User:Kraak

Class Summary

Fire Elemental Lord is a damage momentum class, focusing on ramping up damage output through continuous, efficient offense while hindering the opponent's offense and preventing escape. Two resources, Spark and Brand, increase damage output and can be consumed for additional effects like hinder, balanceless curing, instant damage, or short periods of massive damage output.

Skills

Ignition -

Recommended Learning Order

Ignition is fully trained upon gaining the class, so there is no class skill learning order.

Stats

Fire Lord's combat damage isn't increased by any stats. Constitution will increase survivability.

Traits

Like dragons, elemental lords can't take nimble or quick-witted. Robust is useful for survivability, and Health Inspector provides additional health information during a fight, as Gauge can't be used while off-balance.

Important Equipment

Fire Lords can use the Shield of Absorption and cloth armour for Paragons. No other equipment is relevant, though mushroom sigils can be useful for escaping as Flashpoint is blocked by monolith on both ends.

Basic Combat Strategy

The basic combat plan for Fire Lord is to use Char to build up Spark and Brand, Latency to strip the Temperance defense, and flamewhip to stick sensitivity. With Temperance stripped, sensitivity stuck, and stacked Spark and Brand, you can use Explosion along with Smoulder or Nova to kill from high health ranges, often catching opponents off guard. The sections below go into detail on each of these components of the strategy.

Spark

Spark is increased by offensive abilities, and has four levels. Each level slightly increases your damage output. Spark will slowly decrease while you're not attacking Some abilities, such as Brand and Conflagrantweave, cost Spark to use and require a minimum Spark level. Most importantly, you can use Primalwill for additional effects on your standard abilities, by appending INVOKE (e.g. IGNITE WEAVE &TAR INVOKE). Note that while Primalwill abilities cost varying amounts of Spark, you always need maximum Spark to use them. Primalwill abilities are listed below in order of importance.

Most Important, Always Useful

Conflagrantweave reduces the balance recovery after using the ability. The ability's already extremely useful hinder, and reducing the balance only makes it better for racing an opponent's momentum.

Slough makes the ability balanceless, though it still requires balance and equilibrium to use. Balanceless slough can be used immediately before another ability, allowing you to avoid locks or slow enemy affliction momentum without hindering your own momentum.

Important

Smoulder does additional damage. Primarily you use this with Explosion to get the additional damage from ablaze on the target. With full Spark and Brand, and sensitivity stuck, Explosion plus Primalwill Smoulder can kill at 60% health or more.

Situational

Blister knocks balance and prevents non-standard healing abilities. Can be useful if an opponent is relying on them.

Lasso knocks balance. May be useful if an opponent is constantly flying.

Comet stuns.

Unknown or not useful

Char Flamewhip Pyroflare

Brand

Brand is your other key resource. Applying Brand requires three Spark and consumes one, but the ability also gives one Spark, cancelling out the cost. Once applied, there's a short windup before the Brand activates, based on the enemy's health. Char, Flamewhip, and Smoulder increase Brand, while sipping health lowers it. Like Spark, it can stack four times. Sipping health while the Brand is at 1 reduces it to zero, and two more sips are required to remove it completely. Another attack at zero returns it to one, regardless of how many times they've sipped at zero. In practice, it's impossible to completely remove Brand while you're in the room and attacking.

Each stack reduces the opponent's fire resistance, but the primary use is consuming it with Latency and Explosion for additional effects based on the number of stacks. Both of these abilities are balanceless and can be used alongside a standard ability.

Latency consumes the Brand to increase your power for a short window. One stack strips the Temperance defense (Frost elixir) and prevents re-applying it for 10 seconds, two makes the next health sip not reduce Brand, and three instantly re-applies Brand at level one. Stripping Temperance is how you stick sensitivity and reach your kill window, but re-applying Brand is also critical to avoid having to use Ignite Brand during your Latency window.

