Fire (Mage) needs some cooldowns

[bostwick kingsley]

Everyone keeps talking about how awesome warlocks are. What's awesome about them? They don't have more cd's than us. They have to manage 2 resource systems, which I find not enjoyable. They got green fire, but who cares. If warlocks weren't doing great dps, do you think people would still think they were awesome?

Mage's don't need a revamp, at most they need more aoe (getting addressed in 5.3), frost and arcane need a bit of mobility, and some kind of raid utility.

All everyone is saying about the Warlocks is that Blizzard took the time and changed the way each of the three specs work ( in this case by giving them a secondary resource).

I am not asking they give us a secondary resource but to take some time and look into the Mage class a little more in depth. It has been said multiple times that the 3 Mage classes play very similarly which i agree with for the most part.

1. Apply Bomb of choice (NT for most of us)
2. Filler nuke (Fireball, Frost Bolt, Arcane Blast)
3. Use procs (FoF/FFb, heating up/Pyro, Missles)

Granted to be good at any of the three specs it will take a good deal more than those simple steps but its still a very similar idea.

I personally like the 1 resource play style and enjoy raiding as is. But at the same time I understand the concerns of other mages.

And I completely agree with the aoe revamp we need badly. I feel useless in some situations because my frozen orb is on cd for another 15 seconds but sadly the adds will be dead by then.

[Polarthief]

Think of it this way.

Would you rather have 3 small dps CDs that increase dps or 1 major CD?

Imo Combustion is the ultimate CD. While it sucks if something goes wrong or the stars don't align, but when pulled off correctly it really feels worth it.

That's the problem though. We have 3 cooldowns all of which can add little DPS simply if you don't get crits and trinket proccs lining up perfectly; it's fucking retarded.

[Deleted]

Dunno if this work work well or even be a good idea but how about this:

Mana Swarm
Summon a swarm of ManaFiends to attack your enemy's for 30 seconds

It always annoys me slightly that factions of mages like the kirin tor can get these things to help them but we the player mages cant, doesn't have to be these specific mobs btw, just ones like them that are linked to mages. http://www.wowhead.com/npc=67937

[Deleted]

Well Combustion and Alter Time are actually quite good Cooldowns. AT is only 6sec but if you use it right you can get something like 30% haste, 10k Int and an additional Instantpyro for 6sec from it which is a least equal to some +30% DMG for 20sec CD. If you use it with the Legendary Metagem and T15 2pc Bonus you get even more from it.

Combustion is a large portion of our dmg and on a quite short CD.

Only thing i dont like is that both CDs are so luck dependant especially with the new RPPM Trinkets which are simply stupid and not predictable.

[bostwick kingsley]

That's the problem though. We have 3 cooldowns all of which can add little DPS simply if you don't get crits and trinket proccs lining up perfectly; it's fucking retarded.

So you would prefer a CD that does an insane amount of damage with no luck or skill what so ever? Or a cd that takes away the challenge of building a large ignite? I agree luck does play a large part but a skilled fire mage (with decent gear) will still pull competitive dps and make the most out his/her combustion.

[Polarthief]

Dunno if this work work well or even be a good idea but how about this:

Mana Swarm
Summon a swarm of ManaFiends to attack your enemy's for 30 seconds

It always annoys me slightly that factions of mages like the kirin tor can get these things to help them but we the player mages cant, doesn't have to be these specific mobs btw, just ones like them that are linked to mages. http://www.wowhead.com/npc=67937

It'd be a fun minor glyph imo. It's literally just Mirror Images with different minions.

Definitely not the cooldown we're looking for.

Only thing i dont like is that both CDs are so luck dependant especially with the new RPPM Trinkets which are simply stupid and not predictable.

So you would prefer a CD that does an insane amount of damage with no luck or skill what so ever? Or a cd that takes away the challenge of building a large ignite? I agree luck does play a large part but a skilled fire mage (with decent gear) will still pull competitive dps and make the most out his/her combustion.

The problem I have is not only is our playstyle Luck-based, but even our damned cooldowns are too. AT won't do shit if you use it during Fireball spam. PoM by itself is worthless and only good for trying to tease out another Hot Streak for a pre-Combustion, and Combustion itself requires luck upon luck to be effective.

It's just too dang luck-based all around, you'd think we'd get a cooldown to INCREASE our luck (such as +Crit on Fireball/FFB/Scorch).

It just seems extremely counter-intuitive to design cooldowns around luck when the entire spec is already around luck. We have layers and layers of luck upon luck.

Layer 1: RPPM/Trinkets
Layer 2: Hot Streak/Heating Up (Critting quickly while you have procs up)
Layer 3: Crit Pyroblasts during Pre-Combustion

Why in the fuck do we have THREE layers with not a single spell to help remedy this?

