[Fire] Where Fire currently sits.

[scvd]

Mage not the most viable class for everything in game atm for once? Cry me a river.

User was infracted for this post.

[Nitros14]

If arcane damage wasn't that high it'd be in a pretty bad spot considering it's the least mobile spec in the game. No one suffers from movement more than arcane.

[Darcyn]

It´s not gonna be unplayable, but the problem is - especially with the trend of very strict enrage timers - we need to play the top DPS spec. If a spec gets nerfed (especially as harsh as it happened now with -15 to -20% overall) we have to check the alternatives.
Generally Arcane was scaling a little better than Fire anyways and with the current nerf its very likely Arcane is the way to go with increasing gear levels. Fire isn´t the worst spec ingame, but playing an inferior spec on a class just doesn´t work.

Arcanes scaling was better cause of increased mana pools via int. Fire always scaled, is scaling and will scale better with secondary stats. Didn't run sims lately as I dont pve anymore but I'm quite sure fires scaling was way more ahead than any other spec in game at mop release.

[mrgreenthump]

Arcanes scaling was better cause of increased mana pools via int. Fire always scaled, is scaling and will scale better with secondary stats. Didn't run sims lately as I dont pve anymore but I'm quite sure fires scaling was way more ahead than any other spec in game at mop release.

in pre 5.1, fire was only a bit ahead of affliction and I think the highest scaling spec was assasination of all, it just started so low that it never catched up with affli and fire. And if they would have reverted fire to pre-5.1 it would have been behind arcane aswell in scaling. The thing people forget though is that the T6 mage talents are designed to not be maxed, so its pretty natural for mages to scale a bit better than the rest just cause of that. Given prolly nobody can dispute the fact that fire would have started to pick up if it got past 8k crit rating, but that was more to do with the boss crit reduction being flat 3%(4.5% for fire) and never scaled, so it just added to the speed fire scaled cause we could get our buffed crits to past 32% allready.

[Madruga]

All I know is I'm changing ro Frost today.

[scuac]

Lol its the exact opposite of FoTM, at least in my intentions. I was all about playing frost at the beginning of this expansion, and I went through hell arguing its merit, but when fire was so ridiculous that the difference between my near perfect play dps and our fire mages average rng dps was the same amount of dmg left on cleave bosses after 1% wipes, I just couldn't look at my raid and tell them it was worth it anymore. It was so bad you were basically forced to go fire or look like an ass, it wasn't the slight dps difference between specs we all thought it would be.

I have also played Frost most of the expansion until last week when I switched to Fire for my raid, and this week I am back to Frost. Let me tell you one thing, if you where playing Frost well, and your raid was having 1% wipes, it was not your fault. Frost has been middle of the pack dps or better all expansion. It is easy for the raid leader to say "hey, if you were Fire we would have had it", but what were the rest of the dps in the raid doing? Again, assuming you were playing Frost right, that wipe was not caused by lack of dps from the mage, there was someone else slacking there.

[jason1975]

http://simulationcraft.org/510/Raid_T14H.html

As someone who has worked on Simulationcraft and understands what it is and is not, these discussions make my head hurt.

What SimulationCraft is:

- A tool to help you understand the relationship between certain gearing choices (stat weights, etc) and rotational changes for your gear range.

What SimulationCraft is NOT:

- A valid estimator of any given player playing any given spec for any given fight.
- A valid comparison of one spec vs. another on a given fight.

Stop praying to it facing Simulationcraft.org five times a day. It's not a bible, it's a tool. For those who still don't get it, please list all the patchwerk non-movement, non-adds, non-on demand burst fights in the current tier.

Fire is fine, and probably much better than Arcane on cleave fights (which is most of them) with equally skilled (at their specific spec) and geared players. I know it's tough to swallow, but those nerfs to fire were justified.

If you want to look at the performance of certain specs, I strongly suggest looking at actual parses via Raidbots (but again, there are limitations to the data and analysis you should understand before making comparisons!!).

[scuac]

Time for another anecdote! I just came out of LFR on Garalon. Me on my 484 Frost mage finished 4th on dps and was happy with my performance. But then I noticed that #1 was a Fire mage. She was very similarly geared, lvl 486 also with 2pc bonus and same weapon, but did 27kdps more than me. I checked the fight details and she had 4 mediocre combustions (all sub 20k tics) during the fight.

Either I am doing it really wrong, or the demise of Fire has been greatly exaggerated.

[Kneepel]

Really? So am I to believe that the majority of Warlocks have been farming destruction gear to they can focus on raiding with the lowest dps output spec? People don't get it. Did fire need a nerf? Of course, but to make it completely unviable is a slap in the face to the players that have now wasted 8 weeks of raiding to obtain crit gear.

I was in LFR with a fire mage, he was topping the charts with 101k DPS.

Saying fire is un viable is just, so wrong.

[Tradewind]

I probably just suck hard at Arcane (it's my least favorite spec of all time, period) but I seem to do better as fire still. But likely just a rotational/experience thing. But yeah, huge disappointment compared to pre-nerf.

This is also the most disappointing graph in the history of graphs.
http://www.raidbots.com/dpsbot/Garal...ll/7/60/avg/#1

All aboard the shitcoaster!

[Dragore]

I did the last two bosses in Terrace(LFR) last night as fire. On the first fight I was #1 DPS by about 2%. On Sha I was #2 DPS behind #1 by about .5%. Throughout the fights on both bosses I was typically around #1-3. I gemed/reforged for frost last night but I am now thinking that I might stick with fire this week to come to a conclusion for myself, unless I see some real numbers...

[Tradewind]

I would suggest not using LFR as a gauge for "where you stand" versus other DPS.

