The herald of ash problem
I find it very odd that Herald of Ash is in the game unchanged since 0.1 yet has many conceptual and practical problems making it not only bad with its own element/ailment but even anti synergetic. Here's shortlist of my gripes with this ''herald'':
For refrence the effect of this herald is "enemies you sufficiently (20% of max life) Overkill with non-Herald Attacks will cause an explosion that Ignites nearby enemies based on the Overkill damage dealt"
I want to be clear that this is also not meant as a critic of GGG's tremendous work, I'd just like to have a reflexion around fire element/ailment/herald since I like this element
Loop
All other heralds except Ash make use of their ailments to trigger a bigger reaction:
- Lightning: Apply ailment -> Kill target with ailment -> AoE damage
- Ice herald: Apply ailment -> Kill target with ailment -> AoE damage
- Poison (Chaos): Apply ailment -> Kill target with ailment -> AoE spread
- Bleed (Physical): Apply ailment -> Kill target with ailment -> AoE spread
All of the other heralds force you to apply their ailment, and thus to invest in their respective types of damage. It start a chain reaction culminating by an AoE after killing a target affected by the ailment. Thus they reward the player's ability to apply said ailments through damage or +% chance.
Herald of ash does not. Its loop is extremely simple: kill a target. You don't even need to use the fire element, so using this herald does not reward in any way the use of its element. One could even argue that this herald is better with other elements playstyles.
Anti synergy with its own ailment
All the other heralds scale with their ailment, particularly plague herald and blood herald: the stronger the ailment applied the stronger the effect of the herald.
Herald of ash is a special kid because since it scales of overkill damage appying a DoT can't and won't have any positive effect on this herald. It's a major problem since playing fire element won't bring the player to using this herald, and making a build around ignite will exclude herald of ash. The other heralds are linked to the element and playing them when using the ailment is even highly rewarded.
More synergy with other elements
It's important to note that contrary to other heralds, herald of ash can be used with every setup and element as long as you overkill the targets. Which means that without investing in fire ailment two elements seem better at doing some herald of ash stuff than fire/ignite itself: cold and lightning.
Cold first because it's often associated to crit stuff, but mostly because its playstyle revolves around a loop that looks like this: freeze an enemy -> launch an attack/spell that does AoE and uses frozen state to do HUGE damage (like fragmentation rounds which has huge benefits against frozen targets)
Lightning also because it it has a low max dmg but a high max damage. Shock also helps because it allows to reach even higher damage and thus doing higher overkill.
No scaling possibility
The other herald benefit from scaling their respective ailement, wether it's QoL (lightning, ice) or damage boost (plague, blood). Herald of ash does not since the ignite it applies it sorely correlated to the % of the overkill done. Investing in ignite magnitude or duration has no effect, and the ignite it applies isn't itself considered an ignite by the game.
I know that GGG is aware of the "DoT problem" and specifically of the ignite problem. It seemed important to also highlight that the mechanics of this herald are:
- Not fun/rewarding because they don't reward the investment in a playstyle
- Antisynergetic with fire's ailment, which is here to stay as a DoT and thus won't work with herald of ash's overkill mechanic
