Is fire all about crit?

[Deadrpg]

hello everyone

there has been a long time (i think about one year) i have been checking this forum for several purposes and some of it's cool topics about eveything, especially world of warcraft.recently me and a friend of mine had an argue about fire mage dps mechanism and after his request, i decided to post a new thread here to clarify this.i'm a fire mainer since 4.2 cataclysm in which i started to play wow and after nearly one year of break, i'm back to wow where patch 5.3 is released.meanwhile my friend is an older player and he played more than me and also a warlock mainer.what he mentions is : fire mage was all about crit from wotlk and haven't changed till now and he strongly emphasizes on his opinion :

" I don't like fire becuz its not rewarding. fire is(always was) all about crit since woltk till today and thats damn annoying.if u don't have crit, u can't deal proper damage with fire and that's why the whole mechanism is based on only stacking as much as possible crit."


first of all, i agree that crit is a strongly vital stat for this spec and that's because it increases the amount of instant pyroblasts and crit chance for more damage and therefore overal damage output.crit is the most affective benefitical stat for fire mage dps after having proper intellect and hit rating and that's absolutely right.but what i exactly disagree is that dosen't make fire mage completely based on critical strike; as long as you benefit from haste to decrease your filler spells' cast time like fireball and more important, increase the ticking speed of your dots like living bomb, pyroblast dot and combustion and etc, what exactly completes certain parts of your dps output.furthermore, there's something else that makes firemage, seriously firemage in my opinion, ignite.which deals more damage the more mastery you have.because of this, i don't agree fire spec is a crit crit crit spec.if u don't have proper crit, u won't deal good damage with fire mage, but that dosen't make this spec completely crit based or rewardless, in my opinion.


your thoughts?

[Akakishin]

as long as you benefit from haste to decrease your filler spells' cast time like fireball and more important, increase the ticking speed of your dots like living bomb, pyroblast dot and combustion and etc, what exactly completes certain parts of your dps output

Thats what exactly every other classes and specs in this game need. proper haste to help some stuff coming up better. but that doesn't make it mandatory or anything necessary (comparing to crit which is subject here).
Fire mages are possible to do a lot of damage even without crit(in woltk and cata they couldn't but we live in today xD), but thats not what it meant to be (while you have crit) since this game became meter padding you NEED to stack crit to destroy meters with an unrewarding mechanism (thats what we call it? rewarding and un-rewarding?).

[Deadrpg]

Thats what exactly every other classes and specs in this game need. proper haste to help some stuff coming up better. but that doesn't make it mandatory or anything necessary (comparing to crit which is subject here).

proper haste dosen't help some stuff coming up better, actually it's a necessary part along those stuff to help "the whole mechanism" come up better and crit with being the subject dosen't really change that; as long as the amount of instant pyroblasts (the most important thing based on crit) does not fulfill all of the dmg output and the pyroblast itself has a dot that naturally scales with haste.

[Siri]

It really comes down to what you define "it's all about X" as. It's all about crit in the sense that you want it on all your gear and you'll use use gems to get more of it, there's not really any mentality like "get # haste, then focus on crit" so in terms of gearing it's all about the crit. The random factor that plays into how much damage you do leans much more heavily towards crit than other specs do and this is reflected in the difference between maximum and minimum values of simulations.

In the grand scheme of things it's not all about crit, other stats aren't THAT much worse. For the discussions that really matter it is (imo) all about crit.

[Breakee]

It indeed is indeed about crit but also luck.
You can't say "haste is important because you cast faster". Yeah , no shit, it's like that for every other caster in the game. That doesn't make haste good.
Proof is that even a guy with 0 haste can beat you if he has more crit . Mastery is even way better even if still meh.
I also say luck because even if you had the same amount of crit in a fight as another guy, you can still beat him by a large margin if you had your trinkets proc during the burst and all your other combustions and had like 10 pyros in a row during said burst.

[Deleted]

The spec isn't entirely all about crit, but it is by far the most important stat you need. you want to get things like haste up to a certain level (5036) and try and stack mastery if you can, but if you want to do good damage you have to get as much crit as possible, there no real way around it. Saying that, you of course can play the spec without going all into crit, though it will be rather annoying and your damage wont be that great.

[Siri]

You can't say "haste is important because you cast faster". Yeah , no shit, it's like that for every other caster in the game. That doesn't make haste good.
Proof is that even a guy with 0 haste can beat you if he has more crit.

