Fire Mage Guide

[mrgreenthump]

I ran LFR just now and shredded everyone else as usual, even though I'm still gemmed all crit.
I don't think LFR is a particularly good measuring stick :P

Seeing that the nerf aside from lowering the combustion damage is around 5-6% in dps and even before 5.1 if you know what you were doing in lfr you had good 20-40k dps lead on other people.. its not really a great benchmark. Anyways thing is we all expected to see the nerf incoming, but this was just too soon.. 5.2 aint even near.. so ye, the choice is: roll arcane or dont exept yourself to top damage anymore if your dps is competitive and equally geared

[jtmzac]

I ran LFR just now and shredded everyone else as usual, even though I'm still gemmed all crit.
I don't think LFR is a particularly good measuring stick :P

There are a lot of variables in lfr but I think it does have some use in measuring damage/dps. Once you've done it enough you'll be able to tell when the group is similar enough to another group to compare it. I know whenever I saw another mage in lfr doing 5k dps more than me that they were a fire mage with about my ilvl.

If you have some friends who you have done lfr with them take them with you to help compare your damage/dps to what it used to be.

---------- Post added 2012-12-02 at 08:21 AM ----------

Seeing that the nerf aside from lowering the combustion damage is around 5-6% in dps and even before 5.1 if you know what you were doing in lfr you had good 20-40k dps lead on other people.. its not really a great benchmark. Anyways thing is we all expected to see the nerf incoming, but this was just too soon.. 5.2 aint even near.. so ye, the choice is: roll arcane or dont exept yourself to top damage anymore if your dps is competitive and equally geared

Like I said in the other thread unless you're very opposed to frost or have a lot of non-fire gear you might be best going with a crit heavy frost for the most dps. I could be completely out of the loop but I don't think arcane would work very well with crit heavy gear.

[Methusula]

I think people are being a little hasty when they talk about swapping to Arcane or Frost. The change just went live. I want to see how it performs in a REAL raid environment like Heroic Stone Guard or Elegon before I even begin to formulate an opinion. Having said that, it's really gonna be painful if those of us stacking crit gear and gems will have to begin the transition to Mastery or Haste. I'm not exactly getting gear thrown in my face atm.

[jtmzac]

I think people are being a little hasty when they talk about swapping to Arcane or Frost. The change just went live. I want to see how it performs in a REAL raid environment like Heroic Stone Guard or Elegon before I even begin to formulate an opinion. Having said that, it's really gonna be painful if those of us stacking crit gear and gems will have to begin the transition to Mastery or Haste. I'm not exactly getting gear thrown in my face atm.

Of course people are overreacting. If WoW has taught the world one thing its that people really don't like change of any kind wether its for the better or worse and they like to complain about it. A lot.

A lot of people have said the reason fire is fun is because of the massive crits and how they affect the spec. I think the different feel of the spec now is probably going to make people swap specs more than the actual dps performance. WoW despite everything is still a game and unless it's fun people get bored and stop playing.

[Aet3ra]

Does any1 have up to date info about gemming crit-VS-int for 490+ heavy-crit equip?

[mrgreenthump]

I think people are being a little hasty when they talk about swapping to Arcane or Frost. The change just went live. I want to see how it performs in a REAL raid environment like Heroic Stone Guard or Elegon before I even begin to formulate an opinion. Having said that, it's really gonna be painful if those of us stacking crit gear and gems will have to begin the transition to Mastery or Haste. I'm not exactly getting gear thrown in my face atm.

Most people are yes, but I have already tested arcane quite some in "real" raids and I know that it will pull more dps than fire on ur given "random dps fight", but what really annoys me now is that if progress fights in 5.2 are like they are now, I need to switch bethween specs and reforge each time am doing so. Which I think might ruin the game for me.

And lets do some quick napkin maths. Before the nerf combustion did around 20-25% of your overall damage, now thats halved so your dps would be around 87.5-90% from what it was before the nerf, but not only that, I know that for my particular gear set, the CM nerf will lower my dps for another 5-6% so.. it results around 83-85% of the dps I had before. So while it will still prolly be "ok" dps, it wont be anywhere near arcane which wont even suffer from target switching like fire or frost does.. Only fights I would consider fire being better are movement heavy fights, but there arent really that many around atm, like sure there is 2-3 of them, but unless you are progressing on that given fight.. arcane would prolly do good enough job on it.

[lefteris123]

I think I am gonna change spec.... Hot fix sucks!

[mrgreenthump]

I think I am gonna change spec.... Hot fix sucks!

Short and sweet , But ye am still hoping they would realise that its a bit too heavy handed nerf and decide to put it back and fix fire scaling come 5.2, but hey that would be a perfect world now wouldn't it..

