Fire mage ST dps needs improvement

Classes Mage
1

Hey, guys!

I have returned into WoW after 10 years playing as Fire mage. Once it was a huge DPS badass and now I see certain problems with solo target (ST) damage.

So I started playing in December, got my lvl 70 and was working on my DPS increase. Mostly through ilvl increase. But my dps was low no matter what I did while my ilvl rose to 484. So I checked lots of different resources like IcyVeins, made a lot of Sims on Raidbots, watched a ton of videos (special thanks to Forgyy), analysed top players WarcraftLogs and here is the conclusion I have come up to:

  1. SKB build is the only competitive build for ST in raid environment (pretty obvious, but I need to state my assumptions)
  2. SKB build has following stat priority for ST: Haste (~ 36% - 40%), Crit (~48 - 50%), Vers (~15 - 20%), Mastery (less prioritised <10%). Please note: this is not carved in stone, SKB build is not partcularly sensitive to stat change. So you can have like 40% Crit, 45% Haste, 20% Mastery and 10% Vers and for equal ilvl DPS difference will be minor.
  3. SKB build dps is SUPER sensitive to Combustion uptime (CombUp) during an encounter. Best players has got CombUp of 55% +. I started raiding with CombUp of 35% on any encounter. And this is very low. According to my rough calculations the difference between CombUp of 40% and 55% is up to 25-30k dps for lvl 484. And this is huge. So if you are struggling to increase your ST dps as Fire mage use CombUp as your main KPI.
  4. The last point and subject of my message. Even in best conditions like you dont have to move a lot, you have all the necessary buffs (Aug and priest buffs), you are doing everything right (CombUp is 55%, you are using AoE for mobs in the best possible way) the Fire mage ST dps is still LOW, NONCOMPETITIVE and very punishing even if you utilize Comb and SKB to the full. Warcraftlogs proves that.

I would appreciate if this matter is considered by devs team. My humble opinion is that Pyro dmg should be increased (now Pyro deals just 10% more dmg than Fireball), Ignite mastery reworked (c’mon, Mastery is worse than Vers for fire mages), Living bomb reworked (dmg is so low that it is not worth to waste GCD on it and insert it into rotation unless 30+ targets).

Thanks for reading! Have a great Green Dragon year!

2 Likes
2

2nd on damage to bosses. We are dependant on BL on pull, maybe thats your issue? Temporal warp is op.

Mastery is very strong as soon as there’s any cleave. So strong infact they had to nerf it below vers on ST and an ignite build is still used in most the highest m+ keys in the world.

Living bomb is used in aoe now. Just before combustion on smaller packs and on cd on big packs.

Instant pyros do double ignite damage. Skb openers do something like 250% dmg. There’s 0 chance of a pyro buff rn.

3
  1. You sent a link. Check it out one more time: Fire mages are num 8 in this list. NOT 2nd place. 2nd place is taken by demonology warlock, which is real.
  2. You should never look for overall rating to consider top dps class/spec. That’s what we call an average temperature in a hospital. Pick any ST boss fight instead:
  • Gnarlroot (M) - no fire mages in top 100 dps.
  • Igira (M) - 3 fire mages in top 100 dps. One of them is Трикснаноль, top fire mage in the world hitting less 300k dps on the 19th place. And that was my point as he is 488 ilvl on a stationary almost ST fight. He actually does everything right (all raid buffs, ideal CompUp of 57.4% and still only 19th place! This is anomaly in the stat representation rather than a rule (I mean this a rng result made by a top end gear fire mage and still noncompetitive eventhough its a good rng. For example he had 2 crits out of 3 hits with Beloros which is 1.9M dmg)
  • Volcoross (M) - dummy boss for sure. 1 fire mage in top 100 dps list on 99th place with 264k dps. Compare it to Sub rogues who actually do 15 to 30k dps more, or maybe Unh DK - 10-15k dps more.

