7.1.5: Fire completely wrecked

[netherflame]

In no fight in this expansion is active AoE required, not even mythic Helya. It is better on every fight to have passive cleave and Fire is extremely bad at passive cleave. It's only good at burst AoE.

There are exactly 0 guilds out there that go, "Oh adds? eh they can beat on Jeff the tank until they eventually die."
Nyth-Burst down MC'd players so they can get back to fighting
Ursoc- Kill bear or get feared for 20 seconds
Dragons- Burst down spirits and shades when they come out of the dragon
Spider- Burst down spiders when they are away from the boss or they get a buff
Eyeball- Burst down stalks as they come up since they are infinitely more dangerous then
Cen- Nobody wants those adds up for extended periods of time
Xav- I guess you have an argument here, but clearing tentacles makes p3 easier when they are near xavius

When every encounter is designed so your "niche" is a pointless trick that only has relevance in easy M+ dungeons, you most absolutely 100% should be buffed to be competitive at the only important metric this entire expansion (including NH): priority target.

Go talk to elemental shamans, they aren't even the best at their niche nor do they do good outside of that niche.

False.

I've never seen a firemage that performed anything less then "average" with most performing above average, sure they aren't SPs but that doesn't mean they aren't good because they aren't the best.

And they aren't supposed to, because Ion confirmed during the beta that because of the legendary/artifact systems that they were going to make sure every spec was viable. Blizzard has already stated that specs aren't supposed to be one trick ponies this expansion, and here we are. We have one trick ponies and people are like "fire mage is good, look at all these pad fights where this damage does absolutely NOTHING to kill the boss." Nice argument. Brilliant. 10/10. You're a genius.

If they adds kill other people those people then cannot kill the boss therefore the boss doesn't die which means killing the adds are important to killing the boss because if they adds are dead they can't kill other people who are killing the boss.

I love it when people who are terrible at this game and have no understanding of it talk about balance. Go back to McDonalds, the fries are getting cold.

Like you?

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Quoting skewed data isn't a valid argument.

Also being able to cheese DPS isn't a valid "trade-off" I much rather have consistent predictable DPS.

If warcraft logs could show data since the start I'd love that, unfortunately all we have is trending data. Additionally people didn't just begin to complain about the strength of fire mages.

[deadman1]

If warcraft logs could show data since the start I'd love that, unfortunately all we have is trending data. Additionally people didn't just begin to complain about the strength of fire mages.

If you look at boss by boss you will see that it's heavily skewed mainly by xavius (nearly 2x as much dps as fire does on other bosses) and to a lesser extent dragons

[shaft4783]

I hope they aren't balancing anything around legendaries. Gotta say, it's disheartening to see all these great parses and knowing I physically can't get there simply because RNG. I hope they don't leave fire mages in a sorry state and realize that without legendaries, we really aren't parsing that strongly (except for cheese fights like Xavius).

I have had epicly horrible luck and have 1 legendary - Sephuz's - and to get it I must have gone deep into 'bad luck protection' as it took ages to drop, and when it did it dropped off a raid boss. I do mythic+ and every emissary cache that's up.

I was lucky enough to land the belt for fire, which was long before the 7.1.5 buff. That's my only legendary.

The other day I'm running a H EN with another mage and he's 100k above me after the fight and I think "he has to to have the bracers.....". Not only did he have the bracers but he had the extra TW ring. Must be nice, huh? Oh well. I'm just hoping for a 2nd legendary, let alone BiS.

[BiggestNoob]

There are exactly 0 guilds out there that go, "Oh adds? eh they can beat on Jeff the tank until they eventually die."

Cleave. Thanks for proving you've never done any competent raiding.

Go talk to elemental shamans, they aren't even the best at their niche nor do they do good outside of that niche.

That's definitely relevant to fire mages being shit at everything but M+.

I've never seen a firemage that performed anything less then "average" with most performing above average, sure they aren't SPs but that doesn't mean they aren't good because they aren't the best.

Nice evidence.

If they adds kill other people those people then cannot kill the boss therefore the boss doesn't die which means killing the adds are important to killing the boss because if they adds are dead they can't kill other people who are killing the boss.

Nope, that's not how it works.

Like you?

How's the first grade? It's been like 25 years since I was there. Let me know when you guys get to multiplication tables!

If warcraft logs could show data since the start I'd love that, unfortunately all we have is trending data. Additionally people didn't just begin to complain about the strength of fire mages.

