Still no Fire Nerfs and Frost Gets a New Mastery. Further updates at p22

[mrgreenthump]

If Combustion is the only nerf, Fire will be fine in 5.4.

Let's look at Vykina's log on Twins (purely single target fight): http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-na...s=9731&e=10164

60% nerf on Combustion means he would do 10% less damage, which still puts him ahead of everyone else except the warlock and tank. So with the Combustion nerf, Fire is equal to other specs at 550 ilvl, but Fire still has the best scaling out of all DPS specs, so with 580 ilvl Fire will continue to dominate as #1.

Exept Twins is far from single target.. you can cleave your combustions to the other target in p1 and p3 depending on how you do the fight, and even multidot during those 10 secs in p1 and whole p3.

[Polarthief]

Really bothers me that they're rolling out such a major nerf this late in the PTR cycle... It's like they'd been testing it internally the whole time and just decided to slip it in at the last minute so they wouldn't have to deal with the negative feedback... Either that or they realized all the mastery mages will be stacking in SoO was making combustion get out of hand. One of the two.

That or they really want us to play Frost.

Making a movement-heavy tier discourages Arcane playing, and nerfing Fire like this discourages playing that. They must be so proud of their Icicles change.

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Exept Twins is far from single target.. you can cleave your combustions to the other target in p1 and p3 depending on how you do the fight, and even multidot during those 10 secs in p1 and whole p3.

You forgot the cleave at P2 with the adds.

[mrgreenthump]

That or they really want us to play Frost.

Making a movement-heavy tier discourages Arcane playing, and nerfing Fire like this discourages playing that. They must be so proud of their Icicles change.

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You forgot the cleave at P2 with the adds.

Well yes, the adds in p2 seem to blow up before I can ever manage to cleave nowdays..

And yeah, I don't really know abt 5.4, I got really excited abt 5.4 seeing that there was gonna be some nerfs to decrease the combustion/AT synergy, but this is just ass backwards towards that statement. Fire will still be struggling with Multitarget/dotting, Target switching, and AoE, while now pulling abt the same dps as every other spec on ST. We will still have our cleave though, which might be the saving grace, but hell.. Arcane/frost seems much better for progression now. Unless there is a lot of movement, which again makes fire really good choice.

[Polarthief]

We will still have our cleave though, which might be the saving grace, but hell.. Arcane/frost seems much better for progression now. Unless there is a lot of movement, which again makes fire really good choice.

And other classes with even better movement will be even better choices.

I was going Frost when I saw it will do as well as the other two specs (PTR testing by players here). With this nerf, that just doubly confirms my decision.

[mrgreenthump]

And other classes with even better movement will be even better choices.

I was going Frost when I saw it will do as well as the other two specs (PTR testing by players here). With this nerf, that just doubly confirms my decision.

Well, I don't have a guild atm, so I don't even know if I will raid, but if I do decide to join some semi-decent guild, am prolly going with Arcane and fire offspec for movement, as I still got my fire gear and more than enough money for regemming for movement fights on progress..

I mean Frost will prolly be really decent, but somehow I never grew to like it.. It's kinda weird, but yeah.. what can 1 do when they don't like a spec

[Polarthief]

Well, I don't have a guild atm, so I don't even know if I will raid, but if I do decide to join some semi-decent guild, am prolly going with Arcane and fire offspec for movement, as I still got my fire gear and more than enough money for regemming for movement fights on progress..

I mean Frost will prolly be really decent, but somehow I never grew to like it.. It's kinda weird, but yeah.. what can 1 do when they don't like a spec

Everyone has their tastes. I really liked how Frost worked, even before MoP. I loved Deep Freeze for PvE and wish that'd make a comeback now that Frost is playable in raids.

[mrgreenthump]

Everyone has their tastes. I really liked how Frost worked, even before MoP. I loved Deep Freeze for PvE and wish that'd make a comeback now that Frost is playable in raids.

Mm, I might like it now, that they removed the ramp-ups though.. Have to see I guess.

[Polarthief]

Mm, I might like it now, that they removed the ramp-ups though.. Have to see I guess.

Losing the Frostbolt stacking was a ridiculously good buff to Frost QoL. It was the biggest handicap to our target switching and is a big reason of why Frost was shit this tier (there were others, but still)

[Vynestra]

I like it. Now I can stop hearing from everyone how arcane will suck in siege cause of movement against fire.

[crysie]

I like it. Now I can stop hearing from everyone how arcane will suck in siege cause of movement against fire.

Instead of doing some tweaks to remedy Arcane's movement issues, let's gut the other spec to make the former more competitive... that sounds awful.

[Jarion]

Some numbers.

	50% combustion	20% combustion
300k ignite	1,500,000	600,000
50k ignite	250,000	100,000
difference	1,250,000	500,000

At least it minimizes the difference between amazing combustions and average ones a little. 50k ignites are pretty easy for most fire mages to get. 300k, not so much.

[Rhaelan]

If you follow his post history over the last couple weeks this isn't surprising. He has been asking for Fire nerfs just so that he can *compete* as his favorite spec while hoping people that enjoy fire get screwed over. Awesome mage community.

