Fire/searing palm stack build/ Wind 2rf build

[Zephyor]

wich build is superior in terms of dps  endgame pve ( Yeti/lair/necro/sogun ) i am aquainted to both but cant make up my mind 

[ShiroUmi]

Fire/Searing Palm is better :o group buff and less crit reliance, also Searing Blow reduces CD on Searing Palm 7 sec per skill.

[ShandraManaya]

Depends on what you want.

 

Wind build highly depends on perfect animation cancelling, very good ping, HM skills and critical hit rate, but once you have all of this it deals higher DPS than the fire build. The fire build makes up for this with the constant application of the searing palm debuff which increases the DPS of everyone. The fire build is also less flexible over the course of a fight since it very highly depends on Searing Palm, which means that if you *cricket* up or get screwed somewhere during the fight and can't reapply Searing Palm, you have to wait the CD (reducing it using Searing Blow, which also depends on crit, just like the wind build) in order to re-start a proper rotation, and during that time, your DPS sucks hard. With the wind build your main DPS comes from sustained raw damage with Cyclone Kick and quick burst periods with Searing Palm and Fighting Spirit, and if you *cricket* up Searing Palm, you don't lose as much DPS as with the fire build since you still have your main damage source available, Searing Palm just makes you burst higher for a short period of time (turns 2RFR2RFR into RFRFRFRF and 4R4RFR4R4RFR with Fighting Spirit and HM form 3 Comet Strike), making the wind build more flexible in any situation, but the fire build is very good too, they both have their pros and cons and are very balanced with each other.

 

Basically,

 

Wind :

+ More DPS since perfect ani-cancelling makes you hit faster with higher-damage attacks than the fire build (Searing Blow is very slow and deals shit damage compared to Cyclone)

+ Doesn't rely on Searing Palm that much, you still have very good DPS if you *cricket* it up or if the fight itself *cricket*s you up

+ No focus management (read basically unlimited focus), might struggle with very low crit rate but it's still not as bad as the fire build

+ Very rewarding and satisfying to play since it requires more skill than the fire build to be mastered because of all that ani-cancel thing you must be able to pull off constantly

- Heavily relies on very very good and stable ping

- Quite hard ani-cancelling that you HAVE to master to be efficient, if you can't/don't want to, go straight to fire build instead

- Relies on high critical hit rate a little bit more than the fire build, but this con is not a problem with good gear

- Relies on HM skills such as the LMB one (VERY VERY IMPORTANT) and Comet Strike one -but you also need this one for the fire build-

- A lot less HP recovery

 

Fire :

+ Sustained HP recovery with Tiger Strike

+ Doesn't rely on ani-cancelling since you can't make Tiger Strike spam faster with LMB (you'll even delay it) and if you cancel Searing Blow you'll actually lose DPS, so it's easy to master

+ Doesn't rely on crit rate as much as wind build for raw damage, but you'll still struggle with low crit rate because you'll have a very hard time maintaining focus if you can't Searing Blow, overall KFM is in need of crit rate whatever the route you decide to take

+ The DPS you lack is compensated by the crit damage buff you constantly give to your team mates with Searing Palm. You still give it with wind build but not for the whole fight, while the fire build is able to have it 100% of the time

+ A lot of fun to play even if it doesn't feel as satisfying and rewarding as the wind build. Searing Blow's animation is awesome and the mechanic of maintaining Searing Palm for the whole fight feels amazing

+ Better synergy with the Warlock's Soulburn buff, since your Awakened Searing Palm procs directly from Tiger Strike, whereas with the wind build it procs from Cyclone Kick. If you have a static group for PvE with a Warlock in it, you might consider playing the fire build because of this, it's really really good

- Less raw personnal DPS, your damage comes slower than with the wind build

- Terrible focus management, especially with low crit rate. If you don't crit at least 1 Tiger Strike out of 3 for Searing Blow, you're out of focus. Hellfire Kick, form 4 Iron Shoulder and Leading Palm can help for that but they all have CD and Iron Shoulder has a condition to activate. If you crit all the time tho your focus will be fine since you'll end up almost spamming Searing Blow, so this issue is alleviated with gear

- The longer Searing Blow animation can sometimes make you lose even more DPS while tanking since you'll sometimes end up cancelling it early for a Counter, which sucks.

