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I believe firmly in discussing everything, it's the only way to challenge conventional wisdom

Lets talk numbers, working with estimates.
Combustion has a base cooldown of 2 minutes.
During a combustion phase we generally see about 12 crits.

We will have another 9 fireblasts before the next combustion is ready - 9 crits.
Lets assume a crit heavy build of 40%.
Fireball casting time of 2 seconds.
36 potential fireballs cast inbetween these two combustions - 14 crits.
10 pyroblasts from hot streaks - 4 crits.
39 crits.

Which would bring the combustion down to 1 min and 21 seconds cooldown.
Most trinkets have a cooldown of 2 minutes, so we would use the best trinket on the first combustion and the second best trinket on the second combustion.
We would not be able to activate our trinkets as they became available, otherwise we would not have them on the combustion, so the value of the trinkets deteriorates from limited usage.

We will have more combustions, but the second combustion won't be as powerful as the first one.
We will lose out on meteor or pyroclasm.
The Meteor strengthens the combustion, the pyroclasm is valuable outside of combustion phases.

Based on all this, my gut feeling is that Kindling isn't a worthwhile talent, even with double use trinkets, that being said, the playstyle is probably only 1-3% lower than pyroclasm + incanter's flow builds.

I believe firmly in discussing everything, it's the only way to challenge conventional wisdom

Lets talk numbers, working with estimates.
Combustion has a base cooldown of 2 minutes.
During a combustion phase we generally see about 12 crits.

We will have another 9 fireblasts before the next combustion is ready - 9 crits.
Lets assume a crit heavy build of 40%.
Fireball casting time of 2 seconds.
36 potential fireballs cast inbetween these two combustions - 14 crits.
10 pyroblasts from hot streaks - 4 crits.
39 crits.

Which would bring the combustion down to 1 min and 21 seconds cooldown.
Most trinkets have a cooldown of 2 minutes, so we would use the best trinket on the first combustion and the second best trinket on the second combustion.
We would not be able to activate our trinkets as they became available, otherwise we would not have them on the combustion, so the value of the trinkets deteriorates from limited usage.

We will have more combustions, but the second combustion won't be as powerful as the first one.
We will lose out on meteor or pyroclasm.
The Meteor strengthens the combustion, the pyroclasm is valuable outside of combustion phases.

Based on all this, my gut feeling is that Kindling isn't a worthwhile talent, even with double use trinkets, that being said, the playstyle is probably only 1-3% lower than pyroclasm + incanter's flow builds.

I really appreciate you breaking it down for me. It does make a lot more sense when you put it all out on the table like this. Prolly still gonna run Pyro or Meteor. Hopefully that next 5% will be enough to put it closer to frost or arcane of equal power.