7.1.5: Fire completely wrecked

[Deleted]

No, it's not.

Something needing nerfs implies that it's overperforming. Fire has not ever once in this expansion overperformed, on any fight. It was nerfed in spite of this due to a meme that has now resulted in the spec being gutted.

It's the worst of the 3 specs, so implying it needs a nerf at all is retarded if you're not asking for larger nerfs for the other 2. No spec that's below average needs nerfs. They need buffs.

I think we can agree to disagree on the first part. I still think that when a spec is a little above the overall average of the specs, small nerfs are reasonable.
And I'm not sure where you take it from that fire is, overall, one of the weaker specs in the game.

Actually what you are doing is not understanding how to read logs. Overall data is meaningless, look at individual bosses and you'll more accurately understand what I'm talking about.

I never said that overall data is a good basis for discussion. I even said that it would be stupid to take that as a measurement for analyzing classes. But it's inaccurate, too, to just take data on single bosses, condense it down to a single number, i.e. the placement, and build the average around that number. That would only be accurate if on every single boss the differences between the places would be exactly the same. E.g. 1st place at 400k, 2nd place at 395k, 3rd place at 390k. On every single boss. Then the number "9 out of 24" would make sense.
But that's not reality. Some people here just see that number and base the discussion around it. It gets treated like the Holy Grail and the "reality". My point is not that the "just take the overall numbers, normalize them and build the average" method is better. My point is, and here I repeat myself: Every singe method of condensing the class balance into a single number and basing the discussion on it is inaccurate and has its shortcomings. Many people here just take a single one, where you're at place 9, which is worse than in most other possibilities. How exactly isn't that cherrypicking?

Is this a joke? Serious question, I wan't a legitimate answer.

No. Why would it be? You said that everything below place 9 (look 2 posts back in your history) should be buffed, and place 9 shouldn't get nerfed. That is literally saying that a little above middle of the pack is the sweet spot. My point before was that middle of the pack is the sweet spot. The only real difference is, that 2-3 more specs would receive small buffs instead of nerfs. It's not much, and both possibilities are valid imo. The secons part was more from a psychological one, where I acknowledge the advantage of your point: Just look over the class forums, some classes are up in arms about even small nerfs. Nerfs are never fun, if they are needed or not. So if a few more classes receive some buffs and not nerfs, it can be a plus - again, purely from a psychological point of view.

Yes I think DPS should be equal across the board so people can play what they want.

That is a noble goal. I fully agree.

I was making a point because you mentioned 5% crit loss. Since you clearly can't have a serious conversation, You are simply not worth responding to anymore. Have a nice day, life, whatever. I'm done with you and your lack of understanding of reality.

Huh? Where'd that come from? I though that "build a bridge" from you was already a joke. oO
My initial point was, that classes across the board received nerfs. If we have a discussion about the implications of nerfs on a single class, we have to take that into consideration, too.
And thank you, you too!

Why heavily modify and nerf a sped unless it's considered OP?

It definitely isn't OP.

I never said it was, and never said heavy modifications are in order. I talked about (and I quote myself here) "The direction (nerfing it by a little) seems to be the right one". I never said that the extent of the current nerfs are the right ones, only that the direction is right. Though I see how the thing in brackets may be interpreted as "The current adjustments = nerfing it by a little". That's not my opinion. In fact, I think they're too much, and won't get live.

[BiggestNoob]

Why don't you wait until they have all the changes slated so you aren't just talking first iteration...talk about it in the PTR forums, give them feedback, this isn't the right avenue for this. It's also not the right time for it.

You don't implement in the middle of design iteration. The output of iterative design is a workable solution, not something that's totally fucking worthless and broken. Then you take the feedback from an initial implementation and use that to drive more design decisions (in particular validating/invalidating assumptions and redesigning as needed).

Either Blizzard is the most dysfunctional company in existence, or this is actually what they intended to do. Both point to extreme incompetence.

