As 11.0 is coming relatively soon, it’s time to start hoping for changes. Here are my suggestions that I would like to see. Note that these are mainly gameplay/QoL suggestions.
1.) Make pyroblast castable only with hot streak. Change pyroblast proccing hot streak on cast, instead on hit.
2.) Remove flame strike as spender, and make pyroblast expload instead. Similar to warlocks fire & brimstone/cry havoc. Cursor casting is annoyng if it’s done repeatedly.
3.) Probably controversial but I like Sun King’s Blessing, with that being said make flame strike it’s only activator and castable only once 8 stacks are reached. Remove meteor due to them being too similar after.
4.) Remove ignite as mastery, make Tinder mastery. This one is probably hard to implement, but masteries are often simple X% amount of extra damage. Instead make fire’s mastery reduce CD on combustion by Y amount on crit with scorch/fireball/pyroblast. Ignite is pretty iconic, but makes single target/Aoe balancing difficult.
5.) Remove phoenix flames charges, and make castable only during combustion. Change phoenix flame to crit on cast instead of on hit. Phoenix flames is having an identity crisis currently, other option would be to remove the spell entirely and fireball be an instant cast during combustion.
How do you find these suggestions? Do you disagree with all or some of them, what would you like to see?
What is the point of your post? Are you actually surprised that mages want mage gameplay to be smoother or do you believe that fire mage is perfect and no changes should be made?
You didn’t even pinpoint which of these is actually a buff. I guess you refer to pyroblast being castable with hot streak only? In numerical sense that is actually a nerf because you wouldn’t be able to prepull with it.
The point of SKB is it’s flexibility so you can get the most out of it in both ST and AOE situations. Making Pyro provide hot streak (if it crits, outside of combustion) wouldn’t bring you significant more dps, you are still bound by GCD no matter how much Haste you amass.
Hardcast pyro/flamestrike is also a really good opener/combo for an extended Combustion with SKB
Meteor, ever since we got the current version is pretty good as it deals full damage instead of spreading it, and it deals pretty good damage.
This is what I am talking about. You are annoyed about how certain thinghs work and just want an easier ride. This is not a QoL suggestion, this is just you being annoyed how a certain spell works in the game. Most likely the reason you also dont like Meteor.
Fire already has CD reduction for Combustion and a way to proc Combustion via SKB. We all know that those 2 minutes are rather roughly 1 minute 20 seconds ish, if not less. Ignite is fine as it is, you set stuff on fire, so it burns, it’s extra dps and the base of one the build for Fire on higher keys.
Both Flamestrike and Ignite builds are fine, latter being more prominent on higher keys and being a bit more complicated. Don’t see why it would need another mastery.
So, the same rounds as with pyroblast? Looks like it. Phoenix Flames can be used to be either boost your mastery or to be guranateed critical hits , sort of a secondary fireblast, which makes it rather flexible. Really don’t see what’s the issue here, the only thing I’d add is that it should spread Ignite too.
So my conclusion is, you are just annoyed at how certain spells work and want to make Fire more dull.
I mentioned clearly Gameplay/QoL. Obviously not all these are QoL changes.
There are multiple things intertwined which you need to understand.
Let’s start with flame strike/pyroblast/ignite relationship. Due to the fact how ignite currently works, it’s really difficult to balance fire mage properly. If fire mage’s single target is strong, then its ignite AoE is very strong as well, providing enormously good damage profile in M+. So far Fire Mage has been meta for every season in Dragonflight and ignite has a role to play in it.
You misunderstood the pyroblast on hit part. It has nothing to do that pyroblast should go from zero to hot streak on crit. Instead what I meant is that it procs the heating up/hot streak the moment it’s cast. Pyroblast inherits all of it’s properties when it’s cast except for the heating up/hot streak proc. For example if you cast pyroblast when combustion has 0,01 sec left in its duration, it will gain all the combustion’s benefits despite hitting target after combustion has run out. What this change would do is remove the laggy feeling when playing from max range, nothing else.
As for the phoenix flames, it has options yes, but it doesn’t mean that it’s a well designed & fun ability to use. Also last & least: I don’t have anything against meteor.
And your conclusion is half correct! I am indeed annoyed how couple interactions work, but refining a spec here and there isn’t making it more dull. With your logic Fire mage rework was a disaster because it made it a lot easier.
Only change I really would want is making mages in general less reliant on certain items. It feels bad if you don’t have the right items. Like right now I am sad because I have not gotten Augury because its good for litterally most players, while my arcane buddy got it in vault and can’t even use it cuz its worse for him.
Other than that I like that if you play right you can have a suuuper high uptime on combustion, but I don’t like how I have to tell my tank buddies that they can’t take any breaks in m+ as it kind of ruins fire if they wait 10-20 sec between pulls due to various reasons.
Fire isn’t meta because it does the most aoe damage, it doesn’t. It’s meta because of it survivability and its damage profile. It’s balanced quite well. Flamestrike rotation does more damage than pyro ignite rotation but priority damage is really important for speed in m+. Also it wasn’t meta until the talent changes in 10.5.
What I would like to see for 11.0.
Current tier set baked into the talent tree. It makes crit useful and has opened up the talent tree.
Balance unleashed inferno with skb so it can be used in alternate build. Maybe add flamestrike to it. SKB is nice but we’ve been stuck playing it since 9.1.
Maybe I didn’t elaborate clearly enough, but that is what I meant with really good damage profile, giving really good priority damage while providing solid AoE.
I do like your suggestion though about current tier, high crit chance gives it a better flow. When it comes to Unleashed Inferno, maybe instead of CDR it could be just 1 minute CD reduction or something.