Suggestion: Nerf Searing Flames

Before you reply, read this post in its entirety.


I play an Ele. Not exclusively, but I have one with close to 1 million exp. I have a good knowledge of the class, builds, and skill combinations that work well together.

Searing Flames, in its current state, is over powered.

Yes. Yes it is. Please don't reply with "lrn2play it's not overpoweredded".


Case and Point: I ran Kodonur Crossroads with a friend earlier. I brought my Ele and 2 Ele heroes. I had the same build on each character. Searing Flames was the elite of choice.

We completely obliterated the mission. The only healer in the party was a level 16 Dunkoro.

Later, I ran Ruins of Morah with my Ele team, all heroes / henchmen. Same result. We ran over everyone without any trouble.


This is ridiculous. Will I stop using it? Negative. It's GW on Easy Mode. You get very close to the same result with any class you play, as long as you have Sousuke and Zhed running SF.

No other skill in the game has this type of clearing power. You can easily ruin a small mob of enemies in a few seconds with no exhaustion to worry about, and very very little effort.

I mean, seriously, with the power of this skill, you don't even need Liquid Flames on your skill bar, which most of the now cookie-cutter SF builds use. Just spam SF / GB and you're winning easily.


Yes, I enjoy using SF in PvP and PvE. It's fun to see things die in the blink of an eye. No I do not think it should continue like this.

There are so many things they could do to nerf this skill, I just hope that if they do, they don't make it another useless Ele Elite that gets replaced with Elemental Attunement.

One idea for an SF nerf: Just make it cause exhaustion. At least you'll have to monitor your spamming a little, or you'll be down to 12 energy in no time, with 5 minutes of waiting for your full pool to be back.


Please sign if you enjoy easy-mode, but also agree that it's time to make this a realistic skill rather than God Mode for Elementalists.

There have been many nerf SF threads around that normally ended up with the same result. i never tried multiple copy's of SF in PvE so i'm not sure how easy it would be "roll" over everything, i much prefer a balanced build as i have been killed easily by anti-casters later on in nightfall.

but even with a nerf how would you do that without destroying the skill, and like you said make it like most other ele elites.

If they were to add exhaustion to it then it would instantly be removed from my build,some other suggestions have been to increase recharge or cast time, many people have said this would ruin the skill aswell, although it would not affect me at all if they did that.

Dark

well i just think that they should increase recharge and energy cost to 8 and 10 respectively, meaning it becomes a lot easier to handle and not so spammable..

energy cost is 15 currently, so you would be decreasing the cost.

Lol...
You run around with 2 ele heroes, have all three of you equip SF and the you claim it's overpowering?
Never been in a Barrage team have you?
So becoz 5 rangers spam Barrage the skill is suddenly overpowered?
Necro spike teams who all have healtsteal skills are suddenly overpowered?
Oh wait lets nerf Vampiric Gaze and Shadow Strike...

Sorry but your comment is moot

Searing Flames isn't overpowered, it's the general elementalist that's UNDERpowered

No, it's not. Nothing has the damage output that Searing Flames does when you factor in Cost and Time.

5 Barrage Rangers in a group, vs 5 SF Ele's in a group would lose. Very, very fast.

its only overpowered in, say, HA because less experienced players huddle next to each other. if you watch high rankers, they keep a nice buffer zone between themselves.

In pve, smeh, everything is abusable lol. SS, they're on fire for whole party life barrier, etc etc

Edit: haha no the rangers would win, 100 armor vs ele :P

Every skill is more or less owerpowered when you uppen the numbers.

Im not seeing the issue and im a ele primarily with 2.5 million experience, 100% and protector on all 3 continents, and all 3 end game 15k armors!

Does that mean I win? Bragging aside.

Its about time Ele's actually had a spell which did mass damage, was fast to cast and didnt cause exhaustion.

Searing flame is no different to about 10 other elemental spells, which do exactly the same thing. Does that mean we nerf them too?

Flame birst,
Immolate,
Inferno (goes up to 114 dmg),
Lava font,
Savanha heaet,
Searing heat (virtually identical),
Starburst,
Teinai's Heat.

But you're on about an elite spell, so its intended to be strong. Elementals have been nerfed beyond belief and yet they still have major issues like exhaustion.

Plus if your going to give everyone of your Heroes the same elite spell or any spelll, then obviously its going to make the game easier if you all activate it at the same time.

How is that a surprise? What did you expect to happen?

Its like when I was playing FA in cantha the other way. The entire Kuzack team was full of Elementals. We got our ass's kicked big time due to the mass AoE constantly.

