Is Fire Viable now?

[Notdev]

Yep. I've been on the same boat for years now.

According to class forums almost every spec and class sucks and is underpowered, EXCEPT when they are clearly overpowered, then they are considered to be 'in a good spot' ...

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/17
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/17#difficulty=4
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/17#difficulty=3

[Deleted]

My fire mage is an alt. He doesn't have the bellendgendary wrist.

I wouldn't fancy mythic progress on him. He'd be the red headed hunter bitch doing all the shit jobs.

Except on eonar

[Alphatorg]

You know, what's the funniest part of playing a bit of every class ? You get the chance to see every class community debating day and night about how shitty theyr spec/class are. So, i guess, Blizzard did a fine job making litteraly every spec shitty and by this, balanced.

I think the far simpler explanation is that large parts of the player base are morons who like to complain, despite having no idea what they talk about. Half the people who comment on balance use warcraftlogs aggregate stats.

BTT:
Fire is about as viable as Frost this tier, though If I had to pick one for progression it would be Fire at this point (but not by much).

[Deleted]

I think the far simpler explanation is that large parts of the player base are morons who like to complain, despite having no idea what they talk about. Half the people who comment on balance use warcraftlogs aggregate stats.

BTT:
Fire is about as viable as Frost this tier, though If I had to pick one for progression it would be Fire at this point (but not by much).

No. The explanation is, that blizzard isn't really good a designing raids with bosses different classes can shine on. They designed specs to have different niches, but they're really bad at designing raids where the niches of different classes are highlighted.

EN was mostly ST with some shadow shenanigans so those classes dominated, NH was mostly ST with infrequent addspawns so classes with burst AoE like DH dominated, ToS had a lot of bosses were classes with stacked AoE could dominate like fire mage/arms etc. (incidentally buffing affliction locks by getting of a lot of reaps).

Antorus now has a lot of bosses where spread cleave dominates (i.e. affliction) with some classes just generally being so strong they don't have to care like WW monks and other classes being to weak in general to shine on bosses, where they should have the edge (i.e. frost on varimathras, to some degree fire on high command). These are the general things you can see in logs.

A lot of people just argue of off things they see in their own raids. Generally speaking class balance is fairly ok with a few outliers so you can pretty much dominate in a raid of average people on any class given enough gear and skill. Say you're a god mage player in a below average guild people might see you on top at world breaker and think mage is fine or even op while they play say ww and suck so bad that they sit at the bottom and complain. In every guild there's a different picture so discussions always get very messy.

[Alphatorg]

No. The explanation is, that blizzard isn't really good a designing raids with bosses different classes can shine on. They designed specs to have different niches, but they're really bad at designing raids where the niches of different classes are highlighted.

EN was mostly ST with some shadow shenanigans so those classes dominated, NH was mostly ST with infrequent addspawns so classes with burst AoE like DH dominated, ToS had a lot of bosses were classes with stacked AoE could dominate like fire mage/arms etc. (incidentally buffing affliction locks by getting of a lot of reaps).

Antorus now has a lot of bosses where spread cleave dominates (i.e. affliction) with some classes just generally being so strong they don't have to care like WW monks and other classes being to weak in general to shine on bosses, where they should have the edge (i.e. frost on varimathras, to some degree fire on high command). These are the general things you can see in logs.

A lot of people just argue of off things they see in their own raids. Generally speaking class balance is fairly ok with a few outliers so you can pretty much dominate in a raid of average people on any class given enough gear and skill. Say you're a god mage player in a below average guild people might see you on top at world breaker and think mage is fine or even op while they play say ww and suck so bad that they sit at the bottom and complain. In every guild there's a different picture so discussions always get very messy.

The problem is that you're describing raids like an "all you can pad" hc raid. If that's your ambition in this game you might as well reroll to fotm every tier or you're never going to be happy. From a progress perspective Mage was a decent class on most encounters:
On High Command Fire offers a good balance between boss and add damage, on Portal Keeper you could have Combustion up for every Portal and really do some business there, on Imonar Arcane is a top tier spec in terms of damage, on Kingaroth Fire does consistently high damage on the adds, on Varimathras Frost is great against the adds, on Coven Frost is at least middle of the pack (and ranged). On Aggramar Ring of Frost is great, you have great burst for the intermission adds and execute for the most important phase as fire. On Argus Frost offered very good opening burst to make the first skip as well as two immunities in the last phase before the nerf and after Fire offers decent opening burst, execute and resilience to movement.

[Deleted]

The problem is that you're describing raids like an "all you can pad" hc raid. If that's your ambition in this game you might as well reroll to fotm every tier or you're never going to be happy. From a progress perspective Mage was a decent class on most encounters:
[...].

That's an obvious strawman fallacy come on. I am not saying mage is not viable for progress. We are a range spec with two immunities as frost or the only range spec with a cheat death ability as fire. If encouters require that mage is an obvious pick. But that's not an excuse for Blizzard to not balance the class properly. I didn't even say class balancing is terribly bad at the moment it's actually quite ok considering the hole they digged themselves in with all those RNG procs. I said they're doing a poor job at designing raids where everybody is allowed to shine at least once. If classes don't even perform very well on bosses where their niche is supposed to shine that's an issue Blizzard should fix. And why they don't use aura fixes more often to smooth out the curve is beyond me.

