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

[Juddalenko]

Fire wasn't THAT bad at the start of 5.2 (after the bomb buff).....the majority of raiders were rocking mastery gear which contributed to poorly itemised gear for a fire switch....but it really wasn't THAT bad. Along with Warlocks, we've been top dps in both dungeon tiers apart from maybe the two weeks before the bomb buff...ask hunters how they feel at the moment. As Swizzle mentioned in another thread, there are inherent problems with a spec based on crits because there is no way to balance a bonus, but fire is in a pretty good place dps wise at the moment.

[mrgreenthump]

Fire wasn't THAT bad at the start of 5.2 (after the bomb buff).....the majority of raiders were rocking mastery gear which contributed to poorly itemised gear for a fire switch....but it really wasn't THAT bad. Along with Warlocks, we've been top dps in both dungeon tiers apart from maybe the two weeks before the bomb buff...ask hunters how they feel at the moment. As Swizzle mentioned in another thread, there are inherent problems with a spec based on crits because there is no way to balance a bonus, but fire is in a pretty good place dps wise at the moment.

After the bomb buffs yes, but by that time we already had the important gear ups to have our crit rating at better position than it was in 5.1 with the upped mastery/haste gear.


Plus fire would be A LOT more balanced if it werent based on Pyro damage being so high. I mean just look at everything else, and then look at Pyro. They would need to buff the bomb, fireball, scorch and IB by a lot and at the same time nerf Pyroblast. This would result in decreased combustion damage and decreased Pyro damage, but overall it should even out, and finally fireball would be nr 1 damage dealer instead having 20% contribution with 65% cast time. I mean sure that is a really really hard bandaid fix, but it would have fixed most problems out of the bat, right from the start of beta, pyro wouldn't have needed 10%+10% nerfs so far, combustion wouldnt have needed pyro dot taken out, and cm wouldnt have needed to even exist, but hey who knows maybe they now get a proper team together and really think what could be done to improve mages, but that is unlikely as mages still have a large player base, cause the class is still somewhat unique, even if it is crappier than locks atm in every aspect of the game.

[IsrafaelMage]

But what about low geared mages? Its like fire is a spec that casuals aren't permitted to play,
because I'm sure you know what happens when you try to play fire with low crit.

November 29 clearly showed that Blizzard doesnt care about casuals and poorly geared mages. And not everyone is in a good 25m guild with an option of being carried on progression fights and spoon-fed gear

Plus fire would be A LOT more balanced if it werent based on Pyro damage being so high.

Pyro nerf may hurt a lot more that it appears so for people with low-ish crit, as its also an indirect nerf to ignite and pyro dot (which was around 20-25% of overall damage for me in 5.0/5.1 with 480-489 gear).

[mrgreenthump]

November 29 clearly showed that Blizzard doesnt care about casuals and poorly geared mages. And not everyone is in a good 25m guild with an option of being carried on progression fights and spoon-fed gear

Pyro nerf may hurt a lot more that it appears so for people with low-ish crit, as its also an indirect nerf to ignite and pyro dot (which was around 20-25% of overall damage for me in 5.0/5.1 with 480-489 gear).

That color is really horrid for my eyes at least..


Plus if you would have read what I wrote afterwards.. you maybe wouldn't have posted the last part^^ Ignite damage doesn't really go lower if you buff fireball to a point that it actually does some damage. I mean fireball is over half our cast time even atm, what would happen if it would be even half of the DPET of HS Pyroblast?

[IsrafaelMage]

I mean fireball is over half our cast time even atm, what would happen if it would be even half of the DPET of HS Pyroblast?

Well, i didnt find an "offtopic" bb-tag, so i chose the colour that is usually used for such text blocks.

I completely agree that fb scaling is really poor.. But it seems a byproduct of this 'one stat' mentality that ails blizzard dev team since they started to work on diablo 3 (which is really an epitome of what is wrong with 'stack one thing' specs) and MoP, so i really doubt they will revert back to cata-style fixed bonuses to crit (as someone already suggested) with hard hitting fireball (i think normal value was 40k? ) and crit-only ignite. However, if they do as you suggest, fire would be dangerously close to frost playstyle, which some of this forums members seem to loathe

combustion wouldnt have needed pyro dot taken out

I dont think they made this decision conciously, it was a product of scrapping pyroblast cd and other things they tried to push in 5.1 (dont remember now the specifics). Removing pyro dot hurted only low-crit mages, not high end, which the problem they supposedly tried to fix. If anything, "to the ground" style of nov 29 hotfix attests to that.

[Dusteyy]

Possibly a noob question, but is there a reason I have approx 25% crit on the PTR while I have upwards of 47% with the same buffs on live?