Your theoretical maximum is higher with 0 crit and max haste rather than 0 haste and max crit. That's because even with 0 crit rating you can still crit every spell you cast. Your proof isn't really proof of anything.

[Kenbud]

hello everyone

there has been a long time (i think about one year) i have been checking this forum for several purposes and some of it's cool topics about eveything, especially world of warcraft.recently me and a friend of mine had an argue about fire mage dps mechanism and after his request, i decided to post a new thread here to clarify this.i'm a fire mainer since 4.2 cataclysm in which i started to play wow and after nearly one year of break, i'm back to wow where patch 5.3 is released.meanwhile my friend is an older player and he played more than me and also a warlock mainer.what he mentions is : fire mage was all about crit from wotlk and haven't changed till now and he strongly emphasizes on his opinion :

" I don't like fire becuz its not rewarding. fire is(always was) all about crit since woltk till today and thats damn annoying.if u don't have crit, u can't deal proper damage with fire and that's why the whole mechanism is based on only stacking as much as possible crit."


first of all, i agree that crit is a strongly vital stat for this spec and that's because it increases the amount of instant pyroblasts and crit chance for more damage and therefore overal damage output.crit is the most affective benefitical stat for fire mage dps after having proper intellect and hit rating and that's absolutely right.but what i exactly disagree is that dosen't make fire mage completely based on critical strike; as long as you benefit from haste to decrease your filler spells' cast time like fireball and more important, increase the ticking speed of your dots like living bomb, pyroblast dot and combustion and etc, what exactly completes certain parts of your dps output.furthermore, there's something else that makes firemage, seriously firemage in my opinion, ignite.which deals more damage the more mastery you have.because of this, i don't agree fire spec is a crit crit crit spec.if u don't have proper crit, u won't deal good damage with fire mage, but that dosen't make this spec completely crit based or rewardless, in my opinion.


your thoughts?

Fire is a Stamina based spec because if we didnt have stamina then we would have 0 hp and be dead therefore doing 0 DPS. That is your argument essentially, just using different stats. Mastery and Haste of course play a role in your dps, who can argue that? If you have even 1 of each stat then it will play a small role but they are miles behind in values to crit. The more I think about it the more moronic this thread becomes. It's not only commonsense but backed up by ingame application so you guys can get all theoretical to no end but you are wrong (see Lohe). You have stats other then crit so it is impossible to say your dps is 100% crit dependent but to doing "good" dps is 100% dependent of crit. Your definition of good may be different then mine but I define it as ranking. And on that note only people who can't rank complain about ranks being all meter padding.

[voltaa]

Your definition of good may be different then mine but I define it as ranking. And on that note only people who can't rank complain about ranks being all meter padding.

But ranks ARE all about meter padding, cheesing etc. Maybe not to just "rank" but to rank top 20 it's more often than not padding meters or doing fights in a certain way just to rank.

As far as the crit haste argument, fire is all about crit, it's playable without it and if you had 1 in whatever billion chance yes stacking haste and mastery could yield better results, but the fact is that we aren't looking for theoretical maximums, we are looking for consistency to an extent, so you can't just rely on getting lucky and ignoring crit

[magicric]

Yes fire is all about Crit, stack it on as much as you can. If you have a chance to forge anything into crit do it... Haste and mastery will just become stats that will automatically go up with your gear, but always forge mastery > crit, then hit > crit if you're over hit cap or haste > crit if there is nothing else that you can forge crit into. As a fire mage, you just need to think that you are Fire/Crit mage and granted the other posters are right, you can stack on haste and you'll do great dmg but stacking crit will make you a much better fire mage. This is the reason most of us QQ when anything to do with crit gets nerfed... ala 5.1 when the crit multiplier went from 1.5 to 1.2

[Polarthief]

since this game became meter padding you NEED to stack crit to destroy meters with an unrewarding mechanism (thats what we call it? rewarding and un-rewarding?).

Pretty much. It's a system that doesn't reward skill, but, rather, blind/dumb luck. There is very little between an unskilled Fire Mage and a skilled one (assuming gear levels are the same) because the skilled one could be a GOOD portion below the unskilled one solely on luck of crits.

It's very unrewarding to do the same thing 10 times in a row and get extreme variations of DPS.

[Sageofthe10paths]

Fire works like this... Try to get 50% crit as soft cap, then put the rest into Mastery. Prepare to see big numbers! If you don't it because it's too RNG, I hear Asian server mages do really well with Arcane.

[Methusula]

Fire works like this... Try to get 50% crit as soft cap, then put the rest into Mastery. Prepare to see big numbers! If you don't it because it's too RNG, I hear Asian server mages do really well with Arcane.

