Hey Devs, hey people

First of all: I'm happy that the RK got some interesting changes on BR (hoarfire cycle buff, the new raid sets, dot puls changes) to allow him to compete in the champ/hunter meta. I want to talk about these changes and give you feedback on how it actually works or let's say not work. Also i want to adress some thoughts on quality of life changes and some bugs i noticed. i end up with a summarize and outlook.


1. Changes to Scathing Mockery & Writ of Fire Dot Duration descrease + more pulses:

You dont push the RK dps with this change!

Scathing mockery (21s dot duration, 20s CD, 3s Induction) has the longest induction of all fire skills, therefore you want to combine it always with essay of fire "no induction buff"(CD 10s, induction 2s). The shorter cooldown of SM forces you to use every essay of fire with SM. At the first look it seems like a good fit but lets take a closer look how much time you actually have between two SMs:

Essay into first SM, 10 s CD of Essay, 1,2-1,8s Induction Essay (depens on self induction speed buffs) into any other Fire skill of choice because SM is stil on CD puts Essay on CD again for 10s, 1,2-1,8s Induction Essay again into second SM: 22,4-23,6s
-> You have even with perfect timing* on Essay of fire SM not up for about 3 seconds. If you use SM without Essay youll shoot yourself in the leg by casting 2-3 seconds.

*Perfect timing means you always cast Essay when it just comes up. This is practically NOT doable. Due to other skills inductions, CDs and mainly because one of your main Damage skills: Smouldering Wrath is a channeling cast (up to 5,5s) with a Cooldown.
If the main reason to change the dot pulses and duration of scathing mockery was to increase the dps, you'll have to increase the duration of SM back to around 42s and keep the pulse rate.

2. Quality of life changes:

2.1 Flurry of Words
With the LI change and a new tracery for Frost Skills Duration and Vulnarabilty increase (+2,2% inc crit on golden tracery) + the Setboni Hoarfire Cylce (Red) and buffing -10% inc damage (blue) the skill becomes a must use skill for dps and Heal Rks. It finally puts a blue RK into the same offensive buffing light as Heal Beorns and Minis while healing. The main issue with flurry is that you place it always where you stand. It forces the Rk to move right into the most dangerous spots so you often end up dont using it. Please think about making flurry of words a target grounded skill like the runestones (maxed out fulgurit / flame runestone) so you dont have to walk into melee to place it.

2.2 Hoarfire Cylce Buff
The Hoarfire Cycle Buff tiers up but is always named the same. Please add something like a T1-T3 description to make it easier to track.

2.3 Heraldrics for red RKs
The new LIs put the Damage RK in a low morale spot because of a lack of defensive alternative heraldric. Every DD nowadays slotted a the defensive mastery + main stat + vitality heraldric, but the RK only has a defensive heraldric with outgoing heal so the rk is forced to use the offensive heraldric which lacks in comparison to other dps heraldrics 5k vitality per LI! Please make a defensive Heraldry with mastery vitality and will.

2.4 Mending Verse Healing over Time
With Golden traceries the hot of mending verse lays around 6-7k which is on a tank with 2 million morale really low. pls consider making this skill more benefital.

3. Bugs

3.1 Healing Set Bonus is still bugged. You only buff yourself with -10% incoming damage but your allies dont get the frostarmour buff.
3.2 [Cleansing Flame line: Afterburn (+5% Increasing Fire Damage over time per Skillpoint) doesnt affect Smouldering Wrath.] edit: no bug (thanks fureo)


4. Summarize and outlook:
I dont want to dive too deep into this but if you want to, message me about this:
For me the red RK doesnt have to be in the same dps range as hunters and champs since the RKs always offered different defensive benefits in the past. These were
1. Do not fall this day (which effectiveness was reduced due to revive limit - sure it kinda tricks the mechanic but overall every battle rezz got devalued by this + LI change: Target is revived with less morale)
2. Overall defensive damage dealer: Selfmotivation (got negativly effected by the LI system because you dont actually have space to slot the tracery and the use of the needed skillpoints is questionable if you want to play with yellow buffs) + the fact that as a RK you always got to the tactical mititagion cap quite easy because will on nearly every armour or jewellry piece gave you a decent portion of tact mit. Without the need of slotting tact mits (like hunters,champs,wardens) you could easily push your morale by slotting vita essences when everything else is capped ofc. but without having new vita essences the only path is to slotting physical mit. (so please keep the vita essences )
3. LI Heraldrics mentioned above

-> RK is at an interesting point where he develop into a more defensive healer by providing -inc damage and debuffing (maybe add better debuffs on winter skills? chilling rhetoric is useless and tbh essence of winter too). red rk can develop into a glascannon as it was long time ago or into a defensive damage dealer but even then he needs adjustments to actually be relevant, maybe like this:
simply buff RK Damage flat by 10-30% and adjust it in the next updates



Thanks for reading and keep up the good work so far,
Spinoza



TLR:
1. New SM messes up rotation, fix it by increasing duration and keeping the dot pulses
2. Make flurry of words a target grounded skill like other runestones to avoid walking into dangerous areas
3. hoarfire cycle buff different tiers should have different buff descriptions
4. make a defensive heraldry for red rks with mastery, more vitality, will
5. take a look at mending verse hot
6. fix the Blue raid set boni
7. [fix afterburn so it affects smouldering wrath] edit: no bug (thanks fureo)

I'm playing my RK for nearly 15 years now. So please dont rate this thread as a usual whining about someones class is not op enough without any further thoughts on it :-) .