  1. Please mind that Warcraftlogs has its flaws. Here is the example of broken log doubling Fire mage dmg:
    reports/JFXjZcY6Vt7RpKw1#fight=24&type=casts&source=597&view=timeline

  2. C’mon every average fire mage knows about double BL. That was my point: fire mage has got double BL and even if you utilize it perfectly as well as other features, your dps just CAN be competitive, not SURELY competitive or OMG NERF FIRE MAGE 1M DPS. So objectively double BL is not op.

  3. Fire mage mastery is super poor. It just deals additional % dmg in 9 sec (!) while vers gives straight unconditional dmg increase for the same amount of rating. So that is why ignite build is viable in high keys: because mobs live long enough to get this ignite dmg. And still ignite build for M+ is just GOOD, not top tier dmg. But M+ is not the initial topic, so I skip it.

  4. Living bomb is used when you have a lot of targets otherwise its dmg is not enough which I stated in my initial post.

  5. So what about pyros? SKB is 260% pyro which is 600k dmg (hugest on hit Fire mage dmg). OMG, nerf it. So for Igira (M) you can use like 17 SKB pyros for a 4,5 minutes fight. So frost mages can use Glacial spike 30 times through 4 min fight which hits up to 1.2M dmg. Twice more satisfying, isnt it? Of course it is different spec, but my point is that Fire mages Pyro is not that big. Once Pyro was a oneshot in pvp, thats what made fire mages so memorable. Now pyro deals 10% more on cast than fireball. And we have this pvp talent - Greater Pyroblast. OMG, maybe tune the lesser Pyro not to give fire mages additional spell in PvP? Hope, you got my point)

4

U cannot be always the top dps u had that in 3 expansions in a row so…

5

C’mon, that was not the point. I dont want to be top DPS, all I want is not to struggle because my dps is low. There is no point for RL to take Fire mage instead of Demon lock, Dh or rogue. It is class balance issue that should be resolved for every class and shadow priest also.

But. This is not priest forum and I am not playing priest. I specifically dived into fire mage mechanic to show that it is undertuned which kills all fun to play.

BTW what is your point? If you were top dps in previous expansion you should be lowest in the next one? Yeah, all right. Blizz state the ranking list of dps for the expansion so I can understand if it is worth playing this expansion. Kappa

6

Firstly 8/36(?) Is pretty good. Second I said second on damage to bosses which is what your moaning about. Second and fourth graphs.

ST?.. It’s a cleave party

Only 19th?! Absurd! Imagine not being the best ST in the game whilst having unlimited free cleave and insane survivability and mobility. Also not a completely ST fight.

This is the best melee fight in years. It completely favours them. Also unholy dk and sub rogue are cd classes, their overall is very dependant on when the boss dies.

I didn’t mean overpowered compared to other specs. I meant overpowered for balancing our talents and damage. The different between bl on pull and holding is too much and it feels awful progging a boss where your holding it.

It’s poor on ST, amazing on fights like Gnarlroot.

You said 30+ targets, it is capped btw. From wowhead’s aoe rotation guide:

  1. Pre-cast Mirror Image before combat to pause your threat

  2. Use trinkets, Elemental Potion of Ultimate Power, racials, and any other buffs.

  3. At 5 or more targets, outside of combustion cast living bomb

  4. Hard-cast a Flamestrike with Sun King’s Blessing and use Combustion before the cast finishes.

I get your point but mages spent ages moaning fireball does no damage. If you buff pyro you have to nerf fireball, fireblast, pf… maybe you could do it now we have alextraza’s back making it easier to get hot streaks. It would also put more power into combustion which loads of mages moaned about and blizz went out of their way to reduce our burst.

Rn our playstyle is good and our damage is good. We have a few problems but we are so far above average you shouldn’t complain much. Think of them poor ele shammies, just a poor mans mage…

7

  1. First of all, it is very rude and disrespectful to say that someone is moaning. I may as well say that you just dont care about the class, and you think it is normal to feel at the bottom or average. If you feel fine about your class, ok. But I dont see you toping up the leaderboard. So go protect elem shams in their forum.