At gear levels we can't reach yet.

[magicric]

Pretty much. It's a system that doesn't reward skill, but, rather, blind/dumb luck. There is very little between an unskilled Fire Mage and a skilled one (assuming gear levels are the same) because the skilled one could be a GOOD portion below the unskilled one solely on luck of crits.

It's very unrewarding to do the same thing 10 times in a row and get extreme variations of DPS.

Spot on. Fire used to be a fun spec to play that required a bit of skill. I still miss my flame orb and being able to instantly cast Flamestrike to inscrease the chance of a fireblast proc. Fire used to be the Aoe/cleave boss that required some skill.

[voltaa]

At gear levels we can't reach yet.

Even in our gear levels there are fights where fire doesn't have a hope a touching arcane

[Akakishin]

It indeed is indeed about crit but also luck.
You can't say "haste is important because you cast faster". Yeah , no shit, it's like that for every other caster in the game. That doesn't make haste good.
Proof is that even a guy with 0 haste can beat you if he has more crit . Mastery is even way better even if still meh.
I also say luck because even if you had the same amount of crit in a fight as another guy, you can still beat him by a large margin if you had your trinkets proc during the burst and all your other combustions and had like 10 pyros in a row during said burst.

exactly, unrewarding RNG mechanism if you want to be competitive anyhow.

When I consider the current status of the endgame with RPPM mechanism which injects more unrewarding mechanism to some other specs(demonology warlocks hello!) I blve blizzard likes the way fire mages are!

[pkm]

Fire is still nothing without mastery and haste tbh so yes it is about the crit but not all about the crit.

[Polarthief]

Fire is still nothing without mastery and haste tbh so yes it is about the crit but not all about the crit.

I would gladly be forced to have 0% Haste and Mastery (Well, 0% past the base) if I could have 79.92% Crit (For the record, that's our hard cap after CS/CM)

[Kenbud]

But ranks ARE all about meter padding, cheesing etc. Maybe not to just "rank" but to rank top 20 it's more often than not padding meters or doing fights in a certain way just to rank.

As far as the crit haste argument, fire is all about crit, it's playable without it and if you had 1 in whatever billion chance yes stacking haste and mastery could yield better results, but the fact is that we aren't looking for theoretical maximums, we are looking for consistency to an extent, so you can't just rely on getting lucky and ignoring crit

First why is "rank" in quotations? You either do or you dont it id not subjec to interpretation. Second tell me 1 fight that can be "cheesed" by a fire other then Tortos and Horridon(if you can even count full time boss as cheesing) talking heroics here and keep in mind I said fire Mage, frost and arcane are a different story And finally people keep saying "oh top 20 are all cheesed" all new top 20 ranks have replaced old ones so by that logic all logs are cheesed. Top 20 reflect who got targeted the least by mechanics in addition to who got the best trinket and pyro procs. Skill also is a large factor.

- - - Updated - - -

Pretty much. It's a system that doesn't reward skill, but, rather, blind/dumb luck. There is very little between an unskilled Fire Mage and a skilled one (assuming gear levels are the same) because the skilled one could be a GOOD portion below the unskilled one solely on luck of crits.

It's very unrewarding to do the same thing 10 times in a row and get extreme variations of DPS.

There is very little difference? Unskilled players can't survive heroic encounters while maintaining ranking dps. And even if your "unskilled" floor is a capable heroic Mage then yes there is still a huuuuge difference. There is a reason some have ranks on every boss while others are 13/13 with few to none. Ill give you a hint, it's not RNG...ok I'll tell you, it's skill.

[voltaa]

snip

I put rank in quotations becaise there is getting top 200 or whatever the limit is, where basically if you kill the boss you rank, then there is the top 50 where people actually compete and put up numbers. And as for "cheesing" or changing strats to benefit fire, council, some guilds still don't stack all the bosses on top of eachother, my guild hasn't done it so ranking high is out of the question, there's jikun, where you have to be on the first nest, kill your add before the first nutrient and get it on the way up to be competitive (as well as not go up for top nests), as you said the obvious ones, tortos and horridon, on megaera you can split dps so that you can get full combustions off on the heads as well as spred combust to adds, keeping icewalls up on durumu, there is a lot you can do, and that people will do to rank, and this is just as fire, I'm sure you've looked at the scumbag shit Arold pulls as arcane to get top parses.

I don't disagree that skill is a huge factor, but to pull top of the top, strategy comes into play as well as like you said, good rng