Blaze Wizard is so close to be an absolutely perfect class, and just needs a few small things to bring her there!
Needs:
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An alternate teleport that levels up with Flashfire, current Flashfire is still kept around as is, the alternate teleport would function exactly like Evan's current teleport with fiery visual and audio effects.
A normal reactive teleport would really help with bossing, plus working like Evan's teleport allows Blaze Wizard to teleport one time while in the air for repositioning purposes and can now instantly teleport back to the ground as well when needed.
Most importantly, Blaze Wizard still keeps her current teleport as well! The new teleport would be entirely an additional skill to use for those that desire a more standard teleport to use.
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Salamander's Mischief gets revamped into a skill that is a toggle that is always active and attacks in a similar way that it does now when Blaze Wizard attacks.
When the Salamander attacks, Blaze Wizard gains an Ember that grants +1% Final Damage for Salamander's Mischief and +2 Magic Attack for 15 seconds, up to 30 times for +30% Final Damage for Salamander's Mischief and +60 Magic Attack for 15 seconds.
This is annoying to use as an active and by making it into a toggle skill instead will help save a key bind slot by 1 and make Salamander's Mischief feel better with always having a cute salamander summon by your side!
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Flame Barrier updated into a skill where it blocks up to 5 deliberating status effects per cast with an infinite duration, when 5 effects are blocked then it goes on cooldown for 180 seconds.
Makes this more useful and creates an ease of use on the player in the same way the Explorer Mages' deliberating status effect skills work.
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Fires of Creation duration increased to infinite from 300 seconds.
When you summon the Lion, you remain in Lion Mode; when you summon the Fox, you remain in Fox Mode. This will just create a very minour improvement to the ease of play for Blaze Wizard, but a small annoyance of needing to re-apply Fox/Lion Mode every so often is still is an annoyance after multiple hours of gameplay later that does not need to be here.
Wants:
Flame Bite (1st Job Attack), Flame Vortex (2nd Job Attack), and Flame Tempest (3rd Job Attack) are all skills that are completely useless and never get used even when you are within the level range of 1st/2nd/3rd job advancements and really wish these skills got something done to them to make them useful back with the Cygnus Revamp in the Ignition Update.
How I would change them would be add on some kind of cooldown and make them all toggle skills that when active will automatically apply when Orbital Flame gets used (similar to how the new skill gets used with Orbital Flame VI).
Two different directions to go with these skills: They can either move Blaze Wizard into a damage dealing mage or help turn Blaze Wizard into more of a support mage, and I will offer ideas for both directions.
The following ideas are all toggle skills that passively get used when Orbital Flame gets used when that skill is available.
Support Direction:
~ Flame Bite:
Deals damage to monsters and heals party members and self for 10% HP.
Cooldown: 1 second. (Affected by cooldown resets.)
~ Flame Vortex:
Deals damage and knock-back monsters and grants 10% damage reduction, includes attacks that deal % HP damage, to party members and self for 4 seconds [increased further with buff duration].
Cooldown: 8 seconds. (Affected by cooldown resets.)
~ Flame Tempest:
Deals damage and knock-back monsters and causes party members and self to be invincible for 1 second [increased further with buff duration].
Cooldown: 15 seconds. (Affected by cooldown resets.)
Support direction would be the best option as it gives Blaze Wizard more of a purpose and becomes more desirable for party play, plus it ensures Blaze Wizard's damage stays mostly the same to avoid damage creep.
Damage Dealer Direction:
~ Flame Bite:
Deals damage to monsters.
Cooldown: 0.5 second. (Affected by cooldown resets.)
~ Flame Vortex:
Deals damage to monsters and applies a debuff that causes Orbital Flame to deal 10% increased Final Damage for 10 seconds. [No longer knock-backs monsters]
Cooldown: 5 seconds. (Affected by cooldown resets.)
~ Flame Tempest:
Deals damage to monsters and causes Blaze Wizard to take 80% less damage, including attacks that deal % HP damage, for 2 seconds. [No longer knock-backs monsters]
Cooldown: 10 seconds. (Affected by cooldown resets.)
Additional Want:
Controlled Burn to make it useful by turning it into a support skill for the active portion, three different ideas for it:
1. Restores 100% MP for self and party members.
Cooldown decreased to 10 seconds.
2. Grants a shield for 15 seconds [increased further with buff duration] to self and party members equal to 100% of Blaze Wizard's MP.
Cooldown increased to 90 seconds.
3. Heals self and party members equal to 100% of Blaze Wizard's MP.
Cooldown reduced to 5 seconds.
Comments
Keeps the class more unique and forces players to play a different style. If you just give every class the same stuff they all become the same and mediocre.
Disagree, this skill is not annoying and fits perfectly into your burst rotation. If you find it annoying you're playing the class wrong. (Or playing with 2m classes who should have all been made into 90s classes imo to sync with 3m classes but Nexon won't work this hard.)
Though I don't think turning it into a toggle would change too much so I wouldn't really care if this was changed either.
Disagree on this for the same reason I disagree on teleport. Instead just reduce the CD to 90s or 45s so it can be used once/twice per burst cycle.
Fully agree on this, there's no real reason for this to be anything except a toggle.
Agree that these skills are useless unless you just really don't like using orbital flame during these level ranges.
I don't fully agree on the direction you have here, I'd personally rather see a lean-in to the phoenix idea and have BW skills be more reactive than active.
Something along the lines of you put a buff on a party member that begins healing them after they take a hit, up to x# hits, with a 45 or 90s CD with a similar duration.
Similar to the way the Explorer link skill works but without the need to drop all the way down to 15% HP.
Possibly a revive skill that allows you to die for another party member, with some mechanic to prevent yourself from losing a life, on a toggle so you can just leave it off if you'd rather not. (similar to Dark Knight's iframe and how Final Pact used to work.)
I could agree with a damage reduction skill for BW but I think it has to be more unique than just casting it or standing in an area the way many other classes work.
Perhaps something along the lines of every x# of hits you gain a damage reduction for the next hit, again leaning into the phoenix idea that death/damage leads to rebirth.