Survival Hunter Overview
However, it's been marred by design quirks and bugs that have ranged from tolerable at best to actively harmful, and the 12.1 raid tier unfortunately highlights the latter. Today, we're going to briefly highlight some of the frustrating peculiarities with this ability and how it could be impacting your performance in this raid (also, if anyone says it doesn't fit the theme of the spec, you owe us an iced coffee).
from the middle out
One of the most unique things about Wildfire Bomb that is generally fun to play with in a perfect world is the way the AoE of the ability works. The quick explanation is that you throw the bomb at a target and a cone of wildfire explodes behind the target, igniting everything hit (there's also a very small circle explosion around the target, but it's very small and unimportant now). It's thematic, flavorful, and introduces positioning consideration to gameplay. However, as mentioned, that is just in a perfect world.
The cone does not explode out of the target's hitbox, but rather the center of their model. One of the biggest examples of how this can be frustrating is on static/stationary bosses. As the explosion always comes out from behind the target, generally this cone explosion does not function on a large boss, as the back of the boss's hitbox tends to exist outside of bounds in a space we can't interact with.
Additionally, the cone from Wildfire Bomb has to hit the center of any target's hitbox; it can't hit the edge. If you're fighting a pack of cursed serpentine trolls, for example, and the edge of one of their hitboxes is seemingly in the cone, it won't even damage them as their center mass is outside of the cone. This can be really tricky to keep in mind in the middle of combat, especially for newer players to the spec.
In this image below, the Hunter throws her Wildfire Bomb at the snake in the front, and the cone explodes behind it, damaging the two snakes behind it that have the center of their hitboxes hit, while the snake in the back completely avoids damage, even though the edge of the hitbox would be visually hit.
This problem is especially egregious in this tier with the Twin Fangs encounter.
As you can see, throwing a Wildfire Bomb at either snake means this is effectively a single-target spell, as no matter where you position, the cone explodes behind the boss's model (NOT behind their hitbox), so there is no way to damage the other snake. Even if you stood on the edge of the arena, or went for a swim behind the snake on the left, for example, the cone would simply not reach the center of the other snake's hitbox, so nothing at all would happen.
In the dropdown below, we've prepared many, many more examples. These are just the more recent examples, and we could do this all day. This is also not a problem unique to raiding! Although Mythic+ generally has a more tame boss design when it comes to raw size, lately some dungeons have featured bosses that are large or static (or both), most notably in dungeons like The Rookery, The Blinding Vale, and Maisara Cavers. We have just been sort of lucky that the relevant encounters haven't featured many important adds.
More WFB Tomfoolery
This bomb won't hit the boss.
This bomb won't hit the adds
This bomb won't hit the boss
You guessed it, won't hit the adds.
This bomb won't hit both bosses.
Technically hittable, but needs to be much closer than you would expect or would be able to intuit based on visuals alone.
Not even close.
Yup, won't hit boss.
Won't hit both bosses.
why now?
Even though this design quirk has existed since 2018 (yes, the ability is that old), why are we just now highlighting it? Well, 12.1 is a perfect storm of everything making this previously annoying problem too frustrating to ignore. In previous seasons, Wildfire Bomb was typically too weak for us to really care, such as in Vault of the Incarnates, Sanctum of Domination, and Nerub-Ar Palace. We also didn't typically play any sort of builds that would reward us for hitting multiple enemies, or the adds involved weren't an important factor in the encounters. However, Wildfire Bomb is very strong now; our tier-set bonus revolves around the ability, and both of our Hero trees involve a fair amount of extra Wildfire Bombs to use, not to mention our AoE gameplay loop focuses on maximizing the targets hit by Wildfire Bomb.
Moving forward, we are hoping to highlight how the quirks of this ability, while fun in a vacuum, are getting to a point where it may be time to look into changing how the ability works to bring it in line with every other AoE ability in the game.
such as?
The on-the-surface simplest solution is to change the way the AoE works on the ability. Whether it be making it so the cone just has to touch the edge of the hitbox or the impact of the bomb itself damages anything with overlapping hitboxes, that would take away a lot of the not-so-satisfying friction of the ability. Some similar changes have been made in the last year to abilities like Caustic Spatter or Wild Thrash with under-the-hood hitbox adjustments and grace ranges with overlapping hitboxes. Other solutions could involve replacing the cone entirely with a pbaoe around the target like Explosive Shot, or even adding the radial as a choice node.
At this point, Wildfire Bomb as a concept is almost definitely too iconic to completely replace. However, a frequently suggested change would be to bring back an old Survival favorite in Butchery and Frankenstein it to function similarly to Wildfire Bomb's damage breakdown and cooldown (i.e. 18 second base cooldown, with a large initial impact and a dot on all targets hit).
To keep the ability more thematically Hunter and less Warrior spinning in a circle, the ability could drop Wildfire Cluster, another loved old Survival ability. Another suggestion is to re-attempt Flamefang Pitch as a choice node next to Wildfire Bomb itself, essentially functioning like a Wildfire Bomb you can aim yourself or that leaves a patch on the ground.
