Fire Mage Feels Forgotten – Please Help Us Compete

Classes Mage
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Dear Blizzard,

As a long-time Fire Mage main, it honestly hurts to see how far behind the spec has fallen. Right now, Fire feels like the only DPS that becomes irrelevant outside of Combustion. Even with the LoU tier set bringing it down to around 37 seconds, it’s just not enough—especially in M+ keys around 11–13 where pacing is inconsistent and packs die fast. You can’t time Combustion properly, and without it, our damage is… embarrassing.

Meanwhile, look at most other DPS specs:

Ret Paladins are always top of the meters, cooldowns or not.
Enhancement Shamans pop off with Ascendance, but still do great outside of it.
Elemental Shamans, Unholy DKs, Balance Druids, even Beast Mastery Hunters—they all have steady damage with strong bursts.
They don’t disappear between cooldowns like Fire does.

In Season 1, Fire was fun—it needed some single-target love, not a full spec overhaul. Instead, talents like Phoenix Flames were reworked, Fire Blast was nerfed, and it feels like everything was redesigned around Mechagon bracers. Honestly, just redesign the item. Don’t punish the spec for it.

I’ve tried Arcane and Frost. They just don’t give the same joy. I love Fire Mage—the style, the fantasy, the feel. But I dread queuing up for keys knowing I’ll get outpaced by specs that perform well even when their cooldowns are down.

And now, no one even invites me to keys anymore—why would they, when you’ve got specs like Elemental Shaman or Devastation Evoker who do way more consistent damage and bring Bloodlust to the group?

Please, just give us some love. Let Fire Mages feel powerful again—even when Combustion is on cooldown.

Sincerely,
A frustrated but faithful Fire Mage

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I agree. Feels like there’s not much you can do, I tried most ways but still low DPS. Went to pally and playing fine, but still love mage.

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Just a question, as I haven’t leveled my mage this expansion yet:
Are you stacking haste or crit?

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I have around 43% haste (27,520) , 13% mastery , and 10% versa. Crit is kinda okay because during combustion it turns into mastery.

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Well, that kind of explains it then.

If you want more consistent damage, then you would have a lot more crit, in fact it should be your highest stat by far.

The haste build is for maximising Combustion out put and total Combustion uptime.

With crit build you would have lower Combustion output and lower total uptime, but you would do a lot more damage outside Combustion.

Sounds to me that you want to have the cake and eat it too.

Also, I am not talking about your total output or if you actually need buffs to stay competitive. But to the best of my knowledge, Fire Mage is A to S tier.

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Apologies in advance for the long reply:

Well, since you haven’t leveled your mage and/or played mage this expansion, you might be mistaken.
In every sim I’ve run, not a single one recommended replacing an item with haste > mastery/versatility for something with crit and other stats.

Let’s explore your perspective theoretically:

If I don’t have maximum cooldown reduction (CDR) on Combustion, then I’m looking at approximately a 1-minute cooldown. During this one-minute wait for Combustion to come off cooldown, I have to hard-cast Fireball in single-target or Flamestrike in AoE. With my current haste value, my Fireball has a 1.6-second cast time and Flamestrike is at 2.2 seconds.
According to your recommended playstyle, Fireball and Flamestrike would have longer cast times—at least 2 seconds for Fireball and 3 seconds for Flamestrike.

I know I can use Fire Blast or Phoenix Flames to convert Heating Up into Hot Streaks, but at some point, you have to save them for the next Combustion window.
Mythic+ dungeons are all about dodging mechanics, interrupting casts, CCing mobs, and trying to survive—all while maintaining your DPS.

I also have a stop-cast macro bound to Counterspell. If I press that macro to interrupt while hard-casting Fireball or Flamestrike, I lose DPS. If I use Gravity Lapse to CC mobs and buy others time to react, I lose DPS. Why? Because in nearly every pug key, you’ll encounter one or more of the following specs:

Unholy DK, Balance Druid, Demonology/Destruction Warlock, Marksmanship Hunter, Retribution Paladin, Elemental/Enhancement Shaman, etc.

These specs have god-tier AoE during cooldowns and very solid AoE even outside cooldowns, because their abilities hit hard regardless.
By the time I recast—after canceling my cast to interrupt or CC—the mobs would already be dead, and I wouldn’t be able to make a meaningful DPS contribution to that pack.

