How should incinerate be rebalanced? Vote now

Great, QQ nerf threads...

Did not even open that poll.

Please lock this thread and remove.

"

shaunus wrote:

"

It needs a downside

Having to stay still to get out decent damage when other builds can cast move cast move is a huge downside already.

Not really. I mean, that's the idea behind the design of the skill, but it fails on execution, because the intended downside is virtually nonexistent.

Assuming glvl 20 Spell Echo and Faster Casting, a cast time of 0.07 seconds is virtually assured, and 0.06 is reasonably achievable (~45% cast speed between passive and gear, plus a quality Faster Casting). That means for most players we're looking at 0.7 to 0.85 seconds to go from zero to max Incinerate stacks.

If I was making changes to Incinerate, I wouldn't use any of changes OP listed in the poll. They don't focus on the core problems of charge time for maximum DPS and Eleron jewelry, except for two of them, and those have unnecessary collateral damage in their attempts.

Here are the changes I'd make:
1. The base Incinerate skill now fires four times per cast, much like Lightning Tendrils. Its cast time is increased to 0.8. Mana cost is now 20 at glvl 1 and increases by 1 every odd level thereafter (29 at glvl 20). Eleron jewelry no longer becomes a cost bypass, but this change makes mana sustainment easier for builds which do not use Eleron jewelry (roughly 20% less cost at glvl 20).
2. The system for gaining stacks is changed. Incinerate now grants an invisible non-stacking status when each projectile is fired which last 0.25 seconds (cannot be modified by duration) and grants an Incinerate charge if the Incinerate skill is activated by the player during that time. This changes the interaction with Spell Echo. It is still a valid support and would increase max-stack DPS, but since the echo is not activated by the player, the support gem would actually slow down the rate at which Incinerate charges are gained.

With these changes it would take a more proper 1.6 to 2.1 seconds for non-Echo builds to reach maximum Incinerate charges and 1.8 to 2.5 seconds for Echo builds, properly implementing the intended design.

No changes to damage or damage effectiveness are necessary, nor wise. People use Incinerate for its awesome damage potential at max stacks, it should still have that.

I don't see an option in that vote I would like: "Stop trying to nerf things that work. Buff something that needs buffing instead".

I don't believe incinerate is strong enough to warrant a nerf, overhaul, or adjustment. It's simply popular for budget builds, which gives it a frequency of use bias at the start of new leagues. At top gearing scenarios it's outclassed by spells that scale with crit.

It's also quite bad for pvp, and quite bad vs. mechanics that hurt the player based on their frequency of hits (such as corrupting blood). And yeah, with all the ground based effects, boss projectiles, etc., standing still to cast and build stacks is a definite downside - the fact that you're not locked into standing still (i.e. not forced channeling) doesn't negate the downside, because you still lose significant dps efficiency every time you move. You also can't exactly off-screen with incinerate (it's laughable to use in hall of grandmasters for example, compared to much safer options that trivialize the content).

Beyond budget build efficiency, incinerate is popular because it currently feels good to use - it's responsive and satisfying. If it were adjusted as per ScrotieMcB's proposal, I doubt the skill would continue to be fun to play with (it would feel much less responsive, and would also probably sputter, like lightning tendrils does, but look and sound silly because the skill wasn't quite designed to function like that). And if such an adjustment was made, why would anyone use it over lightning tendrils? (which would have more average damage, more damage effectiveness, less mana cost, equivalent cast time, can crit, can shock, and can aoe natively (whereas incinerate must spend a link on lmp). It would also destroy some of the niche uses of the skill, for example to gain power charges rapidly with romira's banquet.

The real issue is: incinerate is used because it can be effective enough without significant passive/gear investment in scaling damage. This is only a thing now due to the current meta where players competing in new leagues are really building defensively due to the balance of act 4 monsters, high tier map scaling, and the death penalty. The problem is, there are only a few spells that can be sufficient without extensive dps investment (firestorm is one, and it's quite a lot more overpowered because the dps potential of firestorm with top gear is much, much, higher than incinerate). Rather than nerfing incinerate we should be given more options, i.e. more spells that have a comparatively low top-end potential, but that can be effective without an extensive focus on dps. Basically skills that do OK, but scale poorly. And incinerate definitely scales poorly, even if you focus on dps - it's actually quite slow at clearing maps/bosses if you compare it to other spells in mirrored/legacy standard gear.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

Assuming glvl 20 Spell Echo and Faster Casting, a cast time of 0.07 seconds is virtually assured, and 0.06 is reasonably achievable (~45% cast speed between passive and gear, plus a quality Faster Casting). That means for most players we're looking at 0.7 to 0.85 seconds to go from zero to max Incinerate stacks.

