As a fire mage

[Shmeh]

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.

Temporal Shield > Ice Barrier for most raid encounters, excluding with mechanics that could one shot you without the shield.

[Methusula]

Temporal Shield > Ice Barrier for most raid encounters, excluding with mechanics that could one shot you without the shield.

Says who? And don't give me the bs about it being able to heal up more hp than the shield or it being off the gcd. Those are nice perks but even with good healers, you are going to have overlap where they are healing you at the same time TS is. You will still have more times where you are left vulnerable after taking a big hit than with IB. IB also prevents spell pushback while active which on many encounters, more than negates the fact TS is off the gcd. In most instances, IB will be the better choice in pvp as well. As stated many times, including the post you quoted, active mitigation is preferable to healing up the damage taken.

[Balo]

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.

which is what I fear is going to happen with a lot of our talents come 5.2. they are not going to fix the ones that are bad they are just going to nerf the one that is good so all 3 equally suck because its easier. GC even spoke upon it he said mage talent diversity is to low

[Seebach]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35TbGjt-weA

[mrgreenthump]

Temporal Shield > Ice Barrier for most raid encounters, excluding with mechanics that could one shot you without the shield.

If the heal would be 2 sec long.. maybe, but Ice Barrier is far better for Heroic raiding.. I mean there just aint many fights that Temporal shield is that useful compared to ice barrier..

[jtmzac]

If the heal would be 2 sec long.. maybe, but Ice Barrier is far better for Heroic raiding.. I mean there just aint many fights that Temporal shield is that useful compared to ice barrier..

I agree. I've only done normal but most of the mechanics that work so well with temporal shield drop you down a lot and on heroic they would be very close or would kill you which means Ice barrier would work better.

LFR & Normal: Temporal Shield
Heroic: Ice Barrier

But thats just my take on it.