Is it just me or fire mage base damage are underwhelmingly low ? Look ,fire mage is crazy fun now, everything works just fine but :
I just leveled a Warlock ( among other classes) and a fire mage side by side and it reall ystand out that fire mage damage are incredibly uneffective.
I can throw crits all day long and still do less damage than a destro warlock without any build up or buff and debuffs ?
I know fire mage can crit all day long, but what’s the point if even crits are not even close to baseic damage of other classes ? I feel it a little bit flawed, but maybe I am missing something.
So far, I did not do pvp with fire mage yet, but I sincerely don’ t know how I could manage to even scratch a DH, or without talking about the that, any other class that is not 10 lvl below me. I don’ t se many fire mage in pvp either btw. The only spell fire mage has with decent damage is meteor rn, and I don’ t see any build that could resolve this.
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I think that if they used Fire mages in the highest keys then maybe damage, when used properly, is not that low.
Plus you are 171 ilvl, how can you even expect to have a good impression.
This toon has not been played for month, I am just talking about the basic of the class feel after leveling, and unlocking enough points to make a build. Clearly, at same Ilvl, fire mage is way behind other magic users. It’s not gearing my warlo and my fire mage to 260 that will magically mage the fire mage explode in damage, because as I said, even in a full crit frenzy, the damages are still very low
What does this even mean?
Different build, covenant and leggos all have an influence on the gameplay and on the niche you are trying to fill up.
But a spec may be better than others just under certain conditions, that does not necessarily mean there is something “going on”.
Ilvl is not the only factor it needs to be taken into account.
Type of content, difficulty of said content ans gear have a huge part in saying how useful a class toolkit can be.
If you play content where the toolkit cannot express their full potential, with an ungeared char then yes, the spec is gonna compare badly.
That has nothing to do with how the spec plays all around.
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from what I understand fire mage is one of the better dps classes in m+ and solid mid tier in raid atm.
So it’s doing ok.
Bregastor,
It seems you don’ t understand that I am not talking about hard endgame content, and not even about shadowlands because I don’ t include covenants, conduits and tier sets, I am just talking about how the class work and eprform in the most basic way in dragonflight pre-patch, which supposedly aim to fix the unbalance and the complex interaction that all the borrowed powers and legendary bring to the game.
If you cannot answer on a casual level, it’s ok but then it’s not helping me by much. I mostly stopped playing a few month ago and just came back for DF pre patch. I barely touched the game after Zereth Mortis launch…
MoistMeatbal,
Okay but why and how ? if you play fire mage do you have any insight on what kind of build to aim for ? Because for my point of view right now, the raw numbers just seem very low, compared to idk, survival hunter who can do insane AOE damage with fury of the eagle
Current Fire Mage is tuned to level 70 with full gear during first DF tier that starts in December. You can spec to AOE build, Pyro Ignite, Combustion or mixture of these three. Utility wise we are really fun with perma slows, knockbacks and other movement abilities. Survivability is good unless we are heavily purge spammed and focused, but not one build survives stuff like that anyway.
No one can, because blizzard ( thanks god) doesnt balance classes around casual content and with no gear progresion in mind . They aint gona balance class for WQs with 150 ilvl lower gear than whats considered a standard, and thats a good thing .
Mage is in a solid spot, very playable now, both on live and beta , u just gotta invest bit of time and gear it , and maybe learn it. If it doesnt appeal to you then maybe consider a reroll.
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Some classes scale better during leveling on one hand, and on another, warlocks are sort of dominating the dps charts to my knowledge.
Can’t speak for the endgame performance however, as I don’t have a mage anymore.
they are 1 st on the DPS in raids.
Oh nooo a Fire Mage is not extremely OP in all contents in a prepatch, time to panic and complain on the forums!
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From hitting 60 to getting to 300 ilvl all classes scale differently, some start low and some start high but all end up roughly the same place ish. Also stat weights are also very different sensitivity per class and spec.
There is no balancing at min gear its all balanced around max gear.
So at min gear and weird stat levels some classes will easily outshine others.
Fire mage right now feels weird because we lack talent points for the 2nd capstone talent.
But it is still super strong and rewarding to play.
Even in it’s current condition it is on top off the dps meters.
I think the reason why you may feel that way is due to how the damage pattern of the two specs are.
Most of the damage warlock specs have are frontloaded, and it is distributed across their abilities better than for fire.
As fire most of your power is consolidated into your combustion, and it is complemented by your mastery: ignite. The issue with fire is that, since your combustion is so strong, you do not have much power outside of it.
This is especially noticable in low end content, where things melt during combustion, but outside of it you will feel ineffective. You will also not have time for your ignite to do its work, which is a lot of damage lost.
Generally fire suffers a lot from its power being meh in casual content outside of combustion even at higher itemlevels, while everything beside elites die into a single pyro or two during your combustion.
As a comparison this, mage of mine was doing around 3-5k dps in single target under rune of power when is, gear was relevant, and 20k+ during his burst window. My warlock in comparison did not spike up that high, but his damage ouside of his cds are higher.
I hope this answers your question. Fire’s damage is fine, but it is too focused on combustion. I would say warlocks are more suited for casual world content.
Some specs scale differently 
You are absolutely right! The base damage outside their burst window are very underwhelming!
But fire mages are heavily dependent on good stat weight and scaling. So when you get better gear will you notice a huge improvement in how the class operates!
I’m not a fire mage main so I can’t explain it better then this (sorry)! For open world would I go arcane or frost instead! That’s the good part of being a caster class with 3 specs!
Fire mage is S tier , this thread lel , make research before stating things , and there is a mage section .
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All the Fire mage threads are like this.
They all claim Fire is super weak but basicly end up not knowing how to play it 
.
It is you that fail to understand a simple thing.
The fact that you don’t know the spec strenght at high level, gives you a flawled pictures of it in your “basic content”, giving you the impression that the spec is crap all around when it is actually a really good spec.
Fire is not a spec that excel in leveling/solo content for the reason other people have already explained, and that is why i mentioned that just comparing ilvl is not a valid comparison.
If my aim was casual content and i was not that geared i would play frost any day over fire simply because how the spec work serves that type of content better.
Damage is not everything in solo content.
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When triune got nerfed and they started crying I told them that mages would remain more than fine and just swap the legendary they used to the command one and got called a noobish idiot with no clue.
Turned out I was 100% correct. 