I don’t use much elemental, but what I tested Living Flame it felt pretty fun, and a nice option for a ranged aoe interrupt.
There were a couple things I found a bit unpractical, especially with groups of monsters.
Firstly, if you start with the Flame Flare, after that the Flame will return right back to you and does not provoke nor start attacking before you’ve hit with some other ability.
Secondly, when it does attack, the provoke is single target, and it seems to attack the monsters in random order, so if there’s even a small group of them, it leaves some of them eating you for a good while. If you’re trying to keep it at distance, the monsters end up running back and forth between Flame and you, when Flame provokes them and loses aggro again after 3 seconds.
I’d find it more practical if it had an aoe provoke, and if it used it right from the start with Flame Flare.
Maybe it has been considered to be too practical that way?
I’d like to hear some real elemental users’ thoughts about it too.
I believe Flame Flare is its AoE provoke, but it needs to meet the condition that you are being attacked, or as far as i could tell, aggroed by the mob(s) in question. So in S&P for instance, this means you have to hit a group before sending out a Flame Flare.
As for the random targeting, i believe it happens because you can redirect its attacks. How that works i dont know, as I didnt get to focus on it during testing, but I would imagine it works like chaos clones where you aim at a new target, except you can redirect it before its current target is dead.
I may have missed that, as I also didn’t do systematic testing with it, but with a 3 second stun and 3 second provoke it sounds a bit suspicious.
I find it weird that using Flame Flare and being attacked doesn’t make the Flame start attacking.
That’s not a function I could see. With a pack of mobs it let one keep attacking me for a good while even though I was beating just that one after the initial aggroing of the whole pack. It seemed to attack completely randomly those that were attacking it or those attacking me. But of course, I may have missed something.
If you are being attacked, then it should provoke, at least that is what i seemed to notice, unless it changed and i am mixing it up with a previous version (closed beta tester)
As for the redirecting, i didn’t pay enough attention to it, to be able to say anything for sure, so it’s mostly guesswork for me =). Earlier version just stuck with what it was attacking until it for whatever reason couldn’t anymore.
This part doesn’t provoke, as you had not yet been the target, at least in the case of mobs you need to hit to aggro like in S&P
Unsure if this should provoke, if you yourself are just standing there doing nothing. If you attacked one of the eaters, then it should at the very least start single targeting that mob, and provoke it when doing so.
So in the case of S&P mobs, which you have to hit to aggro.
Start with Flame Flare → You get aggro (you didn’t have it, you get it)
You do nothing → Flame does nothing
You attack → Flame attacks and provokes the target
You use Flame Flare → All targets get provoked, cuz they are aggroed onto you.
This is how it worked for the version where i payed attention to it. I don’t think it has changed, but it could have. What i found i had to do in S&P was
AoE hit Mobs
Flame Flare → Flame provokes
I gotta admit i didn’t pay attention to how long the AoE provoke kept the mobs off be when i kept AoEing them.