Fire mage is too easy?

[Cebel]

Fire is not hard to play by all means, but there will always be a gap between a good and a bad player. When they changed Combustion they kinda lowered the skillcap of the spec but there are still other things that require good decision-making and reaction.

Is it boring? Not for me at least. Fire is pretty fast-paced spec that also offers options for almost every situation. Can't say I'm bored of it after playing it on beta for months.

Oh yeah, cause combustion was a really skillful spell... Only the greatest fire mages forced themselves into a massive chain of crit pyroblasts and then hit combustion, all the shitty mages didn't force the RNG and thus sucked. Toooootally skillful game play... Wasnt like there were addons that literally told you when to press the button or anything.

[Aggrophobic]

ROFL Home made sims, maybe you should check the Warlock discord sometimes. Would sims be better if they were made at a workplace?

Good job addressing all the other things I brought up, you can gtfo now.

Whats with the personal insults? You're clearly misinformed.
But I guess we'll see. It's not like Blizzard will make a big changes befor release anyway. Maybe if we're lucky, they might put in some nerfs befor the raids are out.

[HTowN]

Whats with the personal insults? You're clearly misinformed.
But I guess we'll see. It's not like Blizzard will make a big changes befor release anyway. Maybe if we're lucky, they might put in some nerfs befor the raids are out.

Yay. Not hoping for other classes to get buff but hoping for fire to get nerf. The salt level is overwhelming.

[Aggrophobic]

Yay. Not hoping for other classes to get buff but hoping for fire to get nerf. The salt level is overwhelming.

No, but to bring some specs up to the same standard they'd have to makes some pretty big changes and that does not seem likely.
It would work just as well though.

[HTowN]

No, but to bring some specs up to the same standard they'd have to makes some pretty big changes and that does not seem likely.
It would work just as well though.

Oh btw, since rogue has 2 specs on top of your dps chart, perhaps you should go to rogue forum and talk about how OP they are as well?

I mean, they have everything, right? Top dps. Can cheese mechanics. All other melees don't have a chance.

[BiggestNoob]

ROFL Home made sims, maybe you should check the Warlock discord sometimes. Would sims be better if they were made at a workplace?

Good job addressing all the other things I brought up, you can gtfo now.

They'd be better if they weren't made by idiots. We haven't had a stable Legion sim yet. The simcraft branches are still so buggy that the output is useless, hence why any charts you're seeing in discord are inaccurate. I've seen 2 different simcraft outputs now on the same day from different guilds being passed around that show completely different results.

And yes, most of the people working on simcraft are incompetent, and software built by a decent team of competent people would absolutely function better than simcraft does.

[Aggrophobic]

Oh btw, since rogue has 2 specs on top of your dps chart, perhaps you should go to rogue forum and talk about how OP they are as well?

I mean, they have everything, right? Top dps. Can cheese mechanics. All other melees don't have a chance.

That is very true and has been from years. Melee is not really my thing though.
How about you take that one?

[Deleted]

Oh yeah, cause combustion was a really skillful spell... Only the greatest fire mages forced themselves into a massive chain of crit pyroblasts and then hit combustion, all the shitty mages didn't force the RNG and thus sucked. Toooootally skillful game play... Wasnt like there were addons that literally told you when to press the button or anything.

so true, addons literally removed any skillcap combust had and tbh i would argue that the current version of combust actually increase the skillcap bcoz there are so many more situations and choices where its use is useful that cant be reduced to an addon.

[Neoxx]

Oh yeah, cause combustion was a really skillful spell... Only the greatest fire mages forced themselves into a massive chain of crit pyroblasts and then hit combustion, all the shitty mages didn't force the RNG and thus sucked. Toooootally skillful game play... Wasnt like there were addons that literally told you when to press the button or anything.

I like your sarcasm, but hitting a good combustion still was the thing that separated the good from the bad. Sure RNG played a role in this but since we got crit proc trinkets you could force good combustions almost every time since BRF. Some people hit a lucky combustion every 5 tries and some did it consistant every try. Knowing how to set everything up and how Ignite works was the key.
Addons just showed you the numbers, not how you get there.

so true, addons literally removed any skillcap combust had and tbh i would argue that the current version of combust actually increase the skillcap bcoz there are so many more situations and choices where its use is useful that cant be reduced to an addon.

?
Single target Combustion is almost like a set rotation now. On large groups of mobs you just switch Pyroblast with Flamestrike.