It does. People have been complaining about fire mages since the alpha, mostly because of trash DPS and heroic/mythic/mythic+ damage. They were early on doing things like SPs because of broken items giving them absurd levels of crit/mastery (and SPs had absurd levels of haste) and that was back before they reduced secondary scaling. But since then without those bugs, throughout the beta it's just been M+ performance, and on live it's been exclusively M+ performance because the only people who have been above average in EN and ToV have been people with bracers (and a bit behind them is ring, then a huge gap for every other legendary), and as other specs have caught up in gear (BiS legendaries or just ilvl) those people are now slightly above average. When something that swings you 15-20% DPS puts you near the top, then relegates you to slightly above average, how exactly do you think the spec is in the hands of the 95%+ of people who don't have bracers?

It was "good" if you had BiS gear (sinew from heroic, a TF baton, bracers, and full crit heavy gear) during the first few weeks of EN. Then above 870 it was garbage, and much above 880 it's very garbage, especially without good legendaries.

[Deleted]

4th =/= average

Holy cow. I already answered to your asinines comments with the data to show you that ST fire damage is average (or way below average at ToV), yet you continue this. And you call me deluded. Look pal, what is happening right now is that you are showing your inability to read, i'm done. Have fun.

[Elboba]

Running tests last night, I dont want to use the term clunky, but for me it is, and its due to lag.
It doesn't feel as smooth as live because of this, but I dont think that would account for a 30k DPS loss.

Funny thing is, on these runs where i was at a DPS loss, my fireball and pyro crit percentages were between 55-65% so I was even lucky

RoP, Combust and PI changes seems to be what is really hurting. There were times where i had 4 non crit Fb in a row, it still feels a little crit starved.

I dont have much else to say, except I did 20k more dps pressing 2 buttons in a glacial spike build without changing gear.

They still have some tuning to go, today im going to upgrade all the crafted gear to 865 and see how I go wearing 5 pieces of decimator zzzz

[Fayolynn]

Too bad nobody can ever define what clunky means or we could even have a reasonable and sensible conversation about it. Proccing Hot Streak less often than on live doesn't constitute clunky.

But that is exactly why it feels clunky... :|

[Zenny]

If you look at the forums, the fact they are good at aoe and will be average at single target in 7.1.5 you'd think they are nerfing aoe and single target and making both of them bad

No, Fire is average in single target as of 7.1 and very bad in single target on the 7.1.5 PTR.

[Geldor]

Too bad nobody can ever define what clunky means or we could even have a reasonable and sensible conversation about it. Proccing Hot Streak less often than on live doesn't constitute clunky.

Clunky can mean things like old-fashioned and slow, which both would fit, right? In the latest interview Ion also mentioned it. They know that below a certain crit level (for most of us it's something around 60% as mentioned) fire is not a fluent, fun spec. It does feel clunky. That's why they gave us this high crit level at the start of the expansion in the first place.

You could at least try to explain why you think that proccing less hot streaks does not constitute clunky. It's of course not only that. It's a combination of less crit, more passives, no ice floes. But basically having less hot streaks and less pyro crits are the biggest problem. Besides the combustion phase, you get fun out of the spec, when you have several fireball-pyros crit combos in a row.

On the PTR it's just a much more stationary, less-instant based, slower spec. It feels like a throwback to an older iteration of fire spec.

The devs may see no good alternative to reducing our crit to levels, but saying it doesn't feel as good or fun, or it feels more clunky is not bad feedback as such. If you look at the devs posts for other classes they also understand that.

[Bloodmagix]

On Live I rarely go above 2 non Crit Fireballs. On PTR I go up to 5 non Crit Fireballs often as fuck. Sustain wasn't fixed at all because this is of course outside the RoP and Combustion window. I lost nearly 14% Crit somehow and on top of the PI 15% nerf shit just feels fucked.

Sucky thing is I have always loved Fire Mage and will always main it, even if it's below other specs dps and whatnot I will still play Fire unless the dps check is really needed, even then I'll switch toons before I spec Frost or Arcane.

[Deleted]

Running tests last night, I dont want to use the term clunky, but for me it is, and its due to lag.
It doesn't feel as smooth as live because of this, but I dont think that would account for a 30k DPS loss.

When clunky was trending people misused the word clunky. I don't find the effects 11-13% critchance loss valid for the word clunky. But the way fire is set up it is really vulnerable to lag in a way that it does feel clunky. Clunky to me feels that the flow of play needs to go through unnecesarry hurdles on unexpected ones. Sofar i find the changes in ptr not make fire clunky, it does make it flow less solid.

