The problem with flat buffing fire without altering it,

[Deleted]

or why fire requires slight inferiority to Arcane as it is now:

As it is obvious to anyone that plays end-game raiding in Arcane, the spec is not easy at all [compared to 5mans and BH]. Only if the fight is very stationary, such as being on Baleroc and and not moving that much, or in Majordomo, then it is possible to do high dps. The problem with fire being buffed directly is that it's an extremely easy spec to play. You are not positioned properly? No problem, keep running about jumping up and down while doing a scorch or two. It won't destroy your dps, after all, your Living Bomb, your Ignite, your Combustion, your Pyroblast dot, will be on the target, no much harm done. Same if you completely misposition yourself and you're called by someone to change position. No problem, just run there for even 50 yards. You will not kill your dps.

Now try this with Arcane. If you are not positioned properly, or the fight inherently has tons of movement, or if you are being interrupted - or knocked back - right after pulling cooldowns - hell - then you are destroyed. Miss a couple of arcane blasts? Hell.

Plus, Cauterize.

Fire is "technically" more complex but in reality the gameplay is plainly easier.

IF the buf gives it "equality" with Arcane, I will HAVE to go with fire since that mathematical "equality" will be in reality a clear superiority, since it will be much easier to play optimally. Let alone survive stupid mistakes.


IF the buf gives it mathematical superiority, it plainly kills that Arcane spec no questions asked, but that may be already the case.


Also, we will have problems in various guilds that have setup their 3%+ bufs etc, around their setup and this will disturb it.

I hope what this does is to give slight inferiority, so that taking fire will be on equal grounds and the choice would be based on what is fun or more optimal for a raid buf's.

[Blueobelisk]

They'll probably retract some of the buffs for fire but in reality there aren't many fights where there is enough movement to really say arcane is going to suck and fires movement will help.

[Imnick]

They'll probably retract some of the buffs for fire but in reality there aren't many fights where there is enough movement to really say arcane is going to suck and fires movement will help.

Have you read any of the previews for the Deathwing raid?
There's adds and movement all over the place.

[Charge me Doctor]

They need to give fire something to get rid of stupid random mechanic, it even worse than ret paladins one.
Last time i raided as fire mage, i've got 3-5 Pyroblast!s for a whole fight (Nefarian), because it's just keeps going like this: Normal hit -> crit -> normal hit -> crit -> normal hit*10 -> crit*2

Something like "every normal direct damage hit, increases your chance to land direct damage critical hit by 2/4/6%. Direct critical hit removes buff. When stacked more than 4 times, you will automaticly throw a Pyroblast! at target, and loose all applications of buff" in last tires of fire tree, so, you will have choose of 15% haste when 3 enemies suffers from fire dot, or single target damage

[Deleted]

Let me guess what is harder.
To make few steps with silly dmg or to stand in place for few seconds and drop huge numbers.
All you trying to argue is the positioning. Hell, it is not spec problem but human‘s factor. Of course you cannot plan everything but still.
Also I am not defending/flaming one spec or other but can‘t really get what this topic trying to prove.
Cheers.

[iccy]

what do you guys think about the fire changes we've seen so far?

i think it's looking promising GO FIRE!

[announced]

fire is still gonna be worthless even with the flat buffs to it. the only change is its gonna have a slightly higher range of RNG. instead of doing like 10-24k dps in a fight it might do 12-25k.

[Benno]

I like the damage buff to fire, but do agree the way it works is so RNG that it should be modified another way to fix the problem permanently. Making mastery affect the chance to crit when you are in 'cold steaks' seems like the common solution, or add another debuff that is just a personal critical mass debuff, which gives your fb/ffb/pyro! a greater chance to crit the more they don't crit. Or make it a debuff that works that way, but instead of more crit, it makes the eventual crit you get do more damage (like non crits soften up the body for the haymaker crits)

[Pocketzest]

I think he is trying to say that arcane is harder than fire. Or maybe that arcane is hard in the first place. Interesting.

[Promark]

what do you guys think about the fire changes we've seen so far?

i think it's looking promising GO FIRE!

I think it's a step in the wrong direction honestly. With the changes they listed and with the T13 bonus it will put even more emphasis on getting lucky Combustions in order to keep up with everyone else. I will hold judgement though until it gets closer to release, but I doubt the RNG factor will change much before the next X-pac.

[tenub]

inc #1 wol rankings from terrible mages no one's ever heard of due to rng/luck. at least arcane is consistent and you can tell who's good and who's bad.

[ssviolett]

inc #1 wol rankings from terrible mages no one's ever heard of due to rng/luck. at least arcane is consistent and you can tell who's good and who's bad.

Rofl. M8. Good or bad ? Yes, spamming one button on fight like Baleroc is damn hard, and only true skilled people can top the meters !!11
Oh wait ... maybe its about gear they got ? Maybe its about good guild -> faster kill -> more time with hero ?

[Soulstrike]

Rofl. M8. Good or bad ? Yes, spamming one button on fight like Baleroc is damn hard, and only true skilled people can top the meters !!11
Oh wait ... maybe its about gear they got ? Maybe its about good guild -> faster kill -> more time with hero ?

isnt it because they are in "good guild" he/she would do good dps?? its not like some idiot who press 1 button and gets 40k instantly with good guild

but yea gear comes handy like SOW (curse u >_>)

[Deleted]

I think he is trying to say that arcane is harder than fire. Or maybe that arcane is hard in the first place. Interesting.

