Just remake this already, was hoping it gets better in new xpac but nope.
This spec is usable only by top 5% players hands down.
It is by far one of hardest spec in game and one of worst. I tried almost all specs with exception of two classes. It seem intuitive but in reality it isn’t at all. Things you have to do to be able to compete with just about any other class are very elaborate will require you to read encyclopaedia and hours of practice.
Meanwhile 1 minute into frost spec, not read anything no guides just on dummy 50-60k dps consistent with monitor off.
I also tried many talent variations, even using cinderstorm and so on. Funnily enough this seemed to have little to no impact. All my dps is always dependent on how well I press my buttons and if I land some good aoe on adds if boss spawn any. Like playing piano, miss a note and you are toast.
Personally I think you should bring back Combustion as a dot like it was long ago or go all in on ignite in similar fashion. That was very fun playstyle hitting it just at right moment and then even spreading the insane dot, best days.
Fire’s problem is simply this - Combustion. Its designed like ret paladin was back in the day - Pop Avenging Wrath(Combustion) in order to deal huge damage, and inbetween Avenging Wrath(Combustion) you are slightly below average. This simply doesn’t work for Fire, and it never has without being absolutely busted in the process. I don’t see why its been pushed so hard for more than a decade. Clearly it didn’t work for Ret that well, and Ret has had countless redesigns until it finally felt good by moving it further away from that philosophy.
I used to main fire since TBC until Legion, and since then I don’t want to touch it ever again.
Hours of practice ? Maybe, the spec does have a reactive gameplay where you need ot know what button to press at what moment to optimise your hot streaks.
But “require you to read encyclopaedia” ??? Cmon, the spec has a literally 3 or 4 spells to keep track off .
Fireblast → press once if small yellow symbol on screen to get a free pyro/flamestrike
Combustion → press on CD
Meteor→press during combustion
AND IF spec :
Scorch →Use as a replacement for fireblast if you proc (spell glow).
That’s IT. 1 spell with charges, 2 cooldown to use together an 1 optional that work like the first one.
The rest of the rotation is literally :
Spam fireball while stational or scotch while moving to get small yellow symbol
Press pyro for Solo target or flamestrike for AOE if big yellow symbol. (mostly after using fireblast to convert small symbol into big one)
I like it. It’s simple but reward good reaction timing and need to be able to adapt according to the proc.
True that it seems to underperform right now (especially for dps on solo target)
Problem with fire is its heavily gear dependent as well.
You cant with the stat squish just pick up random gear and do well, its more of a endgame spec when you can gear it up and yes atm it sucks horribly compared to frost.
The other issue is they removed a long term spell phonix flames which gave a lot more flow to the combat.
Now its literaly a meh spec and im back playing frost main afer several expacs, frost even gives you double sheilds, which helps a lot.
The current iteration of fire mage can be split into two phases:
Fun gameplay for 20 seconds
Literally AFK for 40 seconds waiting for combustion to come back
The fix is simple. Take some damage out of the burst, and put it into the damage outside of the burst. The fact that it takes 20 seconds to kill one mob outside of combustion is absolutely horrid class and game design.
I know that Blizzard has already lost about 99 % of its proper talent, but it can’t possibly be this hard to come to this conclusion on their own. Also bring deep freeze back. Literally bonkers that mage is the only class without a stun in the game.
This is just objectively false; bursty specs are nearly always better than flat damage, it just comes down to tuning - at higher levels of play ret doesn’t use the 30cd anymore
Fire has a very good damage profile; it is just numerically undertuned
All mage specs are simple right now; Frost is actually more complex than fire because you can actually play frost wrong - you really can’t with fire
As for the topic of this thread; mage has 2 very strong specs, it is sad that fire is weak but you have other options
User error; if I switch to fire world mobs generally die faster than if I play frost because frost relies on FoF to do quick burst damage on mobs - whereas fire can do a fireball + hot streak pyro on a fresh mob, both of which will crit and it will usually be in execute range at that point for more guaranteed crits
Then you either out gear the content significantly or you are hitting a ‘minor mob’ or whatever you want to call it. If its the latter, then the question rather becomes: why should a mage require to hit a minor mob with 3-4 spells when any other class can one shot it?
Hitting a non minor mob, in this case a sunset stag with 156K HP in Eversong Woods, using your perfected user rotation: fireball, fire blast, pyroblast brings it down to 71% HP. The mob then further requires 5 fireballs (this was with one fireball critting, allowing me to follow up with another fire blast and pyroblast combo) for the kill.
Now let’s transfer this equation to a common mob in a delve that has 700K HP, and tell me again how fast they die outside of combustion. The only thing that dies fast is my motivation to play this class (of which I have over 1000 days played).