 

 

Overall, fire build has less cons and more pros than the wind build, but they aren't about DPS (They are completely balanced DPS-wise if you take into account the superior Searing Palm debuff uptime from fire build). Fire build brings a very tiny bit more tankiness (and that's only IF you take damage, which shouldn't happen with Counter/Q/E/SS/C), a lot of fun, very nice looking animations, and a little bit more DPS to your team-mates at the cost of a little bit of yours. Wind build brings more challenge, more raw personnal damage output if you master it, more flexibility at the cost of a little bit less DPS to your team-mates and so much animation-cancelling that your character looks retarded while fighting instead of looking cool as *cricket* with the fire build (Cyclone Kick's animation is SICK but you never see it if you play properly because you cancel it so early that you don't even see the actual kick, you just do weird gestures all the time and it deals damage).

 

I personally play both depending on my internet (when it's bad I instantly go fire build), but most of the time I use the wind build because I'm more used to it. Used to play KFM on other servers a while before EU launch and thinking about fire build was not even a thing back in the days so that's only because I'm an oldie. I see no reason to not play the fire build today if you're new to the class (and by new I mean, you only play since EU/NA launch), as much as I see no reason for you to not play the wind build. It only depends on what you prefer. But what I'm sure about is : If you wanna look cool while fighting efficiently, go fire build. Wind looks really retarded. If you don't care, you just have to choose the pros/cons you prefer.

 

Hope it helped.

[ShiroUmi]

Just to fix you a bit, with fire build, you sacrifice a BIT of your damage but raise the damage of 5 OTHER PEOPLE and that is alot.

 

Also, with Fire build, critical is not a problem since all your skills have 100% critical chance when Searing Palm is at stage 4 while  you have more than 1 way to apply Searing Palm without costing much Focus, and you have more than enough time to reset cooldown on Searing Palm with Searing Blow during the 10 sec duration of Searing Palm. 

 

Not to mention, if you use RF/4RF , you have to use Individual Fighting Spirit which mean the rest of your party gets no buff at all and that mean you loose another big portion of damage to the boss right there.

[ShandraManaya]

13 hours ago, ShiroUmi said:

Just to fix you a bit, with fire build, you sacrifice a BIT of your damage but raise the damage of 5 OTHER PEOPLE and that is alot.

 

Also, with Fire build, critical is not a problem since all your skills have 100% critical chance when Searing Palm is at stage 4 while  you have more than 1 way to apply Searing Palm without costing much Focus, and you have more than enough time to reset cooldown on Searing Palm with Searing Blow during the 10 sec duration of Searing Palm. 

 

Not to mention, if you use RF/4RF , you have to use Individual Fighting Spirit which mean the rest of your party gets no buff at all and that mean you loose another big portion of damage to the boss right there.

You only raise the damage of 5 other people in 6 man dungeons, which don't really need much DPS anyway. In 4 man, you raise the damage of 3 other people only, and it's not much since you just give them 10% more crit damage, which only matters when they crit (~50% of the time basically), and you already give this buff with the wind build, you just have a higher uptime on it with the fire build. So the gain of party-wide DPS with Searing Palm from wind to fire is almost completely negligible (+10% of something that has 50% chances to happen = 5%, but since wind already does that for half the amount of time in average, it's ~2.5% party-wide DPS increase if perfect Searing Palm uptime and assuming your allies all have 50% crit rate. You can individually increase this number for some classes that can increase their personnal crit rate like Destroyer; but it doesn't make that much of a difference and it's very specific cases). But it is worth mentionning since it IS an actual pro for the fire build.

 

For your second point, I said in my post that the fire build was LESS reliant on crit rate than wind build, I don't see where you can disagree. I said it's a problem when you have a very low crit rate (when undergeared, fresh 50, new character, etc..), since you can sometimes literally get 5-6 Tiger Strikes and 0 crit, forcing you to spend time to LMB and lose a lot of DPS since you don't reduce your Searing Palm cooldown because you don't proc Searing Blow either. Crit IS important to both KFM builds, but I precisely said that fire build had less dependance to it. We're in agreement.

 

You don't have to use Focused Fighting Spirit to reset Comet Strike's cooldown. Read the classic party-wide Fighting Spirit tooltip once again, it reduces Comet Strike's cooldown everytime a party member lands a hit on the boss, and on 4-6 man it takes less than 2sec for your party to land enough hits to completely reset its cooldown, and since the form 3 Comet Strike already resets one time on crit, you're completely able to do 4R4RFR4R4RFR during 10 seconds straight. Since with good gear you should be able to get more than 50% crit rate, Fighting Spirit makes you get almost 100% crit rate and if you just add stage 1 Searing Palm to that, you're at 100%. And RFRFRFRF is only while in Searing Palm stage 4 since you don't have Comet Strike resetting (Using Fighting Spirit and stage 4 Searing Palm at the same time is a DPS loss).