With all due respect, Fire Mage is kind of dead right now. If you’re checking Archon or WoW Meta, give it a few more weeks until the logs are fully updated and synced—you’ll see Fire fall to B-tier.

Two weeks ago, Fire was S-tier. People were still complaining about Fire being too strong, even after the 4% nerf. But Arcane got buffed twice, and players are gradually switching over, pushing Fire down to A- and soon B-tier.

Even before the nerf, Fire wasn’t competing with Unholy DK, Balance Druid, or Elemental Shaman. And by “competing,” I mean Fire Mage was consistently number 3 on the overall meters while the top two DPS were pulling significantly more.

S-tier status is determined by how many people play a spec at a certain key level.

For example (just a hypothetical scenario): if the top 100 keys all run with an Augmentation Evoker, you’ll see that spec jump from F-tier to S-tier on Archon or WoW Meta in a few days.
Does that mean Evoker is overpowered? No—it’s still weak overall and mostly being carried by stronger group members.

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And I didn’t say that you should. What I said, is that your build specialises in the burst damage of Combustion. Of course, that means that you are sacrificing your off-Combustion damage.

In total, it is very possible that you are better off with this build.

Yet you would have to cast less often, because you would have Hot Streaks far more often.

You could have good damage outside cooldowns, but of course you would need a lot of crit for that.

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Meanwhile Fire Mage was Meta not even a few weeks ago.
While Ret paladin has Never in the History of M+ ever been Meta.

It must be easy to complain when the only reason Fire is not meta is that Arcane does better.
If Arcane did not Fire would still be Meta.

Welcome to feeling like EVERY other spec in the game normally.
You have been privileged and getting invites because the spec was Meta now you are back to normal mode.

That you Made this post shows how out of touch mage players actually are.

Now for the topic should fire mage do more outside of cooldowns well it depends Fire would need to be nerfed in cooldown by a ton to balance out that.
Fire mage would basically need to be nerfed a lot in cooldowns to buff up the damage between so the question is would you prefer to have Cooldowns nerfed or not?
If you are ok with it being nerfed then maybe

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Wasn’t Retribution Paladin in DF S2, when it got reworked?

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For the love of whatever is holy do not under any circumstance stack crit or even have a modicum of crit on a fire mage. Terrible idea.

There will be the odd pack where you do not have combustion, otherwise the gameplaybpoint in keys is knowing when to hold combust at the end of the pack if it’s going to die too quick, or if you don’t have shifting power to tie you up.

Besides, the issue with fire mage is not necessarily the subpar damage in between busts, but the fact that it’s an uptime spec that relies on you hitting the boss constantly.

Once we get rid of tier set and bracers next season we’re going to need drastic tuning to stay competitive damage wise. I even expect the bracers effect to become a talent of some sort.

This is who we are. If you want reliable cooldowns with less downtime - play arcane !

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No it was not.
it was the First spec to break the whole get a Rework means you automatically becomes meta.
It was not even good in the raid that season
One of the specs that was Meta that season was Fire mage

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At the time of my previous post which is a reply to @Nellja. I said that even fire mage is even still on A -, it’s actually on B-, just give it time for logs to synch properly. Go check where fire mage is now.

I never said it isn’t, but if you read my initial post, you would know that I play my mage as fire and fire only because of the fantasy behind it and I love it as a spec, but I guess you rushed to reply without even reading the full post.

Huh? Fire mage got nerfed the first week after RWF ended (Mid ~ march) In case you haven’t checked, we’re now mid May. It was nerfed even though it wasn’t even a competitive spec compared to UHDK ( in M+ setting / scenario ) which was completely nerfed or balanced just last week.

Nah not really. I forgot to mention that I have almost 14 characters, all above 2.8K rio. Take out tanks and healers, I have like 8 dps classes/specs.

When I play my affliction warlock or my other 7 dps classes which are (UHDK, Boomie, Ret, Enchanc/ele, MM, assa, sp ) (not today or last week) but since fire got nerfed , I rarely see fire in groups. The classes that you’re referring to as normal are more likely to have an invite over fire because of their consistent dmg profile that they bring to the dungeon.

Oh, please! I want it like yesterday. Make fire in a way that has a consistent dmg profile without combustion and ill take that on any given day.