[Life-Binder]

wanted to ask something here

is there some addon (WA?) that will give you a clear visual cue on screen as soon you land a (one/first) spell crit .. so that than you would know that with 1 crit having just landed - you can use Fireblast for a guaranteed second in a row to proc Hot Streak


I mean aside from just watching the yellow crit number on the mob ..

[Deleted]

?
Single target Combustion is almost like a set rotation now. On large groups of mobs you just switch Pyroblast with Flamestrike.

this is generally true but it wasnt the point i was trying to make.

- - - Updated - - -

wanted to ask something here

is there some addon (WA?) that will give you a clear visual cue on screen as soon you land a (one/first) spell crit .. so that than you would know that with 1 crit having just landed - you can use Fireblast for a guaranteed second in a row to proc Hot Streak


I mean aside from just watching the yellow crit number on the mob ..

well HU shows up automatically if you crit, so there is no real reason for something like this.

[Life-Binder]

well HU shows up automatically if you crit, so there is no real reason for something like this.

ok then, sorry I derped ^^, only switched to Fire last night after hitting 100, didnt try it out much, thats the first thing that came to mind - maximize Hot Streak efficiency by always knowing when you have critted

[Deleted]

ok then, sorry I derped ^^, only switched to Fire last night after hitting 100, didnt try it out much, thats the first thing that came to mind - maximize Hot Streak efficiency by always knowing when you have critted

hey, there are no stupid questions, only stupid answers.

[Deleted]

As someone who's used to juggling multiple DoT effects on multiple targets, reacting to procs and managing a relatively long winded resource cycle, I find the spec ridiculously simplistic to play with the relevant talents. Phoenix Flames charges will add some depth due to them being on a relatively long cooldown, not counting procs.

I'm used to having to work for my damage - this does not qualify as "work". Whether you like that or not is up to you.

[Incarnia]

I currently play both frost and fire (haven't tested out Arcane yet). Fire is really fun, it's easy yes but not boring. The talents are interesting and useful if you want to focus more or AoE or towards single target. I like being able to decide this via talents rather than being forced to respec. Frost is almost the same as before imo, not as fun as Fire what I'm concerned but not bad as far as fun factor goes. I tend to spec Frost when I want to be able to control and kite.

Personally I don't mind having forgiving specs around, that doesn't equal boring to me. Besides there will always be a noticeable difference between bad - good and truly skilled. How small or huge the gap will be varies between classes and specs, and I don't see that as a bad thing necessarily.

I will main Mage in Legion. So far I've played MM and BM hunter, Feral Druid, Ele and Resto Shaman & Shadow Priest after the pre-patch. Fire Mage is by far the most fun out of all of them (imo).

[Deleted]

yep way too strong.
even lesser player can perform well as fire mage.

irrelavant argument. Having checked several specs and past expansions. Their have been many simple specs (melee more than ranged).
And most of the cases it hasn't really influenced balance.

It's interesting to talk about if simple specs should be weaker than difficult specs. And should this be across class or just their own specs and what about talents. I myself don't know the answer to that. But generally blizzard rather wants to compensate through utility.
For mages blizzard does balance the talents dependant on how much effort is needed to make good use out of it. So the harder talents generally do more damage.

[Deleted]

irrelavant argument. Having checked several specs and past expansions. Their have been many simple specs (melee more than ranged).
And most of the cases it hasn't really influenced balance.

so true, by that account demon hunters should do half the dps of every1 else bcoz their ST is literally just auto attacks and chaos strike and their aoe is just rotate between their 5-6 aoe abilities and look at all the lowbie aoers out there. yes fire mage is easy but specs like afflic etc. arent exactly pillars of difficulty either, all specs are fairly equal in difficulty assuming you're not a total moron.

[Deleted]

Utility:
Atm mages seem to be one of the weakest classes on utilty. It only has Timewarp. It's a incredibly strong buff but not stackable. Maybe arcane mages will be kiters.

Looking at melee specs they bring stronger utility to the raid compared to mage. This is to compensate for them being melee.
Looking at classes with a healing spec say retribution paladin they have.
- Blessing of protection
- 3 minor buffs
- Blessing of Freedom
- Heal (it's eqauvelant of icebarrier in the amount but able to cast it on others)
- Talent heal for holy power
- Passive minor aoe healing
- Stun and incapacitate (most specs have only one of those)
- And one thing more, hand of sacrifice?

