Searing Words no longer stack with different tiers

[Mandura]

So with these latest changes to RK in U30 the fire RK is back. The problem I noticed though is that the 4 tiers of the Searing Words proc no longer stack with each other, meaning if t0 proc'ed you will not see t1-t3 proc' (depending on your Writ tier) until the t0 expired. This is reducing the damage output for the early stages of combat and also vastly simplifying the rotation as you no longer need to keep track of your Searing Word proc's and can simly tier up Writ as fast as you want.

Is this inablility to stack the different tiers intended? I havent played fire RK in a long time but when I did you could stack all 4 tiers at once.

[Joedangod]

So with these latest changes to RK in U30 the fire RK is back. The problem I noticed though is that the 4 tiers of the Searing Words proc no longer stack with each other, meaning if t0 proc'ed you will not see t1-t3 proc' (depending on your Writ tier) until the t0 expired. This is reducing the damage output for the early stages of combat and also vastly simplifying the rotation as you no longer need to keep track of your Searing Word proc's and can simly tier up Writ as fast as you want.

Is this inablility to stack the different tiers intended? I havent played fire RK in a long time but when I did you could stack all 4 tiers at once.

Change was intended:

Anyhoo, I'm definitely open - in a future pass - to playing more elaborate games with Searing again, but not in any manner that results in long rows of repeat effects on the target. We really need to get away from doing that in the future, both for legibility and for perf reasons.

-Vastin

I did come up with a (hopefully) decent suggestion for how to give us back the tiering gameplay without throwing up more than 1 effect at a time:

So far my brain has come up with the following option:

• Divorce Searing from being based on Writ tier.
• Create a new skill that deals solid damage and cashes out any active Searing Words DoT's on a target. (Can also repurpose a Frost skill for this).
• Fire skills have a 20% chance of proccing a buff for the player that makes the cashout skill tier Searing up instead of removing it. (If Searing isn't present yet the first tier gets applied)
• If the cashout with proc is used on T3 Searing it deals bonus damage (but doesn't refresh or remove Searing).

We don't quite get the same rotation as 105 RK but our end result should be something along the lines of:

• Player monitors their buffs for the proc.
• If proc occurs, they use the cashout skill to tier searing. If they don't have the proc then the cashout skill would remove searing.
• Once at T3 Searing you're still incentivised to focus on fire skills for the burst damage via the cashout rather than mixing lightning into the rotation.

The downside of this approach is that we still end up with fairly heavy usage of writ-ridicule but writ-ridicule spam is arguably better than the ridicule-ridicule spam of the original Searing rotation so...I dunno. I'll also admit that this point:

• If the cashout with proc is used on T3 Searing it deals bonus damage (but doesn't refresh or remove Searing).

Is still a bit of a weak spot, might not actually be any need to prevent it refreshing Searing as giving it bonus damage still gives incentive for monitoring the proc even though max tier has been reached.

But we don't really have any idea as to their plans for fire RK right now.

[Dragofer]

Tbh I had mixed feelings about holding back Writs for Searing procs, back in the 105 days. Writs are like oil for a rotation, especially early on when you need to build all your buffs and debuffs, and the dot from t1 Writ is also worth quite a bit compared to t0 Searing. So you'd want to get t1 Writ fairly quick, but could get a slight edge by shuffling the order of your early skills depending on what happens.

Once you were warmed up, you'd have the choice between Writ-Ridicule or Ridicule-Ridicule waiting for Searing procs:
- in single-target, Writ-Ridicule was faster at (re-)proccing the fire mitigation debuff, which was responsible for something like 30% of your DPS. So that would've been a priority. If you already had that debuff, then you could afford to wait for Searing procs.
- in AoE, cycling through the mob with Ridicule-Ridicule was superior because you'd always hit 3 targets, spreading Searing and debuffs. You'd only tier up Writ once per Combustion to give every mob a chance to get Seared, so apart from that you didn't have to monitor for Writ/Searing tiers in AoE. Exception was if there was a big target in the mix.

So overall, trying to maximise Searing procs was an interesting mechanic, but its dependence on Writ (which had other important uses) made it situational and probably only resulted in a modest advantage on average. Though you could definitely see the difference between starting a fight with either 0 or 4 procs.

[Joedangod]

So overall, trying to maximise Searing procs was an interesting mechanic, but its dependence on Writ (which had other important uses) made it situational and probably only resulted in a modest advantage on average.

In all fairness the advantage was small because you couldn't loop back through and reproc tiers, once you hit T3 writ you were stuck so it only mattered on an opener (and it was rough to use in groups with multiple RK's). If we'd had a writ cashout in place Searing tiering would have been a much, much bigger contributor to damage.