Originally Posted by
Didactic
And that, my friend, is the lazy man's answer. Rather than gutting Fire, the -proper- solution would be to address why the other specs are not felt to be as fun.
You are correct; because none of them play or at least main a mage, they do not understand the reasoning -why- mages choose which specs, talents, etc. they do. Just look at the reaction to the Ice Barrier problem; "Oh, everyone takes it, so it must be OP". No. The answer is that active mitigation is always preferable to the other two talents in that tier.
Someone who plays a mage, like myself, realises the answer is simply making Ice Barrier a baseline survivability tool and replacing its spot on the tier with a gimmicky spell similar to Temporal Shield.