I’m trying to make Pyro an absolute rat menace in Cata lobbies. I follow the Royale w/ Cheese builds. I have been running the second pyro build: Dagger/Flail + Beam staff with traits 1,1,1,1,1,2 and the recommended necklace charm and trinket.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1833925976

I play as instructed in the build, am able to make it through with a good team, but pretty consistently end up with the lowest damage output on the scoreboard.

I have looked at the optimal melee combos post for both the flail and the dagger, and do my best to follow the combos.

I use the beam staff pretty consistently as it has great horde clear and snipe capabilities.

Blocking and dodging when I’m not attacking.

Yet still, pretty consistent low damage overall.

Guess I’m curious if anyone has experienced a similar damage output limitation with Pyro? Is it just that builds with other classes are objectively more powerful?

Is it just a skill issue? If so, please bestow upon me any knowledge you are willing to share that will make my Cata pyro runs feel balanced with my team.

  • What is your melee kill : total kill ratio? If you aim to get the damage green circle, it needs to be something like 1 : 3+.

    I also had a small write-up on this subreddit about beam build DPS loop:

    Here are some basic DPS loops of some beam staff builds:

    A: the classic Beam Pyromancer build with Deathly Dissipation/Bonded Flame. During pacing, when you find an elite enemy/couple trash, you will keep walking towards them while constantly doing M1 + M2 to either kill or weaken it, by the time they got to melee range they will be pretty low health and you will have high overcharge for high crit chance and use melee to finish them off. During horde, keep M2 + M1 the horde until they all die or you are on high overcharge. If you have high overcharge, back dodge, vent with your range weapon, and use your career skill with Bonded Flame to refund all the THP you just spent, and start blasting again. When you find a special, if situation allows, drop everything to snipe it with either your range or your career skill; if you don't have career skill and high on overcharge, vent and then snipe. Once you killed it, you have 12 sec of free casting, so again you can keep spamming M2 + M1.

    B: UC with Conduit + Bomb Balm. During pacing would be similar to the Pyro build. During horde, M2 + M1 until almost explode, vent with range weapons (since you have Conduit you can vent a lot faster and easier), rinse and repeat until all the horde enemies die. If you have no HP to vent anymore, next time you M2 + M1 to high overcharge, just press F, you now have another bar of overcharge to keep doing M2 + M1 on top of 30 THP.

    C: BW with Famished Flame and Second Wind + Firesword. During Pacing, with Famished Flame you want to just hold M1, until you feel like execute M1 + M2 will kill it; this will take a while for you to get used to the TTK(time-to-kill) on different enemies. During horde, M2 + M1 until high overcharge, vent until you are not slow down anymore, and use firesword heavy 1 block cancel + second wind to farm your THP back up, then start blasting with M2 + M1 again. This range - vent - melee for THP loop is also useful for any range focused Sienna build, but most important for BW because all other Sienna has other ways to get more overcharge/THP efficiently, while BW's passive is pretty underwhelming when you actually need more overcharge.

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    I’m a huge fan. Thank you for your service.

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    Do you have any guides for the Chaos Waste?

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    This is helpful! Especially for the curses, they normally mean jack shit to me between paths.

    I mean, kinda hard to go for specific builds, but what would you say your playstyle for CW is?

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    Personally, Im confident at beating the final level with just my adventure mode build, i.e just basic stuff, no crazy op boon/boon combo. Because of this, I will just focus on constantly upgrade my weapons, picking up defensive boons, and avoid/only do minimal gambling.

    Most of the players I know prefer to save for orange/red weapon and skip previous upgrades, spend most of the money on boons/shrines instead looking for strong DPS boons.

    I upgrade at least one of my weapon every time a new rarity shows up. If I have 1 white 1 green and see a blue upgrade, I will upgrade my white weapon. Also, I rarely gamble away my weapon, and even if I go for random weapon I will only do the subsidiary weapon. E.g if Im playing Merc, I will only do random range weapon and always keep my melee. Ofc this doesn't include the low rarity crit boon weekly.

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    I only play on champion so far (got in VT2 2 weeks ago after playing from EA til little before grail knight release.) But that makes sense, I may give that a try. I usually don’t care much for a lot of the random boons I get from shrines. But I tend to upgrade my melee weapon as I go, going for random more often than not unless my melee really works well with my ranged or vice-versa if I’m playing Sienna.

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    Also thank you! Yours and Jokxstars guides have made getting back into VT2 like riding a bike.

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    Does pacing just mean walking up to the next ambient group/horde?

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    Kinda. 'Pacing' just refers to progress through the level. In this context, I specifically mean what you are doing when there is no horde/boss/patrol and are not in an event. Usually players will move forward, clear ambient enemies, gather books/items etc during this. If it's actually horde, it's safer to find a good holding position and let enemies come to you. But if you are confident, you can also walk up and meet with the horde, with the risk of getting into bad fighting position/pulling more ambient enemies or boss.

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    BW is prob my fav career but the one I suck the most at, especially special sniping. With all other career you have access to an almost hitscan ranged weapon and not with BW. Any recommendation?

    I usually run your Fireball staff build because of its versatility.

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    Well Volcanic Bolt on BW has by far the best breakpoint, but you need to learn its charge speed/projectile speed and keep semi high heat for the charge speed perk. Outside that probably just learn how to properly use beam staff to snipe. Fireball is ok but much weaker on armoured specials and long range blight.

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    The only Sienna good at killing specials is Necromancer with Soulstealer Staff. Any other setup and you're a backup sniper at best.

