What do you currently like/dislike about Fire at its very core?

[LocNess]

Exactly my point; if it wasn't as important to your dps (if we had another cooldown and the glyph didn't exist for example) it would a perfectly fine spell, while still being a little dependant on RNG.

It is indeed a problem with the spec that I am working on getting rid of, and did in the past. Bad RNG that is that important to your damage is never fun for anybody.

[Artorius]

The problem with fire is that it has lost all of it's mechanics. No, seriously, playing without shatter, old alter time, PoM and deep freeze feels wrong.
I have nothing to complain on the PVE side, if blizzard can tune it correctly to work without pyro management for perfect combustions, it's fine. But for PVP... The spec is like 10% of what it used during MoP, when you saw a fire mage you had 2 chances, the guy would have no clue about what he was doing and would fail miserably or would kill you in a split second throwing pyros from the "nowhere". It was a spec that used to "scale" with skill incredibly good. It was just fun to control your stacks through shatters, then wiping someone with alter time PoM and deep.

Some may debate that casting scorch while moving with garanteed crits from shatter were too good, yes probably, but leaving the spec without anything to do but cast fireball and hope for crits isn't the answer.
Well, "frost" mechanics were much more important to Fire's pvp than to frost itself.

[Deleted]

But that's just me I guess.

Just a little heads-up, I agree with everything you wrote. It was nice seeing DF and AT gone but though the dish they were wasn't to my liking, it left a stale taste in my mouth once it finally dissolved.

[dopefishz]

I never mained mage but I always wanted to. Especially Fire seemed like so much fun because to me, it looked like it was an 'active' spec. Managing your procs etc seemed much more fun than FB, FB, FB, IL. Now I got the chance to main Mage and I'm sad how low the damage of fire is.. Playing Frost as long as Fire is crap.

I talked about Fire Mages with my friends 1 day ago and we came up with a pretty good idea (IMO) to 'fix' Fire in the early content and not make it too overpowered endgame.

Since Fire is kinda all about the crit you have, give Fire a base crit%. Let's say around 25-30%. Lower the amount of crit you get from gear ((for example: 200 points of crit for 1%, while normally it's 100/1% (don't know the actual numbers and I'm too lazy to look them up, but you get the idea)). At the same time, lower the critdmg of every Firespell. Now, as you get more gear with crit on it, every point of crit increases the critdmg of firespells by x% (again, no numbers, cba) and also your crit% (as stated above by a lower amount of what you would normally get). Tweak the damage some spells do here and there and voilà, maybe a fine to play Fire Mage.

What do you guys think ? Would that be a solution for Fire ?

[dopefishz]

Something along those lines would probably help.
It's what made fire nice to play before, in pvp at least: Shatter.
Can't get your crits for pyro? Just freeze some guy and throw something fiery into their general direction, ???, pyro!
And I wouldn't go overboard with reducing crit damage AND scaling, that seems a bit overly dramatic.

In my example we have a baseline crit% of 25-30%. That would be too strong early on without any 'nerf' and too good endgame. You would still be able to raise your crit% and critdmg with critgear.

[Deleted]

Since Fire is kinda all about the crit you have, give Fire a base crit%.

That's exactly what happened until they changed Critical Mass in MoP. Fire talents increased your critical chance by a very significant margin.

[Armbre]

I think a fun mechanic that would make me feel a bit more pyroish would to have a debuff for each fireball kinda like arcane except each stack = higher crit but each cast at 4 stacks will put a "burn" on you and damage you and also do aoe dmg and by casting inferno blast you clear this debuff i know most of you will hate this but fire needs a large change or else we will keep getting the same system every xpac

Or idea number two have a bar that with each firespell you cast it "fills up" until it reaches a critical mass that you activate and it gives you a stupid high crit for 30s or w/e basically replacing combustion and making fire a spec where throwing around as much flame as possible = highest dps, so basically a wild pyromancer type of gameplay something like fb for filler, but using flamestrike dragons breath and inferno blast maybe even comet could be useful while keeping all of those on cd would give the best dps i think it would be a fun kinda spammy burn everything everywhere kinda spec.

[Artorius]

Numbers aren't important, they can easily change numbers if people complain enough.

Problem is that the spec doesn't have anything to do besides trying to hardcast a fireball and hope for it to crit with a completely RNG based mechanic.

There isn't a thought process, there isn't a planning, there isn't that factor that makes you differentiate the regular Fire mage from the skilled Fire mage.

I mean, I agree that fire should have it's own mechanics and not be based on Frost's, but then we need a redesign.

Making Pyro hit for 5x more than what it is doing now won't change that the gameplay feels dumb.

[nukie]

It wouldn't take much to make me happy with fire. My biggest issue (and I'm guessing its shared by everyone) is that I love fire, i want to blow stuff up, crit hard, and set it on fire... ITS NOT FUN to not be able to use the spec i love until the last tier of an expansion. I dislike arcane and frost already, but I'm pretty certain that because i cant play fire, i dislike the other specs even more then i would otherwise.

This is a game that i play for fun, and its not fun when i cant be competitive with the spec that appeals to me the most.

____


Since you asked for likes/dislikes and specifics, here are a bunch:

I like the simplicity of the spec now.

I like the simplicity of going with unstable magic and kindling if i chose to go that route.

I like passive/bi-product dots (ignite, pyro dot).

I like combustion or the idea of a finisher type ability.

I dislike active dots (LB).

I dont care about PvP viability.

I like the idea of an impact stun mechanic and the stun portion of combustion returning, for survivability and for those that do care about PvP.

I like the idea of either boosting base crit for fire mages, or taking that 35% buff to pyro and placing it on fireball instead so at least I'm hitting hard when I'm not critting.

I like the idea of a mechanic that provides an increase in base crit based on your current crit.

I feel that enhanced pyrotechnics is only one step up from useless, and it should provide a 33% increased crit chance per miss as a fresh lvl 100, scaling down to 5% as a minimum as you gear up (crit rating increases) toward 50%+ crit.

Basically i like it for its intended purpose at endgame, but it doesnt do much for us at low crit ratings.

I would be very excited for something like "fire form" (granted this was already done with shadow form), where the fire mages basically look like the human torch. This new talent could replace kindling at tier 100 and provide one or more of the following benefits: the kindling effect, returning stun to combustion, adding the impact effect to scorch, adding a crit modifier for fire spells that scales based on the amount of crit that you have.

I like them additing/removing a crit modifier as they have been doing more then not getting to play fire spec till the last tier of the expac.

I do agree that a radical change like no longer basing fire on crits is probably necessary.

I like fire's mastery in theory and like the suggestion that maybe fire should be mastery based (as much as id miss crit stacking).

____

I'm an easy customer, as long as I'm hitting stuff with fireballs and I'm competitive (or near the top of the meters, hey i can be greedy) then I'm happy and open to even radical fire changes.

edits: for ease of reading.

[Javox]

Fire is my favorite mage spec. I got my mage all the way to 90 as fire and then all the way to 100. After 100 though, I couldn't take not having any crit and had to switch to frost. All I can seem to get from dungeons is haste/mastery gear. I went from having 40% crit at 90, to now having 10% crit and 35% mastery as fire. I know RNG is RNG, but damn.

But as soon as I get the gear, I will switch back to fire. It's why I can't wait for Blackrock Foundry. The tier 17 actually has crit on it.