I think in general the subject is broader than what is 20-targets soft-capped what is fewer targets capped; fire mage just does very high AOE damage (regardless of how it does it; it just does; maybe it’s because of the reason you say or not). For that reason they try to make Arcane be higher single target damage and lower AOE damage and Frost an average of both (but easier to play).
The absolute worst state of the class I remember was when at the Launch of Legion we were practically forced to play fire because it was best at single target too; it destroyed the other specs if you wanted to be even marginally optimal at raiding; they should either have fire nerfed at single target or balance all specs to similar numbers on both aoe and single but what they should do is subjective because too much balance may be more dull.
On huge pulls frost does more dmg than fire and warlock does insane numbers but they can get around the 20 target cap. Sounds like you haven’t been keeping up. Casters (ranged that aren’t hunters) all have some form of strong uncapped aoe. Some melee get away with it too (unholy, survival) but tend to be stronger than casters on smaller pulls, its actually a nice idea done poorly.
Fire mage does not do more aoe dmg than other specs, its not op, but the percentage of it dmg that goes into a 12sec window, without ramp is uniquely high. Which is why its good to let the tank know when you are able to do good dmg, it makes the run go smoother, especially if your using the combustion to on difficult pulls. It makes it easier for the tank to live when the mobs die within their mitigation and thats the reason fire mages are popular in m+. Combustion is effectively one less defensive the tank has to use.
The recent nerfs to dungeon mobs has made tank survivalibility much better and has made other specs more viable. Burst dps isn’t as important for surviving which has lead to the rise of frost in the mdi which can do big dmg every pull unlike fire’s huge dmg every other pull.
Seems like you live in the world of simulation. The main reason fire is op in AOE is that in 5mans they have downtimes when running from mobs to mobs so they can burn down packs much faster than others.
My arcane would probably be better than them if we never stopped dpsing or at least if it was mostly bosses.
A good tank that requires this, would track it on their own because the LUA API allows it. If they had no clue about that and they need you to spam it in chat: chances are they are not going to be good anyway or/and they may be frustrated from the chat spam and make it worse.
You don’t get basic statistics here. If a spec has stable damage then it’s trash compared to specs with similar total damage but with burn phases if there are downtimes between combat (which is very common). In practice that means arcane is god-like if the combat has single target and fire if it’s aoe but since 5manning has so much trash packing: fire seems powerful in 5mans.
That by the way is why frost is the “baby” spec and why it is easier to play. It deserves it. It has stable damage and it will be reliable to play even for mediocre players but it will never shine compared to the best players on other specs.
Its a pug. You don’t know the tank or how good they are, it may help, it may not. I have a weakaura that announces when I use alter time so the healer knows, the healer could track it but I don’t expect them to be watching my cds all the time. Its the same thing. Hunters announce binding shot, binding shot debuffs mobs but it still helps to announce it.
I totally understand why fire is great with downtime. If you do then you understand how strong combustion is, which contradicts your original post about everyone having cds.
Also watch the mdi, frost was the go to spec not fire. Your moaning about fire being op but the game is incredibly well balanced atm. If Arcane had dragons breath and didnt get smacked about in melee it would be just as good as fire.
lol only a fire mage would troll with that phrase in a discussion about AOE. I know it’s subjective in whole but it depends on the setting; on 5mans you are definitely not balanced; most of 5manning is AOE and I doubt that changes even on the +boss affixes.
alter time usage is interesting if you know you’re not going to die.
If they don’t want to know your CDs are ready and won’t pull larger around them, then they can always just say that and the fire mage will stop announcing it if they’re a decent person. But, I’ve definitely had tanks who were willing to bring in an extra pack or two during my combust but didn’t have the means to track it. You might’ve not met them, but they exist.
It’s not season 1 anymore. We got nerfed and unless you pull large (which many pugs won’t, they’ll go for packs one by one), there’s a pleeeeeeeeeenty of specs that will out-damage even a good fire mage when played properly. Including the other two mage specs. Fire mage’s AoE is good, but that is only during combustion.