    Bolt has the most range and 1-shot breakpoints but the projectile travel speed and charge time are its limitations.

    Beam, Fireball and Conflagation can kill specials okay-ish with their left clicks, no super long-range sniping but it's good enough to help out.

    Coruscation dabs very well on nearby Assassins and Leeches and is good enough for Packmasters, poor vs Gunners (Pyro's crits help a lot here) and useless vs faraway Blightstormers/Globadiers.

    Flamestorm is a flamethrower, very short range. Good for killing Packmasters hiding in horde though.

    For BW specifically your ult helps out a lot when it comes to reaching a special, especially with Burnout you could ult, kill them and ult back to your team.

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    Soulstealer is unreliable when enough of your skellies die and you lose the danse macabre attack speed buff. Also without proper communication, people tend to snipe the sniper - they focus down targets that are already being taken care of by Soulstealer.

    BW Bolt with Rechannel has amazing quick charge for sniping, also with BW's teleport ability you can easily reposition for better sniping, for example when you get surrounded. Lingering BW of any kind tends to be outsniped by other players not understanding how lingering works.

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    I said good, not great. Soulstealer pales in comparison to things like Handgun or Crossbow BH but it's the best Sienna's got.

    Rechannel has a long 6s cooldown that gets reset every time you use the staff, a big issue when you want to be shooting at every elite in sight, chances are it won't be ready for when a special pops up. And without it Bolt is just as prone to having its target sniped by someone else as Soulstealer. At least Soulstealer puts an indicator on the enemy that shows it's about to die, some players realize that the threat is already being handled. And it cannot miss unlike Bolt, enemy pathing can sometimes be infuriatingly random.

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  • Damn OP you summoned him

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  • I dont play pyro, but one thing I will say is that damage numbers (green circles) mean nothing and you shouldn't worry about getting them.

    Some careers and players are just better at horading stats. It doesnt mean you do nothing or dont pull your weight. And it's definitely not a skill issue. Chill keep playing.

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    I appreciate you saying this. I have been in lobbies with Warrior Priests, Bounty Hunters running Griffin Foot, and Outcast Engineers that clearly can farm green circles all day. But there have been lobbies where I was playing pyro with Dagger, and my end game stats were consistently around 9k total damage, while everyone else was 15k+. Pretty sure it was a skill issue with the dagger.

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    Just keep playing smart and the green circles will come.

    The only important green circles are dmg taken and specials.

    I love it when i get most specials killed ln slayer.

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  • I very much enjoy pyro in cata. My most played sienna. Cheeses build is great but I don't feel like it utilises beam staff shotgun enough. If you really want most damage in a game, focusing on maxing out horde clear is the best way of doing it. Rictus is obscenely strong in this regard as it massively increases your spam speed and allows you to mince mixed hordes due to the stagger and hunter giving you a nice 25% damage bump to whatever you crit. Can swap out one with the flame for deathly dissipation for even more shotgun spam (there is an annoying interaction with rictus and deathly where if you are under the effects of rictus and at 100 charge, kill a special and then keep spamming at 100 charge. Once rictus expires and you havent lost any charge, you will just explode)

    https://www.ranalds.gift/heroes/14/133311/4-4-3-1/45-1-4-3/3-2-1/1-5-1/2-7-3

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  • You can get some absolutely insane damage puttint crit power on the bolt staff and either dagger or 1h sword. Because they have very high finesse crit power is actually good. I prefer 1h sword because the heavy attack has a higher finesse than the lights for whatever reason so you can do massive damage while still staggering mixed hordes with heavy spam. The dagger does do more dps and you can use the h1 so its probably a higher ceiling.

    But with crit power on the bolt staff with crit power + getting 65% or so crit chance is putting out insane damage. And with dissipating rictus giving you 50% charge time and not blowing up for 12 seconds it will litterally flatten everything infront of you if you have space including bosses.

    It doesn't stop pyro being extremely vulnerable though. But yoour DPS will be through the roof

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    I prefer 1h sword because the heavy attack has a higher finesse than the lights for whatever reason so you can do massive damage while still staggering mixed hordes with heavy spam.

    The finesse might be higher on heavies than L1/L2 (2.0 vs 1.8) but their horde DPS is half that of lights. Your high crit chance doesn't change that, lights are still way better for killing the horde. Heavies are still good for staggering it, although only pure horde as they don't cleave through elites.

    The dagger does do more dps

    Compared to Sword's heavies yes, but its lights - not even close. 1h Sword is one of the very best melee horde clear weapons there is.

    And with Pyro's max 55% crit chance light spam becomes very solid anti-armor as well, it was my go-to weapon for melee Pyro builds until I started running the Flail. Sword is safer and simpler while Flail deals with elite waves and hyperdensity much better.

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  • Is chasing green circles really worth it? Really aggressive front liners with a wave clear weapon will always get the highest numbers, usually going to who's willing to dash away from the team first...and in some cases chasing damage is actually a bad play. Like joining in the rat slay with two of your team who have it handled, and letting the team get flanked by a special or extra trash wave. I'd judge more on how much HP damage you took and how efficient you were killing enemies/bosses when it mattered. Or how often threats for through to the team you could have stopped.

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    I see your points. Perhaps I am playing a co-op game too competitively!

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  • Well if you are not getting green dmg circle with pyro u are most likely not doing it right. Its allrigjt tho if u want record ur gameplay and post it on the modded discord for analisis we can tell more from footage

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    Thank you for the invitation to record a video and get feedback, that means a lot! I'll record and post soon.

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