Kraak
Class Summary
Fire Elemental Lord is a damage momentum class, focusing on ramping up damage 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 to drastically increase damage for short windows or provide instant damage.
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. Mainly 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.
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.