I think we can agree to disagree on the first part. I still think that when a spec is a little above the overall average of the specs, small nerfs are reasonable.
And I'm not sure where you take it from that fire is, overall, one of the weaker specs in the game.

The actual data. It's not an opinion. Fire is garbage and it's the worst mage spec right now. You're disagreeing with the data, not with any opinion I have.

[Eyliria]

From the start of this expansion up until recently people made fun of me for playing frost, especially fire mages. WHOS LAUGHING NOW? But seriously those arent even nerfs really if you read up and try it on ptr. Flame on buff, better sustained damage etc. People are freaking out for no reason as its on ptr still.

Yes, they are. Empirically, PTR tested - unless coefficients are changed on most of our spells, this is a serious and heavy handed nerfs.

Also, if you're frost you shouldn't be laughing. It's in an even worse state currently in the ptr.

[MashTactics]

From the start of this expansion up until recently people made fun of me for playing frost, especially fire mages. WHOS LAUGHING NOW? But seriously those arent even nerfs really if you read up and try it on ptr. Flame on buff, better sustained damage etc. People are freaking out for no reason as its on ptr still.

As I understand it, people are reporting upwards of 30~ percent DPS losses when testing their DPS on the PTR currently.

[Doffen]

are you looking at the HC logs or the normal ones?

I was looking at heroic.

[Deleted]

Dear fellow mages,

This message was drafted for the respective post in the US forum in response to statements by US Community Manager Ornyx, but before I found out that I'm not able to post there. I haven't written anything for a very long time, which is why I think I can just post this here without completely revising it. I'm sure you'll understand. If anyone knows how to get my message in there feel free to copy & paste it.

All the best,

Katsu

-

Dear Ornyx,

first and foremost, thank you for listening to the community. We all appreciate that you and your team take our concerns seriously. Given the challenges of balancing a game as complex as World of Warcraft, you guys are all tasked with a pretty impossible job.

I'd like to address three main points that this thread is revolving around:

1) Expectations should never be dashed

As has been stated before, the outrage we are witnessing here is due the breaking of promises that were explicitly given to the mage community. The fact that this is happening first and foremost shows how much we love this game - it means a lot to all of us. However, we trusted you and now we feel betrayed because the proposed changes are questioning the time we invested over the last couple of months. I'm sure you won't forget that us using these very words for a videogame is something most other companies would be envious of.

If this mismanagement of our expectations was not intentional (and I so do hope that it was not) you should be more careful in the future. Trust is lost so much more easily than it is gained.

2) Objective or subjective balancing, and for whom?

As for the former, if we have the tools to identify objective balance issues (warcraftlogs) there can be no question that you have them as well. I must assume then that you are well aware of all the numbers and that the sources of data available to us could be flawed in a way that is not immediately obvious. So I went digging in the other direction.

Fire seems to be strong in the low M+ and also in the lower percentiles. I'm discarding the lowest and the highest ilvl ranges due to their high variance, but where interpretation of the data is feasible the trend seems to be there. Furthermore, I must assume that the data on warcraftlogs is heavily biased in favour of better players with better gear. Since casual players will never find that website, let alone care to upload their logs, the effects could be even more pronounced outside of what we're seeing. What you guys must be seeing in terms of the total player distribution could show any imbalances across the skill and gear distributions in a much more obvious fashion than the data that is available to us.

If I also assume that your intention is to balance the game for the majority of players your choices for the fire mage may become understandable, but remain disappointing. If there is data to justify changes this dramatic it is not available to us. I don't need to point out again that there is no conclusive evidence of an imbalance for the more challenging content that would justify the proposed changes.

3) Doing high DPS is not the same as playing with fun mechanics

This is my main point, so I'm trying to be as clear as I can. We are not concerned about the lower numbers we are currently seeing on the PTR. DPS goes up and down all the time and we know for a fact that you guys are, contrary to OP, not idiots. You will adjust the numbers of fire to a place that makes it feasible in terms of dps when things go live, no question about that.

