Flame Orb and Fire Power... not nearly as interesting as one might have hoped?

[Gunjniir]

I've been playing around with Flame Orb and was excited about putting points into the Fire Power talent to make my orb explode. A lot of specs being thrown around have Fire Power, which makes sense as it's a flat 3% damage boost... but the exciting thing about it to me was the explodey-orb portion of it, otherwise it would have been just another "insert points, boost damage" sort of boring talent Blizz had supposedly been trying to get rid of.

Anyways, looking at it further and having a little more experience with it, the explosion proc from Flame Orb seems rather worthless. In the instances I've run so far, most mobs in a pack are dead from other more effective aoes (blast wave/flamestrike spam) before the bomb ever explodes. This comes from quite some time of playing with it in questing, on various targets, and instances, etc.

Furthermore, the damage from the 'beams' does not proc Hot Streak (or even impact, not that I see impact being that effective in most raid/group circumstances). The explosion may trigger impact, but not Hot Streak. When kiting, one must be mindful of the small blast radius of the orb's explosion or it won't even damage anything, and being that it only flies in one direction, it just feels like I'm tied to a stripper pole being forced to dance around it for crappy tips. Easy, sure, but in pvp against anything but keyboard turners, also rather useless.

I understand what you're thinking... "come on, are you going to complain about a bonus we give you for free along with that 3% damage buff. Sure, it's easy to see why Fire Power is effective from the 3% boost to damage, but what about the FUN stuff? Is this just going to be chalked up with "well, in a raid you're going to want the 3% buff, why not let your orb explode on the boss too? Ignite procs are a flat/passive bonus too!" which in some ways is a valid argument... but ultimately makes the additional explosion seem rather....vapid and disappointing... when you consider the fact that you can get a far more effective proc from Frostfire Orb as frost.

Until they roll multiple ignite damage procs into a 'stacking' ignite as they supposedly may be doing (unless they have already, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that has been implemented yet) I just don't see this as being a very 'interesting' talent to take, nor effective sans the flat 3% fire damage boost.

What I would like to suggest would make it seeking at it's current speed, and perhaps explode once it reaches it's target. This would introduce other dynamics in the pvp realm, giving opponents the option to either intercept the orb and soak a large hit, or attempt to position away from the orb and take the damage from the strikes. Or other slightly more boring options would be to make the explosion possibly trigger hot streak (with perhaps a reduced damage modifier or a 'cannot crit' component), since living bomb was removed from the equation... or simply increase the radius of the beam strikes/final explosion.

Because right now, it's very 'meh'.

Also, If anyone has words of encouragement at 85 like "wow it's stupid op at 85, esp. in pvp" or some such, please, let me know... that would honestly be a surprise to me. Regardless, input/thoughts are appreciated.

TLDR Version: On paper, exploding orb = cool. In actuality, exploding orb = yawn/worthless.

[Swizzle]

It adds a potent explosion to the end of your Flame Orb which can crit for more than the actual beams. It's meant to be a PvE/raid talent, not something you always use in a PUG heroic or soloing.