Damage

Always be casting. Your ramp does not fill every global, and the gaps are where your damage goes.

When to press damage

Your heals keep arriving after you cast them. Dream Breath heals instantly and then for up to 16 seconds more. Reversion heals over 12 seconds. Emerald Blossom lands 1.5 seconds after you place it. All of that keeps working while you press something else.

Damage is free in three places:

1. Walking to the pull. Nothing is taking damage yet.
2. After your ramp is out and ticking. Standing still and watching frames does not add healing.
3. While Twin Flame does the work. It costs you no global at all, and it is the single most recorded thing in the window.

Damage costs you in two places:

1. When it eats a global you needed. Every ramp piece still has to be out before the spike lands, and the logs do not record whether a global spent on damage was one you were about to need. Treat a late global as owed to the ramp until the ramp is finished.
2. When it eats Essence. Disintegrate costs 3 Essence. So does Emerald Blossom. Every Disintegrate you channel is an Emerald Blossom you did not cast.

What is actually pressed

0 abilities count as damage. Two of them matter: are 0 of the 0 damage casts, NaN% of them. Learn those two. The third button most players would name is Living Flame, and it is not a damage button at all.

Casts recorded in the 30 seconds before a spike, across the 0 runs that have cast data. The last column is how many of those runs the ability appeared in at all, which is the difference between a button everybody presses and one a few people press a lot.

Living Flame is a heal

The button most players treat as damage filler heals for more than it hits. Preservation's branch of the tooltip leads with the heal: 780% of spell power to an ally, against 232% of spell power as Fire damage to an enemy. It is one button and your target decides which half happens.

Press it at whatever needs it and stop thinking of it as your damage button.

Where damage goes around a ramp

Damage goes out early. The figures below are how far ahead of the spike each ability first appears in a ramp, so a long lead means the button opens the window rather than closing it.

So press damage on a gap rather than as a step:

1. Early in the window. This is the cheapest damage you will get, because none of your ramp is due yet.
2. Between ramp pieces. If your next ramp button is on cooldown or nobody is in position, fill the global.
3. Inside the last few seconds. Only if a global is genuinely spare. If any ramp piece is still unplaced, place it instead.

Step 3 is advice. The logs record what was pressed and when. They do not record whether a Disintegrate 3 seconds out cost anybody a life.

Fire Breath

Fire Breath heals, and not because of your hero tree. Life-Giver's Flame turns 80% of its damage into healing, split between up to 5 nearby injured allies. That is a Preservation spec talent, so it works on Chronowarden as well as Flameshaper. Leaping Flames is the second route: Fire Breath makes your next Living Flame strike one extra target per empower level. Do not hold Fire Breath waiting for a damage window, because holding it holds healing.

There is no Fire Breath talent package, whatever the take rates suggest. Lifecinders is at 90% of recorded builds and Consume Flame, Conduit of Flame, Renewing Breath and Fire Torrent all sit at 95% or more. None of the five touches Fire Breath. Lifecinders modifies Obsidian Scales. Consume Flame and Renewing Breath modify Dream Breath. Fire Torrent modifies Twin Flame. Conduit of Flame is a flat critical strike bonus. They are the Flameshaper tree, and their take rate is the hero tree split restated.

Fire Breath is empowered, and the rank moves the damage rather than adding to it. Rank I deals its damage over 20 seconds, rank II over 14, rank III over 8, with more of it landing instantly at each step. Rank III is your maximum unless you take Font of Magic, and 9% of recorded builds did.