Fire or chaning to Arcane. ??

[Geldor]

Let's go point by point:

> lol they dont want to nerf fire

Ion has claimed it's too strong. So have other Blizzard employees. It was and still is nerfed on PTR.

> they want to improve scaling

It scales worse with every stat but main stat on PTR, and remains one of the worst scaling specs in the game.

> reduce crit and burst window reliance

Crit is also still more valuable than int and is the most important secondary. The burst is higher and the sustain is lower.

> and they could only do that by doing what they did

All they needed to do was add reforging and significantly buff fire's mastery to bring it in line (more sustain, better cleave, therefore relevant in mythic raids). Instead, they've exacerbated the scaling issues and made the spec feel horrible. The PI nerf, the RoP nerf, and the crit nerfs were all mainly nerfs to sustain.

> blizz is perfectly aware that fire isnt in the spot it should be and will continue to make adjustments and give buffs where they are needed

Except they've already claimed it was too strong, and nerfed it on live shortly before starting the redesign on PTR. It was average to slightly below average before that nerf and after a 3% overall nerf Blizzard stated yet again that fire was too strong.

Every single thing he said was false. All of it. This is why there's been so much discussion about fire and people pointing out how it's not in a good spot and the changes on PTR have so far all of them been bad. It has the highest possible modifier to every skill on PTR and it's still losing 50k+ DPS. Before they added that dynamic modifier, it was 100k+. Fire's entire mechanical kit is designed around critting and very often, but it's being heavily nerfed so it crits less often and doesn't have as potent crits. Bumping up the ability damage only makes the burst even higher and the sustain gap remains larger than it is on live, which is the opposite of what they claimed they were trying to do. This route of changing fire will fail to deliver what they were hoping to deliver.

The only way to do what they wanted to do is to revert everything and buff mastery significantly. Fire should be at an effective rate around 70% with fireball/pyro. It always has since alpha, and it plays well at that crit rate. It plays very poorly much below that. Making the spec hit harder and crit less hard and less often makes it just a shitty arcane mage, completely robbing it of the "class fantasy" they're so desperately trying to push in this expansion.

In every conceivable way, these changes are provably garbage and are showing us just how inept Blizzard's employees are, even at the most trivial of tasks.

Thanks for the explanation. Sorry, missed the post at first. I wasn't aware that even after the 15% aura buff to everything the gap between burst and sustain phases is still bigger than on live. If that is how it ends up, then yes, they either failed or didn't inform us about what they really want to achieve.

I kinda still thought, they'll bring up our crit rates somewhat before this goes live, as they also (generally) mentioned in the last Q&A that you'd only lose a few percents of the secondary stats, which in the case of our crit rate is still not true.

I interpreted the various comments from the dev and CM that after the latest live nerf they thought fire is in a good spot. But at the moment, your interpretation seems to be closer to the truth. Anyway, thanks again for the explanation. I still hope it won't get as bad in the end. Really enjoyed fire so far.

[Rylalai]

There are dozens of ways to fix the scaling of fire mages and to reduce the importance of crit-rating.. But everything they did so far was to increase the importance of crit by reducing overall crit.. Logic?

[Deleted]

Let's go point by point:

> lol they dont want to nerf fire

Ion has claimed it's too strong. So have other Blizzard employees. It was and still is nerfed on PTR.

> they want to improve scaling

It scales worse with every stat but main stat on PTR, and remains one of the worst scaling specs in the game.

> reduce crit and burst window reliance

Crit is also still more valuable than int and is the most important secondary. The burst is higher and the sustain is lower.

> and they could only do that by doing what they did

All they needed to do was add reforging and significantly buff fire's mastery to bring it in line (more sustain, better cleave, therefore relevant in mythic raids). Instead, they've exacerbated the scaling issues and made the spec feel horrible. The PI nerf, the RoP nerf, and the crit nerfs were all mainly nerfs to sustain.

> blizz is perfectly aware that fire isnt in the spot it should be and will continue to make adjustments and give buffs where they are needed

Except they've already claimed it was too strong, and nerfed it on live shortly before starting the redesign on PTR. It was average to slightly below average before that nerf and after a 3% overall nerf Blizzard stated yet again that fire was too strong.

