Good day, Id like to raise some issues I have with the fire mage tier for 10.1, the set itself has a lot of potential but has been recieved poorly because it has negative synergy with how fire currently plays.
2pc: The concerns for the 2 piece are minimal, but with current haste levels at some point in combustion you will have to drop either Feel the Burn or Charred Embers in an attempt to maintain both.
This will most likely be fixed with more haste, but for the sake of not making it feel bad to use til then, an increased in Charred Embers OR Feel the Burn duration would be appreciated. Alternatively Phoenix flames could just be made a faster button, PF since its inception has been a clunky button to press because it takes a full GCD + Ages of travel time before it registers. Any of these suggestions should fix the 2 set altogether.
4 pc: This is where the majority of the problems are at the moment, and its actually less to do with the 4 set design in particular and more so the design of Hyperthermia, and how it runs counter with the current iteration of fire in DF.
The first issue is proc munching. Our spec at the moment relies heavily on the utilization of fire blast to maintain Feel the Burn, seeing as fire blast serves no purpose in the Hyperthermia window, chances are we will have to munch procs to keep up the buff.
This is the tame version of the problem, the real crime currently lies in AoE damage. Currently we utilize ignite spreading to deal AoE, to do that we need to use fire blast in order to do so. The obvious issue then is that you need to REALLY munch procs in your Hyperthermia window in order to maintain ignite spread despite the uselessness of Fireblast otherwise.
This wasnt such a problem with firestorm in shadowlands because we relied on flamestrike for AoE then, and while I wouldnt mind a return to flamestrike, flamestrike itself does not contibute to charged embers progression, making it a dead button (and a DPS loss for not taking another talent) until Hyperthermia finally procs.
Im actually not sure what the solution is here, I suppose an increase in feel the burn duration could solve the issue in ST, but then you still have the problem of proc munching in AoE, which could only really be fixed i think with a rework to Hyperthermia itself or a return to BFA fire where ignite spread passively.
The third problem is Hyperthermia’s interaction with SKB. Outside of the problem of it proccing during combustion and SKB windows (a point I address in the next paragraph) the issue here is needing to hard cast pyro while hyperthermia is up. You literally just cant, and you could lose entire procs of SKB because the set will not allow you to start hardcasting until the timer runs out. The fix here is simple. Make an exception for pyros in hyperthermia to count towards the activation of SKB (basically pretend that theyre hardcasts) but on that note we reach into the problem of hyperthermia and combustion mixing together.
And so, the final fourth issue is hyperthermia proccing during combustion, which is going to invariably be a DPS loss, and will be clunky to play around (having to hold combustion to get 30 stacks of charred embers). My suggestion here is either pause the combustion timer while hyperthermia is active, or do not allow hyperthermia to activate until combustion ends.
Nothing but love and respect for the devs, DF has been great and fire has been fun to play, this is just me doing my part to make sure it continues to be so as this set needs serious work before release.
Have a lovely rest of your day
