Fire: Perception vs Reality

[killsophia]

>I have a screenshot of 6M DPS after a mob pull in karazhan
was it with LB or flame patch?

LB. The tank pulled half of the mobs in the theatre, and I was thrilled.

so you living bombed an entire room of about 50+ mobs? Not uncommon. Living Bomb scales with more enemies, you can hardly use this as a baseline for mage dps.

Hell Ret Paladins can get 4-5 million in these packs as well. Tell us how well living bomb does on that pair of stormreaver/warrior in Eye of Azshara, or that pair of Lancer Warrior in Black Rook hold. Lets see the 6 million there.

Terrible example taking our dps out of context

I'm not saying we as fire mages should take our damage out of context, but other classes (especially the ones whining about how OP fire is) do. I once had to explained to the same tank why I sucked at ST damage, and why another fire mage with the legendary bracer didn't.

I doubt any fire mages would take the damage out of context. Because we can't.

Edit: Typo.

[Rydis]

>I have a screenshot of 6M DPS after a mob pull in karazhan
was it with LB or flame patch?

LB. The tank pulled half of the mobs in the theatre, and I was thrilled.

so you living bombed an entire room of about 50+ mobs? Not uncommon. Living Bomb scales with more enemies, you can hardly use this as a baseline for mage dps.

Hell Ret Paladins can get 4-5 million in these packs as well. Tell us how well living bomb does on that pair of stormreaver/warrior in Eye of Azshara, or that pair of Lancer Warrior in Black Rook hold. Lets see the 6 million there.

Terrible example taking our dps out of context

I'm not saying we as fire mages should take our damage out of context, but other classes (especially the ones whining about how OP fire is) do. I once had to explained to the same tank why I sucked at ST damage, and why another fire mage with the legendary bracer didn't.

I doubt any fire mages would take the damage out of context. Because we can't.

Edit: Typo.

I struggle to get tanks to explain that my ignite passing to targets he is near is not me pulling by tab targeting :/

Vast majority dont know anything about our class

[killsophia]

>I struggle to get tanks to explain that my ignite passing to targets he is near is not me pulling by tab targeting

I've been doing Mythic+ (and before it's released, Mythic) with the same tank. Sometimes I think he knows much more than me in the exact range of the ignite spreading and its odd performance in some scenarios like the snake boss in EoA. Occasionally someone in the team conplains me aggroing odd adds and he would explain to them that I couldn't help it since it's how fire Mage works. Having an understanding tank really helps. And I'm so glad my guild has no problem with my unsustainable DPS and no one forces me to respec.

I really enjoy playing fire. Hopefully blizzard wouldn't try to force us respec or dual-spec. And to achieve that, we need more and better kind of communication like the OP did. Oh, If only I have an NA account.

[Rydis]

>I struggle to get tanks to explain that my ignite passing to targets he is near is not me pulling by tab targeting

I've been doing Mythic+ (and before it's released, Mythic) with the same tank. Sometimes I think he knows much more than me in the exact range of the ignite spreading and its odd performance in some scenarios like the snake boss in EoA. Occasionally someone in the team conplains me aggroing odd adds and he would explain to them that I couldn't help it since it's how fire Mage works. Having an understanding tank really helps. And I'm so glad my guild has no problem with my unsustainable DPS and no one forces me to respec.

I really enjoy playing fire. Hopefully blizzard wouldn't try to force us respec or dual-spec. And to achieve that, we need more and better kind of communication like the OP did. Oh, If only I have an NA account.

well it was more to the point, everyone else just doesn't know how our class is or works, but thinks they know what we need done and how to fix/nerf us. Everyone has input, and few of them even know anything about it.

[Iceshatter]

Just reposting this here, my reply to this post on MMO-C.

I disagree with this post, not by its intent, but by its content. Most of us know all that already and it's misleading that these obvious issues raised by the OP are enough to change developers' minds.