Maybe without ice floes the pyro bracers are.
The live version of Norgannon was clunky (ptr changed it) and the conjure food thing is clunky :P.

What i do find ironic, that the first time in this long thread i saw someone use clunky (in my eyes inaccuratly). And next someone says clunky is overused :P

------------Pyro bracers and no Ice floes--------------------
Since were talking about pyrobracers. I think it should go back to 250% and buff the base pyroblast. Eventhough at 200% it's still a dps gain it just comes over awkward so the minimal for me would be 225%.

The pyro bracers gives fire mages a huge boost to their ST potential which is their weakness. With the loss of ice floes this compensation in our weakness comes with an obstactle, standing still for a long time.
My opinion on this obstacle depends on other classes situation. If their legendaries wil result in a similiar balance compared to pyro bracer mages without an added obstacle i find this unfair and than pyro bracers should make pyroblast casting on the move which unfortunatly removes a combination with norgannon.
If however the pyro bracers brings fire mages ST close to ST specs although just below it while still being much stronger on all the other archetypes than it's probably a fair price.

[Krazzorx]

Imo, when it comes to legendaries, you should only compare to your class' legendaries and ignore others. Because that's essentially what players are doing right now. Class balance at this point feels like less of a concern for people compared to the awful feeling of getting the wrong legendary. Particularly considering there are classes doing well like enh shaman that have really bad legendaries. (Think their best is 6% dps increase) So having good legendaries isn't a prerequisite of a class performing well.

Ofc because mobility isn't tangible this probably won't do much to remove those feelings. "Harder to use" doesn't sound very reassuring.

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In no fight in this expansion is active AoE required, not even mythic Helya. It is better on every fight to have passive cleave and Fire is extremely bad at passive cleave. It's only good at burst AoE.

When every encounter is designed so your "niche" is a pointless trick that only has relevance in easy M+ dungeons, you most absolutely 100% should be buffed to be competitive at the only important metric this entire expansion (including NH): priority target.



False.



And they aren't supposed to, because Ion confirmed during the beta that because of the legendary/artifact systems that they were going to make sure every spec was viable. Blizzard has already stated that specs aren't supposed to be one trick ponies this expansion, and here we are. We have one trick ponies and people are like "fire mage is good, look at all these pad fights where this damage does absolutely NOTHING to kill the boss." Nice argument. Brilliant. 10/10. You're a genius.

I love it when people who are terrible at this game and have no understanding of it talk about balance. Go back to McDonalds, the fries are getting cold.

Then you haven't been paying attention to what Blizzard has said recently. Look at what they said about spriests, they want them to have strengths and weaknesses. They've also said similar things about Ele shaman. (that they look bad as EN has very little aoe and their niche is ST burst and aoe)

Thankfully we can multi spec at this point pretty easily.

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You can't dismiss a valid point because of jealousy.

The bracers got double nerfed, less procs and less damage when it does proc.

Let me put it another way: I want all throughput legendaries to be nerfed to about the level of Enh's legendaries of best being 6% dps increase. Or be able to target them.

So i WANT them to be nerfed. Badly in the case of pyro bracers.

[deadman1]

Let me put it another way: I want all throughput legendaries to be nerfed to about the level of Enh's legendaries of best being 6% dps increase. Or be able to target them.

So i WANT them to be nerfed. Badly in the case of pyro bracers.

That's fine, I don't disagree with that.

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Isn't everyones crit and that getting nerfed though? I know we are crit>int which is deffs wrong in general, so hopefully we're not that bad



Thanks for answering my question. 10/10 would ask you for anything again

But we used to get passive 20% crit from molten armor, that is nerfed to 10% +10% from all sources which ends up being about a 7% overall loss, and that's before the stat squish.

[Deleted]

But we used to get passive 20% crit from molten armor, that is nerfed to 10% +10% from all sources which ends up being about a 7% overall loss, and that's before the stat squish.

Tooltip:
Critical Mass PTR:
Your spells have a 10% increased chance to deal a critical strike.
You gain 10% more of the critical strike stat from all sources.

This means critical strike rating gives an additional 10% critical strike rating, you see this effect immidiatly in your character screen.
With this your 7% is incorrect. Because on ptr we loose the multiplier on the most important spells for crit: Pyroblast, Fireball, Scorch. So we loose another 5,5-7% crit.
What i calculated is that firemages loose about 11-13% critchance.

