Introduction
Hello all, a few of you may remember my old Fire Spec Redesign that I made several months ago, and has popped back up every now and then. It did garner a decent amount of support, and good ideas have been knocked back and forth. I have also had many people in game, from higher end raiding Mages to average Mages, and they all chimed in with ideas and support as well. With this, the start of Patch 5.4, and the soon-to-be end of the expansion, I have re put everything together and redesigned my...redesign to reflect the changes that have been discussed with me.
The Current Problems of Fire: Why it needs to change
To answer any beginning questions for this guide, I will start with why I believe the spec needs to be redesigned. If you have played a Mage this expansion, you have realized that the class and all of the specs have been very rocky throughout it. Fire in particular, has bounced from a medium spec, to the best spec, to the worst, and slowly climbed its way to a competent spec with gear. Now that doesn't seem so bad in general, however, if you review patch notes you see the true mess of the spec. From 5.0 to 5.2, almost every hotfix had something to do with nerfing Fire, accidentally buffing it with a temporary Combustion change (which was 100% of your ignite, a HUGE unintentional buff). The spec scales well, too well. And that is not a good thing during the MoP era and possibly going into the future.
Back in WotLK, we did not have Inferno Blast. You needed two Fireball crits in order to grab a Hot Streak proc. This reduced the scaling as you were still working against probability in gaining that Pyroblast. Even with up to 60-70% crit back in the day, it is easier nowadays to get a Crit with just 50% crit (and then an Inferno Blast for the free Pyro) than two criticals with 65% crit.
Math for that:
50% of Fireball crit per Cast = 50% chance of Pyro per cast w/ Inferno Blast
65% of Fireball crit per cast x 65% of Fireball crit per cast = 42.25% chance of Pyro w/o Inferno Blast
We did have huge amounts of crit in WotLK, however the scaling was not near as huge as it is today.
Now why is scaling a problem? Just look at the hotfixes and patch notes for this expansion. With the addition of x2 Secondary Stat Gems (320 Crit vs 160 INT) and reforging, we can get bucket loads of Crit with Gear than ever before. On top of that, as gear improves through tiers, chances of multiple sockets in gear increases. Those extra sockets are another possible 320 crit, or 160 crit on top of that. This shoots Fire out of control through the patches, requiring constant nerfs. Now nerfs are not a bad thing, but they are when they have gone as uncoordinated as they have this expansion, which makes me afraid for the future. Combustion, our one CD, is completely broken. It is either too good, or too horrible. It is too RNG based, as is the whole spec. And RNG brings in an entire other point.
Crit is the only secondary stat that does this. For specs that rely on it a ton (aka Fire Mages), it can make or break your DPS. Haste? Straight boost to casting speed. Mastery? Straight boost to our ignite. Crit? You either do double damage or you do not. You either get a Heating up proc or you do not. And RNG ruins the fun of specs. Yes, you heroic raiders who had 548 ilevel love RNG, we get that. Because at your gear level, it is almost never a problem, and generally goes in your own favor. However, 95% of the Mage population is or can be screwed over by it, and that is terrible class design. It is horrible to see your DPS drop by 10k of your normal damage one attempt because your RNG is just terrible for that attempt. Oh, you are supposed to have 45% crit buffed? Enjoy quite possibly averaging 34% for an attempt and having terrible Combustion uses on top of that. A class should not be designed around luck. You shouldn't be able to put two equal skilled and equal geared fire mages next to each other and have one pull 20k-30k over the other just because of RNG. No other spec suffers this much, and if it continues, we can expect next expansion to be the same back and forth placing of Fire and the constant complaints from it. And thus, to my proposed changes to fix this.
The New Fire Spec
New Resource:Heat
Heat - Fire Mages will no longer use Mana, we will use "Heat". Heat is a resource that is at a baseline of 0, and climbs to 100, the cap. Spells will generate Heat or cost Heat. Heat will also decay at a rate of 5 heat every 5 seconds*.
*This will occur at a rate of -5 on the 5th second, not -1 for every second (i.e. 50,45,40, not 50,49,48).
New Mastery: Thermophile
Thermophile - As your heat increases, your spell damage is increased by x%, up to a maximum of x% at 100 heat.
Spells that Generate or Cost Heat:
Fireball - Generates 20 Heat.
Scorch - Generates 10 Heat.
Pyroblast - Costs 20 Heat, Now has same cast time as Fireball.
Mage Bomb - Bombs are individually balanced to provide 15 Heat with their explosion or end of duration.
Inferno Blast - Generates 15 Heat, 100% crit rate, now a 10 second CD.
Flamestrike - Removed. Replaced with Meteor.
New Spell: Meteor - A meteor falls on the selected location, doing x% Fire damage and leaving a damaging aura on the ground for 7 seconds. Costs 40 Heat. BEING IMPLEMENTED WITH 100 TALENTS
Dragon's Breath - Costs Zero Heat. Does x% damage and dazes the targets for 0.5 seconds for every 10 heat you have (up to a maximum of 5 seconds).
Blast Wave - Reimplemented. Blasts away all targets from the selected area doing x% damage. Costs 15 Heat. 15 second CD.
New Passives*:
*Passives not listed (such as Shatter) will remain the same
Heating up - When a spell crits, you will gain "Heating up". If the next spell you cast crits, "Heating up" turns into "Hot Streak", which allows a instant cast Pyroblast that does not generate nor cost Heat.