As a returning player (~40 days ago) I had to pass numerous gameplay checkpoints before even reaching the point where I can (or should) worry about the artifact, gear or changes to damage output. Please take this into consideration, as many mages are returning players and not everyone had the luxury of playing consistently from early August.

These checkpoints, in no particular order, are:
- social (re)integration
- eliminating general rustiness inherent to long periods of absence
- learning new dungeon layouts, trashpack and boss locations, new timings and cooldown usage.
- learning boss fights before even entering raids
- gathering resources, harder now than ever, considering prices skyrocketed.

Kudos to Blizzard for enabling us to gear up outside raids. That's one of the things that could've been a huge issue in previous expansions.

However, and this is directly tied to the original post, the problem is not the nerfs themselves, but the impact they'll have on the real mage community out there, in the real game world, outside of "Blizzard's perfect bubble of how-things-are-because-we-pretend-they-are-so".

1. Legendary items
Returning players are lucky to have one legendary. So why bring a mage that does 330k (that played his eyes out to even get there), when you can grab a 400k mage with 2 BiS legendaries?

2. Experience
A mage with dozens of runs under his/her belt has a significant advantage when it comes to proper positioning, burn timings, mob switching etc.

3. Artifact power and off-spec gear
Anyone that played from launch, even considering the "catch-up mechanisms", has huge AP and off-spec advantages over new or returning players.

4. Players prefer taking the easy way
Why bother compromising a raid/mythic+ by introducing and exceptional player, when an average one with experience and legendaries will perform significantly better?

You can see how the above four points, by themselves, can end up in a closed loop:
--> not getting a raid slot because your DPS is shit --> greatly reduced chances of getting legendaries and learning the fights -->
<--

Now add to this all the changes Blizzard plans for 7.1.5, when we'll have to switch to either Frost or Arcane, probably Arcane.
- All the AP we struggled to grab for fire (to even be remotely competitive) is down the drain.
- All the gear we struggled to grab for fire (to be even remotely competitive) is down the drain.
- We have to learn a new spec while still struggling to learn the fights (due to tight raid slots).
- That legendary or two (if we got lucky) are probably for fire. Down the drain.
- The patch comes at the worst possible time - between two big raids - meaning we can't even use fire to gear up and prep for Nighthold.

To reiterate, I'm not saying the OP is wrong, I'm saying that anyone who went into Mythic 5+ knows all that already. What they need is to take into consideration the player base that's outside the 3% they seem to be so fond of. I'm not spending additional two months just to be finally ready to play the game on a competitive PVE level with barely one character, let alone more than one.

I perfectly understand that this is an MMO where time sinks are a thing, but this is beyond retarded.

[Warble]

Your theory is very flawed because it is so cut and dry. Raid leaders are going to take the raiders that have put the most time in/ the better player and best attendance. Not because someone has a better legendary. And because you have 2 good legendaries does not make your damage good or anything. You still have to be able to play the game.

AP is so easy to catch up now. Don't even try and justify that being a downfall of fire mages.

[Saarin]

Your theory is very flawed because it is so cut and dry. Raid leaders are going to take the raiders that have put the most time in/ the better player and best attendance. Not because someone has a better legendary. And because you have 2 good legendaries does not make your damage good or anything. You still have to be able to play the game.

AP is so easy to catch up now. Don't even try and justify that being a downfall of fire mages.

I think the point is that fire mages are as close to make or break with a legendary. That being nerf'd along with the burst rotation and ice floes means that they really bring very little compared to the other mage specs. While it is true that a legendary doesn't mean you will do the best damage, not having it puts you at a heavy disadvantage and having that wile in a group at your rough skill level hurts you as a raider. Will you still be able to beat an lfr player that plays for 3 hours a week and is done? Sure, but that isn't who is gunning for your spot on a raid team, it is players with your around your skill level so that disadvantage is even more dramatic.

And to top it off, you are right about AP being pretty easy to get, to the point that it is easy enough to force you to change and all that AP and time is lost. With the hinted additions to artifact traits being available in the upcomming patch and the fact that you are now a talent or 2 behind (assuming you farm decently hard) it all adds up to form a complete "feelsbadman" situation.