I am not talking about meta man. I am talking about having a consistent dmg profile. Rets have the most consistent dmg profile of all other classes I mentioned. You literally have CDs / High dmg on every pack, I play ret man, who you’re kidding?

Here’s a scenario:

If the dungeon finder has 10 groups that has a tank + healer and they require a dps, 7-8 out of 10 would have a ret.

In the topic of meta:
In season 1, arcane was meta for the first two or three weeks, then it got nerfed.

For the entirety of season 1, fire mage was C tier then after it got buffed/fixed like 7 times because it was pure **** it became at best A tier. I am not complaining about being A tier, I actually adored fire mage in season 1. It was really decent, it needed just a little ST buff.

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I did read it.
Remember you named this thread Fire Mage Feels Forgotten - Please Help Us Compete
You are saying in your thread name about power not about fantasy.
Fire mage right now is competitive.
You claim it feel forgotten while mage as a class is the most looked after class in the game by blizzard.
There are many many specs that is forgotten if you think fire is forgotten.

You do realize that is the normal average right that just means the spec is average not specially good not specially bad.
Oh and Using tier lists on Pure dps classes are always a BAD idea because of this very simple fact good players of the class will gravitate to the good spec of the class making the other dps specs look way worse then they actually are.
So because Arcane is good fire will lose the best players that played if before Arcane was considered good this will make fire drop further then the spec actually are on the tier lists.
(this also apply to pure damage numbers)

And in Raid Fire and Arcane is doing within 20k dps of each other.

It was nerfed yes it was still Meta until Arcane took over that was only a few weeks ago.
NO other spec took fire out of the meta other then another Mage spec and that is just reality.

The Nerf had zero effect on it being or not being in meta.
(being or not being in meta matters for what you are talking about as it is what a lot of people use to invite or not invite people)

According to you while it is not the case for a ton of other people who did get invites on their mage but not on their other classes.
So no you are just feeling what a normal class invites are.

Glad to hear this.
Because there has to be a trade off you can not have the power of combustion as it is today and consistent damage it would just be OP

But you are talking about meta as you are talking about getting invites to groups and that is heavily affected by the meta.
having a consistent damage profile would make fire not be meta often so that would be nice for a lot of people.

Oh you clearly have not played it for long if you are going to use that as an argument.
Yes Ret has consistent damage but in return it has one of the WORST single target damage (and this has been consistently true for many Years btw) and its aoe is just good and have to choose between single target and aoe can not mix them.

That is popularity not actually what people would choose Paladin is the most played class in the entire game.

That single target buff would likely be making it go from A to S tier in that season you do understand that right?
The only question is would it be enough to move the balance druid and mark.

But the thing is right now in this meta If arcane did not get the buff it had gotten Fire would be played and not Arcane that is how good it still is.

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This is funny. If played properly fire is great around the 11-12 key level. Other specs can out burst you every 2mins, but you have combustion up on pull for every pack. The only time your dmg should drop is at the end of pulls if your holding combust, but then you have improved scorch to get consistent pyros/flamestrikes. Other specs might do more on big aoe or some might do better on ST but you’re great at both without out changing talents and you have amazing cleave to boot.

If your in a key with ret palys, devs, unholy dks etc you should be doing prio anyway. Find the big dude or the dangerous dude and ST combust it, you do less overall but the key is done much faster and/or safer. Also mage survivability is insanely good, ask a shammy or evoker if they’d give up some dps for a few of your defensives and see what they say.

Fire mage may not be the best at any one thing but it’s very good at everything!

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I still have no idea why do you keep bringing the meta up? It still seems that you haven’t understood my main point of discussion.
But ill put in in a simple scenario:

Take Cinderbrew First pull or PotSF first pull or take any dungeon for that matter where the first pull is huge and everyone is using their CDs + Blood lust.

I guarantee you that fire mage wouldn’t pull more than 13M - 15M dps with two combusts. On the other hand, most specs would pull 23M + DPS (One of those specs being ret paladin btw). In other words, other specs are outperforming fire mage while being in combustion.

Do you know what that means? What do you think is gonna happen when combustion is on CD?

To be honest with you, looking at the argument that you’re presenting; it seems to me that you haven’t played fire mage or even touched it for that matter.

So you’re just quoting what streamers and other content creators are saying. Unfortunately , this doesn’t play out it well in pugs. In coordinated groups (teams), yea maybe. But I have mentioned that I only pug.

