Been fire a lot more lately and I feel like I should be getting more out of my aoe dmg.
Depending on dungeons/affix I’ve either been stacking crit, taking living bomb and flame on then using fireballs and fireblasts to get flame on and using them on flamestrike. Or I stack haste, take flame patch and pheonix flames and hard cast flamestrike and use PF and FB for extra instant flamestrikes.
Really happy with the single target dmg with the ST dmg with high crit just a bit lacklustre in packs. Any advice fellow mages?
Don’t be afraid to combust on trash. Fire AoE is very hit and miss especially compared to frost imo. But because combustion is only a 2m cd you can use it on trash providing you time it right
I pretty much use it on cd in m+ as long as its a tough pull. Seems like there’s more chance of wiping to hard mobs than bosses these days anyway.
I haven’t touched fire in a while, but is living bomb really worth it unless you have an absurd amount of targets like +15? Having the flame pillar talent which leaves fire on the ground after cast used to be better for mythic dungeons at the very least. Apart from that, just get hot streaks and spam fire pillars. Fire aoe isn’t particularly complex.
I could imagine phoenix flames being a decent choice especially since it has good synergy with fire blast (more fire pillars).
Yh living bomb is decent on reaping and the only choice on weeks you need to kite but on pulls of 3-5 you struggle.
Maybe stacking mastery and chucking pyros instead of flamestrike?
I was just hoping for some tips to squeeze out some extra numbers. Feels bad when you bottom of the dps meters on packs without comb. At least I can usually make it up on bosses.
I’ve just been sticking with Conflagration most of the time, doing ST rotation but spending Hot Steaks on Flamestrike instead of Pyroblast, seems to work. Although you won’t catch me playing Fire outside of a Sanguine week, since it’s damage is like 10-30% behind.
It seems to be a DPS loss to use it on anything other than Reaping or certain packs like the Tainted Globules in SotS. Using it on regular 2-4 enemy packs will probably land you behind the tank. Seems odd to have an AoE ability that’s not worth using in most AoE situations.
I’ve found myself erring on the side of caution with this talent, although it is the best choice for most AoE situtations, it is instantly nullified if you have to break the cast (3.6 seconds for me) by moving or the tank kites the mobs out of the area to avoid mechanics. It’s basically a 80% increase to your Flamestrike, but only if the enemies stand still for 8 seconds and don’t die before the effect ends.
If you’re on a Fortified week, this is often the best way to go, since the mobs will last long enough for your higher Ignite to spread amongst them. The rest of the time stuff is just gonna die too fast this to be a viable strategy.
Flame Patch and Meteor are recs imo. I also prefer flame on to phoenix fire as FB can be cast during other spells, and the aoe damage increase isnt worth the sacrifice to single target dmg flame on grants. Fire changes between a single target rotation and multi target sensitive to mobs present so not gimping your single target too much is preferred.
If mobs are 2 or less simply do single target rotation. Even though a flsmestrikes on 2 mobs with flamepatch added may do more dmg per cast (if they remain inside) pyro crits fuel hot streaks so you’re likely to even out these raw numbers by getting off more pyros then you would flamestrikes.
If mobs go above three (and you have flame patch) and aren’t likely to be moved, then spend your hot streaks on strike. Use your FBs to trigger this whenever fireball heats you up. Flame On will ensure you always have a fire blast ready for this. When mobs get low swap to scorch to fish for crits but still continue rotation unless a target dies or all are nearly dead and won’t live a flame patch. In this case go to single target.
Obviously as well, if a mob in this pack is a priority target and must die first and fast, single target rotation them, return to aoe rotation when they die as ignite will cleave at least.
When mob numbers get higher (around 10) I hard cast flame strike repeatedly, using FB to get occasional instants, so long as the mobs arent moving. Flame patch stacks so there’s no downside to doing this if the mobs stay still. If they’re moving, I so. Ply go single target on one as gnite aoe is at least mobile to a degree. Return to aoe once they stop.
Meteor should be used on CD and dragons breath should be thrown In where possible, ideally when mob pack is low so you don’t lose dps (as moving to pack can be done whilst scorching).
Combustion is better on smaller aoe packs imo where single target rotation is needed. Imo its preferable to build a huge ignite that may spread and then go aoe casts as opposed to using combustion to crit flsmestrikes. Also pyro is always preferable in combustion as pyro fuels hot streak and flsmestrike doesn’t.