Instead, people are waving pitchforks and torches because you are about to alter the playstyle. Your are about to take away something that we love, not because it does damage but because it is fun. Fire mages are the very reason why people call it a "burn" phase. Blowing stuff up in short periods of time is hilarious. It is well worth the low dps in between and also works well from the perspective of class and spec flavour.

-

In the future you could make us very happy if you'd be more transparent about why you think something needs to be changed. To that extent and considering the dedication of the community, anecdotal evidence is not sufficient. Furthermore, try to better distinguish numerical outliers from mechanics that are fun in itself and optimize around the fun, not the dps.

One example for this approach to balancing has already been given in this thread with regards to the pyro bracers, which create an obvious balancing problem just like many other legendaries do. Casting a massive pyroblast is a lot of fun, but doing so frequently breaks the dps charts. If you want to keep (or even increase) the fun while cutting the damage you could keep (or even increase, for higher predictability) the proc rate while adjusting the damage with an appropriate internal cooldown. Thus whenever it becomes available it will still be the optimal spell to cast and bring fun to the player because of the big number on impact, but it won't lead to a significant overall increase in damage done.

Finally, don't forget that we love this game and that our expectations matter. We might not be the casual majority that boosts the subscriptions, but we are the reason we're celebrating 12 years of World of Warcraft today.

Thank you again for listening.

Kind regards,
Katsu

[Deleted]

''Father, is it over?''
''At long last, no flavour lasts forever my fire mage.''
''I see only rerolls before me...''

[nocturnus]

snip

I don't agree with the "burn phase being fun" part. Imo, it's bad design to have a spec perform extremely well for 10 seconds and horribly for 2 full minutes after. It's even worse, if 2 of the 3 specs are practically identical, barred spell-effects and thus heavily based on similar "burn phases".

No, the changes are welcome if this means we'll finally do some sustained damage.

[Sanoku]

Warlocks are buttfucked and mechanically wrecked at every turn and mages get the taste of equality ONE time in the history of like... forever and the sky is now falling and people are threatening to unsub. So hilarious. Go roll a warlock and you'll want to play your mage within days.

I'm enjoying this.

[Torian kel]

I don't agree with the "burn phase being fun" part. Imo, it's bad design to have a spec perform extremely well for 10 seconds and horribly for 2 full minutes after. It's even worse, if 2 of the 3 specs are practically identical, barred spell-effects and thus heavily based on similar "burn phases".

No, the changes are welcome if this means we'll finally do some sustained damage.

I hope they give us the tools for that sustained damage, a la nearly every expansion until now, because as of now I'm just seeing a gutted burst and terrible spec legendarys, and nothing else

[Deleted]

Warlocks are buttfucked and mechanically wrecked at every turn and mages get the taste of equality ONE time in the history of like... forever and the sky is now falling and people are threatening to unsub. So hilarious. Go roll a warlock and you'll want to play your mage within days.

I'm enjoying this.

I remember warlocks getting ever so buttfucked throughout all of SoO. They were soooo bad, wrecked at every turn. Then they reaaaally sucked all of WoD. Totally.

[Sanoku]

I remember warlocks getting ever so buttfucked throughout all of SoO. They were soooo bad, wrecked at every turn. Then they reaaaally sucked all of WoD. Totally.

I never said warlocks have never been good. But Blizzard manages to fuck us up more. My point was, name a time when mages were just awful.... having trouble? I'll help you out. Never. Mages are Blizzard's baby and they brought you in check for once. Warlocks have been claiming they're gonna unsub since the start of the expac, mages get a couple tweaks and start the same crap. I'm not saying either extreme threat of quitting is warranted, but the level of buttfucked warlocks have gotten is unreal, so I just find it funny when a mage claims the same level of unfairness when they are still practically good at everything... aoe, ST, mobility, etc.

