My reaction to the new changes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHpdgHTINik
My reaction to the new changes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHpdgHTINik
Maximising combustion has always been to me what differates a good fire mage from an average one. With the latest nerf to combustion I feel they have taken the fun out of it.
I personally loved tweaking and doing anything possible to get off a 'perfect' combustion, and I would rather have fire ball brought down to a reasonable level than messing with our lovely Combustion!
/ Toäd - Turalyon EU
I still enjoy my one after another 400K Pyroblast! crits. And I still love to burn things down while managing to do very good damage compared to others(always top 5-6 in my 25 man raid team). Our Arcane Mage wins in most but not all fights but I dont care as I love Fire spec.
You need to be a very good Fire Mage to be competitive and I do my best playing the spec I love. Be good while playing what most consider to be the "weak" spec is what makes me smile every time!
Fire is a great spec. Not overpowered at all but it is just fine. After all, I am still able to win sometimes!
If you compete with your arcane mage then either he sucks, you outgear him by a lot, or you are only looking at specific fire friendly fights. My guild is progressing on heroic empress, and i sit at an average of 120k (fights ending at sub 10%), our fire mage, who by the way is 5 ilvls above me, sits at around 95k. On fights like garalon, which are EXTREMELY firefriendly, he rarely beats me by more than 5-8k (and this is the only fight he beats me on). Maybe these numbers are in your opinion close enough to be competing however...
PS: We are both very good players, so a lack of skill is not the culprit here
Last edited by Grumash; 2012-12-28 at 07:58 PM.
Playing
WildStar -Mechari Medic, Draken Stalker
Diablo: RoS
GW2 - Ranger
IMHO, Fire's issues are generally one of boredom, not necessarily just output.
That being said, the two are connected, as we can see with Critical Mass.
I think, the 'fun' in fire (as alphamage says) is the hot streaks, coz outside of those, you are pretty much just spamming fireball + keeping your bomb up which is mindlessly boring.
Hotstreak + Inferno blast and then using the pyro is where 'stuff' happens in Fire. And the way that 'good stuff' happens is through, naturally, crit.
I don't know if its a good design to have a specs 'fun' be so closely tied to gear. This is what is causing the issues with fire which blizz themselves say they are looking into. Sure, you should have more 'fun' because you have better gear (and in some way, you already do since your numbers are zomgbigger), but the gap in 'fun' between gear tiers should not be that high.
The real derptastic move that blizz did was to nerf CM in order to nerf fire's output. After all, just a global deduction in spell output would have accomplished the same goal and kept the "number of moments of fun per min" that the spec has static.
But in order to do that they would have had to nerf Pyro's damage pretty hard I guess, and so they kind of caught themselves in their own shit-trap, especially since the thing that makes pyros so much 'fun' in the first place is, after all (again, like alphamage says), all those absolutely massive numbers when you fire a pyro. It would suck hairysauce if pyro hit like a wet noodle.
So I guess that just brings us back. Its kind of herpy to link a spec's "fun" so closely with the gear.
Spec's should be fun irrespective of gear. My green geared fire mage should be having 'fun' too.
"There are very few who can claim what he can. There are even fewer who can prove it like he can. There are even less that can match him, but all will no doubt accept what he is, and what he can do. The Highlord is for sure one of a kind. A true Master of the Arcane arts. It would be best for you to listen."
- Lady Nåabi of the Immortalis, former Guild Executor, former Raid Lead.
I see why they nerfed CM, (even though it pissed me off royally). They were future-proofing the spec for scaling reasons. While this may be pretty obvious to those who are into theorycrafting in any way, surprisingly, it's not obvious to everyone. We already were at a point where we were critting more than half the time and that's the first tier of the expansion in sub BIS gear. IMO, they purposely overtuned fire early on so that after the nerf, it would be in a more acceptable place for future tiers. It will still scale very well and adjusting CM is easily done in a hotfix if something becomes an issue. The biggest problem I have with this situation, is being blindsided by a massive nerf after letting the spec go live in 5.1 completely broken. Horrible job handling that and they could have warned the fire mage community of an impending nerf so people could plan accordingly.
I can see it now...