  2. I dont want to answer you, because you clearly dont understand my message and misinterpret information and statistics:

  • there are 26 dps specs, not 36. yeah I got your point - 8 is not that bad. You know the difference between you and me? You wanna lose small I wanna win big.
  • the graph with mage 2nd place is based on normalized average score. Go deep dive warcraftlogs and show me some proof that fire mages are second best dps on firm numbers.
  • Buff pyro = debuff fireball? how many fireballs do you use in a fight?
  1. I will redirect you to US forum:
    /en/wow/t/ive-played-mage-for-18-yearsand-it-isnt-fun-anymore/1773854

Maybe you will understand my message from there.
You need to deepen your knowledge about the mage class.

Best wishes, nonmoaning guy) Kappa

8

It’s 95% boss damage. Fire mage is doing the 2nd highest boss damage in the game.

I do understand your problem, your getting beaten on the dps meters and your blaming the spec. Then while you were moaning about the damage, you threw in how fire was more fun when you were having more fun in the game when pyro hit like a truck and it was unplayable until you had a load of crit. They don’t make them like they used too…

1 Like
9

  1. No, it is 95% percentile. Means that sample consists only of top 5% best recorded results. It doesn’t explain the scoring system and how it is normalized. Check raw data and dps based rating. Try harder.

  2. No prob, man. I see you are not really familiar with statistics and feel fine about that. Try get some knowledge. Gl

10

Ye-huh. Try
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/35#aggregate=amount&metric=bossdps

Mess around with it and see if you get fire out of the top 5

11

Well done, my fellow mage!
Lets take your sample and deep dive into it! I will make it step by step.

So… It is a rank list for class/spec dps (damage to bosses only) in Amirdrassil (M), all percentiles, all item lvls, all bosses, 10.2.5 patch (2 weeks). And we can see that fire mages are pretty well in here on average being top 3 dps. The ranking is made on the basis of max dps in the upper quartile (75th percentile).

I will try to prove that fire mages need their damage increased, stating that their doing worse than other classes/specs using this sample.

  1. Wacraftlogs is a database of damage (and other stuff irrelevant to the question) logs. So it means that there might bad players, good players, players who died in an encounter, maybe bots, maybe someone being carried out through the dungeon - so all kinds of players. But I would like to see the best possible damage the fire mage can do. For this purpose I will click on Percentile and choose Max. So I will ensure it will give me the one best result from all of the parses made for the last 2 weeks for each class. And we will see the following picture:

Fire mage - 18 out of 26 (further i will use just X place/26 or 18/26) with 313k dps (best class Balance druid with 427k dps which is 36% higher than fire mage dps)

(please note: it is not clear if its the best parse of one mage through all of the bosses or average sum of best of different mages)
(Update: Uh, I finally got it. Here it seeks the best parse of one player on one any boss. So it means fire mage 313k dps is the highest possible result among all of the bosses)

following fire mage stat on each boss, same sample (only dmg to boss):

  • Gnarlroot - 14/26, 288k dps (best SubRogue, 341k dps, 18.4% higher than fire mage)
  • Igira - 6/26, 260k dps (best UnhDK, 273k dps, 5% higher than fire mage)
  • Volcoross - 17/26, 264k dps (best SubRogue, 309k dps, 17% higher than fire mage)
  • Council - 12/26, 313k dps (best BalDru, 427k dps, 36% higher than fire mage)
  • Larodar - 4/26, 256k dps (best ArcMage, 259k dps, 1,2% higher than fire mage)
  • Nymue - 8/26, 215k dps (best RetriPal, 226k dps, 5% higher than fire mage)
  • Smolderon - 10/26, 301k dps (best SubRogue, 352k dps, 16.9% higher than fire mage)
  • Tyndrall - 10/26, 219k dps (best SubRogue, 255k dps, 16,4% higher than fire mage)
  • Fyrakk - 10/26, 197k dps (best SubRogue, 218k dps, 16,4% higher than fire mage)

