Improved Burning Embers

General Information

Level: 74

This skill replaces Burning Embers.

Effects

Using this skill applies or tiers up a Fire DoT, which tiers down as it expires.

It also applies Burning Embers: Slow Burn to the target, which slows it.

Traits

The trait Master of Fire in the Master of Nature's Fury trait tree increases the damage of this skill by 15%.
The trait Slow Burn in the Master of Nature's Fury trait tree adds up to 3 pulses to the DoT, increasing its duration.
The trait Dry Kindling in the Master of Nature's Fury trait tree adds a chance of up to 30% to apply two stacks of the Fire DoT.

Interactions

The Lore-master Word of Mastery tracery Burning Embers Initial Damage increases the initial damage of this skill by up to 55%.
The Lore-master Word of Mastery tracery Burning Embers Critical Chance & Multiplier increases the critical chance of this skill by up to 11% and the critical magnitude by up to 38.5%.

Equipping six pieces of the Stone-reader's Armour set increases the damage dealt by this skill by 10%.

Tactical Information

Burning Embers is the main damaging skill of the Lore-master, having a short cooldown and dealing good burst damage and sustained damage. The Fire DoTs can be tiered up by Gust of Wind and spread to nearby enemies with the trait Mighty Wind. In the Master of Nature's Fury line, the skill is further improved. The slowing effect can be useful to kite enemies around.

The skill Improved Sticky Gourd also tiers up the effect on its targets.

Lore

Burning Embers is a reference to an event during Bilbo's journey with the dwarves to the Lonely Mountain. (This event also formed the inspiration of Sign of Battle: Wizard's Fire.) At a certain point they climb in trees after being hunted down by wargs and Gandalf uses a trick that resembles the skill all too well:

"Now you can understand why Gandalf, listening to their growling and yelping, began to be dreadfully afraid, wizard though he was, and to feel that they were in a very bad place, and had not yet escaped at all. All the same he was not going to let them have it all their own way, though he could not do very much stuck up in a tall tree with wolves all round on the ground below. He gathered the huge pine-cones from the branches of the tree. Then he set one alight with bright blue fire, and threw it whizzing down among the circle of the wolves. It struck one on the back, and immediately his shaggy coat caught fire, and he was leaping to and fro yelping horribly. Then another came and another, one in blue flames, one in red, another in green. They burst on the ground in the middle of the circle and went off in coloured sparks and smoke. A specially large one hit the chief wolf on the nose, and he leaped in the air ten feet, and then rushed round and round the circle biting and snapping even at the other wolves in his anger and fright."

"(...) Wolves are afraid of fire at all times, but this was a most horrible and uncanny fire. If a spark got in their coats it stuck and burned into them, and unless they rolled over quick they were soon all in flames. Very soon all about the glade wolves were rolling over and over to put out the sparks on their backs, while those that were burning were running about howling and setting others alight, till their own friends chased them away and they fled off down the slopes crying and yammering and looking for water."

- "Out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire." In: "The Hobbit", by J.R.R. Tolkien