DAY1:
GC tweets: Sup firemagi. So like.. we are going to nerf the ever-living fun out of you and reduce your DPS on raidbots to last place in the next ~2weeks. Please prepare accordingly. kkthxbai <3
DAY2:
*giant mayan apocalypse spaceships appear above human cities*
Mayan Apocalypse Leader: Yea.. soz about that lol. We a week or so late, got caught up in traffic. Let the shitstorm begin!!
The shitstorm would be glorious mind you. Firemages would probably burn the official forums down in 3 days, leaving a vast wasteland where tiny skirmishes would break out from time to time but which would generally be devoid of life.
The best part? Everything would be destroyed before the nerf bat would even go live in 2 weeks.
"There are very few who can claim what he can. There are even fewer who can prove it like he can. There are even less that can match him, but all will no doubt accept what he is, and what he can do. The Highlord is for sure one of a kind. A true Master of the Arcane arts. It would be best for you to listen."
- Lady Nåabi of the Immortalis, former Guild Executor, former Raid Lead.
While humorous due to how correct you likely are, did fire mages not raise a shitstorm as it is? It was doubly bad due to the qq from the nerf and the qq from being blindsided by it.
edit: blindsided by the way the nerf was hotfixed in, not that we were nerfed in general. Most seasoned mages realized this was going to happen. The patch was just the more appropriate time for it.
Absolutely right, and a shitstorm they did raise. A lot of it was squelched by a certain green posting member, but most was also quickly misdirected since the nerfs came in as hotfixes extremely suddenly.
This meant that you needed to go to raid and had to scramble to figure out how to gem, gear and reforge so as to still remain competitive in the raid you were going to that very night!
This mid-week 'scramble to be viable' diverted a lot of focus away from qq, since mages were worried about their raid spots and progressions. The firemages got so distracted trying to figure out how to switch, they just didn't have that much time to qq.
If the nerfs were publicized from (probably) the time they were conceived at blizz. Mages would have had time to theorycraft out the implications, and so, the shitstorm would be heavenly focused. Perhaps that is precisely what blizz was trying to avoid?
"There are very few who can claim what he can. There are even fewer who can prove it like he can. There are even less that can match him, but all will no doubt accept what he is, and what he can do. The Highlord is for sure one of a kind. A true Master of the Arcane arts. It would be best for you to listen."
- Lady Nåabi of the Immortalis, former Guild Executor, former Raid Lead.
I'm actually with Nathyiel on this one.
I'm almost majority certain that not only the timing, but actual mechanism for fire's nerf were carried out to get mage spec population balance under control, and to somewhat 'force' mages to play other specs.
Everyone and their mother was playing fire, not only because it performed the best, but because it was the most 'fun'.
I think blizzard is still holding on to hope that 'if mages at least play the other specs, they will like them'. I don't think this is the case.
I feel there is a fundamental difference in the 'fun' of the specs, just on a basic level. (yes, its subjective, but we can still perform analysis on subjective things. dont let a scientologist tell you otherwise).
What they are finding (and you can too with a 5 min scan of the official forums) is that people are actually pining to go back to fire because they found it fun. Most of the comments now are of the form "I hate that I have to go Arcane, its just not fun to play. I want to go back to fire". etc etc
So yea, I'm quite sure it is a deeper ploy like you elude to. One to shift around the mage population. But I think its failing. Mages aren't buying it.
If you want my real take on it, we are probably just pawns in a big political drama being played out in the internal politics of the class design team. Too bad none of them even plays a mage
"There are very few who can claim what he can. There are even fewer who can prove it like he can. There are even less that can match him, but all will no doubt accept what he is, and what he can do. The Highlord is for sure one of a kind. A true Master of the Arcane arts. It would be best for you to listen."
- Lady Nåabi of the Immortalis, former Guild Executor, former Raid Lead.
And that, my friend, is the lazy man's answer. Rather than gutting Fire, the -proper- solution would be to address why the other specs are not felt to be as fun.
You are correct; because none of them play or at least main a mage, they do not understand the reasoning -why- mages choose which specs, talents, etc. they do. Just look at the reaction to the Ice Barrier problem; "Oh, everyone takes it, so it must be OP". No. The answer is that active mitigation is always preferable to the other two talents in that tier.
Someone who plays a mage, like myself, realises the answer is simply making Ice Barrier a baseline survivability tool and replacing its spot on the tier with a gimmicky spell similar to Temporal Shield.
Originally Posted by Marjane Satrapi