Do they normalize? I have the new tier pieces on without gems or enchants as well as the amp trinket and wooshoo equivalent trinket, but I dont think that accomodates for missing about 10k crit (ish).

What am I missing?

[Vynestra]

Possibly a noob question, but is there a reason I have approx 25% crit on the PTR while I have upwards of 47% with the same buffs on live?

Do they normalize? I have the new tier pieces on without gems or enchants as well as the amp trinket and wooshoo equivalent trinket, but I dont think that accomodates for missing about 10k crit (ish).

What am I missing?

Umm idk. Must be a bug of some sort? Unless your in a raid/dungeon being scaled back a lot...No clue.

[Dusteyy]

Umm idk. Must be a bug of some sort? Unless your in a raid/dungeon being scaled back a lot...No clue.

Alright, I figured it out. Molten Armor is NOT working on PTR. I take it off and put it back on and it has zero effect on my crit rating. AB works properly with crit however.

Anyone else can verify this or no?

[Deleted]

I've noticed a funny thing, mages doesnt like warlocks and vice versa
Topic though, How much crit should i stack in 5.4 on my fire mage?
And what should i go after? haste or mastery? Or MOAR CRIT!

[mrgreenthump]

Topic though, How much crit should i stack in 5.4 on my fire mage?
And what should i go after? haste or mastery? Or MOAR CRIT!

Don't know yet, No idea, Dunno and maybe?

They are nerfing fire, and GC said on twitter they are busy considering how not to nerf undergeared fire mages cause of overgeared ones.. So, we have no idea of what's coming. Simple co-efficient nerfs, fire is the same as now next patch. CM nerf won't happen I guess. Touching combustion would lessen mastery value.

The fact is they haven't said anything on what is going to happen, so predicting what is needed is impossible..

[Tokas]

I just want frost pve to be viable in 5.4... really hoping they focus on getting that right.
I don't enjoy fire or arcane particulary.

no more frost... leveling as frost, raiding as frost until high ilvl... enough

[Deleted]

Why would they nerf it? Warlocks are doing the same/more DPS, Rogues and Hunter can compete on Singletarget fights too.
Warlocks get small buffs, don't know about the other 2 "pure DPS" classes.

Would be nice if the patch hits and i don't have to worry about being horrible like it was at the start of T15.

My feeling says that we are reaching a point where Fire doesn't scale that much more anyways... we are at Hitcap, the only achieveable important haste breakpoint and we are reaching a point where crit does have to get worse... what do Top mages have? 60% crit in raids? Add another 10% and it doesn't make that much of a difference.

[Deleted]

I've noticed a funny thing, mages doesnt like warlocks and vice versa
Topic though, How much crit should i stack in 5.4 on my fire mage?
And what should i go after? haste or mastery? Or MOAR CRIT!

Even now, highly geared mages are going for mastery after crit. Getting those stupidly high Combustions at the start by using Mage Armour is a lot of fun

You do need quite a lot of crit for this to work in your favour though. I'm not sure if there's a threshold to it. I imagine in 5.4 (unless CM gets nerfed enough), this will become the norm.

- - - Updated - - -

Why would they nerf it? Warlocks are doing the same/more DPS, Rogues and Hunter can compete on Singletarget fights too.
Warlocks get small buffs, don't know about the other 2 "pure DPS" classes.

Would be nice if the patch hits and i don't have to worry about being horrible like it was at the start of T15.

My feeling says that we are reaching a point where Fire doesn't scale that much more anyways... we are at Hitcap, the only achieveable important haste breakpoint and we are reaching a point where crit does have to get worse... what do Top mages have? 60% crit in raids? Add another 10% and it doesn't make that much of a difference.

More than 60% actually Way more for Pyroblast with the 4-set bonus too.

When you include potions, trinket procs and profession procs or uses (enchanting/engineering). Average crit chance rises by a lot.

[Dusteyy]

Nobody answered me lol.

Can ANYONE verify that Molten Armor is not working on the PTR?

[Deleted]

molten armor works

[Dusteyy]

hate my life

[fearist]

Dude you're looking at melee stats not caster ones

[Erolian]

Melee crit and spell crit are different.

Rather uncreative nerf inspired by this derping for high end mages that doesn't effect lower geared mages would be molten armor ceasing to function after 40-45% crit chance.

[Dusteyy]

God damn mother fuck. Its late, I need to go to bed. Hate when they rearrange shit.

/crymyselftosleep

[Deleted]

It's not that we wnt nerfs or are asking for them, it's that we understand that things are unbalanced how they stand and are wanting a way to be brought back in line that doesn't ruin the flow or feel of the spec

Wants that cannot be fulfilled. Blizzard is not in the business of subtle tweaks and smooth nerfs.