Initial Feedback - 7.2 Fire Artifact Traits

#1 - Jan. 22, 2017, 5:39 p.m.

Pre-Ignited: Increases the duration of Combustion by 1 sec.

At a glance, it would seem that extending our main class cooldown would be a nice DPS increase. With the changes in 7.1.5 to dramatically reduce mastery associated with Combustion, this is much less compelling. Add on top of this that optimal use of Combustion requires you to bank instant cast spells (Phoenix Flames and Fire Blast) and you completely run out of instant casts in the 10s period. Extending this would mean the last few seconds would be hardcasts, contributing much less to the building of a large ignite during Combustion. This also synergizes worse with Rune of Power, which only has a 10s duration.

Suggestion: Use this talent to give back a small amount of the burst combustion had in 7.1, e.g:

Pre-Ignited: Increases mastery granted from critical strike by 5% during Combustion.

4 ranks would be 20%, bringing us to 70% mastery and bringing back some burst. This could be easily tuned.

Phoenix's Warmth: Phoenix Flames has a chance to grant X% critical strike chance to you and the four nearest allies.

This is an interesting concept, although it seems more useful in small group content than raid content. It also adds an element of RNG to large groups, as far as who gets buffed when everyone is stacked. This feels like it should just be a personal buff or just changed to something else.

Suggestion:

Phoenix's Warmth: Phoenix Flames has a chance to grant you 10% critical strike chance for 15 seconds.

Strafing Run: Phoenix Flames chains to an additional 2 targets.

I'm not sure that AOE only would be fitting for a trait that should be pure throughput. Maybe a small addition:

Strafing Run: Phoenix Flames chains to an additional 2 targets. If no additional targets are in range, Phoenix Flames deals 100% increased damage.

#2 - Jan. 23, 2017, 2:12 a.m.

Tuning on the datamined 7.2 traits is very preliminary and/or nonexistent at the moment. I don't doubt there is a point at which additional duration on Combustion could add the correct amount of DPS for an artifact trait, even if that turns out to be a higher amount than 1s due to Combustion being less bursty than it was in 7.1.

Phoenix's Warmth--we are considering changing the mechanic on this and similar artifact traits to something other than "nearest allies", so it doesn't feel like it's inducing some complicated positioning puzzle in raids that are trying to optimize DPS. That said, it will still likely feel random to an extent (in fact, it may well be "four random nearby allies").