Wrong, I tested on various mobs whilst leveling mage this expact, exact same mobs died without reaching me as frost leveling.
Fire on the other hand literaly had to wait on combustion to down 1 mob in anything like a reasonable timeframe and thats 1 mob compared to taking on multiple as frost.
At least try to be consistent if your going to post misleading information.
I dunno what to tell you, I’m 266 and playing as fire the standard 171k HP mobs die in under 5 seconds without any cooldowns, if I get lucky with crits it’s literally fireball + pyro x2 and they’re dead - my frostfire bolt + instant cast pyro opener does about 80k
I’m not the one who apparently needs combustion to kill a quest mob - does a world quest take you 30 minutes?
Look you are the one pretending fire killed stuff quicker than frost or aracane leveling in world quest mode.
Its laughable how much you dont know or even properly test.
So dont tell others fire is fine when its clearly not.
Anyone and I mean anyone leveling mage can easy swap between the 3 specs and test, something you clearly didnt bother to do correctly, then decided to tell others off over.
Arcane is the slowest, most of your damage comes from arcane salvo spenders; Arcane blast is extremely weak tuning wise right now - which would be your most used spell from mob to mob
Frost is the best on paper but again, its damage is tied to shatter, frost bolt, flurry and ice lance etc do very little damage by themselves - so your damage is reliant on applying shatter first which takes a few casts or hoping for FoF procs, which are plentiful enough that frost is still very good for killing mobs but you can have times where you’re just casting frostbolt over and over which does very little damage
One strength frost does have is frequent usage of glacial spike in the open world from the passive icicle generation out of combat, but blizzard is removing this soon so we can’t count on that for much longer
Fire has very front loaded, on demand damage - so while it’s overall damage in instanced content is low right now; for killing short lived mobs in the open world it’s easily the best - it’s also the best for prey/ delves because you have a very strong 1 min burst window; even a nightmare/ high delve boss melts very quickly
Not to mention playing frostfire fire, you get access to slows and the instant cast frostfire bolts can crit above 75k by themselves
You have no idea what you are talking about
Some testing I just did on the same exact mob
Fire : Fireball > Fireblast > Fireball/ Pyro combo > instant fireball > dead = 4 globals
lol, what do you expect when you are outgearing it with 50-60 item levels. If I go do Molten Core, the mobs get one shot. That hardly means that fire is in a good spot.
<217 is literally the item level the content is designed for. I see no reason to continue this discussion, because you’re either trolling or completely clueless. For the sake of all mages out there, I hope it’s the former.
Brother you could get to 230+ in the first 2-3 days of the expansion at a certain point a player isn’t qualified to talk about things if they aren’t really engaging with the game
I literally just posted proof that fire is killing things faster
I could make great comparison of fire to frost and it goes as follows.
If I need to switch important target, frost will immediately start destroying it with 100-200k dps monitor off, while fire will deal maybe 20k dps throwing some fireballs or pyro if lucky proc.
Just put combustion on 3min already. Having to make class deal zero dps because it has low major cooldown is one of worst downsides that can be.
It also mean if by any chance you mess up which can happen to anyone you are so done. You need extensive preparation to what spells are being throw from mobs so that you don’t combust into being hexed or what not. Raid boss mechanics are the extreme version of this, not being able to use combust very often and need a lot of planning and luck. Make it 3min.
edit: I really disagree that it’s easy, as I said it seem intuitive and easy but really it is not, you can’t just press your dps cd whenever you want and destroy meter like most classes, and messing up any cast feels extremely punishing (maybe because of how ignite works?)
I wish fire was more of a consistent dps spec, or at least would have more tools to do it. Combustion just throw that out of the window. Combustion is the main problem of current fire spec
Fire could easily be a heavily oriantated dot spec, with emphasis on ignite, burning, smoldering etc., instead of 10s burst window spec.
I would leave Ignite as it is, as a dot from a filler / bursty spells on crit
DoT from firebolt
add a new castable dot - “Burn” - 24s dot dealing average base damage, and increases damage based on current ignite.
living bomb as a 3rd dot
Pyroblast works similar as glacial spike - on gathering 5 embers firebolt would change to pyroblast, which would deal more damage and bigger ignite/DoT
Flameblast would be faster to cast for easier and more efficient aoe
266 ilvl is overgeared for world content. If you got fireblasts and do enough dmg stuff dies fast. If it doesn’t die fast frost has glacials, orb and ray on short cds, you always have something.
As for fire, Im loving the 2 charges on ray. How about combustion is a 2min cd but has 2 charges?