Every single thing he said was false. All of it. This is why there's been so much discussion about fire and people pointing out how it's not in a good spot and the changes on PTR have so far all of them been bad. It has the highest possible modifier to every skill on PTR and it's still losing 50k+ DPS. Before they added that dynamic modifier, it was 100k+. Fire's entire mechanical kit is designed around critting and very often, but it's being heavily nerfed so it crits less often and doesn't have as potent crits. Bumping up the ability damage only makes the burst even higher and the sustain gap remains larger than it is on live, which is the opposite of what they claimed they were trying to do. This route of changing fire will fail to deliver what they were hoping to deliver.

The only way to do what they wanted to do is to revert everything and buff mastery significantly. Fire should be at an effective rate around 70% with fireball/pyro. It always has since alpha, and it plays well at that crit rate. It plays very poorly much below that. Making the spec hit harder and crit less hard and less often makes it just a shitty arcane mage, completely robbing it of the "class fantasy" they're so desperately trying to push in this expansion.

In every conceivable way, these changes are provably garbage and are showing us just how inept Blizzard's employees are, even at the most trivial of tasks.

you called what i wrote drivel? then you've reached a new high coz your entire argument fall flat on its ass once you realize that Ion's statement that fire was to strong was actually said prior to the nerfs fire got in the current patch, where as the things i wrote is actually current info, the only correct info in your post is for the most part the stuff you quoted from me, also you seem to believe that every1 is going on vacation and tuning is done in blizz, guess what, tuning isnt finished, so how about we give some decent feedback instead of whining and bitching about something that is still going to change, yes we're still a bit off the mark on the ptr vs live but there is plenty of time to correct that, ofc that doesnt mean some of the stuff you mention isnt true but what blizz is trying to achieve, if you can look past the "omfg!! they are nerfing fire!!" mentality you seem to have, then you would realize that its a good thing in the long run.

[Fojos]

It is not about ignoring, it is about arcane being more versatile. It can be a complete replacement for fire, while frost can only replace fire on ST or 2T stacked cleave.

So have frost for ST/2-cleave and fire for any other fight.

[Deleted]

second will be arcane too, I hate the waterelemental.

[Deleted]

you called what i wrote drivel? then you've reached a new high coz your entire argument fall flat on its ass once you realize that Ion's statement that fire was to strong was actually said prior to the nerfs fire got in the current patch, where as the things i wrote is actually current info, the only correct info in your post is for the most part the stuff you quoted from me, also you seem to believe that every1 is going on vacation and tuning is done in blizz, guess what, tuning isnt finished, so how about we give some decent feedback instead of whining and bitching about something that is still going to change, yes we're still a bit off the mark on the ptr vs live but there is plenty of time to correct that, ofc that doesnt mean some of the stuff you mention isnt true but what blizz is trying to achieve, if you can look past the "omfg!! they are nerfing fire!!" mentality you seem to have, then you would realize that its a good thing in the long run.

How is his argument falling flat when Ion was wrong when he said that fire was OP in the very first place. Decent feedback had been delivered, feedback to justify Fire's nerf ? Guild/trade chat banter. Pairing mechanical changes to the class while doing also the secondary stat changes is myopic to a class which requires an insane amount of crit to even start to function properly and be enjoyable.

[Deleted]

How is his argument falling flat when Ion was wrong when he said that fire was OP in the very first place. Decent feedback had been delivered, feedback to justify Fire's nerf ? Guild/trade chat banter. Pairing mechanical changes to the class while doing also the secondary stat changes is myopic to a class which requires an insane amount of crit to even start to function properly and be enjoyable.

bcoz Ion said it in another context, prior to the nerfs on live which essentially makes the quote useless as an argument for reasons why blizz would "nerf" fire, no1 is saying that the devs have a legitimate reason to nerf fire, it was never their intention to nerf fire, it was their intention to fix some issues that fire had and using a 2-3ish month old statement Ion made prior to even the current patch on live taints Plastkin's argument but ofc whether or not the devs succeeds in what they intends is a different question, fire certainly isnt there yet and still needs something to boost up to current lvl.

[Deleted]

Crit is not as high weight as it used to be. Just because without it rotation is bad doesn't mean that it's weight somehow went up. It's definitely worse on 7.1.5 than live. Stop saying otherwise or post some evidence.

[BiggestNoob]

I kinda still thought, they'll bring up our crit rates somewhat before this goes live, as they also (generally) mentioned in the last Q&A that you'd only lose a few percents of the secondary stats, which in the case of our crit rate is still not true.

