[Fire, Arcane] Hotfixed mage damage changes

[Xentropy]

All of the complaints about frostbolt damage being so low having bad gameplay feel make me chuckle since fireball has even lower DPET than frostbolt.

This pyro change was entirely the wrong direction and pushes fire further into the same situation as frost (horrible dps during filler, with occassional burst), just with still lower average dps through the entire tier. Fire has always been an RNG spec, but loading all of our damage into pyroblasts will make our fight-to-fight dps variation higher than it has been in our history, even including the 100% combustion ridiculousness.

The correct change would've been to revert the idiotic level 90 changes entirely. Maybe add a little more to fireball and less to pyroblast. I don't know what Blizzard is thinking. Meanwhile, warlocks got a blanket 8% buff across the board pretty much. I can only hope they haven't even started to look at mages yet and this was just someone's quick 2-minute bandaid because they heard there was an issue and maybe this'll shut us up.

[Thelxi]

I wish they would have buffed frostbolt damage also, maybe tuned down frost's mastery to compensate.

[Sevarin]

PS:
It's pretty funny that they still refuse to buff Comet Storm

i want both comet storm and meteor to be viable choices, cause.... comets and meteors. but i doubt that will ever happen. qq

[nickseng]

All of the complaints about frostbolt damage being so low having bad gameplay feel make me chuckle since fireball has even lower DPET than frostbolt.

Am I missing something? I see this thrown around a lot, but I can't seem to work that out.

Fireball has a spell Coeff of 158.6% and a cast time of 2.25 sec
Frostbolt has a spell Coeff of 119.1% and a a cast time of 2 sec

This gives Fireball a DPET of ~70.5 and Frostbolt of ~60

So what don't I know?

[Xentropy]

There are a few reasons frostbolt sims (and logs) better than fireball despite the base coefficients. One frostbolt every 15 seconds casts in 1.5. Frost's cooldown also adds multistrike or haste, directly increasing frostbolt's DPET (while fire's just does damage to the target and doesn't modify fireball directly). Frost values haste and multistrike higher than fire and will tend to have more of each. Overall sim DPET comes out a bit higher for frostbolt when averaging everything together over a reasonable length fight due to these factors. (Note in a similar fashion enhanced pyrotechnics increases fireball's DPET by making it crit slightly more often than our base character sheet crit, but this doesn't increase it to the same degree as improved frostbolt and the other effects above.)

The important takeaway is that however weak you feel while casting frostbolts waiting around for that proc to finally happen, fire feels equally weak while just casting fireballs waiting around for that important crit to finally happen. Just even when we do proc we only get our average up above tank dps briefly then drift back below rather than seeing numbers like other real dps classes sometimes.

Given the "balancing" fire just got, Blizzard seems to like the idea of our filler spell being basically the same as a melee class's autoattack: negligible damage and just there to kill time. The difference is we have to keep pressing buttons (and stand still) to keep our "white damage" going, which is annoying. Blizzard wants all our damage to be in our procs. I disagree with the stance but can't do anything to change their minds.

[Jonsse]

Given the "balancing" fire just got, Blizzard seems to like the idea of our filler spell being basically the same as a melee class's autoattack: negligible damage and just there to kill time. The difference is we have to keep pressing buttons (and stand still) to keep our "white damage" going, which is annoying. Blizzard wants all our damage to be in our procs. I disagree with the stance but can't do anything to change their minds.

I disagree with their stance also. I don't like the other extreme either ie. warlocks in tbc, but all casts are supposed to hurt. That's how casters in every other rpg work.

I don't personally mind the Water Jet functionality, it makes the rotation a bit more robust. But it's just another tool for frost mages to force FoF procs. And another silly thing in the spec that blizzard developers can point their chubby fingers at and go "see that, mages are fine, just use water jet" and nothing gets solved.

[Deleted]

i'd like to see frostbolt and comet storm being buffed, i hate prismatic crystal

[Kendeura]

Am I missing something? I see this thrown around a lot, but I can't seem to work that out.