Okey. Fire mages (in the best observed state) are not that great in dmg to bosses lacking up to 18% of dps from the best and more than 10% in 6 encounters out of 9. So, according to this stat you can legaly improve fire mages ST dps by 5% and they will not be even the best. I will return to the question how it might be done, but meanwhile…

Maybe I am wrong?!!!

  1. Okey. How can I ensure the results? Well, maybe all fire mage parses were not that great (foolish doubleclickers), and they always didnt have an Aug in raid, or the ilvl was always less than raid average…

Lets return to initial sample. Rank list for class/spec dps (damage to bosses only) in Amirdrassil (M), all percentiles, all item lvls, all bosses, 10.2.5 patch (2 weeks).

I will change 3 things:

  • Max on Percentile (we still need the best result)
  • Change M to HC (HC is less punishing in mechanics and the sample would be larger to find the best parse for each class/spec)
  • Fix the ilvl to 483-485 (to ensure all of the classes has got comparably equal ilvl)

So…

Fire mage - 24 out of 26 with 300k dps (best class Balance druid with 424k dps which is 41.3% higher than fire mage dps)

(please note: it is not clear if its the best parse of one mage through all of the bosses or average sum of best of different mages)
(Update: Uh, I finally got it. Here it seeks the best parse of one player on one any boss. So it means fire mage 300k dps is the highest possible result among all of the bosses)

following fire mage stat on each boss, same sample (only dmg to boss):

  • Gnarlroot - 14/26, 285k dps (best AsRogue, 363k dps, 27.3% higher than fire mage)
  • Igira - 18/26, 259k dps (best DH, 293k dps, 13.1% higher than fire mage)
  • Volcoross - 22/26, 263k dps (best SubRogue, 321k dps, 22% higher than fire mage)
  • Council - 23/26, 301k dps (best BalDru, 424k dps, 40.8% higher than fire mage)
  • Larodar - 9/26, 258k dps (best BalDru, 279k dps, 8,1% higher than fire mage)
  • Nymue - 10/26, 235k dps (best SubRogue, 260k dps, 10.6% higher than fire mage)
  • Smolderon - 15/26, 289k dps (best SubRogue, 365k dps, 26.3% higher than fire mage)
  • Tyndrall - 18/26, 201k dps (best SubRogue, 237k dps, 17,9% higher than fire mage)
  • Fyrakk - 19/26, 185k dps (best BalDru, 218k dps, 17,8% higher than fire mage)

Well the situation is even worse… Fire mage lacks up to 41% dps from the best and more than 10% in 8 encounters (more than 15% in 6 encounters). It is not the worst result among all classes, but it is well below average.

  1. Here I want to explain why you see mage in top 3 dps in your initial sample. It means that average top fire mage plays better than 22 other class/spec. Which makes me truly proud…

  2. So how can 5% dps increase can be achieved? It is pretty simple. Pyroblast damage is around 30 - 40% (lets assume 40%) of mage dmg and it 95% crit throughout any enconter. Well, if we consider that top baseline dps is 260k, that means Pyroblast is 104k dps. So 5% increase is 13k dps. If we increase Pyroblast dmg by 12,5% we will get more than 5% overal dps increase, because there is ignite dmg based on initial pyroblast dmg. So lets make it 10% increase. Just to be better and not the best. Of course It is rough and fast calculation, but I think if blizz will check full logs on their servers, they can easily count the right number. It took me just 2 hours to make this deep dive.

Btw, we are not talking about lazy hands. The numbers above are max dps on bosses. So it is objectively inner class restriction, cause you very unlikely to beat this numbers.

