Any Ideas to fix the Fire Balance Roller Coaster?

[Karon]

Hey,

I've been thinking about it for quite a while how to fix the biggest problem with the Fire specc and how to make it possible to balance it without having to buff/nerf the specc massively between the content patches.

I wanted to share my Idea in hope that there is nothing I oversee that would make such a thing impossible and after that making a thread on the Blizz Forums in hopes that the devs see my idea:

Add a passive to the fire specc that increases his critical hit chance by 30%-40% (So that he has a chance of 50% to land a critical hit) and at the same time reduce the critical hit damage by 60%-70% (Just some numbers, I didn't do any math if or if not the numbers are within reasonable levels). Critical hit rating reduces the effects of the passive to the point that when reaching 50% crit alone from crit rating on gear, the passive is effectively +0% crit / -0% crit hit damage.

With such a passive the fire mage would be IMO more enjoyable because he would feel more like the end-content mage minus the haste rating, and blizzard could balance the fire mage once and wouldn't have to fear that the fire dps skyrockets because they don't have to compensae for the lack of crit early on with stronger Pyroblasts (ust like they did today with the 35% PB buff).

With more gear and more crit rating on the gear the mage may not feel stronger because the crit % wouldn't change until probably the last content of the addon, but he would still become stronger due to getting back his critical hit damage making his crits hitting harder and harder without suddenly having enough crit to chain Pyroblast which would still be overbuffed from previous patches due to low crit ratings.

So, what do you think about my Idea to fix one of the core problems the fire specc currently has? Do you see flaws in my Idea that I can't see or have another Idea of your own?
Please let me know!

[Deleted]

Get more crit gear. Revert the 30% nerf.

Here you go.

[Karon]

Ok, that leaves fire boring at the beginning of the add on and since blizzard isn't the fastest to push out fixes it wouldn't change a thing about the situation we are in at the moment. Early in the add on they buff mage to compensate for missing crit, later on they (over)nerf mage because he now has enough crit.

[Deleted]

Adding some base critchance to fireball would solve a lot of problems. It could've been even 30%.

- - - Updated - - -

Get more crit gear. Revert the 30% nerf.

Here you go.

Wouldnt fix anything and need constant fire nerfs every tier. Even in its current state fire would be great in ilvl 700 and probably overpowered at ilvl 730.

Being too gear reliant is one the basic problems.

[Polarthief]

Being too gear reliant is one the basic problems.

That's what happens when everything you do is based around one stat.

Crit inflates:
- Normal damage (doing 2x instead of 1x)
- Ignite (double Ignite)
- Pyroblast rates
- (Good) Combustion rates

I mean, that's way too much for one stat to do, and most of it kinda stacks on top of another. It's an archaic mess of a design.

[Deleted]

Integrate some mechanic similar to the 2p and 4p t17 bonus, which result in crit losing value and mastery scaling upwards.

[ssviolett]

Thing similar to Shatter must be in Fire spec.

[IsrafaelMage]

it's quite simple - they should return fire back to cata model with static %crit mods on most spells, shift damage from pyro back to fireball (or pyro dot), make ignite much more valuable and proc-like (so that combustion will be again an opportunistic spell), or maybe give LB a chance to generate HU/HS procs. I don't remember huge scaling problems back in cata (AFAIR, 4.0 fire hurdles were mostly associated with bad mana management, in 4.2 it was simply plainly overnerfed) and hotfix nerfs like this (i remember 5% nerf back in DS times caused a huge uproar amongst mages - little they knew what awaited them on black Friday in 5.1 and in the beginning of 5.4)

[Deztru]

I would say that revamping the spec to be mastery based instead crit based could stop the nerf-train in every single patch, somehow handle the Pyroblast! proccing without criticals and so on.

Seriously though. The nerf train is happening solely because of crit, the more crit we get during progressing every expansion simply just requires a nerf.

[Aphrel]

make hotstreak a random proc from fireball/scorch/pyro rather then a critproc. that way Increased critrating wont inflate the amount of pyros being casted in a fight and tuning should be easy.
Wich whould make infernoblasts only funciton be to spread ignites/living bombs.

another solution whould be a shatter mechanic for pyros, so that crit whould devalue earlier (if pyro whould get 3x critchance, critrating whould start to become more and more undesirable once u hit 33%). This whould make tuning easier. Crit whould probobly still be the most desirable stat just to get hotsteaks more often. but it whould scale as insanely good as it does now.

[Jideo]

The problem isn't relying on crit as the basis of your dps, it's relying on back to back crits. The back to back crit instant pyro mechanic is what's making fire dps scale exponentially with gear, or at least more than other specs. If we/Blizzard wants to keep this mechanic for fire mages, then they need to address this somehow. Or at least do a better job than just the buffing and nerfing cycles they've been doing.