[Polarthief]

Some numbers.

50% combustion 20% combustion
300k ignite 1,500,000 600,000
50k ignite 250,000 100,000
difference 1,250,000 500,000

At least it minimizes the difference between amazing combustions and average ones a little. 50k ignites are pretty easy for most fire mages to get. 300k, not so much.

Are people trying to justify this?

With no compensation, who the fuck cares if our RNG is "better"? It's just a complete nerf to the top and even a small nerf to the lower end.

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If you follow his post history over the last couple weeks this isn't surprising. He has been asking for Fire nerfs just so that he can *compete* as his favorite spec while hoping people that enjoy fire get screwed over. Awesome mage community.

For the record, I'm Fire atm (only because I have to be) and planning on going Frost in 5.4 (even before today), and I still think this is the most retarded move Blizzard can do.

[Deleted]

Ignoring lower geared fire mages for a second, because this nerf does a lot more to bring the geared players in line than it does to nerf the low geared fire mages.

This nerf as absoloutely extreme as it seems is still not enough to even bring fire to middle of the pack due to scaling (this means you still may see co effiient nerfs).

The only way to slow the extreme scaling that fire has with temp haste buffs on combust is to make combustion no longer generate extra ticks.

The problem that you have here is that with them leaving the haste scaling in you literally cant keep both ends of the scale in check, and what really sucks for fire is that now you will probably spend all t16 trying to get back to where you are at t15 hc tf levels. (Combustion will never get as strong as it is now either with that nerf)

[Jarion]

I think that combustion damage is probably a smaller % of overall fire mage damage than most people think.

Unless they get one of those "stars align" combustions.

However, from my post history I think you can see that I agree that the fire specialization needs some major work. My hope is that they will buff some other aspects to bring the spec up and keep it competitive. Right now, as a 522 fire mage, I'm not really that competitive with the rest of the DPS in our raid.

[Boxedwaffle]

Frost still isn't nearly as strong as arcane, nor will it be as strong as post-nerf fire. I'll be playing arcane since I haven't found rop to be that much of an issue.

[crysie]

Ignoring lower geared fire mages for a second, because this nerf does a lot more to bring the geared players in line than it does to nerf the low geared fire mages.

This nerf as absoloutely extreme as it seems is still not enough to even bring fire to middle of the pack due to scaling (this means you still may see co effiient nerfs).

The only way to slow the extreme scaling that fire has with temp haste buffs on combust is to make combustion no longer generate extra ticks.

The problem that you have here is that with them leaving the haste scaling in you literally cant keep both ends of the scale in check, and what really sucks for fire is that now you will probably spend all t16 trying to get back to where you are at t15 hc tf levels. (Combustion will never get as strong as it is now either with that nerf)

I can't really think of any other solution that would tone down the higher geared people than nerfing the lower geared ones, but then combustion is going to be just too weak with this change. It just becomes a weak CD, like how Power Infusion once was (still is in some scenarios)

Once people start getting geared from SoO, Fire will show its colors once again for sure though.

[Rhaelan]

Ignoring lower geared fire mages for a second, because this nerf does a lot more to bring the geared players in line than it does to nerf the low geared fire mages.

This nerf as absoloutely extreme as it seems is still not enough to even bring fire to middle of the pack due to scaling (this means you still may see co effiient nerfs).

The only way to slow the extreme scaling that fire has with temp haste buffs on combust is to make combustion no longer generate extra ticks.

The problem that you have here is that with them leaving the haste scaling in you literally cant keep both ends of the scale in check, and what really sucks for fire is that now you will probably spend all t16 trying to get back to where you are at t15 hc tf levels. (Combustion will never get as strong as it is now either with that nerf)

This feeling just sucks. We all know that Fire scaling gets out of control towards the end of an expansion. I don't think most people are complaining that Fire got nerfed, I think most of us are upset that it is on our only DPS cooldown. The one cooldown that the entire spec rolls all of its abilities into and then can't cast again for 2min. Taking out non-AT combust into account(maybe 60k on average) will hit for less than our bombs do. It just doesn't feel like a CD, it feels like another DoT on a 2min timer.

I hate the feeling that we have to play another spec until we get the gear to play another spec, especially if we hate one or another. The feeling atm is that we will have to respec, at least at the beginning of the tier. For progression, I figure people will respec to help out there team. And if you have to respec after months of getting gear that is completely worthless for the 2 other specs we have. Reforging and gemming will help to a degree but Arcane/Fire require completely different secondaries. And if Fire will scale out of control at 570 ilvl, we will be rolling on Fire gear while playing Arcane/Frost. So for months we are playing one spec(with sub-optimal itemization) just to gear up another spec just to get to the same numbers we had the tier previous. It is very annoying.

[Methusula]

Aside from stat priorities, I wonder what this change does to the Combustion glyph. It seems a lot less mandatory now.

[Deleted]

I like it. Now I can stop hearing from everyone how arcane will suck in siege cause of movement against fire.

How come? It still will.