  1. Well, my fellow mage. That is all for now. Go get your your college degree in math and stats. Very useful and helpful. Kappa
12

You just reduced your sample size to one pull, per boss, per spec so your looking for the best o f the best pulls. But then you reduce the ilvl and change it to HC? So what your basically doing is pulling out random parses from hc and using that to show spec balance?

Well done to manage to screw with it enough to get fire out the top 5 lol.

On top of that fire mage has quite a flat damage profile. Anything with strong cooldowns will have pulls where their cds line up perfectly with the length of the pull. That will produce a better top pull. That’s why no one ever looks at just the best pull on any boss and bases balance on it.

Your even using council, a spread cleave fight with 3 bosses as an example, pitting us against specs that can hit more targets than us in the encounter. Balance druid is amazing in that fight but ask a balance druid if they do more ST than a mage.

This isn’t about maths its about common sense.

1 Like
13

Max percentile is the best pull ever observed. The bigger the sample, the higher the chance that the best scenario is found on each boss. The warcraftlogs counts yours results in comparison with these Max pulls. So your point was actually that mages do better on average compared to their best observed result. Wow! Their best result is worse than other spec best result.

And that was my point: fire mage lacks max dps on ST.

No, I haven’t reduced ilvl. I fixed it. Because maybe some best unholy DK has ilvl 489 and fire mage has got 485. Its called generalizing the sample. It means that fire mages do less dmg not due to ilvl difference.

I dont take random parses. I take best parse for each spec observed in HC. What is your question about whatsoever if you were not attentive enough to read the assumptions?

Wrong. In this scenario, mages also would have a perfect pull with best cds line up. The numbers show there is no such an encounter or parse.

I gave you the whole objective picture. BalDruids do better on ST than fire mage on every boss except Nymue. Check it out yourself before stating something. It was your choice to check dmg to bosses.

Wrong. Your common sense fails you. Because you lack critical thinking and you dont work with numbers obviously.

Read the book: Daniel Kahneman Thinking fast and slow.

You havent provide anything in opposition. Not a single number. You spent 5 mins to wrote your post to say you dont agree without any brain work invested. You just want to be right. No you are not. You just have a mediocre opinion…

Well I also think that there are 7km to the moon but no one gives a…

Topic closed. You are wasting my time.

14

I hate myself for getting dragged in this deep.

This is kind of true but its not because of balancing its because of damage profile. I’m going to use mythic Igira as an example. It’s an early fight so they will be more parses, the fight has no downtime and it’s actually quite a long fight for a second boss, the boss has a lot of hp.

Roughly, the average time for the kill on the top page of the logs is about 4mins. 7 of the top 10 pulls on this boss are unholy DK. Unholy DK has a massive 3min burst profile. Outside of this burst window it famously struggles to do any damage.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/g4zDKpQ7kHhnbFPA#fight=11&type=damage-done&targetclass=Boss&source=11
This shows the damage profile of the top log on Igira. As you can see until the second set of cooldowns, a huge % of the DKs damage is done inside its cds. So if you think of its damage in 3min cycles, most of it is done in the first ~40secs. The boss dies at 3:50, which means its got the majority of its second cycle of damage into the boss when the fight ends.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/9fcYy3Ftk1KBMVCH#fight=10&type=damage-done&targetclass=Boss&source=17
This is the highest Boomie parse, ~6k behind the top parse. Boomie’s main cd is also 3mins. You can see the 3m cycle, although its cds aren’t as powerful relatively as Unholy DKs but it certainly benefits from the 3m cd.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/Tj7tz2RP9pXCGncH#fight=12&type=damage-done&targetclass=Boss&source=33
This is the highest fire mage parse, which is ~13,500dps behind. Except for the early boost from temporal warp and the massive damage from the trinket, you can’t really say there are cycles. Fire’s design means our damage is a lot more consistent.