Now to the scenarios you described. Add cleave is fire's main niche still they're not really the best at it currently (see High Command and Portal Keeper statistics). Big burst every 1:30 minutes is Arcane's niche yet they're only middle of the pack on immonar (or kingaroth to some extent) where they should really shine. And infrequent 2 target cleave is frost's niche yet they're only middle of the pack on varimathras as well. So even if you were to spec to the respective specs on those bosses you'd be average or slightly above average at best. That's not really a good situation to be in as a pure dps class with three dps specs. Why would bring up Coven is beyond me being middle of the pack still means you're doing half the damage of other range specs like affliction (and shadow to some extent) and if you have ever done coven mythic with decent players you should know how demoralizing it is to try and optimize your dps and still get completely demolished by multi dotters.

[Alphatorg]

That's an obvious strawman fallacy come on. I am not saying mage is not viable for progress. We are a range spec with two immunities as frost or the only range spec with a cheat death ability as fire. If encouters require that mage is an obvious pick. But that's not an excuse for Blizzard to not balance the class properly. I didn't even say class balancing is terribly bad at the moment it's actually quite ok considering the hole they digged themselves in with all those RNG procs. I said they're doing a poor job at designing raids where everybody is allowed to shine at least once. If classes don't even perform very well on bosses where their niche is supposed to shine that's an issue Blizzard should fix. And why they don't use aura fixes more often to smooth out the curve is beyond me.

Now to the scenarios you described. Add cleave is fire's main niche still they're not really the best at it currently (see High Command and Portal Keeper statistics). Big burst every 1:30 minutes is Arcane's niche yet they're only middle of the pack on immonar (or kingaroth to some extent) where they should really shine. And infrequent 2 target cleave is frost's niche yet they're only middle of the pack on varimathras as well. So even if you were to spec to the respective specs on those bosses you'd be average or slightly above average at best. That's not really a good situation to be in as a pure dps class with three dps specs. Why would bring up Coven is beyond me being middle of the pack still means you're doing half the damage of other range specs like affliction (and shadow to some extent) and if you have ever done coven mythic with decent players you should know how demoralizing it is to try and optimize your dps and still get completely demolished by multi dotters.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/17/#boss=2082
That diagram tells you Arcane is middle of the pack on Imonar? You know with it being the best performing ranged spec despite there being like less than ten people who are dedicated Arcane mages in a serious enviroment?

You complain about Frost on Varimathras yet the spec can really carry a raid on the only thing that makes or breaks that encounter, if that's not shining on an encounter for you then we're back to talking about immature pad lords who don't care about helping their raid.

And even if we follow your logic, Arcane is top 3 parsing on high command, top 5 on eonar and top4 on portal keeper. So mages have multiple bosses to "shine" on and everything is great? If we discount the low number of parses we can even throw in Argus.

Yes, mages don't top meters at Coven, so what? It's not our niche, we still do relevant damage and have a safe raid spot.

To be honest I think your whole "we have that niche and we need to be the bestest at it" approach is silly, because class design isn't that simple. Mages just aren't just focused on one thing, our class is more rounded (utility and mobility, double BL for frost, great burst on a short CD and execute for Fire) and thus contributes something valuable at every encounter. Whereas by your expectation Shadow Priest must be an amazing spec, because it's niche is quite pronounced and you really get to shine on not only one but two bosses, until you find yourself benched for Argus.
And what exactly is even the definition of balance? How does utility factor in? How about versatility? Your definition is extremely narrow. What do you think Boomies would say if Fire would match them on high command? While also having far superior utility and an execute? This is not as simple as you might think.

[Celestraza]

The main issue lies with the utterly broken class warlocks and the fact most melee dps like warriors, WW, rogues and enhancement are too far ahead.

There is no reason half the melee dps should be 10%-20% ahead of dps on a stationary single target dmg boss. I mean they barely have to deal with mechanics as it is not to mention have godly mobility.

Our alt warriors/warlocks are surpassing most mains in performance.

[Deleted]

Mages weren't OP every expansion. It wasn't until Trial of the Grand Crusader in WotLK that they became truly competitive. Prior to that, they were mostly water coolers and Int buffs with middle of the pack to lower DPS.

Then again, I'm pretty sure if you browse any class forum during a time that class is doing weak, you will see people complaining that what they pay to play is suffering.

What complete garbage. Mages have been strong every expansion since the beginning of the game except for the rule of SM/SM warlocks in TBC. Int and watercoolers? Did you even play vanilla? You have no clue what you're talking about. Don't speak without knowledge.

[Swizzle]

What complete garbage. Mages have been strong every expansion since the beginning of the game except for the rule of SM/SM warlocks in TBC. Int and watercoolers? Did you even play vanilla? You have no clue what you're talking about. Don't speak without knowledge.

SM/SM Warlocks? Is that the kinkier brother of Siphon Life - Soul Link Warlocks? Otherwise known as SL/SL? On the whole, I don't really consider Vanilla raiding when talking about balance since half the specs weren't functional and no one knew what they were doing (let alone ignoring the atrocities of having to stack 8 of one spec of tank just to progress on encounters and the countless bugs that would go months before being patched). In any case, as you mention, Warlocks trumped us in TBC in every aspect and due to the requirement of party buffs, very few times did Mages get put in groups with Moonkins and Spriests in order to do max DPS. The IQD zone buff also gave out Int and stat buffs, so Mages weren't that amazing. Now, for WotLK, Naxx was a mish mash of good and bad, and after the nerf to FFB, Mages sat mid pack again. It wasn't until the buffs to Arcane and the RotD trinkets and scaling from ToGC that Mages truly pulled ahead of the pack. From there we just scaled into monsters in ICC and remained competitive till now.

Now please, focus on the discussion at hand.

[Deleted]

All raids should be outgeared at this point of the xpac. So why even asking if X is viable, when viability only makes sens during the very first days of the raid?