Heralds while they undergo a complete re-work might also be on the table.

I also expect Warriors to get a lot of attention in that upcoming patch, BTW. Warriors do have a lot of balance issues right now, and I do think GGG are well aware of the problems at this point.

Also herald of ash doesn't have good support gems.