Still no Fire Nerfs and Frost Gets a New Mastery. Further updates at p22

[ssviolett]

Yeah, they sure failed. Must suck being one of the top specs.

The fact firemages (all mages) are broken in this expansion does not mean they should not be top, dont get me wrong.

[Deleted]

Well there is the big fire nerf I suppose.

GC may not have wanted to nerf fire mages, but to be perfectly frank this is better than seeing a dps comp of 13 or so fire mages going into SoO and blowing the entire raid apart. And I think one of the top guilds may well have done this.

[Karon]

Aaaaaaand they killed every fucking mage twink that isn't 549 equipped. GG Blizzard

[Madruga]

They really will need to rework mages entirely next expansion. While the Combustion nerf is not the end of the world, our design seems like a roller-coaster, going from OP to remarkably weak with every small change. Same thing with Frost. and not to say we have one of the dullest specs in Arcane.

[simeon]

All of the talk about fire needing nerfs is ridiculous. Under what conditions is Fire over-performing to the extent of necessary reductions? Even on raidbots they are neck-in-neck with Demo locks and Assassination rogues for the fights they are on top. There are several fights where they aren't doing any better than Fury warriors. GC stated yesterday that even though they are doing well, there is nothing pointing to necessary nerfs, yet it's signature ability is nerfed into the ground not even 24 hours later? I'm sick and tired of all the fickle garbage their PR shits out.

[CrippleshoT]

So even more gear is gonna be required to play fire now...

[Solidpat]

They kept reverting old nerfs saying they were affecting lower geared fire mages too much, but this one is worst than all of those combined together for lower geared mages.

Going from 50% ignite to 20% is huge! It is a lot more than the 60% nerf mentioned above. The stated example was with 0 haste, which means the 60% nerf to Combustion is the best case scenario. Adding haste will cause an even bigger spread. This looks like a 10% DPS nerf to single target for a fight with no modifiers. A fight with modifiers and adds, this could look more like a 20-25% DPS loss.

Lower geared and less skilled players will definitely not be competitive as they will no longer be able to tap into Combustion to improve their skills and DPS. As for great players, their well placed and timed Combustions will not be as rewarding anymore. Instead of reducing the variance of DPS out there, it simply brings it down all across the map.

Combustion single target was not that big of an issue. Simply spreading it less would have been sufficient. The following ideas should have been considered before reducing Combustion to a pitiful % value:

Removing Glyph of Infernal Blast
Spreaded Combustion could have been 50% of the initial Combustion value, not 100%

[Yizu]

60% nerf is too much. Removing glyph of combust + reduced damage when spread is imo a better way to balance fire

[Frost1129]

Without touching CM and how crit interacts with everything we do (a tall order) this doesn't do anything but apply a straight nerf to the output we're already capable of.

High geared fire mages will still be wrecking in single target due to a higher ratio of pyro:fb making up their damage (which also leads to consistently better ignites). Combustion nerf will hurt lower geared mages more, who actually are relying on the AT/PoM forced combustion to be good in order to be competitive in single target scenarios since they lack the better ignites rolling and higher number of pyros to carry them through a sub-par combustion.

It's a pretty massive hit overall to any council-esque fight or a fight in general that relies on combustion spreading. This is probably where the most change will be seen for higher geared fire mages. Lower geared fire mages are probably just going to be completely stomped on these types of fights now.

One thing to keep in mind though: the bar for a "lower" geared fire mage right now is pretty well below the "fire is awesome" gear level. Assuming these types of mages only can get through normal, they're looking to be 522-ish. So yeah, right now they are screwed. But the "low" of 5.4 is significantly higher, at 553 for a normal geared mage. This will put them above where the best geared mages are now - so they might be safe with this nerf. Assuming you can get 553 gear. If you can never get close to that, you're probably going to be hurt a lot by this change.

[ssviolett]

They really will need to rework mages entirely next expansion. While the Combustion nerf is not the end of the world, our design seems like a roller-coaster, going from OP to remarkably weak with every small change. Same thing with Frost. and not to say we have one of the dullest specs in Arcane.

Mages are OK (c) GC

Also I dont get legendary cloak nerf. 2,5-3% of total dps was too much for a LEGENDARY item?

[Menphis]

The bar for a "lower" geared fire mage right now is pretty well below the "fire is awesome" gear level. Assuming these types of mages only can get through normal, they're looking to be 522-ish. So yeah, right now they are screwed. But the "low" of 5.4 is significantly higher, at 553 for a normal geared mage. This will put them above where the best geared mages are now - so they might be safe with this nerf. Assuming you can get 553 gear. If you can never get close to that, you're probably going to be hurt a lot by this change.