Fireball has a spell Coeff of 158.6% and a cast time of 2.25 sec
Frostbolt has a spell Coeff of 119.1% and a a cast time of 2 sec

This gives Fireball a DPET of ~70.5 and Frostbolt of ~60

So what don't I know?

I'm assuming he's including frost's mastery.

[Polarthief]

There's people threatening re-rolls and account cancellations over the rain of fire nerf....lol.

One of them happens to be in my guild. The Mumble conversation we were having over the guild fight was hilarious. Everyone basically made analogies to restaurants and stuff; too funny.

Anyways, this is the MAGE FORUM, guys. We discuss Arcane magic here, not fel/demonic or natural magics.


As far as the buffs to Arcane and Fire, they are bandage fixes and do nothing to help but change numbers. Take a guess what they did last expansion? The same thing, and it sucked. Honestly, this is just proving over and over that Fire needs an overhaul. It needs to be stripped naked and modified to a more modern experience. Arcane is actually okay for the most part, but it needs more mobility (to fit the most "mobile caster") and should be doing better standstill ST against our heavy AoE specs, Frost and Fire.

[Zenny]

Unless mages are bottom 10 you have literally no room to complain. You have been top for years.

Why should that ever matter? What about new players or people that rerolled? Should they just suck it up? Having a class perform poorly because it was great in a previous expansion is utter nonsense.

[Polarthief]

You have been top for years.

I mean, now you're just class bashing.

Also, before you say it, "one spec is viable" isn't a valid excuse to not be upset that we have two dead specs. What if a hybrid only had "one viable spec"? We'd go back to Vanilla days.

[Deleted]

Am a bit worried about Mage, I'm in two minds at the moment because I have always been Mage since the game was released almost (short spell as Shaman at the start ) but there isn't much that is fun about Frost and can see myself having more fun with something else. Need to decide soon...

[zomgDPS]

~12% DPS increase for Fire, which does not bring it up to pre-buff Arcane levels.

Arcane buff brings it up to just sliiiightly behind Frost DPS on single target.

It is imperative to note:
This is true, but only for "patchwerk" scenarios (e.g. no movement or fight mechanics).

In actual raids, Frost will still (and quite significantly) obliterate the other two mage specs, simply due to its superior handling of any situation that is not "patchwerk".

[Alex86el]

it doesnt change anything.
because everyone else get a damage buff, and much more than the mages actually.
fire is the worst spec for pvp atm. and arcane is realyl bad also. (i dont know about pve).

i just hate that they are practically FORCING mages to play frost. what the hell?

also, it sucks that the supposed "glass cannon" class is not the best dps.

should be

1. Mage
2. Rogue
3. Hunter
4....then the rest.

i mean, warlocks and plates dealing more damage than mages?!
all that WHILE having self-heals and even pets??!
OBSURD.

[Frost1129]

It is imperative to note:
This is true, but only for "patchwerk" scenarios (e.g. no movement or fight mechanics).

In actual raids, Frost will still (and quite significantly) obliterate the other two mage specs, simply due to its superior handling of any situation that is not "patchwerk".

Depends on the scenarios. Fire starts catching up by the time you are in mythic gear (based BLY making Fire a mythic only raid spec again), has similar mobile DPS, and potent cleave. 2/3 targets you should be playing Fire, if that cleave is going to be sustained. Any sort of burst cleave, burst AoE, or sustained single target, yeah, you want to play Frost.

[Horror]

No, it shouldn't be like that, because the game wouldn't be fun if Mages were always the top dps just because they're a 'glass cannon'(they're not). Be reasonable. You have an entire game full of different classes.

[Zenny]

They should buff barrage and make it deal 100% damage to all targets. Should have decent burst AoE then with Supernovax2 + Barrage + Orb + Barrage. Making AM castable while moving should bring it's mobility up to the other 2 specs. Or if they do not wish to go that route then at least make Arcane single target king.

[Breit]

i just hate that they are practically FORCING mages to play frost. what the hell?
also, it sucks that the supposed "glass cannon" class is not the best dps.

should be
1. Mage
2. Rogue
3. Hunter
4....then the rest.

i mean, warlocks and plates dealing more damage than mages?!
all that WHILE having self-heals and even pets??!
OBSURD.