[Funkyfire]

100% agreed. I would love to answer on the Blizz forums, I'm unfortunately on EU though.

We will be facing 2 major problems in 7.1.5 (if the current build goes live).

1. People without the "go-to" items will perform even worse than before.
This applies to both raiding and M+.
For raiding: Players with SotE will stil perform better than people without it. Okay, bracers got nerfed. Koralon's is now the way to go. They just swapped the problem to another slot.
Players who had the bad luck to get neither a good ring, Koralon's (or the bracers) will still be outperformed by other players who get the 'better' legendaries. Plus the raw DPS nerfs won't even the legendary issues out by any means. Maybe the gap won't be as drastically as it is now. However, the DPS will be worse.
For M+: Nearly the same story. Darcklis. Outperforms every mage without it. Plus Aran's Ruby. This needs no further explanation.

2. Switching the spec is no option at all.
Frost and Arcane aren't viable in M+. You'd have to decide between raiding and doing M+ dungeons. And even here, Fire will perform worse than before. I already loved how Windwalkers and (good) Elemental Shamans wiped me out of the DPS meters. This will be even greater in 7.1.5.

Switching a spec has, by far, never been worse than in Legion. AP, relics, sec. stats on gear... In addition, Frost and Arcane don't seem to perform that much better than Fire in raiding atm. Haven't looked too deeply into the actual cleave DPS of both specs though.

I am pretty curious about 7.1.5's final build. This will basically decide if I, again, cancel my subscription until the next xpac because my favorite spec got nerfed to hell.

[Sosaria]

Agreed with above post about legendary player gap.

I have Darklis + Bracers, and an 880 nightbane chest + Aran's ruby at 860.

Of 9/10 Mythic + run groups, I outdps everyone by a huge margin (with the exception of hunters).

Bosses I'm burning regularly at 500-800k dps (peaks at 1m dps), and big trash pulls net me over 1m dps (fight end, not damage done) on the recount meters. Total damage done is usually sitting at 30-40% of the damage DONE out of the entire group after the pull.

Overall damage done in the entire dungeon run, I'm usually 10-20% higher than the next dps person that's not a fire mage. This is for ANY dungeon up till Mythic + 14, but figures are dependant on current prefixes. For example, I can't pull these numbers on Bolstering (suicidal), or Fortified (trash doesn't die fast enough, other classes ramp up and catch up with the numbers).

This is why they're nerfing us ("less burst, more sustained!"). But the PTR nerf is extremely bad on long sustained fights such as raid bosses and it's not so good for us on the higher end of Mythic +. (read other threads as to why)

This is with the legendaries as well... so without them kiss the dps goodbye..

[incaendius]

I don't understand. Why don't you just basically say people who have inferior gear will do worst than those with better gear? Yea, you need one of those good legendary and you tell me you didn't get one of those during these 3 months? The point of the nerfs IS NOT to make legendary obsolete but to bring each legendary closer to each other. Sure they have ways to go, but they are on the right track.

[Sosaria]

Dunno about the "on the right track". January 17th is when they launch the new patch. You have the Christmas where nobody's working.

Thing to really worry about is when the patch finally launches, Nightbane is out, guilds are going out for progression and us fire mages are still holding our members in our hands wondering whether we should be going Frost/Arcane or stick with fire.

All because people are telling us to wait for the nerf/changes to "finalise".

Example:
Nighthold is out for a few weeks, then it's finally found that Frost is the highest raiding dps spec by miles (like what fire is to the rest right now).

For those people saying that they won't make Frost so OP or they will change it again to bring other specs to equal level... Hey, it took from August till December for them to realise Fire is "too strong" before the nerfs are proposed for January. So that's, what, 4-5 months before they made changes?

[incaendius]

Well nerfs and buffs are going to happen. I'm not going to sit here and say "play what you like", but if you want to stay competitive then you should already be leveling other weapons already. Even then, there's multiply post about damage comparison between live and PTR. It doesn't look much difference to me. My only gripe with live is that bracer outshine everything else by a HUGE margin and they brought that down to earth a bit, while increasing our baseline damage. If it was up to me, I would nerf the bracer even more and increase our baseline even more.