The other stats remained in the mid-high 90%s of what we have on live, but crit is significantly down due to class changes (in particular the 1.1 multiplier applying to static crit, and the removal of some static crit). Those stat reworkings were essentially pointless and intended only to reduce scaling, which will actually end up making it impossible to balance content given how M+ and legendaries work.

The other class changes are completely unnecessary since they don't actually reduce reliance on crit. When you think about it and realize that we're being impacted more by the global crit scaling nerf than we are by the changes made to our spec (94% effective vs 95%), the only logical conclusion is that these changes were made to do two things:

1. Make fire feel less like "crit crit crit" and more like "you're going to sit here and cast a lot of fireballs."
2. Reduce fire's damage.

Given these changes I've completely lost all faith that fire's going to be in a good place in 7.1.5 because most of them are pointless to their stated goals. Fire's more fun than frost/arcane but only because it's mobile and crits a lot. They haven't explained why they're gutting the spec of its originality and the fun aspects because they never said it was "too fun", "too mobile", or "crits too much."

you called what i wrote drivel? then you've reached a new high coz your entire argument fall flat on its ass once you realize that Ion's statement that fire was to strong was actually said prior to the nerfs fire got in the current patch

He said it afterwards as well, in another developer interview. As did other Blizzard employees.

Crit is not as high weight as it used to be. Just because without it rotation is bad doesn't mean that it's weight somehow went up. It's definitely worse on 7.1.5 than live. Stop saying otherwise or post some evidence.

It's effectively nerfed to 350/400 = 87.5% of where it is, the rest of the variables they're tuning are independent of crit (which is why it's not actually being nerfed). By removing the flat crit we had, they also deferred the DR we were already seeing.

The int they're adding is something like 8% so ints effective scaling value is at 92.59% of where it is. PI's nerf adds to that to bring it to something like 88%.

If 1 crit was worth at or above 1.13 int on live, crit remains more valuable than int. It still remains significantly better than other secondaries.

The value for crit is mainly dependent on int, which is why they can't buff how much we scale with int without doing something like significantly reducing how much crit % we gain from crit. The better option was to buff mastery. Even with HS doubling the effect of our mastery, ignite is still quite weak outside of Combustion. It's one of the weakest masteries in the game. The real solution would've been to buff that, since we'll never scale super well with haste because it just reduces cast/GCD times rather than having a quadratic effect like it does for other specs.

[Shamran]

you called what i wrote drivel? then you've reached a new high coz your entire argument fall flat on its ass once you realize that Ion's statement that fire was to strong was actually said prior to the nerfs fire got in the current patch

He said it afterwards as well, in another developer interview. As did other Blizzard employees.

Also, adding to Plastkin's point, you've still managed to evade the premise that even when IH initially made that statement - the statement you're referencing - Fire was already in mediocre position as aptly demonstrated by Smalldps on Blizzard forums.

Aside from that, it's arguably sensible to keep providing contstructive feedback and, for the time being, refrain from too much drama. However, if you were to analyze the indications so far, 7.1.5 is probably going to be hard on Fire Mages. There's a chance they can fix it. I mean, anything can theoretically be fixed by the turn of a bolt, and, say, and an increase in Ignite spell coefficients until Fire's sustainable damage is competitive. (Just to force the point, of course, no idea if that's viable altogether). But, as said, indications are that's not likely to happen.

[ehxy]

I think it's a little early ladies and germs to make this assessment this early a month away with as many changes they make weekly to the PTR. Changes are being made, reverted left and right. Anything we say now can be undone week to week but it seems like they want all specs to be viable so going with you like may be the best advice you're going to get.

Yes, I'm a min max kinda person too but to be completely honest nobody knows. What we can do is pay attention to the PTR. Call blizzard out on their bullshit when something goes awry but what I tell you now will be very different come next year when we get to the patch.

Best of luck peoples and merry christmas and happy new year.

[klaps_05]

If you have kept up with AK, by the time 7.1.5 comes out you should have all 3 artifacts at level 35. I went for Frost second as its a much simpler rotation and you get better results without tier gear(and it sims the highest in 7.1.5) and i have 5 more levels for arcane. Given that there is like 400k AP per day available, its not very hard to keep up.