[dementor]

Yeah it is really annoying with the RPPM trinkets. Just got heroic thunderforged Wushoolay's and seems to be VERY unpredictable. Going back to ICD trinkets would be a welcomed changed. Blizzard's slogan has always been easy to use, hard to master. RPPM isn't possible to master, people are rewarded on pure luck. At least ICD trinkets you could predict roughly when they popped so you knew if sitting on a cd was worth it not.

I think the most frustrating thing about fire is that most of us came off playing arcane last tier, which involved nearly no rng. It wasn't hard to capture two AM procs while your trinkets were procced, use AP then AT. The only rng was how many crits you got during your burst, but it always seemed to even out over the course of the fight.

Then you go to fire, and it's completely opposite. You need to crit consecutively, and you need those crits to be large (ie trinkets procced) to pull off a huge combust to be competitive dps in your raid (assuming you have players of equal skill). You can either be on top of the meter on a pull or the bottom based on your 3 layers of luck, with skill not being involved at all. That is definitely frustrating.

To me though, adding more cd's is just gonna be more of a headache. I love the mana worm idea as a minor glyph.

I think the only way to fix fire, if you wanted to get away from the luck of the spec, is to make it so that fire mages aren't always critting. Lower fire mage base crit. Make CM so that it increases your chance to crit by x% every y seconds, much like the demon hunter talent in D3. Increase base mastery so that ignites are meaningful when you get them. Increase ignites contribution to combust and probably add back in the pyro dot portion. Decrease the relative power of crit, increase the relative power of mastery and haste. This would also allow mages to switch specs for certain encounters without having to regem, much like warlocks can do now. Pyros! should feel like a proc, "Oh cool, I got an instant pyro" much like FFB/AM procs.... it shouldn't feel necessary to get 4 large pyro crits in a row to pull off competitive dps.

Or they could leave us the way it is, but change the way the crit roll is calculated. Currently it seems like I get 100% crit for like 10-15 seconds, then I don't a crit at all for the next 10-15 seconds.

I just personally wish they brought back scorch weaving arcane. It was by far my favorite rotation across the 6 years and 5 classes I have played. It allowed you to move when you needed to, but it rewarded you for staying planted. Despite what developers said, mana management was necessary. AM procs felt rewarding and not like a chore.

Just thinking about it makes me want to try out the new arcane and see how it goes.

[MrExcelion]

I'll take a DPS cooldown in the form of replacing our level 90 talents. Make it a DPS cooldown tier. I just don't want it create GCD capping problems or the like, or forcing you to use a glyph to mitigate that (ie: Icy Veins). Flame Orb was fine personally, but I'd like to see Blast Wave make a comeback as a viable DPS option with > 2 or 3 targets.

Moreorless, I'm interested, but it's low priority compared to scrapping level 90 talents, and berserkings pretty much an outlier cooldown as it is for combust.

[Dralektus]

The problem isn't so much a lack of cooldowns or that combustion and all the various CDs used to support it aren't good. What you really miss when you switch to fire is on demand cooldowns. If there's vulnerability phase or a brief window to do damage, fire requires you to be very lucky to take advantage of it. It would be nice to have something to fill that gap providing reliable short duration burst.

I'd recommend something like this (apologies for the lack of specific numbers, it would obviously need careful tuning):

Ignition: (X second duration. 2 minute CD) Your fireball becomes instant cast and does Y% more damage, but cannot crit and does not apply ignite.

The idea is that it would feel like a miniature hot streak pyroblast string that you can create at will, allowing you to fire off several reliably high damage instants. It would make play more varied as your rhythm would change as it came up, and it would be totally reliable without either requiring setup or feeding into combustion so you could use it when combustion is on CD. Further, you could use it on short lived mobs without wasting ignite when they die and while it would be better to use a combustion on a vulnerable phase if you have one ready, it would be there as a guaranteed backup. There would also be some room for skilled usage by timing it to benefit from spell power procs while avoiding its use when crit and haste buffs are available to fuel pyro streaks/combustion.

The idea would be to tune it so that it was a significant buff over the damage done by your average rotation while combustion is on CD, but not be as good as chaining pyroblasts back to back and certainly not as good as a fueled up combustion.

Because they can't crit, don't apply a dot, and are instant, there would be minimal scaling from anything other than SP so it would do more to help boost low geared players while not contributing so much to fire's problems with over scaling. Also by lining up an instant streak, it could be used as a movement CD which, to be fair, fire doesn't exactly need compared to frost or arcane, but would enhance fire's role as the more movement friendly of the specs.

[zandiy]

If they could remove lvl 90 talents for mages and implement 3 different minor cds it would be great, but yeah that's never gonna happen

(Like shaman 90 talents)

[Deleted]

Here have some enhancement cooldowns. I'd love to give away one of our 6 or 7 we need to keep track on