Originally Posted by
Endus
Except it's difficult to argue that it's a "weaker ascendance". The Lava Surge procs get the full benefit of the buff, and no "penalty" from cast time.
If you just want to use relative numbers, and assume you're not currently at the 1.0 second LvB cast time or higher (since if you're over that, you'll get additional benefit from haste post-5.3 that we're not evaluating here), then it's a 25% buff to all LvBs, roughly, and a 33% decrease to hard-cast LvBs. That makes for a net change of about -8% for hard-cast, but still the full gain of 25% on Lava Surges.
If you only instant-cast 1 out of every 4 Lava Bursts, it would be a nerf. In practice, we're seeing more than a single Lava Surge every 24 seconds. Even during Ascendance, the same ratio applies; if you're getting 2-3 Lava Surge procs during Ascendance, it's still a net gain.
Gear should be essentially irrelevant, since there's both a base and coefficient buff, and they're the same. The amount of lava burst damage coming from gear won't change, which means gear overall isn't becoming more (or less) important.