Now this sounds like a lot, but it's also to compensate for other weaknesses like mobility compared other melee and maybe weaker on dps like firemage.
Other ranged classes im not too familiar with. I saw warlock still has many utility elements (healthstone, gateway, (summoning), and some specs have curse of tongue?)
Boomkins have the affinity talent, I think the healing one will be the most interesting one.

Now it's unknown how effective these extra utility are. Noob players won't use them and at the top raiding level you might be better of focusing on dps rather than casting a heal (but i enjoyed doing it as retri paladin in wrath). Hell despite frost arsenal of slows I don't think it will be an effective kiter, arcane seems much stronger but hunter will probably rule that department, meaning arcane mage is a compensation for a raid lacking a skilled hunter.
Blizzards main goal this expansion is to diversigy the specs, I'm not expecting their to be the best balance........hell i'm afraid Arcane and Frost will be too weak. So mages will be stuck with 2 dead specs........can you say that about the other classes you compare fire with?

With these massive class changes and more diversity it's incredibly hard to compare one on one.

I also want to note that their is a larger difference between classes in how they deal an Archetype dmg which can have big influences on some fights. Firemages can do all departments but the mobs need to be close to eachother. Quite a few specs it will excell at the mobs being spread out (dotbased specs) or when the mobs die fast.

To add to that, if you watched the developer interviews that were done recently the FATBOSS guys and Slootbat himself repeated over and over and over again that mages are going to be THE go to caster DPS in most cases unless you're playing at sub mythic difficulties. Fire is fun and all but I don't think that it should be so good that you're less likely to bring other classes just because they're not as good as a fire mage.

To be fair mythic dungeon balance is also a problem where its dominated by melee. Especially since it's only 5 players and melee got extra utility for the raid compensation. So fire really shouldnt be nerfed their.

What "hybrid" has more utility?
Fire has a "heal for 15%" every 15 sec, ice block, a shield and can even get a "cheat death" ability of they feel like it.
While other mage specs might have more, no other caster comes even close to that survivability without sacrificing huge amounts of DPS. The fire mage does not even have to lose a single point of DPS while using all these.

I don't mind you having this initial perspective. But your being idiotic at how you continue along this line in the thread.

Arcane and Frost have an artifact talent that doubles the effectiveness of Icebarrier. This is the equavelant of Fires blink heal. Admitingly blink heal is on shorter cd
But in raiding the icebarrier will in most cases be better. Other classes have similiar talent for this. Paladins and druids for example. The shield or heal come suprsingly close to eachother in the amount they do. Ussually around 25-30% of your health.

On another note, if you keep going on the attack, do you have any sources where it shows raid performance of specs?

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Admittingly their is a internal problem with mages where fire is so much more popular than the ohter 2.
Arcane might be a possible spec to have a lot of utility to compensate and thats where it could be buffed, and maybe allow channeling on the move at 50% movement reduction.
Frost no idea. But we have to see how things play out.

[Deleted]

Utility:



To be fair mythic dungeon balance is also a problem where its dominated by melee. Especially since it's only 5 players and melee got extra utility for the raid compensation. So fire really shouldnt be nerfed their.

aye and it looks entirely different in raids, a good example is spriest, they utterly in mythic dungeons but in actual raids they are about as good as mages, demonology is crappy in mythic dungeons but given an ideal raid situation like a patchwerk fight without moving and they could potentially outdmg fire mage.

also i wouldnt give slootbag too much credit when it comes to comment about casters in mythic dungeons, he knows his shit when it comes to tanks but the comments he made were based on what he sees in mythic dungeons and mythic dungeons and mythic raiding are to different things, for example mythic+ trash and bosses generally dont live longer than a mythic boss+adds, meaning that some classes will have a much higher uptime on their cds while in a mythic raid or even hc raid, the uptime on said cds will be much lower and it will be a much smaller gain.

[ultramini]

Fire Mage needs nerfing because it's bad design to have one class/spec that is easy to play and outstanding at everything which other players with different classes have to compete against

Blizz talked up having different strengths and weaknesses for different classes, presumably to make it more interesting to build raid teams and to make sure that all classes had a place to shine and be needed

At the moment fire mage has no weakness, it is simply a top performer at everything

Fire mage doesn;t just "play well" (translation, it's piss easy to play) it rewards it's simplicity massively, whereas others classes are harder work to get right and even then don;t reward so much

And the sad thing is I suspect it's all going to go live.

I have yet to see a fire mage beat the aoe potential of Battle cry + bladestorm / whirlwind. Much easier to play too. Fire mage are good...but don't outperform everything.