[wirrrey21]

So i'm completely lost now that 5.1 is out and my dps has just plummeted.

what is the order of stat priority now? Hit cap>Crit>haste>mast? or Hit cap>crit>mast>haste?

[azzastar]

D; i just recently switched to raiding as a mage and was looking forward to fire, now im in two minds :/

[KoolKidKaos]

I am currently 23.54% crit unbuffed, and it doesn't feel too off for me. Yeah of course I notice the lack of pyroblasts, and the small ignites, but overall I'm doing about the same as I did before. Yeah it won't be op and if I goof a combustion it may cost me top 5 spot, but other than that, it's still viable to me. I'm not sure why everyone is jumping ship so quick, most don't even have BiS fire gear yet. Though I have seen people do amazing as arcane, they were all in BiS fire gear, we're talking 500+ item level. I guess if you just have to be the very best spec, more power to you, as for me, I just can't change specs, I will take the bench in my guild before go Arcane full time lol.

[Kat]

Ok so i have gone over the guide loads of times and i have been testing it on training dummies for ages now and i cannot get the 4 pyros from the Alter Time/Pom macro to stack ignite.Am i missing something?My ignites just dont seem to stack and are weak as hell.Is it just a gear problem or am i missing something very important?

[Legebril]

Ok so i have gone over the guide loads of times and i have been testing it on training dummies for ages now and i cannot get the 4 pyros from the Alter Time/Pom macro to stack ignite.Am i missing something?My ignites just dont seem to stack and are weak as hell.Is it just a gear problem or am i missing something very important?

You have HS+HU
POM+AT

Pyro from HS
Pyro from POM

AT

Pyro from HS
Pyro from POM

And if you crit with your first pyro, your HU will convert into another HS so it would be something like

Pyro from HS
Pyro from HS
Pyro from POM

AT

Pyro from HS
Combustion
Pyro from POM

etc etc

[Deleted]

Pyros only stack ignite if crit.

No, Pyro!'s always stack ignite, they just do it much better if they crit

[Legebril]

No, Pyro!'s always stack ignite, they just do it much better if they crit

Sorry, my bad then. i'll edit my post.

Btw, im still sitting with fire, and, at least on cleave fights, it does more damage for me than arcane/frost, i will have to see what happens when going to single.

[Kat]

My problem seems to be that the damage caused from each pyroblast isnt adding up on my ignites.Even after 4 pyros the ignite is stupidly low. Could i somehow be messing it up while trying to jugle AT/PoM?Or am i just increadably unlucky with crits?

[crittenden42]

My problem seems to be that the damage caused from each pyroblast isnt adding up on my ignites.Even after 4 pyros the ignite is stupidly low. Could i somehow be messing it up while trying to jugle AT/PoM?Or am i just increadably unlucky with crits?

I seem to be having a similiar problem. Keep in mind that your Ignite is only as strong as your mastery, which is a crappy throughput stat for us. So my ignite is 15%...prettttty weak if you ask me. I've gone from stacking full crit (gems) to stacking full Int and then back to crit but I seriously rarely get a Combust over 10k but occasionally i'll get ignite up to 40k so ill get a 20k combust (when stacking crit im at 28% with a crit elixir popped). But this is all related to RNG and unfortunately RNG 9 out of 10 times sucks. You're prob not doing anything wrong if you are following the macro's proper usage but I find that the 1st Pyro's ignite has already fallen off by the time you get the full 4 pyro's off so you should get an add-on like Combust helper to keep an eye on Ignite. I generally pop Combust on anything over 13-15k. (26k+ Ignite)

[Kat]

I do have an addon to keep an eye on my Ignite , thats what prompted me to come check the forum.

[elpadrino293]

My problem seems to be that the damage caused from each pyroblast isnt adding up on my ignites.Even after 4 pyros the ignite is stupidly low. Could i somehow be messing it up while trying to jugle AT/PoM?Or am i just increadably unlucky with crits?

i wasn't having any problem building up ignites after the nerfs. in fact, to my own surprise, i was regularly breaking 100k ignites last night in raid.

logs still can make the top of the meters...

on protectors and tsulong immediately after, i had 120k+ ignites.

[mrgreenthump]

i wasn't having any problem building up ignites after the nerfs. in fact, to my own surprise, i was regularly breaking 100k ignites last night in raid.

logs still can make the top of the meters...

on protectors and tsulong immediately after, i had 120k+ ignites.

Or you could face the fact that you were seriously lucky there.. Your raid buffed crit is what? 33-34%? that would make your 1.25 multiplier crit rate around 40% maybe a bit more with int procs.. And you had allmost 47% crit rate with pyro and fireball in that log, so its around 6% more than what your gear should average and around the same maybe bit lower than what the unnerfed CM would produce, so ye.. Gz on being the luckiest mage in the world