If you combine an entire team of elemental mass damage spells, then its obviously going to over power you. But thats obviously just good team building on your part.

Anet has already over compensated by making Nightfall far harder then it should have been. To take away one of our few advantages is just insain.

Sorry

/notsigned

Playing as a SF ele gives you nearly zero utility. You have to spec all out in fire, and dedicate at least half your skillbar to using one skill.

So yes, it's powerful, but hardly imbalanced. Warriors can still smoke eles and single target damage, as can sins. Rangers can B/P and enjoy heavy AoE damage with endless meat shields. Minion Masters pretty much roll over any area in the game with corpses. Why would you want to nerf one of the more underpowered classes in GW?

Ok.. I see a lot of comments I don't really agree with.. Let me explain why

First of all, All heroes having the same elite or normal spell (let's say elite to make it interesting) and activating them at the same time does not make a game easy.. For example, when all my eles (primary and secondary) cast Master of Magic Elite (For 20 seconds, whenever you cast a Spell, you gain 0...2 Energy for each recharging Skill that does not share this Spell's attribute.) This does not mean I'll have a walk in the park.. I still need to work my behind of in order to take the baddies down, obviously

Second, a big group with a lot of AoE damage is not good building.. It is overpowered unless people know how to play the game properly (position yourself widely, bring damage reduction (prot spirit? ), disrupt casting of AoE, numerous simple solution to AoE..

And third, Nightfall to hard? Don't make me laugh.. I've seen you are experienced (with all 3 titles) but nightfall is not hard, at all... It is a cakewalk, even with a class like dervish I finished the game in a few (4 to be precise) days.. The only hard part is the gate of madness, which has been discussed endlessly on this site (and many many others ) and which is totally doable if you set your team up properly..

Fish, this is not an intended flame, I respect your contribution, but some of your comments just made no sens to me at all..

As for SF being overpowered.. It is a bit powerfull, but not to powerfull Everything that is used in a nice combo, well organized group can make an impact, so that should lead to more major nerfing, something I am not looking forward too

It's not the barragers that do the damage in a b/p team, it's the Orders necro.

...As for it creating a PvE "easy mode", you can create the same effect by setting up your heroes as a Barrage team (including an Orders as per above)... Or simply by giving one of them a Minion Master build!

Most people are underestimating the true power of hero teams simply because they haven't tried builds with internal synergy.

LOL, i loved that. Kudos.
I like to think of it this way:
On a single ele, Searing flames is all the effects of Searing Heat balled up into a 1 second cast. You're right, it's GW on easy mode.
Step 1: Add ele heroes.
Step 2: press C.
Step 3: Press Ctrl+12121212.
Step 4: Watch the end mission cutscene.

I personally have no problem with using broken/exploitable builds in PvE, it isn't hurting anybody, and everybody can win. I am more concerned with its abusage in PvP. I've seen it on observe, and I've GvG'd against full SF teams which roll us in seconds, no matter how much damage prevention we have.

The fact is that searing flame eles take up more slots in GvG than monks do. I am not exaggerating. Each "balanced" team runs at least 1-2 SF eles. Why? Because their damage is so much higher than any other build in existance that it would be stupid to run anything else.

I've seen some idiotic, rediculous skills since GW has come out. None of them match the killing power of searing flames. I think Isaiah was smoking when he put that damage on SF.

(side note, I think he was also smoking when he put "41" instead of "14" on scythe damage.)

I want to say that I havent made up my mind about Searing Flames yet. But I do have to say that sometimes it's not that a skill is overpowered but that it's too easy to use. Maybe those are the same thing but I'm seeing very little effort being used to use SF effectively.

One final thing.

If you want to see visually how broken searing flames is, go to your local rune trader and look up superior fire magic. Before nightfall it was 100g.

lets face it

S.F.

do

1) Big aoe burning.
2) Big aoe damage
3) 2 second reacharge.
4) only 1 second cast

- you can work around the energy cost. so it dont controbalance it.

now tell me one elite skill who are so good. not only a ele skill , on all prefession...

SF is overpowered... not as much as people think though... if the elementalist wasn't underpowered, this probably wouldn't be considered so overpowered. It definitely needs a small nerf... not enough to cripple the skill, but enough to make it a little less spammable.

did you noticed ever skill you wrote have

1) higher casting time
and - or
2) higher recharge time
and - or
3) less radius
and - or
4) higher energy cost.

the fact is elite dont conpensate it.

S.F. essentially does 147 fire damage every 2 seconds to target foe AND nearby foes (once you take burning into account). I'm not sure any other elites are quite that powerful... fortunately.