Are you sure? Never in all my years has it ever taken less than a couple seconds to reach max stacks. Do you have an incinerate character yourself capable of testing this?

Anyway yeah, if you want incinerate to stop being the go-to skill for a ton of builds, make it work worse with elreon rings. A way to do this without making the skill slower or channelled would be to raise the initial mana cost but have stacks also lessen the mana cost by a %, either to the same mana/s as now or possibly lower to make up for the new higher initial cost.

"

Wooser69 wrote:

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

Assuming glvl 20 Spell Echo and Faster Casting, a cast time of 0.07 seconds is virtually assured, and 0.06 is reasonably achievable (~45% cast speed between passive and gear, plus a quality Faster Casting). That means for most players we're looking at 0.7 to 0.85 seconds to go from zero to max Incinerate stacks.

Are you sure? Never in all my years has it ever taken less than a couple seconds to reach max stacks. Do you have an incinerate character yourself capable of testing this?

I am sure. I briefly leveled an Incinerator (in a Tabula Rasa) to early Merciless in Warbands, before I got bored and eventually deleted him. I can't pull him up now but I know what I saw: cast time 0.07 seconds. Pretty much just Spell Echo and Faster Casting.

Another whine thread about a skill worth using because most of the others spells suck for end game.

Before 2.0 incin was actually not that easy to pull off with high AA being difficult to sustain alongside incin. Then they nerfed the piss out of AA mitigation but buffed its reservation: giving a small flat reservation without the need for insane amount of regen. Now u just need to worry about incin regen without the AA movement drain regen.

As others have mentioned, just look at the top players on ladder and you quickly identify the few dominant skills/builds capable of dealing with endless beyond boss pops every few feet. That does not mean incin needs to be nerfed. Other skills need to be buffed.

"

Vhlad wrote:

I don't believe incinerate is strong enough to warrant a nerf, overhaul, or adjustment. It's simply popular for budget builds, which gives it a frequency of use bias at the start of new leagues. At top gearing scenarios it's outclassed by spells that scale with crit.

While this 'good budget, bad top end' part is very true for PA, and somewhat true for SRS it is not at all true for incinerate.

Look at this guys gear/tree: https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/Alanti/characters

He has 62k tooltip with LMP and over 8k life. That is completely insane.

There's another build with 200k tooltip for single target. That's 800k single target DPS on a spell. Show me any other spell that reaches that kind of DPS.

You would need mirrored gear to achieve those kind of offense:defense stats on other builds, not just spell casters.

You guys think this is people complaining have no idea. Almost everyone at the top of the ladder is playing self cast incinerate or totems. It's going to completely dominate if it's not hammered down to size.

Scrotie: your suggestions would make for interesting mechanics but seem like they're more work and same result as a simple x0.7 multiplication.

"

MatrixFactor wrote:

"

Vhlad wrote:

I don't believe incinerate is strong enough to warrant a nerf, overhaul, or adjustment. It's simply popular for budget builds, which gives it a frequency of use bias at the start of new leagues. At top gearing scenarios it's outclassed by spells that scale with crit.

While this 'good budget, bad top end' part is very true for PA, and somewhat true for SRS it is not at all true for incinerate.

Look at this guys gear/tree: https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/Alanti/characters

He has 62k tooltip with LMP and over 8k life. That is completely insane.

There's another build with 200k tooltip for single target. That's 800k single target DPS on a spell. Show me any other spell that reaches that kind of DPS.

You would need mirrored gear to achieve those kind of offense:defense stats on other builds, not just spell casters.

You guys think this is people complaining have no idea. Almost everyone at the top of the ladder is playing self cast incinerate or totems. It's going to completely dominate if it's not hammered down to size.

Scrotie: your suggestions would make for interesting mechanics but seem like they're more work and same result as a simple x0.7 multiplication.

Top of the 1 month ladder isn't a good indication of anything but the best budget build.

Also only pointing to the very top 1% players of xyz is inherently wrong considering most people really would never reach that level or attempt to. This was like nerfing low-life mirror item crit builds because it was "op." Did that actually balance the game or added any variety?

You need to balance abilities for early-mid-late and then how budget it is ect. Incinerate position in the meta is that it happens to be the best bang for your buck ability at the moment, much like every single other ability they nerfed just like it. (Spectral throw, flameblast, ect ect).

If it needs a nerf have it be a smart one, not something that guts the ability just because it's "popular."

My only thought so far is to decrease the dmg when it gets over lvl 20.