Mages' changes facing 7.1.5

[ssviolett]

Correction: The fun of fire is pyro procs when pyro is a meaningful hard hitting spell. Right now crit is way too high, and pyro hits like a wet noodle as a result of the only way to balance it.

Casting fewer (but harder hitting pyros) will be more fun than constantly casting turkey slap pyros. Of course theres a balance/line somewhere between those two extremes, but right now its simply in the 'too much too weak' category.

Not for me too. For now I'm quite enjoying Fire gameplay, no idea why Blizzard want to change it, since we are not OP anymore.
I enjoy constant crits, even if they are weak, I enjoy casting 2m pyros from legendary bracers (btw there is nothing OP about it - warlocks cast such Chaos Bolts every 10 seconds - we enjoy such big crits 1-2 times per minute.
They just have to reduce Comb, as they did - 50% Mastery - fine, and buff our spells as they did - fine too, well, and maybe nerf LB a bit.

[Seramore]

The fun of fire is the pyro procs, how will fire maintain that with less crit?

how did you play the spec at the beginning of the expansion?

[MashTactics]

how did you play the spec at the beginning of the expansion?

With the understanding that it would get better as gear scaled upwards.

And additionally, the understanding that our DPS would be going up, and not down.

[Seramore]

With the understanding that it would get better as gear scaled upwards.

And additionally, the understanding that our DPS would be going up, and not down.

Thanks for the answer Mush

[MashTactics]

Thanks for the answer Mush

Oh, sorry. I didn't realize that you asked a person-specific question, and not one that could by answered by literally anyone who played mages before their crit was jacked up to 11.

[Armourboy]

Thanks for the answer Mush

If you wanted a personal answer you should of sent a PM.

[Seramore]

If you wanted a personal answer you should of sent a PM.

should have*

Infracted.

[Deleted]

So i think they have fallen into their own trap here, as ppl have stated crit is going to seem just as or even more important to some ppl, since the spec will take a massive nose dive in how it flows (i mean its not that turbo interesting as it is for me anyways), meaning its going to feel slow and clunky even if you are pulling the same numbers as before.

They are in a catch 22 right now as the damage of pyro has to be weak to balance the damage due to the amount of them you can spam, this spam is what ppl enjoy about the spec, take that away and we are back to the old days of spamming fireballs.

Here's an idea tho, scrap the bracers and make the effect baseline, since you can maintain the spammy pyro burst and still have an proc that does that high burst ppl also want, you could call it say.......Greater Pyroblast?

Then the spec doesn't have to rely on having the bracers to do well and another legendary can be designed to take its place.

[Rumstein]

Correction: The fun of fire is pyro procs when pyro is a meaningful hard hitting spell. Right now crit is way too high, and pyro hits like a wet noodle as a result of the only way to balance it.

Casting fewer (but harder hitting pyros) will be more fun than constantly casting turkey slap pyros. Of course theres a balance/line somewhere between those two extremes, but right now its simply in the 'too much too weak' category.

I don't agree. With low crit, you are even more locked into combustion phase for damage.

Lower crit = Less Heating Up = Less Hot Streak = less Pyroblasts, bracer procs, etc. Our crit rate has dropped almost 30% in PTR, while the damage boost has been around 10% on Pyro.

I currently have 62% crit on sheet with food, for Fireball, Pyro, Scorch that is multiplied to 68.2% (And fireball stacks on non-crit). In PTR, we lose 10% flat from Molten Armour (Currently 20%, removing crit in PTR and adding 10% to Critical Mass instead), and the 1.1x multplier is gone from Critical Mass. In addition, Crit rating goes from 350/% to 400/%, so my 12682 rating provides 31.7% instead of 36.2% (Another 4.5% drop). In total, my fireball/pyro/scorch crit rate goes from ~68.2% to 46.7%, which results in roughly 31.5% fewer crits than live.

The spec is bland and lacks fluidity below about 55-60% crit, as you end up with long chains of just fireball.

The issue is that they are removing so much crit, but doing absolutely nothing to change the builds reliance on crit. I feel like we are going to be so desperate for crit, (and the weightings for secondary stats/% will reinforce this by making mastery harder to stack) that it will actually become MORE valuable than int after 7.1.5 due to it's scarcity and the resulting lack of fluidity.

[deadman1]

how did you play the spec at the beginning of the expansion?

With the understanding that it would get better as gear scaled upwards.

And additionally, the understanding that our DPS would be going up, and not down.

Thanks for the answer Mush

Mash, Mush same thing.

[nickseng]

You know what's the funny thing?

http://i.imgur.com/temCWAz.png
^Early sim result.

With all the stat conversion changes, Blizzard might actually have de-emphasized secondary stats, making not taking a huge ilvl increase item a dps loss.

[Deleted]

You know what's the funny thing?

http://i.imgur.com/temCWAz.png
^Early sim result.

With all the stat conversion changes, Blizzard might actually have de-emphasized secondary stats, making not taking a huge ilvl increase item a dps loss.

now they just need to buff our core spells by 20-30% and where set.