Yep. That!

Fire starts catching up by the time you are in mythic gear

Problem is, that we play half an addon with sub-par dps due to bad scaling of fire and then, when finally the stats on our gear allow us to start making damage we shine dps-wise for a short time only to get nerfed due to "being OP". Sucks. Really!

I leveled to 100 with a fire spec because I hate to play frost more than anything and I can tell you this was not a great experience. Doing no damage at all, having no heal at all and having all mobs taking ages to kill is really no fun (add to that the ~8 hour wait time it took to log into my server). Now doing heroics and CMs isn't fun either because every tank is doing twice the damage (hell even a DK tank is healing twice as much as the healer does). I re-specced to frost and really hate to play my mage with this, but it is the only way at the moment. I play my mage since the beginning (nearly 10 years now) mostly as fire and it never was that bad. Not even in BC for the Sunwell raids where mages weren't even considered raid-viable.

I mean I got voted out of random heroics due to low dps with fire... How fun is that?

No, it shouldn't be like that, because the game wouldn't be fun if Mages were always the top dps just because they're a 'glass cannon'(they're not). Be reasonable. You have an entire game full of different classes.

Thats my point. Mages are one of the few pure DPS classes in the game and I say a pure DPS class should top charts DPS-wise. They simply have nothing else. A hybrid should bring support, but may not equal (or surpass) the DPS output of a pure DPS class. That being said, this should apply to all pure DPS classes being it hunters, rogues or warlocks.
Why (besides playstyle) should one play a pure DPS class if lets say a druid is a better caster with balance, can heal himself with resto, can be a superb melee if he choose to with feral AND can tank just with a flip of a switch?

Blizzard needs to finally get their stuff together. I mean 10 years and still they don't get class balancing sorted out?!

[zomgDPS]

Depends on the scenarios. Fire starts catching up by the time you are in mythic gear (based BLY making Fire a mythic only raid spec again), has similar mobile DPS, and potent cleave. 2/3 targets you should be playing Fire, if that cleave is going to be sustained. Any sort of burst cleave, burst AoE, or sustained single target, yeah, you want to play Frost.

Correct. Though this pretty much covers a wide variety of upcoming encounters (especially in the first WoD tier).

But yes, Fire does have a strength in sustained AoE/cleave encounters. That is the one thing keeping it relevant with respect to Frost. (It is important to note: Arcane has no such +1 up on Frost, it wholesale sucks comparatively in every scenario).

They should buff barrage and make it deal 100% damage to all targets. Should have decent burst AoE then with Supernovax2 + Barrage + Orb + Barrage. Making AM castable while moving should bring it's mobility up to the other 2 specs. Or if they do not wish to go that route then at least make Arcane single target king.

This issue was brought up during beta (especially the part about Arcane not having any niche to call its own), however, it was ignored. One of the key problems with Arcane is that nobody (not even Blizz) have an idea of what Arcane is 'supposed to be good at'. Similar to how Frost is good at burst, CC, AoE burst, mobility, etc; and how Fire is good at sustained AoE; no one has any idea of what this 'niche' Arcane is meant to have.

This is not to say no one has opined what it should be, its just that Blizz doesn't wish to put in the time to actually realize one for Arcane. From their perspective, Mages already have one working spec (Frost), and so, their intent to "ensure each pure class has at least 1 spec that 'works'" is already satisfied.

[Frost1129]

Correct. Though this pretty much covers a wide variety of upcoming encounters (especially in the first WoD tier).

But yes, Fire does have a strength in sustained AoE/cleave encounters. That is the one thing keeping it relevant with respect to Frost. (It is important to note: Arcane has no such +1 up on Frost, it wholesale sucks comparatively in every scenario).

I'd agree on both accounts. The number of fights were Fire has a leg up over Frost are few and far between (and they are none of the super hard fights), and there really is no reason to play Arcane that I can think of right now.