I guess everyone has their own perspective of "low geared". My term for low geared would be ilvl 528 in 5.4, the LFR ilvl.
So basically if this goes live, I'm screwed.

[The Kao]

Meh. For a nerf of that ridicule, chances are it will not go live and is merely there for testing purposes like the PoM nerf they reverted instantly. However if it really goes live, what can we do? Suck it up or go with a different spec, it's not like fire was the only playable spec we have.

[Frost1129]

I guess everyone has their own perspective of "low geared". My term for low geared would be ilvl 528 in 5.4, the LFR ilvl.
So basically if this goes live, I'm screwed.

You're absolutely right. My idea of "low" is a mage who can get to at least normal mode gear. Below that, you're probably fucked. 528 isn't even close to where fire gets really powerful with the current combustion. In the 530s you're starting to pull ahead, and by the 540s you're constantly competing for first or second on every fight.

Fights like H. Primordius I think highlight just how well we scale. Looking at our kill last night, I doubled the damage of our next DPS on primordius. Fucking doubled. Did 31% of his overall HP by myself. We definitely need a nerf, but probably a more complicated one than a simple combustion nerf - if they care about not screwing over people who can't get to the higher ilvls.

[Solidpat]

Just to add numbers to my previous post, I took the 2nd highest parse on Heroic Jin'rokh: Balooni

His combustion was 17.5 mils, which is not the best I've seen. His total damage 57M.

With the new values, his combustion would have been 7M, that is a 10.5M damage loss out of his 57M total damage : 18.5% DPS loss on single target with modifier fight

[Frost1129]

Just to add numbers to my previous post, I took the 2nd highest parse on Heroic Jin'rokh: Balooni

His combustion was 17.5 mils, which is not the best I've seen. His total damage 57M.

With the new values, his combustion would have been 7M, that is a 10.5M damage loss out of his 57M total damage : 18.5% DPS loss on single target with modifier fight

Be careful with judging DPS on Jin'rohk. Guilds that can wreck this boss with one lightning storm are highly skewing real DPS data. On most fights combustion isn't going to provide as huge portion of your damage (because you'll be spending a lot of time DPSing with it on CD and not ticking on the boss, which is not the case on Jin'Rokh when you can kill him so fast)

[Smigel]

Hopefully they bring it back up a bit from 20%. I don't mind seeing this too much, though. Combustion usually benefits well when you get a lot of nice Pyros, but if you don't then you're just blowing Combustion to not miss out using a good cooldown. If something has to be nerfed, I guess I'd rather it be the button that I'm sometimes reluctant to hit anyway.

Make Inferno Blast spread Living Bomb again. The Mage community would go nuts for that, wouldn't they?

[Species]

We all knew a big nerf was coming, but reducing Combustion's tick by 60% is massive and probably a bit excessive. I can totally see them over nerfing it for 1 or 2 PTR cycles and then adding back %'s for a live version of like 30% instead of half.

[Deleted]

Just to add numbers to my previous post, I took the 2nd highest parse on Heroic Jin'rokh: Balooni

His combustion was 17.5 mils, which is not the best I've seen. His total damage 57M.

With the new values, his combustion would have been 7M, that is a 10.5M damage loss out of his 57M total damage : 18.5% DPS loss on single target with modifier fight

Fire #1 Jin rokh 702798 DPS
Demo 1# Jin rokh 487082 DPS

I could say #1 Fire is 44.28% higher than #1 demo wl, so where is the point with these numbers?

[sornok]

Fire #1 Jin rokh 702798 DPS
Demo 1# Jin rokh 487082 DPS

I could say #1 Fire is 44.28% higher than #1 demo wl, so where is the point with these numbers?

People keep doing the mistake of looking at top parses to justify their argument. Do you not just understand that this is unfair to mages, especially the low ones ? Fire is a very high RNG spec and because of that it will produce MANY very high results, and MANY very low results. Showing us the average of ONLY the top parses is at least suspicious from your part. At least, if you want to be more objective, you should show us raidbots of ALL PARSES.

This isnt even funny anymore.

[Deleted]

People keep doing the mistake of looking at top parses to justify their argument. Do you not just understand that this is unfair to mages, especially the low ones ? Fire is a very high RNG spec and because of that it will produce MANY very high results, and MANY very low results. Showing us the average of ONLY the top parses is at least suspicious from your part. At least, if you want to be more objective, you should show us raidbots of ALL PARSES.

This isnt even funny anymore.

I´m sad for you that you didn´t get the context. Maybe you should read previous posts to get an idea what I wanted to say with my post