Arcane gets an easy reputation of being "easy" since if someone doesn't play end-game raiding, they think it is like doing a 5man or baradin hold. Arcane is extremely sensitive to movement and extremely sensitive to disruptions, interrupts, knockbacks.

For example, if you pop your cooldowns for burning and you miss 2 or 3 seconds only of that burn your DPS will fall like a rock. The reasons those Blasts may be lost are various, knockbacks, interrupts, have to move, you're called by a raid leader to go elsewhere, big bad random ability comes that calls you to 'connect the link' with someone, etc.

Hell, even if you don't do 2 Arcane Blasts in the burn phase out of lag for 2 seconds or for another reason like knockbacks from a boss damage that pulsates, the drop will be very noticeable.


Compare that to fire that can jump around like a goat and still lose a minimal dps (scorch for 2 seconds instead of fireball, boohoo, there will be ignite, living bomb, pyroblast dot, or combustion on the target unaffected during the time). And even stupid mistakes can be saved with cauterize. Fire is simply easier. And I did start with fire and I loved it. It's not a rant by someone that doesn't know other specs, I've played all 3 properly.

[drtrann]

i agree that arcane is far harder then people really give it credit for, and i really want to give fire a try in a raiding environment (ok i use it on alysrazor because of the stupid amounts of haste and crit.. but if your not your doing it wrong). arcane is challenging and complicated and requires you to do a lot of things right, where fire is pretty average in its dificulty.

but i do not like the idea of bringing a purely RNG dps class to the table in raids. as arcane i can guarentee i bring 26k dps to a fight.. as fire im anywhere inbetween ~28-14k dps depending on if i can get a damn proc. last week for shits i did baleroc as fire and got 1, YES 1, pyroblast the entire fight. that kind of RNG shouldnt happen, and my miserable 17k dps shows why. i really like the reaction mechanics of fire, and that its has mobility, but the RNG gamble is not worth taking in on progression raiding.

that said, the new buffs + t13 buff could be pretty huge in fires DPS, having combustion up a lot more + the larger amounts of haste might might the RNG a little less of a factor in overall dps.

[Affectionate]

you know theres a ton of mages out there right now playing arcane because they "have to" that absolutely despise it

[Deleted]

I also started as fire and I loved and I did switch to Arcane after the 4.x bufs. But I do realize that fire is the easiest of the two. What proved it to me was Atramedes when it was still hard for us: That fight can just have you running about like a drunk person in fire and still outdps most of the people in there (before the big nerf).

By the way, I find frost to be the easiest of the two since it only awaits for a couple of procs, nothing else, even if it is slightly less mobile that fire. But, the problem with that spec is that it is very flat, it does nothing spectacularly, its single target damage is "ok" and its aoe damage is "ok", none of the two is great. In PvE, not PvP. Even if it has its "bursty" moments those are very limited and are based on a couple of procs that won't give more than 40k dps on average gear for a couple of seconds. This spec is simply the easiest, followed by fire, followed by arcane, in PvE.

[Gaexion Ramza Beoulve]

It's not really that great, fire still suffers from the gcd of doom, we use more gcd's than almost any other spec, if you throw a pyroblast and it doesnt crit it's a dps loss, if you press LB a half a second too soon-dps loss, combustion uses the gcd too. Running and scorching is a major dps loss, and more so than having to stop the arcane rotation for a few seconds, during which you can cast AB, FB or throw up mana shield/mage ward which should cut out a little work for the healer and give you a SP boost.

Arcane is still incredibly advantageous because you can control when to blow your CD, so if you know the boss will have a phase where he is temporarily weakened for 20 seconds Arcane can blow it CDs and do some serious damage. Lets say your fighting Alysrazor and she lands after tornadoes, your group BL but nothing's proc'd ignite is weak and you cant get a hot streak to save your life, Combustion simply wont help so you lose big on being able to control your output when you need it most.

Also not being able to control when you want to burn means you are wasting refresh time on your combustion, so you only get it once versus the arcane mage. At the very worst if you pop your combustion at a bad time, say when ragnaros is getting close to 70% and he starts his transition before the raid is ready the leader has called out for a stop your going to have some serious problems and some serious splaining to do.


The fire buffs aren't unwelcome, they're simply not fixing broken and unfun mechanics. These still might not be enough to let fire catch up to arcane and worst case scenario arcane gets buffed to keep up with patchwork style fights.


Want to fix fire, help get us out of GCD lock and take away some of the RNG by redesigning combustion to be fun and effective.

Want me to make it simple? skip the flat dmg buff and just give Combustion a shorter CD so fire mages have something to look forward to in their rotation instead of dreading over whether or not to waste combustion because hot streak refuses to proc.

[kivipää]

So basically, OP is saying that fire is better for people who are bad enough to screw up on a regular basis?

I am confused, how is this relevant in any way?

[LaplaceNoMa]

I think he is trying to say that arcane is harder than fire. Or maybe that arcane is hard in the first place. Interesting.

I think you're trying to say that it's not the case and arcane isn't one of the 3 hardest specs in the game (on par with sub-rogues and ferals) while fire is easier than combat rogues and warriors. Interesting.