[jason1975]

I probably just suck hard at Arcane (it's my least favorite spec of all time, period) but I seem to do better as fire still. But likely just a rotational/experience thing. But yeah, huge disappointment compared to pre-nerf.

This is also the most disappointing graph in the history of graphs.
http://www.raidbots.com/dpsbot/Garal...ll/7/60/avg/#1

All aboard the shitcoaster!

Context, my friend. Here's what it looks like with all other ranged DPS specs added in:

http://www.raidbots.com/dpsbot/Garal.../7/60/avg/#3vv

Note the fire is still significantly ahead of every ranged DPS spec on these results . . . Note that even just that analysis is not complete, but it's hyperbole to post that graph without context and imply that fire is now crap.

Unless exceeding every other ranged DPS spec = crap, of course.

[Shmeh]

Context, my friend. Here's what it looks like with all other ranged DPS specs added in:

http://www.raidbots.com/dpsbot/Garal.../7/60/avg/#3vv

Note the fire is still significantly ahead of every ranged DPS spec on these results . . . Note that even just that analysis is not complete, but it's hyperbole to post that graph without context and imply that fire is now crap.

Unless exceeding every other ranged DPS spec = crap, of course.

I'm not sure why the OP linked to the Garalon graph, but nobody gives a left handed fuck about Garalon. The fight is designed in such a way that fire will always be exceptional on it.

He should have linked this. http://www.raidbots.com/dpsbot/Overa.../7/60/avg/#3vv

Fire is still steadily dropping, other specs are rising. And that is with fights like Garalon and Protectors skewing the numbers for fire I believe.

[Babylonia]

Context, my friend. Here's what it looks like with all other ranged DPS specs added in:

http://www.raidbots.com/dpsbot/Garal.../7/60/avg/#3vv

Note the fire is still significantly ahead of every ranged DPS spec on these results . . . Note that even just that analysis is not complete, but it's hyperbole to post that graph without context and imply that fire is now crap.

Unless exceeding every other ranged DPS spec = crap, of course.

Actually, both of these graphs demonstrate a down tick in Fire. As Jason indicates, still a little early as most of the raiding guilds we done or almost done when the Fire nerf hit. It will be interesting to see just how much Fire falls off. Who knows, maybe the sky is not falling after all.

[Kiry]

Looking at worldoflogs, might look at arcane as an option with frost. I did 10 bosses in our raid last night, felt my performance was on par with most of what we needed.....except for that missing combust fun that I used to have.
Now, I also did Terrace LFR and was lucky enough to be with 4 other mages. The other frost mage and I duked it out, par to par. One fire mage kept up, a little more geared then me at about 495. the other fire mages were about 10 -13 on the list.

While I know LFR isn't a good way to compare, it does provide some data that is interesting. People are now finding themselves evaluating which spec is really the best way to go, there is more than one option now. That's cool, but confusing to many. I'll be hitting the dummies tonight because it appears Arcane is good for Amber shaper (our next boss).

[Tradewind]

Context, my friend. Here's what it looks like with all other ranged DPS specs added in:

http://www.raidbots.com/dpsbot/Garal.../7/60/avg/#3vv

Note the fire is still significantly ahead of every ranged DPS spec on these results . . . Note that even just that analysis is not complete, but it's hyperbole to post that graph without context and imply that fire is now crap.

Unless exceeding every other ranged DPS spec = crap, of course.

It's a fight where it was Fire's bread and butter, cleave. But really I just linked it because I found it to be humorous how sharp the decline is.

[elpadrino293]

Fire currently sits at the bottom of the pit

It's not unplayable, the buff to combustion was over the top and you had to expect to have it nerfed. I got 2 mages in my guild. One of them is rolling frost and other (raid leader) will go for arcane until fire comes above them again.

things are not that bad.

---------- Post added 2012-12-05 at 04:06 PM ----------

Time for another anecdote! I just came out of LFR on Garalon. Me on my 484 Frost mage finished 4th on dps and was happy with my performance. But then I noticed that #1 was a Fire mage. She was very similarly geared, lvl 486 also with 2pc bonus and same weapon, but did 27kdps more than me. I checked the fight details and she had 4 mediocre combustions (all sub 20k tics) during the fight.

Either I am doing it really wrong, or the demise of Fire has been greatly exaggerated.

sounds like you are doing a poor job of spreading your dots.

---------- Post added 2012-12-05 at 04:10 PM ----------

Here's a 'realistic' sim from noxxic:

http://www.noxxic.com/wow/dps-rankings/realistic-dps

Fire is bottom, Arcane is king.

is this the new ftom troll?

[Osaedon]

Here's my thoughts now that fire is useless. I say nerf every class to keep all dps or damage done equal. That way nobody will QQ about being top dog when there all the same. Just give every class a 1 button rotation so people dont have to learn there class and play it properly just to get slapped in the face mid tier.

[Iskra22]

While of course all sim and WoL data has its flaws, those graphs show a really fucking awful trend. Those of you posting those graphs and essentially saying "It'll be fine, we're still in the middle of the pack" are missing one really key piece of information, and I'll quote it from the raidbots site.

All values are aggregated over the last 14 days from all public logs. So for a specific boss fight, you are usually looking at the median over all kills from the past 14 days.

The data is an aggregate of two weeks. The nerf happened what, five days ago? So those "middle of the pack" numbers are really 9 days of pre-combustion/CM nerf, 5.1 OP combustion data, and only five days of post-nerf numbers. Meaning the dps shown in those graphs is very heavily weighted by completely outdated data from the wildly OP 5.1 combustion. The dps decline in those graphs is probably around half of the change in where fire actually stands with respect to other specs.

Time will ultimately tell where the spec falls, and I'm hesitant to say the sky is falling, but the new numbers from WoL, simcraft, and the trend that we're seeing in performance all paint a really damn bleak picture for the spec.