Explosion deals damage based on the number of stacks. One stack applies ablaze, two stacks applies blackout, and three strikes applies stun. This is used for damage and ablaze for Smoulder; the other effects are nice to have. You can't regenerate the Brand off of Explosion. Typically Explosion is part of your execute, to push the opponent into Nova range or kill them instantly with Smoulder.

Other Important Abilities

Flamewhip is a basic attack that applies sensitivity if the opponent is below 75% health, and paralysis and sensitivity below 50% or when Temperance is missing. You want to use this to stick sensitivity once Latency has stripped Temperance; it can also be useful after a Starburst before the opponent's had a chance to sip Frost. Once sensitivity is stuck, go back to Char to apply clumsiness and make kelp a 50/50 to cure sensitivity. Note that sensitivity strips deafness before it applies. This means you must use Flamewhip at least twice to stick sensitivity. Calamine and hawthorn give deafness, so after the first Flamewhip watch for calamine and hawthorne. If they eat just before your next balance, then sensitivity will be stuck on the next Flamewhip, as they'll only have herb balance to cure paralysis before you start using Char again.

Comet is used for chasing the opponent when they're trying to evade you. Fire Lord is a pure momentum class, so allowing them to escape will completely reset your offense. Comet will automatically catch the opponent if they're in line of sight within (three) rooms. Moving out of line of sight or crossing an area boundary will break it, so it's important to pick your battlefield carefully. Try to avoid fighting near area boundaries or forking paths. If you must, an icewall between you and the fork will force them to use balance to move, allowing you to catch them with Comet before they can get out of line of sight. Note that you need to be in your Crucible (see below) or have a firewall between you and the opponent to use this, but the Crucible will follow you. See also the section on option-selects below.

Blister applies the blisters timed affliction, which adds a delay to movement and deals damage when the opponent successfully moves. This further helps you keep the opponent in the room with you, and is especially powerful against multi-room movement abilities like Dash and Wavesurge. Each room will apply the damage, so a big movement ability can deal massive damage and potentially kill the opponent outright.

Crucible creates a room effect with several benefits. The ablaze affliction will deal its first tick of damage instantly, before the opponent can cure it. You can use Hearth to teleport to your Crucible. Comet needs Crucible or a firewall to function. You should always try to fight inside your Crucible, ideally applying it before the fight.

Flashpoint places a spark in a room that you can teleport to later. A monolith on either end stops the teleport.

Option Selects

Brand and Comet are both option selects, meaning you can input them simultaneously with your normal attack and automatically use the correct one. For example IGNITE BRAND UPON &TAR/IGNITE CHAR &TAR/IGNITE COMET &TAR will use Brand if you have enough Spark and the opponent isn't branded, Char if the opponent is in-room and you can't Brand, and Comet if the opponent is out of room. Using the abilities like this greatly reduces the complexity of fighting, and is highly recommended. Note that you probably don't want to option-select Comet in a group combat situation, to avoid getting caught away from your group.

Putting It Together

With all of this understood, the basic strategy for Firelord in a duel is to use Char to build up three Spark, Brand the opponent, and then use Char to build up Spark and Brand, while using Slough, Weave, and Blister as needed. Once you have at least three Brand, use Latency combined with Flamewhip to strip Temperance and Deafness, and then continue Flamewhipping until Sensitivity is stuck. After that, use Char until you're ready to Explode/Nova or Explode/Primalwill Smoulder for the kill. You can usually do this around 60% to 70% health, depending on your Brand stacks.

Artefacts for Fire Lord Combat

Fire Lord doesn't need any artefacts to perform in combat. Smouldering Ember, the Fire Lord damage artefact, does not increase damage against adventurers. Standard defensive artefacts like reserves and sip are useful, as is Shield of Absorption.

Fighting Against Fire Lord

The best way to beat a Fire Lord is simply to kill them before they kill you. They will try to race you to the kill window, using abilities like weave and slough to hinder you while preserving their own momentum. If you can reach your kill condition first you can win, otherwise you'll likely need to back off and reset. Don't get overconfident, their damage spikes extremely hard once they hit Latency and start applying sensitivity.