The average 4min fight time for this boss is the best possible set up for Unholy and Boomie. It plays to their strengths. Fire doesn’t have a perfect fight time, it’s strength is constant flat damage, so whatever the fight length it has good damage but it’ll average out better over longer fights.

Yes. Because of flat damage profile we are strong in most fights and less of a specialised in some fights. Generally the longer the fight is the better we tend to do as powerful cds have less impact. That being said fights with downtime like Tindrel, or fight with damage amp phases like Smolderon suit strong cds specs much more.

If we go back to Igira and change it to HC, the mechanics of the fight don’t change too much from a dps perspective. There’s a bit less movement but there’s still full uptime, the difference is the average kill time on the first page is down to ~2:45 (i’m eyeballing it). Now 9 of the top 10 parses are Sub rogue, the nearest unholy Dk is ~25k behind despite it being basically the same fight.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/Jv3GxNFdhCPatfyW#fight=9&type=damage-done&targetclass=Boss&source=22
Sub Rogue has ~1m big damage cycles and the top parse manages to get the majority of its 3rd cycle of damage in just before the boss dies at 2:18.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/3FJMz62qbBjZ9wxf#fight=6&type=damage-done&targetclass=Boss&source=22
The top unholy Dk parse is done without managing to get to its second set of cooldowns which is why it can’t live with sub rogue on such short fights.

These damage profiles are why averages are important when comparing ST dps.

This just isn’t true on the mythic fights, where bosses live longer but I can’t be bothered to do anymore homework.

1 Like
15

OMG, my whole point was that fire mage lacks ST dmg. Now you say:

Thank you. Why are you moaning about fire mage ST dmg? It is fine. Kappa

I actually dont care if its because of balancing or dmg profile. Or maybe dmg profile is also a balance issue? Whatever. I wanted for devs to get into it. I dont want to keep silent. I am giving my feedback. And I didnt want just to state the problem, I suggested a solution. Maybe it is bad. But it is better than not doing something.

Totally disagree. We are not strong in most fights. The top dps fire mage ever did on any encounter was 313k dps (Dmg to boss). So it is our ceiling. And this is 18th result in M among all bosses among other classes max dps ever observed. Increase the ceiling anyhow…

It is like a car. You got like 180 horse power and whatever you do, you cant get more than 220 km/h with that. If you want more speed you have to change the engine and get more horse power. Same with fire mage balance or its damage profile. This is the core problem.

16

Why do you need Fire mage to be overpowered?

17

Overpowered? No, want them to have fine damage. Because right now they are undertuned. They feel fine only in 23+ keys compared to other classes.

Duel any fire mage as Retri. And tell me what you think.

18

You drag me into it, all the way down to crazy town then you don’t read anything I wrote after the first line.

I don’t know why I bother, trying to help, trying to explain how mage damage isn’t bursty but is actually very strong.

If you didn’t understand thats fine but you didnt even try. Didn’t even try. I’m so disappointed.

Excuse me while I go rethink some things. You’ve made me lose faith in the wow forums.

19

That is literally just false.
It is literally just not true.
Fire mage is doing Really good single target damage they are not the best of the bestat it but VERY far from being under tuned. It is infact above middle of the pack it is inside top 5 single target specs.

It is used in M+ to deal a lot of damage.
Used in the MDI Time trials that is going on right now for the damage it does.
(highest key is 23)

If fire is buffed more now it becomes straight up Overpowered.
There is no real way to buff fire right now without making it overpowered.

There is however a massive chance it is a skill issue on your part have you tried to look at things that makes you do more damage?

First thing first PvP and PvE is very seperated things.
Secondly PvP HAS NEVER in the HISTORY of world of warcraft EVER been balanced in 1v1.
Blizzard has NEVER ever tried to balance pvp in a 1v1 setting because that would MESS up balance in the premiere pvp mode.
PvP has never been balanced around 1v1 or 2v2 ever in the games history.

20

Really? Top 5 ST Spec?