That said if the mob packs are large and no better combustion opportunities present, then ofc use combustion for strikes and scorch to pump out as many as poss (no hard casts during combustion as it takes you the time to hardcast flsmestrikes as it does two scorches and a hot streak strike )
Guides say not to use flamestrike during combustion at all because the guarenteed pyro crits plus the boosted mastery to spread it puts out better numbers that crit flames do.
Hardcasting flamestrike at 10 seems a high number.
What a headache. Been playing my DH and it makes so much more sense lol. Aoe talents should be on different rows so you can choose them all. Choosing your balance of ST v Aoe/Cleave v CCs/Utilty.
Gonna try and stack crit/mastery and play with lvling bomb and just ST everything I think.
That’s because DH AoE is no different to the ST rotation, you use Eye Beam and Blade Dance/Death Sweep on CD. Hell, their talents either enhance these 2 abilities or just provide you with another button to press on CD (Fel Barrage/Immolation Aura) for both AoE and ST situations.
What the hell? We have to do all this dicking around to deal crappy AoE damage and they basically just spam the same rotation no matter the situation and come out on top.
Yeah hence why I prefer combust on smaller packs to single target. When I refer to using it on big packs I’m talking 10 plus. In this situation the aoe crit dmg of flamestrike will likely outperform the pyro ignite spread.
It totally depends on mobs present and whether any are a priority.
Fire aoe is limited to a few spells but is quite complex to maximise each pull, we have it rough in that regard. But hey I’m guessing we play fire for reasons like that else we’d all be frost right?
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But…but…I just want WOTLK Living Bomb back. Everything else can remain the same and the situation would be 10x better. Fire is so much more fun than Frost but this irrationally complex hope-it-works playstyle needed for small AoE packs just kills that experience.
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Fire aoe has terrible rng element attached to it. Flamestrike is awful and ignite is really badly designed. Its either too high ticks or way too low. Making Flamestrike channeled would stir up things when done right.
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Channelled flamestrike sounds amazing!! But be hard for anyone to see anything stood inside it lol
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They could make it more transparent. Current on demand aoe is what Fire is really lacking. Even arcane explosion would help, but no because “class fantasy”…
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Maybe replace it or add a talent for some sort of channelled eruption of flames from the ground up
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Ugh, class fantasy again. Trouble is, it’s class fantasy from a developer’s point of view and they don’t communicate with the people who actually play the class that they’re designing 
.
Lets get an Arcane Explosion with an orange tint that has a flame effect at the edge of the explosion. Hell, make it so that the enemies caught at the edge take an additional fire DoT. Something like that.
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Blast wave then just without the knockback and more dmg. Animation’s already there! No one uses it anyway, I tried it on eye of the storm the other day and it wasn’t even powerful enough to knock people off the middle of that!
IKR it’s the most pitiful ability in game. The only thing it’s really good for is the slow, since it’s damage and knockback are utterly pathetic. It should have 3 things going for it, damage, knockback and slow, but it’s nowhere near good enough to compete with Shimmer.
Bring back the WoD version! Same for Ice Nova and Supernova.
Fire is not completely terrible, it just feels awful withouth high crit. And tbh we lack snares and its really really bad when you get bombarded with 50-70% snares… While we got 20% rng one…
I’ve been finding Fire to be okay on ST but it’s still behind Arcane and Frost, it’s fantastic on long-lived trash packs like the ones in the CoS.
But then on normal trash packs, like the ones that constitute 80% of m+ dungeons, it often falls behind the tank. On non elite packs, the entire pack can be killed before I can even hard cast a Flamestrike with some classes like DHs pulling 120k dps for 3 seconds and basically evaporating the pack.
Yeah, we effectively can’t slow anything in pvp. It’s only 20 friggin’ percent, that’s literally the same as the Tidal Surge azerite trait. It’s not feasible to hard cast it, since it’s both a targeted ability and has a long cast time, so we have to rely on using Hot Streak procs, which should pretty much always be going on Pyroblast.
It just feels bad, since not only are most snares incredibly powerful, but a lot of classes (mostly melee) have multiple ways to completely nullify them.
Like try going up against a DK, they can’t be slowed below 70% baseline whilst they can apply a 70% slow themselves, basically giving them a permanent 40% movement speed over anyone they’ve slowed. Even then, they still get Wraith Walk and the active portion of Death’s Advance and not forgetting Death Grip.
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