[stevenho]

So have frost for ST/2-cleave and fire for any other fight.

Yeah, just get bis offspec gear, bis offspec legendaries and all will be gucci.

[Zardam]

Fire will probably take a noticeable hit to single target dps, blizz has noted that they thought fire was too strong and the changes on the ptr have mirrored this. In addition, a lot of changes to arcane suggest blizzard is trying to rework/buff the spec, so it will likely be the better performing spec for single target.

[Stacyrect]

Care to elaborate? What Almara said, seems to be correct, judging from their statements and how they have proceeded so far, or?

At the moment, fire is definitely worse off on the PTR (and no one knows if they get it right in the end), but the officially proclaimed aim seems to be exactly what he said (improve scaling, reduce crit and burst), no?

Genuine question.

In theory that should be it but it's impossible for blizzard to do given RoP, combustion, and how poorly intellect scales. Unless they mechanically change the way our spec works, they are steamrolling it's strength and duct taping our weakness

[bowchikabow]

They don't even need to revert the PI nerf. Just change the trait from 5 stacks to 4 stacks. It normalizes the damage increase on the high end without adversely affecting the low end (similar to how they want to change the Shadow priest void stack timing).

Keep the bracer nerf in place (250% instead of 300%). This makes sense... It sucks, but it makes sense. The bracers were super strong, allowing otherwise sub-par dpsers to artifically perform better.

Allow us to keep ice floes (this would be a non-direct dps balance change because it offsets the known crit loss, which directly affects our mobile dps through reduced HS procs).

Buff and reduce charge time for Phoenix Flames. Considering it is our spec artifact ability, the idea that it contributes less to a fight than double popping Deadly Grace potions is absurd. Let it be something beneficial outside of just Combustion windows.

Buff Mastery percentages (as explained in posts above).

Nerf Pyroblast damage. This is another thing we should be ok with IF.. and I repeat IF they can bring other abilities, collectively, within the window to replace that damage. Someone in another thread something like 20% pyro nerf, 15% buff to Fireball and fireblast? But I don't know if that specifically would work.

... I am out of ideas, lemme get some hot tea to wake up and I should have more. Thoughts?

[pleblius]

Let us bank Heating Up again.

It makes it so that even at low values of crit, our HS generation chance is improved above even what it is on live. This naturally devalues crit because, any crit above that mark would start to suffer from diminishing returns. In addition, sims have shown that around 75% crit, all of our other stats, including int, start to shoot up in scaling, because now we're more reliably getting pyroblasts off and Combustion's crit conversion becomes less powerful.

This would bring sustain up without touching our burst, and level out our stat priorities. It also synergizes with our 2-piece.

See: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20752168438
(A post with a more advanced math discussion is coming soon. I've just been too busy to sit down for long enough to hash it out.)

[bowchikabow]

Let us bank Heating Up again.

It makes it so that even at low values of crit, our HS generation chance is improved above even what it is on live. This naturally devalues crit because, any crit above that mark would start to suffer from diminishing returns. In addition, sims have shown that around 75% crit, all of our other stats, including int, start to shoot up in scaling, because now we're more reliably getting pyroblasts off and Combustion's crit conversion becomes less powerful.

This would bring sustain up without touching our burst, and level out our stat priorities. It also synergizes with our 2-piece.

See: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20752168438
(A post with a more advanced math discussion is coming soon. I've just been too busy to sit down for long enough to hash it out.)

The first issue that comes to mind though then, is do we still have to worry about minimum crit? Would it devalue crit too much given things like Pyrotechnics? Will the value change when we gain and then lose 2P?

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea.. It's a smart take on the system. I just wanted to get the obvious thoughts out of the way.

[Deleted]

The first issue that comes to mind though then, is do we still have to worry about minimum crit? Would it devalue crit too much given things like Pyrotechnics? Will the value change when we gain and then lose 2P?

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea.. It's a smart take on the system. I just wanted to get the obvious thoughts out of the way.

There's no such thing as minimum crit. There's crit weight which is ridiculously high, and there's point where rotation stops beiing completely boring.

[bowchikabow]

There's no such thing as minimum crit. There's crit weight which is ridiculously high, and there's point where rotation stops beiing completely boring.

Right now, minimum crit is 60%, fire deteriorates fast before that. I would call that a minimum. Not a hard line.. but more a starting line.