I will also tell you something about prio target. Arcane (which isn’t the spec to discuss in this post, but I like to clarify) is almost played the same with touch of the magi. I tried to play Arcane with pugs, but you know what happens most of the times, the “prio” target you’re referring to dies quickly because everyone is targeting it or people are tunnel visioning which makes the target with your touch dies before touch’s duration expires and explodes (not all the time tho, but 3/5 this would happen). On the other hand, when you are playing with coordinated groups, as an Arcane mage, the target that you mark as your touch target wouldn’t be focused by other party members.

I wrote to Ayellin that most specs are outdpsing fire mage even during combustion. But since you play mage, go fire and do a 30 secs combat timer duration on dummy while not using combustion. Find an AoE dummy that has < 30% hp or ST dummy with the same HP and do scorch + HSs into flame strikes / pyros (ST scenario) without combustion and see how much dmg you do.

To sum it up for both of you: Fire Mage damage is limp noodle — with or without Combustion — compared to most other DPS specs.

P.S: There’s a short on youtube for Gingi where he is playing fire in Theater of pain and in the gauntlet’s last plateform before the Lich boss ( kultharok or something), he doesn’t use combustion and he’s below the tank and/or the healer.

They make a joke saying “summon the buyer” and he says “ye that was no combust pull” and says something along the lines of “I don’t know why they made it this way etc”

This is Gingi that I am talking about, top mage in the world and says that, you wanna argue that he doesn’t know the ins and outs of fire mage?

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“If you want more consistent damage, then you would have a lot more crit, in fact it should be your highest stat by far.”

This alone shows how little you understand about how Fire Mage works for more than 1 Xpac now,

With SKB, you want haste to accelerate the rate at which you enter combustion and your combustion uptime, and the number of GCDs you can cram into your combusts, and for Unleashed Inferno builds (which is currently meta) the damage increase from the talent make crit totally irrelevant since you have no damage outside of combustion anyway. FYI a pyro outside of combust hits for less than 800k when a frostfire bolt hits for 600k.

But please explain how the worst Fire mage stats will fix the issues the spec has which are very real such as => random combustion timings due to CDR / procs, awfull target swapping damage, and overeliance on tank routes for damage. Also Fire has no prio at least not in the mage slot, Frost is Far better on Prio (in M+) and Arcane is literally the Prio / funnel god class with current tuning.

A worthy change for Fire would be for SKB to be remotly competitive and interact with our tier set or interact with Sunfury.

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Of course you don’t have damage outside Combustion. You choose this on purpose.

If gearing was a talent, then you just took "Reduce all damage done by 40%. This effect is suppressed during Combustion. Reduce Combustion cooldown by 50%.“

This is absolutely your right. If your overall is now higher and you enjoy this playstyle, then it’s a no-brainier to build your character this way.
Just don’t moan that you don’t have damage outside Combustion, you specifically build your character for that.

Very good example. Except forgot to mention that YOUR pyro hits for 400k, and a crit build’s pyro hits for 800k. Since they have 85% crit chance and you have 6%. Add the fact to it that during Combustion their Pyro still hits for extra 600k damage.
Though, you can fire off more pyros, especially during Combustion.

Half the damage dealer specs have these issues. So what?

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It’s even more than one xpac, it’s since legion launch brother.

I wanted to answer this monk person, but it made so little sense to me that I think it’s a troll.

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That makes me a sad Panda. My troll druid has nothing to do with my views!

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This right here is where you do not get why Fire mage is in the meta in the first place.

Fine by me if you think this way but you fundamentally do not understand why Mage is being picked for dungeons Hint: Both Fire mage and Arcane mage are in the meta to take down single target big hp mobs aka Priority targets so you can have 2 big aoe dps classes.

Your scenario shows you lack information sadly.

Here is the dps it does 3.76M
Arcane does 4.67M in keys on overall according to archon that is warcraftlogs.
Just for Reference Shadow does 3.52M
These are all high keys
The thing about these numbers though is that Fire mage will look way way way worse then it actually is because the top players of the class does not play it they play Arcane not fire mage.

You lack the understanding why Mage and fire was being picked in the very first place.

I personally would love Fire mage to get nerfed (that is what you are asking for) so it will not be meta so often. Specs with steady damage are normally not meta specs.

Just fyi he is not the top mage player, but also you need to understand he is playing in a team that has those kind of things planed out.