[pyrostorm9001]

Warlocks are buttfucked and mechanically wrecked at every turn and mages get the taste of equality ONE time in the history of like... forever and the sky is now falling and people are threatening to unsub. So hilarious. Go roll a warlock and you'll want to play your mage within days.

I'm enjoying this.

Your class must be doing really well if you have time to post in another classes forum about it.

[Doffen]

I never said warlocks have never been good. But Blizzard manages to fuck us up more. My point was, name a time when mages were just awful.... having trouble? I'll help you out. Never. Mages are Blizzard's baby and they brought you in check for once. Warlocks have been claiming they're gonna unsub since the start of the expac, mages get a couple tweaks and start the same crap. I'm not saying either extreme threat of quitting is warranted, but the level of buttfucked warlocks have gotten is unreal, so I just find it funny when a mage claims the same level of unfairness when they are still practically good at everything... aoe, ST, mobility, etc.

More useless warlocks-post with no truth in it. Whining and lying. What is it with you guys?

[Bloodmagix]

Sure but it's hard to know what spec to play right now, what should I be putting AP into, what loot spec should I use when looking for legendaries?

That's the point, that's why people are upset.

AP isn't too scarce. If your starting a new artifact just a few 10k+ AP items (easily obtainable at this stage) will dump a fair amount of points onto your artifact to begin with at least.

[Woobels]

I never said warlocks have never been good. But Blizzard manages to fuck us up more. My point was, name a time when mages were just awful.... having trouble? I'll help you out. Never. Mages are Blizzard's baby and they brought you in check for once. Warlocks have been claiming they're gonna unsub since the start of the expac, mages get a couple tweaks and start the same crap. I'm not saying either extreme threat of quitting is warranted, but the level of buttfucked warlocks have gotten is unreal, so I just find it funny when a mage claims the same level of unfairness when they are still practically good at everything... aoe, ST, mobility, etc.

I demand you post your armory and warcraftlogs link or I'll laugh at you and consider you a fucking idiot.

You don't even realize just how big 'these couple of tweaks' are on PTR.

Also Warlocks have shat on Mages for arguably two expansions in the past, and in one of them you were so obscenely overpowered they literally changed the way the game works because of it.

[BiggestNoob]

Yeah Warlocks are always bad. They're actually good right now, but they were really bad in WoD. We can prove this by checking the logs:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/8#dataset=99
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/7#dataset=99
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/6#dataset=99

Definitive proof that they were shit in WoD. You've seen it here folks.

[sosaria]

Yeah Warlocks are always bad. They're actually good right now, but they were really bad in WoD. We can prove this by checking the logs:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/8#dataset=99
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/7#dataset=99
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/6#dataset=99

Definitive proof that they were shit in WoD. You've seen it here folks.

Plastkin, add a sarcasm label in your post otherwise people are just gonna link your post (stating their warlocks are shit) and make a fool of themselves (as they won't look at the actual log) !!!!!!!!

[deadman1]

AP isn't too scarce. If your starting a new artifact just a few 10k+ AP items (easily obtainable at this stage) will dump a fair amount of points onto your artifact to begin with at least.

Ehh kinda, but even then, I don't know what weapon to put it into right now.

[sosaria]

Ehh kinda, but even then, I don't know what weapon to put it into right now.

Yeah... especially when you're only a few level off from hitting the offhand 5% damage increase.

Switching too early --- Fire might not be gutted to warrant the change, although signs is pointing it will be

Not switching now --- Fire is completely gutted, and you're behind in dps traits with your new mage spec, losing out on the competition.

I'm in the same boat Mush.

For now I'm sticking to fire AP and loot as tuning can still happen to Arcane (at the moment it's very very good on the PTR). Loot wise I'm still going for fire because PTR testing suggest that Arcane stat preference is currently Haste>crit=mastery>vers

The really weird thing about Arcane on live is that people are getting really different results with a range of stat combinations. Some swear by the 50% minimum mastery.. some are doing bs dps with 24% mastery... etc etc