[Xuvial]

I currently have 62% crit on sheet with food, for Fireball, Pyro, Scorch that is multiplied to 68.2% (And fireball stacks on non-crit). In PTR, we lose 10% flat from Molten Armour (Currently 20%, removing crit in PTR and adding 10% to Critical Mass instead), and the 1.1x multplier is gone from Critical Mass. In addition, Crit rating goes from 350/% to 400/%, so my 12682 rating provides 31.7% instead of 36.2% (Another 4.5% drop). In total, my fireball/pyro/scorch crit rate goes from ~68.2% to 46.7%, which results in roughly 31.5% fewer crits than live..

Wow. Okay, I agreed crit levels were getting too high but that is an absolutely insane amount gone. And there seems to be nowhere near enough compensation within the spec to make up for that.

But I'm still holding onto faith in Blizzard that they won't completely make fire redundant. The backlash will be ENORMOUS if fire becomes flat-out inferior to other specs. There are too many mages who have invested deeply into gearing for fire and farming AP for it.

[KivuYar]

I have more or less lost any hope for staying fire but am learning how to Frost instead (TV build, for now, but GS looks fun to try out)

With the constantly accelerating AK, changing artifacts is not really a big deal anymore; I started putting AP into my frost weapon about a week ago and it's now at 29, while my fire artifact will stay at 30. It is remarkably faster to level an artifact now compared to levelling the first so that system is at least working well!

I would say that what "locks" you into a spec will be legendaries which is ALL up to good old RNGsus - if you got a BiS for some spec you should still stay with that, IMO. For instance I only have Sephuz so I don't have a problem cutting my AP losses and switching all to frost, but it would be a harder choice if I had fire bracers or something similar.

For once I am glad my luck is so terrible in this game...

[Deleted]

I have more or less lost any hope for staying fire but am learning how to Frost instead (TV build, for now, but GS looks fun to try out)

I would say that what "locks" you into a spec will be legendaries.

Legendaries and Relics. I think people are making an oversight in that relics really are this expansions "weapon", and even worse that each spec requires different types.

My offspecs are a good 30 ilvl behind my main.

[Noobles]

Everyone that started off from exp launch should be getting around 200k a day in game...whether or not you want to farm it is another question.

last night on hc and mythic run plus WQ and WB...was insane amount of AP...

If you invested the last 3 traits of fire ...for the Armour...well that's just plain dumb..that would have been better been put into the other 2 artifacts.....right

There is no 'enormous' amount really...so long as you didn't try put 5k AP dailies/drops etc into a 1million upgrade....because that's just stupid.

So if people want to backlash...then they really need to ask themselves if they actually worked out the best route to level up their artifacts...

My 2c

[Sevarin]

If you invested the last 3 traits of fire ...for the Armour...well that's just plain dumb..that would have been better been put into the other 2 artifacts.....right

i mean... its dumb if you dont want the 5% damage buff for the next trait.

[Torian kel]

Everyone that started off from exp launch should be getting around 200k a day in game...whether or not you want to farm it is another question.

last night on hc and mythic run plus WQ and WB...was insane amount of AP...

If you invested the last 3 traits of fire ...for the Armour...well that's just plain dumb..that would have been better been put into the other 2 artifacts.....right

There is no 'enormous' amount really...so long as you didn't try put 5k AP dailies/drops etc into a 1million upgrade....because that's just stupid.

So if people want to backlash...then they really need to ask themselves if they actually worked out the best route to level up their artifacts...

My 2c

You what mate? First, the +5% is one of the best upgrades to have, secondly, even though it doesn't take that long to bring another weapon up to par (It took me 3 weeks of moderate farm to bring my Arcane weapon to 35 after my fire one), you still probably have tuned your whole gear towards fire, be it gems, enchantments, crit gear, even perhaps jewelry like a full crit class neck as well as the oversized ring. This is what people are clamoring about, and to good reason, especially if you've got a couple fire legendaries and zero in another spec.

[Noobles]

You what mate? First, the +5% is one of the best upgrades to have, secondly, even though it doesn't take that long to bring another weapon up to par (It took me 3 weeks of moderate farm to bring my Arcane weapon to 35 after my fire one), you still probably have tuned your whole gear towards fire, be it gems, enchantments, crit gear, even perhaps jewelry like a full crit class neck as well as the oversized ring. This is what people are clamoring about, and to good reason, especially if you've got a couple fire legendaries and zero in another spec.

Mate its the armour one...what 5% are you on about...
Do you still hope for a titan forged when you are probably around 880 IL...and run heroic hoping on that boss you will get a better item....CHANGE your loot spec...
Does this exact thing not happen every EXP...same thing everytime...it will always change....if you aint used to it by now..damn dude

Everyone invests in gear in every exp....at 30k a AP drop now leveling an artifact is easy...gems are cheap now....
Its easy now

Stop moaning

[aznxk3vi17]

Mate its the armour one...what 5% are you on about...
Do you still hope for a titan forged when you are probably around 880 IL...and run heroic hoping on that boss you will get a better item....CHANGE your loot spec...
Does this exact thing not happen every EXP...same thing everytime...it will always change....if you aint used to it by now..damn dude

Everyone invests in gear in every exp....at 30k a AP drop now leveling an artifact is easy...gems are cheap now....
Its easy now

Stop moaning

You'd best stop talking before someone not as nice as me points out how ignorant you are in more colorful terms.