[karkooshy]

A new resource system similar to Destro. You have a red bar below your mana bar. When the red bar is half full, you proc Heating Up. When it's completely full you proc Hotstreak, and then the bar resets.

All Fire spells gradually fill the bar up (crit or non-crit). Longer casts fill the bar more quickly than shorter casts e.g Scorch fills the bar by 10%, wheras Fireball fills it by 25%. ANY crit by any Fire spell will immediately fills the bar by 50%. That way we maintain our Crit based playstyle where crits help us get Pyros out more often, but not having mythic levels of crit won't hinder Hotstreak from procing at all and ruin the rotation.

[Frost1129]

Pull back the pyro buff from 35% to ~20%. Add more damage onto Fireball / IB. You know, like they had during the beta. When Fire had no issues with low or high ilvl.

Problem solved.

[Schmeebs]

Pull back the pyro buff from 35% to ~20%. Add more damage onto Fireball / IB. You know, like they had during the beta. When Fire had no issues with low or high ilvl.

Problem solved.

But then they would have to admit the 20% across the board nerf was purely a knee-jerk reaction to QQ about absolete content and not the planned balance for level 100 they claimed it was.

[Corazu]

A new resource system similar to Destro. You have a red bar below your mana bar. When the red bar is half full, you proc Heating Up. When it's completely full you proc Hotstreak, and then the bar resets.

All Fire spells gradually fill the bar up (crit or non-crit). Longer casts fill the bar more quickly than shorter casts e.g Scorch fills the bar by 10%, wheras Fireball fills it by 25%. ANY crit by any Fire spell will immediately fills the bar by 50%. That way we maintain our Crit based playstyle where crits help us get Pyros out more often, but not having mythic levels of crit won't hinder Hotstreak from procing at all and ruin the rotation.

I like this idea. Maybe needs some tuning (not just in numbers which were off the top of your head) but I think it's a solid base of an idea.

[Tyllis]

The Problem: Crit scaling is ludicrously high, AND game play breaks down when crit rating is outside the (too small) sweet spot.
Obvious Minimal Solution: Enlarge the sweet spot and reduce scaling by replacing some or all of the scaling multipliers (Critical Mass and Incineration, specifically) with flat crit% bonuses.

This solution is so obvious and so simple that it blows my mind that they didn't address this between MoP and WoD. Maybe reducing crit scaling isn't sufficient, and a full redesign is required, but they should at least give it a try.

[Puuhis]

But then they would have to admit the 20% across the board nerf was purely a knee-jerk reaction to QQ about absolete content and not the planned balance for level 100 they claimed it was.

They already said that the nerfs were purely for level 90 since fire mages were just so damn overpowered. They could've reverted the nerfs, but went with a bigger buff to pyroblast instead.

[Kanariya]

I'd rather see Fire reverted to it's wotlk state. It worked great back then and we weren't subjected to the RNG cooldown that Combustion has become. Ignite as a mastery sucks.

[Bryci]

reduce the fireball cast speed to at least 1.8-1.9 sec. Enhanced pyrotechnics should be giving about 10% crit rate/stack so you can get hot streak after 2-3 fireballs which is not a big thing to ask and would have a good impact on the current rotation which is about 10 fireballs in a row 1 inferno blast and 1 non crit pyro... and ye reduce the pyro dmg a bit. Really don't understand why combustion is so nerfed to the ground... it is kind of similar to shadow priest devouring plague and see how powerful it is and how easy to get 3 orbs to cast it wihle combustion has hell of a cd and does like no dmg at all...

[DungeonMaster]

A new resource system similar to Destro. You have a red bar below your mana bar. When the red bar is half full, you proc Heating Up. When it's completely full you proc Hotstreak, and then the bar resets.

All Fire spells gradually fill the bar up (crit or non-crit). Longer casts fill the bar more quickly than shorter casts e.g Scorch fills the bar by 10%, wheras Fireball fills it by 25%. ANY crit by any Fire spell will immediately fills the bar by 50%. That way we maintain our Crit based playstyle where crits help us get Pyros out more often, but not having mythic levels of crit won't hinder Hotstreak from procing at all and ruin the rotation.

I was thinking in something like this too. Demo rage with frost DK procs.

My personal changes:
- Make crits improve resource generation by a % over non-crit effect, rather than flat 50%, just to compete with haste.
- Make some kind of "killing machine" proc from fireball to improve Pyro damage. All fire mages like to see big numbers.

Imo, this will fix:
- Crit stacking for reddic Pyro burst on late game, since Pyro is now a resource dump.
- Now we have burst on demand or, at least, more predictable dps.
- Haste build: faster fireball cast, normal resource generation, pyro cast improved by "killing machine proc".
- Crit build: slower fireball cast, better resource per cast, pyro cast improved by natural crit.
- Inferno Blast could be the ultimate balance tool.

What do you think?