Here are the calculations
live: 52,35% x1.1(critical mass) = 57,535% crit
PTR week4: 46,45%
difference: 11,085%

Double crit trinket
Live:59,59% x1,1 (critical mass) = 65,549%
PTR4: 53,73%
Difference: 11,819%

[Skajon]

Regarding the legendary bracers, I would like to see them change it to 100-200% somewhere inbetween and make the cast time 0.5sec like the proc in wotlk "Fiery Payback".
Maybe tune to proc chance abit too.

[Krazzorx]

One "problem" I think Fire has is the same as all aoe niche specs: aoe targets are the first to get trivialized on farm when you outgear it. That's not true on most progression though. When progressing on Dragons of Nightmare, you wanted good aoe/cleave to efficiently kill the adds as all of them were dangerous in one way or another (ok maybe not the shades). But now, if you have it on farm? Yawn.... not dangerous. And they die considerably faster.

So I think people's viewpoints are skewed slightly because we are now at the point basically everyone outgears EN. Also doesn't help EN has very few cleave/aoe fights. Thankfully NH looks better.

[Deleted]

One "problem" I think Fire has is the same as all aoe niche specs: aoe targets are the first to get trivialized on farm when you outgear it. That's not true on most progression though. When progressing on Dragons of Nightmare, you wanted good aoe/cleave to efficiently kill the adds as all of them were dangerous in one way or another (ok maybe not the shades). But now, if you have it on farm? Yawn.... not dangerous. And they die considerably faster.

So I think people's viewpoints are skewed slightly because we are now at the point basically everyone outgears EN. Also doesn't help EN has very few cleave/aoe fights. Thankfully NH looks better.

This is an very important element yeah. This is the first time in wow where aoe focus has a more consistant value...in the past aoe specs always failed. But eventhough theirs value i do notice it quickly becomes trivial or the targets for ST are still a higher thread.

[BiggestNoob]

One "problem" I think Fire has is the same as all aoe niche specs: aoe targets are the first to get trivialized on farm when you outgear it. That's not true on most progression though. When progressing on Dragons of Nightmare, you wanted good aoe/cleave to efficiently kill the adds as all of them were dangerous in one way or another (ok maybe not the shades). But now, if you have it on farm? Yawn.... not dangerous. And they die considerably faster.

So I think people's viewpoints are skewed slightly because we are now at the point basically everyone outgears EN. Also doesn't help EN has very few cleave/aoe fights. Thankfully NH looks better.

That's not really the case. On every fight in EN, even in progression, it was best to do as much damage as possible to priority targets while cleaving adds. On Ursoc, you wanted the add to die just before it casted the fear. You wanted Cenarius's trees to die just before the second stomp. You wanted adds on Dragons to just get interrupted or tanked and cleaved. The damage required for MCs on Nythendra was far far far too low to make AoE mandatory there, and because fire's damage is backloaded AoE, it's not good for this. Elerethe was a target swap cleave but the spiders die incredibly quickly even during progression (several seconds), again making fire not great at it outside of LB before the tank picks things up and DB helm. Xavius was efficient cleave with the people with the buff killing off the add with cleave (esp. shadow priests).

The burst AoE on Helya can be done by fire mages, but hunters are better because they also hit tentacles while doing it.

Fire's in the shitty situation where Blizzard keeps making fights where AoE is completely useless, especially true burst AoE (which is almost never useful in raiding). Not only do you want to kill adds with as little cleave as possible in these fights, but you can do it from the first few pulls if you're geared appropriately (mid-high 860s EN mythic). It's not just a thing that becomes a problem with gear, it just becomes even worse.

Given this meta, they need to buff fire to be competitive in priority target situations.

[Celestraza]

If you look at boss by boss you will see that it's heavily skewed mainly by xavius (nearly 2x as much dps as fire does on other bosses) and to a lesser extent dragons

Warcraft logs also has a feature to exclude logs where a certain item is used. If you look at logs and exclude the legendary wrists you will get a very good (and rather sad) picture of how badly the wrists skew fire mage data. If you do it on Odyn you wont even see fire on top.

I cant think of any other spec where 1 legendary is so game breaking, the system is flawed, unfun and broken as was predicted when dps legendaries were introduced. Everyone knew diablo style legendaries in WoW was a bad idea.

[AwkwardSquirtle]

Absolutely. The good players are finding different classes and specs to play.

I feel sorry for the poor bastards that are going to be staying fire. Really, I feel sorry for people who intentionally choose to under perform as an undertuned spec.

Honestly a lot of players will perform better on a weaker spec they're used to and geared for than a new one they're not familiar with.