The vast consensus and feedback seems to be, that mages currently are not fun to play, and it’s not a tuning issue.
Fire: We need at least as big of a rework as Paladins. Fire mages should be redesigned from the ground up completely. No damage buff will fix this. Idc about tuning, if something is not fun at all to play. Fire has way too many buttons to do the same damage profile, and we do nothing outside of combustion. This is really boring and it doesn’t fit our class fantasy in the slightest. Rune of Power is really annoying to play with, and the gameplay has nothing to do with our class fantasy.
Arcane: I’m not sure, who asked for Kyrian Harmony, and all the other periodic cooldown rotations from Shadowlands and stacking modifiers. It’s not fun. Whoever is responsible for mages, can you maybe play your own class in different types of content, and see if it’s fun, and what could make it unfun possibly? Just from playing 5 minutes I really did not enjoy it in the slightest, and I love casters in every MMO/game type.
Frost: Gameplay itself is in my opinion better than for the other two specs, but for the only “ok”. The numbers just aren’t there. Lame. Still needs rework, because it’s just alright and not average or good. It’s only acceptable I think.
TLDR: Give Mages a ground up rework please to fit your modern game design philosophy to have satisfying damage output, no button bloat, and healthy gameplay, that can be complex, sure, but it also needs to be fun…
i want to motion a new playstyle for frost tbh, or atleast a different viable playstyle that isn’t spamming the same three or four abilities constantly
Fire has too many buttons?! It’s one of the leaner specs in the game in terms of buttons. People keep on moaning about fires damage outside of combustion but it’s what makes combustion fun!
Also in SL everyone was praising the harmony build saying it was the best arcane had been in years.
“People keep moaning”. Yes. Ofc people moan, since the spec is absolute garbage from a fun perspective. If you enjoy it personally, good for you, but it has nothing to do with what fire is supposed to be. You’re in a little minority. Fire atm is definitely one of the casters with the most buttons, but the problem is, that those buttons don’t feel satisfying to press at all most of the time. I’ve mained fire before Dragonflight, and I know what it’s like, since they copied the entire spec directly anyway. Raiding is the only aspect, that fire mage probably feels ok in, but I mainly refer to M+ and pvp.
I’m not in the minority. Fire is extremely popular because pressing combustion feels great. Imo its the best raiding spec in the game in terms of its kit and dmg profile. Also its much better in m+ since the buffs, you just have to be doing difficult keys to make use of its meta build. Use different talents if it doesn’t feel right, if stuff dies to fast the meta build wont do as well as other builds. Icy floes has actually made the skb/clasm build a lot better.
Sure it could do with a few more abilities in the tree but its far from ‘absolute garbage’ because you didn’t like it at level 64.
M8, your highest key was 16, and you talk like you are a pro. Relax. Also, me being lvl 64 has everything to do with my opinion, since mages are designed in such a trash way, that I didn’t even bother leveling my previous main. Idk what this tells you, but it should be clear. I don’t need to touch fire to know it’s hot in real life, and I don’t need to play fire mage again to know how awful it feels, since I’ve done that for countless hours with almost the exact same abilities in shadowlands, alright? I think this spec is terrible for normal players, that don’t play hardcore, and it’s also very unfun with RoP and doing no damage outside of combustion. You can have your opinion, but don’t belittle me. Will stop responding to you now.
Im behind the curve cos I spent the first 3-4 weeks as a monk. Should be pushing twenties by now but playing catch up on an unwanted spec is a pain.
So this is just an ‘I don’t like this spec so its awful’ rant then. Minute mage at the end of bfa was my favourite version of the specs… but that may be because it was op
Uh no, fire does not have the most buttons, here is a more acurate break down:
Frost: Easy mode
Fire: Intermediate
Arcane: Hard mode
They do need to make all the 3 mage trees more rewarding for playing well instead of lineing up a bunch of stuff only to see another class do equivalent with 1 button press.
That is legit one off the reasons I like arcane…
It makes using CC stacks on AM so much more worth.
I love the big a 20 stack Arcane Barrage can do!
EDIT:
The only change that should be done imo is give the appropriate numbers too the correct difficulty.
It shouldn’t be the case the eassiest spec has the biggest dps
Your bad for 1 season. And u feel ur equally in need a rework who has been bad for 8 consecutive years.
Wut?.
Granted. Fire is not meta this season (which is a first) its not its design to reasoning, its design itself is fine.
The issue is. Blizzard are low balling its Tuning intentionally to give arcane its time in the sun, as another specc which has sucked for most of the 8 years.
Reworks arent because classes are low tuned which fire is.
Reworks are when its physical design dont work.
As druid demonstrated. A rework csn be a dps loss, druid dropped 10 places in raids in terms of balancing after its rework.
You going to be happy if u get reworked and turn out worse then u already are?. Likely not and im afraid thats the difference. Paladins likely would be because of the design itself dont work in modern WoW anymore.
Class either does too much damage or absolutely sucks. And its been that way througu 8 years of changes. So its design requires changing.
Fire could easily be the top dps in the game tomorrow. SL proved that. It just needs buffs realistically, but they wont do it becsuse they want arcane to be ur top dps option.
This is a reading comprehension issue. I don’t like, how fire plays currently. This has nothing to do with the numbers. The spec itself is designed in a way, that can never be alright for average groups or players without being way too broken for players, who are playing almost professionally. Then, the spec also just simply is not fun anymore since shadowlands.
This is not a tuning issue. Idc about meta. I wanna play a fun spec.
Why did you play ret paladin? Because you like the class and the spec as a whole, not necessarily how it plays. The class fantasy, etc. Fire mage is one of the core classes of wow, and for it being the core wizard class of a rpg, this type of design is not acceptable in my opinion.
That period is over already.
Fire is absolutely blasting in M+ and all three mage specs are equally descent in raids.
The fire supremacy is almost returned already…
That goes for most classes. Most classes in m+ espically are built around using ur CDs at the correct moments.
Fire is just a extreme due to how accessible combustion time is with its correct talents.
I picked ret because its fun ye.
But thats a opinon, fire fills a playstyle option for a audience that love it and given the huuuge backlash for it being the lower option compared to arcane.
Kinda proves. The specc has a absolute ton of demand, deleting its playstyle is litterally advocating a damage profile to no longer exist.
Those that love fires design, have no other option for its gameplay.
You’re a ret paladin main on the mage forums being mad, that I want a rework of my favourite spec, because it’s simply not up-to-date. You need to get a grip
The issue isnt a dislike of its actual playstyle. If u go to the discord u reliese quite a few like ret from a gameplay perspective.
The problem is, its sustain and more become extremely toxic and unfun for others, the moment we become balanced, which is the issue.
They buffed us, then the sky fell with players screeching for nerfs 2 days later, they nerfed us and the class goes straight back to bench. Theres no middle ground in its design.
So it needs chsnging due to the time requirements blizzard are having to feed into the class every patch to try stabilise it.
Fire mage just doesnt have those problems, fire mage is very balancable. And its sustain and damage isnt toxic to the game itself.
Now, i personally sucked at fire, and i scored low on multiple runs. But thats a me problem, so when it fell out of meta id obviously be absolutely terrible. So i made the choice to change.
That doesnt mean the speccs bad however im just bad at it.
a 20 stack Arcane Barrage can do!