[Imaskar]

Fire is too strong? Right now? What?
We are barely keping up. At least, the ones without bracers. Honestly, I'm sweating so hard too stay in top 5, padding wherever I can. And not every pull I success in that.

[Majky]

Well nerfs and buffs are going to happen. I'm not going to sit here and say "play what you like", but if you want to stay competitive then you should already be leveling other weapons already. Even then, there's multiply post about damage comparison between live and PTR. It doesn't look much difference to me. My only gripe with live is that bracer outshine everything else by a HUGE margin and they brought that down to earth a bit, while increasing our baseline damage. If it was up to me, I would nerf the bracer even more and increase our baseline even more.

"but if you want to stay competitive then you should already be leveling other weapons already." Are you serious? Artifact weapon is the smallest problem right now and will be even smaller with 25AK in few days. But how can you stay competitive with 3 fire legendaries and frost/arcane will be top dps? Here is the problem, blizzard are doing nerf/buffs all the time between patches, i am used to switch spec after every patch (even like it, new gameplay, new ways to improve). But without legendaries you are screwed right now.

And bracers, I assume you dont have them. They are removing ice floes and without ice floes, at least for me, bracers are dead legendary. In mythic raids it will be pretty much low dps increase, even maybe dps loss if you are forced to cancel 4s cast more often. But I understand what you mean with increasing our baseline.

[incaendius]

Well nerfs and buffs are going to happen. I'm not going to sit here and say "play what you like", but if you want to stay competitive then you should already be leveling other weapons already. Even then, there's multiply post about damage comparison between live and PTR. It doesn't look much difference to me. My only gripe with live is that bracer outshine everything else by a HUGE margin and they brought that down to earth a bit, while increasing our baseline damage. If it was up to me, I would nerf the bracer even more and increase our baseline even more.

"but if you want to stay competitive then you should already be leveling other weapons already." Are you serious? Artifact weapon is the smallest problem right now and will be even smaller with 25AK in few days. But how can you stay competitive with 3 fire legendaries and frost/arcane will be top dps? Here is the problem, blizzard are doing nerf/buffs all the time between patches, i am used to switch spec after every patch (even like it, new gameplay, new ways to improve). But without legendaries you are screwed right now.

And bracers, I assume you dont have them. They are removing ice floes and without ice floes, at least for me, bracers are dead legendary. In mythic raids it will be pretty much low dps increase, even maybe dps loss if you are forced to cancel 4s cast more often. But I understand what you mean with increasing our baseline.

Well, what is the competitive to you? Here is my logs, I don't have the bracer and I scored above 90% percentile and averaged 94% on mythic EN. Hell, I swapped to frost with fire legendary and STILL averaged 87%. Is that considered competitive to you?

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/c ... 543979/10/" target="_blank

I mean, I am salty about not being able to score higher than those good players WITH the bracers, but thats the reason they bring ALL the legendary closer to each other in term of of DPS. It's not as bad as people are making it out to be.

[Eyliria]

I'm confused as to whether you guys are comparing interclass or intraclass performance.
Fire was not overpowered compared to other classes, it was bottom half tier (this argument has been made and shown before, many many times) once you factored out pad damage (Xavius tentacles)

We thought the point of 7.1.5 was to cut down our reliance on crit rating and smooth out our peak and valley, while leaving our DPS more or less unchanged.

So far, they've done .. one of those things.

Our valleys are not as deep anymore (thats good).
We are still coming short (>5% off compared to live) on the overall damage aspect
And crit is still by far the best stat (because of Hot Streak)


I'm worried that I'll be left with a boring spec (fireball... fireball... fireball... fireball.. FIREBLAST! Fireball + Pyroblast... Fireball... Fireball... Fireball... Firebal...) that does worse than it does now.

