Fire: Perception vs Reality

[Scherazader]

Hey Everyone! A friend and fellow fire mage made this post that discusses the potential fire mage mage changes in 7.1.5. If you haven't seen it, I encourage everyone to read it.

http://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topi ... 010?page=1" target="_blank

[Lahrast]

he basically wrote down what my two fellow mages and i discussed at length in the ts some nights ago, well done

[Frantik]

really good post that sums up a lot of what many mages are discussing these days..too bad I am not on US so I could upvote..Devs should really read this

[Ceraphie]

Such a well written, coherent, down the point post.

[nickseng]

You're posting this link wherever you can, aren't you.

I mean, the arguments are there, but you're assuming the changes are aimed at nerfing Fire mages coz their too powerful. Nothing they've posted really says that.

Seems to me they want to remove the reliance of Fire on big damage cooldowns, and buff our sustained a bit.

[lowska]

Read it before it was posted here. Lots of prattling about how the guy is a hardcore player, however his points about mages are solid, and the rest is very well written.

They SAID they weren't nerfing fire, yet long-term players know that what is posted/released on the PTR more often than not makes it to live in the same form, with only minor changes. That's why the mage community is up in arms.

[Sosaria]

The general consensus is that when the patch goes live (after x amount of iterations), it will -still- end up being a DPS nerf for the fire mage spec.

[nickseng]

Blue just posted.

Fire Mage:
While Fire was mostly in a good place, we’re looking at two related issues in 7.1.5; the degree to which critical strike dominates other stats, and the overly high amount of damage concentrated into Combustion. Focusing on critical strike’s very strong contribution to the damage of Combustion, as well as that of Pyretic Incantation, addresses both of these. We'll be adjusting the damage of Fire’s core spells to leave its total damage similar to what it was before these changes. We're also giving Fire its own element-themed shield, as with Arcane.

Basically, they're not nerfing us.

As for general consensus .... I've been reading the mage forums since BC... the forums are ALWAYS full of ppl saying the spec is dead. It's an echo chamber. And I've never had an expansion where a mage spec was totally dead (which is what everyone is saying now).

[Xinder]

The removal of Ice Floes is honestly what frustrates me the most. I enjoyed the playstyle of fire with Ice Floes usage and the benefits I'd get for using it correctly during movement. I really am going to struggle if I lose it.

[lopstar]

After all bracers are dead after ice floes removal, and can the fire spec compete then? Proberly not.
Good luck hardcasting a 4s pyro on helya without ice floes, that will be a challenge.

Maybe they're not nerfing the fire spec seen from a casual / simdps point of view, but it will definately be a different story for top notch progress/raiding.

[Lammer]

I believe that Blizzard has tools for more detailed analysis of classes in comparison to warcraftlogs.

The real reason behind Fire nerfing is simply to make people switch specs. As it was always before, Blizzard buffs and nerfs specs from Expansion to Expansion: Frost in Highmaul, Fire/Arcane in BRF, Frost/Arcane in HFC, now Fire in EN

I expected these PTR notes and started massively leveling Arcane and switched loot to Arcane.

The only one thing in PTR notes that killed me is elimination of Ice Floes. If this happens this will be a class reroll. No more playing a turret, like it was when I rerolled from Elemental shaman.

[Breshnak]

Blue just posted.

Fire Mage:
While Fire was mostly in a good place, we’re looking at two related issues in 7.1.5; the degree to which critical strike dominates other stats, and the overly high amount of damage concentrated into Combustion. Focusing on critical strike’s very strong contribution to the damage of Combustion, as well as that of Pyretic Incantation, addresses both of these. We'll be adjusting the damage of Fire’s core spells to leave its total damage similar to what it was before these changes. We're also giving Fire its own element-themed shield, as with Arcane.

Basically, they're not nerfing us.

As for general consensus .... I've been reading the mage forums since BC... the forums are ALWAYS full of ppl saying the spec is dead. It's an echo chamber. And I've never had an expansion where a mage spec was totally dead (which is what everyone is saying now).

Yet they also said; "As a long time fire mage player (among other classes, don't pigeonhole me ), I think it's very fair to say the spec needed some adjustments - that's something I've heard in Trade and Guild Chat since Legion day one (even the post above me is a player who boosted a mage for this reason)."

and; "Fire is on the very strong side, so they nerfed it a little bit. It is still a little strong, but there is no way to get it exactly in line with the other specs."

They keep saying fire is very strong when all evidence shows that it's not.

[Hachiun]

They keep saying fire is very strong when all evidence shows that it's not.

Thats cause we are all doing it wrong. We must be. Its like the unicorn priest theory by Ben Brode in hearthstone.

There is a mythical awesome fire mage build out there, ppl just didnt figure it out yet. But it is there, and it needs a nerf. =P

[Eyliria]

Their point makes a bit more sense when you roll M+ into the mix.
Which is what I believe that post on the blizzard-forums was getting at.

Everybody notices the F.Mage doing 2M+ on the trash pack/M+ non-bosses.. nobody notices us when we are doing 350k dps @ 870ish on a single-target fight.

Interestingly enough, the PTR changes so far only make us even more powerful in M+... (Flame On was probably overtuned currently... but I like that Flame On seems to be the superior choice for sustained AOE, assuming non-silly amounts of targets, since Flame On scales linearly and LB scales quadratically)

I think they have good intentions with Fire Mages:

a) Give us better secondary stats scaling
b) Less reliant on a pure burn phase that if interrupted/disturbed, becomes impossible to recover from
c) Better overall/steady damage.


I'm just not sure they are hitting the marks with these changes.

[nickseng]

Yet they also said; "As a long time fire mage player (among other classes, don't pigeonhole me ), I think it's very fair to say the spec needed some adjustments - that's something I've heard in Trade and Guild Chat since Legion day one (even the post above me is a player who boosted a mage for this reason)."

and; "Fire is on the very strong side, so they nerfed it a little bit. It is still a little strong, but there is no way to get it exactly in line with the other specs."

They keep saying fire is very strong when all evidence shows that it's not.

For the first quote, they said we needed adjustments. Moving our damage from Cooldowns to sustained seems like an adjustment.

The second quote ... you do know this was from months back, and they were saying this in response to the Pyro nerf? Not about the current state?

[killsophia]

Nowadays, if a fire Mage performs great, others think that's because fire Mage is OP; if poorly, everybody assumes that's because you're a terrible fire Mage.

From the changes up-to-date, I have a feeling that we're being pushed to a good-at-aoe but below-average-at-ST spec. Considering how time-consuming it is to respect in this xpac, I seriously hope that won't be our future.

I have no problem with not relying on combustion that much. Actually I think that would be great, better sustained damage.

Don't have an NA account so can't upvote. Nice and deep words, fellow fire addictors!

PS. I have a screenshot of 6M DPS after a mob pull in karazhan. Now I'm considering print, frame, and hang it on my wall.

[Imaskar]

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

[Rydis]

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

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

[OccamsRazor15]

I do hope that we're not being nerfed to appease the masses who whinge about how OP fire is. That said, I agree that Blizzard has access to better metrics, so I feel it is likely that they have math that contradicts this individual's analysis of Warcraft Logs.

[Lahrast]

lb scales with dmg = lbdmg*n+lbdmg*(n-1)^(n-1) which is rather ridiculous, they could just introduce a "spreads to a maximum of 20 targets" or so and be done with it but nooo... that would make too much sense