Inbetween that, our AoE is really not that amazing. Particularly so if the mobs are moved due to necessary kiting etc. Saying that we’ll do tank-level damage without pulling around us is of course an exaggeration, but a plenty of specs will do better in this scenario. How can we possibly be OP if this is the case?
Time to play some kyrian arcane. It’s the most interesting/new iteration of the spec I’ve seen since the firelands years and I suspect part of it will find its way to the talent tree (but not as-is).
But: given 2 optimal players: I bet fire still wins in 5mans mainly because of the downtimes that exist in most of them even when the tank is not pulling packs for them.
Fire would be more popular in keys if that was the case. It was FotM back in season1 because the damage was admittedly overtuned, now it is simply not quite there if you do normal-sized pulls. Fire doesn’t get to shine compared to AoE capped/cleave-oriented/whatever you want to call them specs when you consistently do the pulls of 3-5 mobs. Your point about downtime doesn’t really have much going for it, because in the vast majority of cases you still won’t go for a “pull 1 pack>combust it>kill it in 15 seconds>wait 1.5 minutes for combust to come back>pull another” routine. Fire will have many parts of the dungeon where mobs are pulled and it cannot provide much damage because its combust is still on-cooldown.
Also, if you want to go with the idea of downtime giving fire and advantage, you should not forget about the case where combust will come off-cd when the pack is nearly dead, you’re better off holding it because you wouldn’t get full value on 30% hp mobs, and then there’s downtime before the next pack is pulled which in turn leads to sitting on combust for a veeeeeeeeeeeery long time.
I like fire though! Regardless of whether it’s the meta or not. I just like its playstyle.
I prefer arcane on a “systemic” level because it’s clear to me for many years now that it is the most punished if crap is spammed on the ground and it has to move and therefore the hardest to play (or to learn to play initially). That in turn makes me think that if the devs know what they’re doing: they are designing it with some advantages provided you don’t do mistakes and I think that’s what they do when e.g. it has better single target damage.
For me frost>fire>arcane in terms of ease of use when you start learning the timings and the rotations etc. so frost would be the most nerfed (and it’s usually proven to be) and I want to have the max potential with arcane; that of course sometimes backfires; e.g. there’s total failure with arcane if you don’t know a boss’ timings perfectly yet.
Frost will be forever the baby spec. It is designed to do “just good” damage but it gains in return ease of use: it’s very hard to not be able to rotate well with it even if you know nothing about a complex encounter.
AOE will never be uncapped in 9.1.5 by the way; the only thing 9.1.5 does is to expand a little the soft-caps so it feels more natural; almost all specs in the game have soft-caps of at most 20 targets for years.
On the average population: specs like frost are probably best for the average guild. That’s because even mediocre players will not be terrible with them.
But that depends on who you are; e.g. a child it probably best on frost; total dps being equal: an expert is probably best on arcane or fire.
There’s the thing. While you could argue it should be the case by design, it won’t always come down to that in practice. There’s this thing called tuning that we get every single patch. And sometimes, even the simpler spec will have so much more damage output on its abilities you cannot get close to it with a more demanding spec despite having a decently strong grasp of its rotation.
Of course, an awesome fire/arcane mage will still outdamage a bad frost even when the tuning is not the most favourable, but even a decent/good frost mage will have more output than awesome player of either of the other two when the balance is not quite there. And an awesome frost will be miles ahead of an awesome arcane/fire in that case.
The main idea is that on average across patches it’s how it is; arcane is harder to play but has good single and fire higher aoe though slightly easier to play (probably because high single is more important in the hardest fights) and frost is average; it might vary in patches but I remember this character of this class being dominant on average for many years now.
If they do deviate too much from it and they do it without a holistic design: they ruin the game; for example: they completely ruined the class around the launch of Legion; fire was best even on single target so you were forced to play fire even if you hated it if you wanted to be optimal (couple it with the legendary RNG and it was horrible).
By the way: simulation damage is most of the time worthless for these comparisons; if you have low burst you are usually worse in the real game; this is because they have tuned most encounters to benefit from short bursts.