[Jereko]

We thought the point of 7.1.5 was to cut down our reliance on crit rating and smooth out our peak and valley, while leaving our DPS more or less unchanged.

So far, they've done .. one of those things.

Our valleys are not as deep anymore (thats good).
We are still coming short (>5% off compared to live) on the overall damage aspect
And crit is still by far the best stat (because of Hot Streak)

Are you seeing a real increase in sustain dps on the PTR or just a relative increase compared to combustion windows? On live, about 55% of my damage is tied up in Combustion, with 45% being "sustain". Those numbers have switched for me on PTR, but with the lower damage on PTR, it's hard for me to tell whether that's just because they removed damage from Combustion, and not because of any increase in sustain.

I'm worried that I'll be left with a boring spec (fireball... fireball... fireball... fireball.. FIREBLAST! Fireball + Pyroblast... Fireball... Fireball... Fireball... Firebal...) that does worse than it does now.

Hitting a 4 stack of Enhanced Pyrotechnics on live is super aggravating. Hitting a 3-4 stack on PTR with the 2 piece bonus isn't a rare event, and it's even more aggravating.

[Eyliria]

We thought the point of 7.1.5 was to cut down our reliance on crit rating and smooth out our peak and valley, while leaving our DPS more or less unchanged.

So far, they've done .. one of those things.

Our valleys are not as deep anymore (thats good).
We are still coming short (>5% off compared to live) on the overall damage aspect
And crit is still by far the best stat (because of Hot Streak)

Are you seeing a real increase in sustain dps on the PTR or just a relative increase compared to combustion windows? On live, about 55% of my damage is tied up in Combustion, with 45% being "sustain". Those numbers have switched for me on PTR, but with the lower damage on PTR, it's hard for me to tell whether that's just because they removed damage from Combustion, and not because of any increase in sustain.

I'm worried that I'll be left with a boring spec (fireball... fireball... fireball... fireball.. FIREBLAST! Fireball + Pyroblast... Fireball... Fireball... Fireball... Firebal...) that does worse than it does now.

Hitting a 4 stack of Enhanced Pyrotechnics on live is super aggravating. Hitting a 3-4 stack on PTR with the 2 piece bonus isn't a rare event, and it's even more aggravating.

On live right now, I'm seeing roughly 210-230k dps ST with nothing up.
On the PTR it's 250k ish.

It's "better"

On the PTR w/o 2PC it's not uncommon at all to hit 4 stack on Enhanced Pyrotechnics - which makes it 'sync up' with Flame On very well... You basically always have that 1 stack of Fireblast to use when you do get the crit.

Which concerns me a bit because it makes me think THAT's the point of Flame On.. to make sure you aren't "wasting" Heating Ups reliably and smoothing the rotation a bit.


I can't go back to test it because I had a habbit of deleting my character and reimporting every new build (UI settings transfered over perfectly if all the characters were named the same... Yes, I'm lazy, sorry)

But ever since the ptr went "Release Candidate", they took out the copy option.

[Majky]

Well, what is the competitive to you? Here is my logs, I don't have the bracer and I scored above 90% percentile and averaged 94% on mythic EN. Hell, I swapped to frost with fire legendary and STILL averaged 87%. Is that considered competitive to you?

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/c ... 543979/10/" target="_blank

I mean, I am salty about not being able to score higher than those good players WITH the bracers, but thats the reason they bring ALL the legendary closer to each other in term of of DPS. It's not as bad as people are making it out to be.

If you have such a good logs why are you even want to nerf bracers more? I think that every 90%+ is more about luck with procs/boss targeting with abilities/boss encounter overall/raid setup. So you are doing fine even without them (honestly, i dont really think that bracers are so much OP as people are saying, but wah, who am I).

And about frost...what can i say, you have BL ring. First of all it's very good legendary for all specs and it's BIS for GS build, much much better than any frost legendary. That is not really good example. I was talking about FIRE legendaries.

[incaendius]

Not going to respond to you anymore. Your argument is going off track and your ignorance is baffling. Good day.