Critical Mass - No longer multplies Crit chance by 1.3
New Passive - Every point 10 points of Heat will increase your critical strike by 3%, up to a maximum of 30% at 100 Heat.
Nether Attunement - Removed as a passive
Ignite - No longer a mastery. Same effect however, but is fixed at x% of your damage instead of scaling off of mastery.
New Cooldowns:
Combustion - No longer makes a DoT based on Ignite Damage.
New CD: Increase your Heat generation by 100% for 15 seconds. 1min 30sec CD.
Flame Orb - Reimplemented. Absorbs all Heat your Mage currently has into an orb that fires straight, doing x% damage based on your Heat for the next 10 seconds. If cast at multiple targets, damage is split between them. Orb explodes at end of duration. 1min CD.
NEW ADDITION - Wildfire - Your Critical Strike Damage is increased by 50% for the next 15 seconds. 2min CD.
New Glyphs:
Glyph of Combustion - Removed
Glyph of Inferno Blast - Spreads Pyroblast DoT and Ignite to 2 additional targets (up from 1).
Glyph of Fiery Returns - Your Mana Gem becomes a Fire Gem, restoring 50 Heat per use, not increased during Combustion. 2min CD.
Glyph of the Phoenix - Minor Glyph. Your Flame Orb spell is no longer an orb, but takes the shape of a Phoenix that flies out in front of you, shooting fire at any target(s) near it. Explodes into ash at the end of the duration. (Cosmetic).
Basic Rotation with these new changes:
Without Cooldowns:
-Start Fight-
Fireball (20 heat)
Bomb, 0 Heat initially (20 heat total)
Fireball (40 heat)
Fireball (60 heat)
Fireball (80 heat) *Crit* *Heating up*
Inferno Blast (95 heat) *Crit* *Hot Streak*
Free Pyroblast (95 heat)
Casted Pyroblast (75 heat) *Crit* *Heating up*
Bomb explodes (90 heat)
Casted Pyroblast (70 heat) *Crit* *Hot Streak*
Free Pyroblast (70 heat)
Bomb (70 heat)
Casted Pyroblast (50 heat)
Fireball (70 heat)
etc.etc.
With Cooldowns:
-start fight-
Fireball (20 heat)
Bomb, 0 Heat initially (20 heat total)
*Cast Combustion*
Fireball (60 heat)
Fireball (100 heat) *Crit* *Heating up*
Flame Orb at 100 Power (0 heat)
Inferno Blast (30 heat) *Crit* *Hot Streak*
*Use Fire Gem* (80 heat)
Pyroblast (60 heat)
Bomb explodes (90 heat)
Fireball (100 heat) *Crit*
*Combustion ends*
etc. etc.
Theorycrafting 101 for this new Spec:
NEW: Possibly having Heat as a main "fire bar" but also adding a Mana bar to use spells outside of the Fire line of spells (for things like Ice Barrier, Spellsteal, etc).
Now with the basics over, there is still a lot to review and think over. There are still spells in the repertoire I didn't include (i.e. Spellsteal or Ice Barrier). My possible changes for things such as these (that I will allow you guys to assume a blanket example here for the rest of the spells not included):
Spellsteal - Costs 0 Heat, now a 10 second CD.
Ice Barrier - Costs 0 Heat, 25 second CD.
However, with spells like Invocation and the such, things that have to do with our mana specifically (as mana gem has been addressed), I would just leave the mana part out like such:
Invocation - A full cast of Evocation now increases spell damage by 15% for 60 seconds.
This also assumes 90 talents will not change next expansion (kill ourselves).
Now at the nature of the spec. It will be based on maintaining high amounts of heat, and your DPS will be better the higher average you can keep it at (sort of like Arcane's Mana Adept). With Critical Mass giving us a built in possible 30% crit, I would assume the strongest stat would be Haste for us, if not Intellect. Since our Mastery no longer includes the DPS of a major CD, I find it to be weaker than it currently is. My guesstimated Stat priority would be:
Hit/Exp (to 15%) > Haste > Intellect > Crit = Mastery
However, I am not running a sim here, I am guessing. I could be completely wrong, and it also depends on how well the Mastery would be initially implemented. Now, why is Crit lower if we still have Hot Streak? Because I believe for this Spec redesign to work, we would need to nerf the damage of Fireball by 10%-20% and Pyroblast by 20-30%, otherwise Pyroblasts would be too easy to come by and hit way to hard to really be fair. With Pyroblast now the same base cast time as Fireball, it becomes our main Heat user when we cannot get free casts, and it will overall be used more than it is today.
*To be added to when necessary*
Final Notes:
Now, the ending notes to this. This spec is complete theory. I have no idea how great it would preform, I have no idea how easy it would be to implement. I just know that many people liked the original idea, and I have brought all of our ideas together to make this. It is the end of an expansion (or the beginning of the end), and I would LOVE Fire to change for the future, and I believe this spec design to be the step in the right direction. Will Blizzard ever see this? Probably not. However, we can at least try. If you do like this spec, or have a question, feel free to comment or ask. The more people that see this, the higher chance that Blizzard will see this if it gets a lot of Mage support (which is good if you like the idea, right?). Get other Mages to read it, link it to your friends, spread it around!
If you hate the spec and think I am a dumby, please comment as well. Offer your critique, offer your suggestions, offer what you think about it in any way, shape, or form. I did this all in one night, I might have missed a key point, or wrote something that sounds weird or stupid that I could reword better. So point any mistakes out too.
Thank you for reading this, if you want to get in touch with me in game, my battletag is Rhaegas#1141.