So, as the title states i feel extremely weaker playing Fire mage compared to Frost. I started playing and gearing up as frost and ended up doing mythics +8 to +10 with lower ilvl requirements and i was pretty amazed at the damage i was able to do and how well i performed, even doing higher damage than people with way more ilvl than me.
However, i had to try fire and become familiar with it since people seem to value Fire spec more in several dungeons and raiding. I spent like 2 days doing low mythic + and LFR raiding in order to get to know the rotation and priorities. I have reached a point where i think my rotation is okay, so i started doing higher mythic keys. To my surprise, my damage was extremely weak, especially on trash mobs. Single target was almost fine since my combustion rotation is decent, bursting a high amount of damage. I have changed my talents a bit, following a more mythic oriented setup but even if its better, its nowhere near enough to perform.
The people i used to outdps by a large margin with Frost, i couldnt even challenge with Fire.
My question is - is there any particular reason Fire feels kinda weak? Are traits like Blast master or wildfire 100% mandatory in order to play Fire and i should stick to Frost once i get optimal gear? Thing is, its like my frost gear is any better XD
Fire in mythic+ highly depends on how the tank is pulling and what affixes there are. Just try to convince the tank to pull bigger packs and combust more often. I noticed that a lot of mages forget that they have combustion while clearing trash and only use it on bosses. Cumbustion is very powerful cd and is major source of the overall damage, so if you use it on small packs or forget to use it at all, the damage becomes very low. Frosts icy veins does not have that much of an impact on overall damage, so if used incorrectly of not used at all, the overall damage stays relatively the same.
My experience has been pre 8.1 Frost was only ahead of fire in aoe and cc for m+. 8.1 hit and fire’s strongest trait got nerfed, frost got some burst aoe reduced (and slows too) but got an overall dmg increase of 3%. They both also got new bis traits but frost’s is more powerful than fire. Frost seems to be ahead in all aspects of PvE against fire now except raid fights that suit searing touch like Taloc and G’huun.
Fire is mostly great, at least in my experience for M+. I’m also pretty sure that Fire scales significantly better with gear than Frost does, so when you gear up more the difference should be less obvious, if not reversed entirely.
The only issue I have with Fire is that I find myself falling behind on trash mobs, sometimes by a huge margin on non-Fortified weeks. When a DH knocks of 70% of a trash pack’s HP with a single Eye Beam, you will often find that your Ignite doesn’t have a chance to deal much, if any, of it’s full damage before stuff dies.
It feels to me like Ignite perhaps takes a little too long to deal it’s full damage, 9 seconds to deal (atleast in my case) 17-34% (hardcast-Hot Streak) of your initial hit, that is entirely lost when the mob dies.
Fire simply isn’t kitted out for short term AoE burst, not without using Living Bomb into a huge pull (which you will see less of at higher M+).
How about flamestriking mobs to death with combustion up when talented into flame patch? From my experience, this did the fair share of damage on mythic+ trash mobs.
I wouldn’t consider something you can only do once every 2 minutes (if your are less than 2 minutes from starting a boss) to be all that useful.
A 10 second burst with a 2 minute CD cannot realistically compete with most other short term AoE burst abilities/capabilities. Unlike other AoE bursts in the game (with the exception of Frostwyrm’s Fury), the cooldown will not be available every 0-2 packs (some will be available multiple times per pack).
Generally speaking, it will be 2-4 packs between Combustion uses, depending on the level of your Keystone. So we end up falling behind on trash for the 110 seconds in every 120, that Combustion isn’t available.
You’re right. But all specs can’t be good at everything or the game would be boring.
That being said if a dh is burning off 70% of a packs health in one eye beam then they are op for the content. If you move up the difficulty and packs are alive for longer you can carry on flamestriking while classes like dh’s are waiting for cds and you’ll catch up on the meters.
Frost is one of the best for burst aoe at the moment if that’s what you are looking for.
