On the viability of Fire

[Deleted]

Hi!

I'm strongly considering rolling a Mage, but more due to Fire seeming fun than anything else -- neither Arcane or Frost seem too interesting to me (particularly not the latter considering the seemingly tedious Archimonde trinket and all). Looking through WCL's Mythic statistics, Fire seems to handle itself really well on the vast majority of fights (mostly being better than the other Mage specs as well), and on those it does not, Arcane fares well.

But here's the thing: the sample size for Fire is extremtly small, which I suppose impacts the credibility of the numbers quite a bit.

So: Does Fire perform as well as it seems to be, and if so, why do so few play it?

[Polarthief]

No, it doesn't. /endthread.

In more detail: Fire's been the topic of discussion for quite a long time. Due to its heavy reliance on Crit for procs and damage, it can do very bad damage and insanely good damage from the same player on the exact same fight and raid night without changing a single thing but their RNG. The only time it's decently consistent is when you have packs of adds constantly harassing the raid.

Unfortunately, very few fights in HFC are actually built to strengthen Fire. You don't see many add packs grouped together, and the ones that do are only alive for a few seconds (and aren't ~5-7 adds, it's usually more like 3-4). Coupled with Fire's pitiful ST damage and the fact that fights practically scream Frost or Arcane, it just remains as very noncompetitive when you could just be playing Frost or Arcane both of which are vastly superior.

Is Fire viable? Yes, but it's not competitive outside of those 1-2 fights where you don't even need the AoE damage (because others can do better burst AoE anyways). You will not beat Frost or Arcane ever, unless they're poor skilled+geared and you're incredibly skilled. This is also why the sample size is so puny. Most people typically roll "flavor of the month", but when Frost and Arcane are pretty close, people tend to roll both if they can pick which one they like better. Fire just isn't doing so well and got left behind.

[Zuul]

Play what you want. If you don't enjoy playing Arcane or Frost then what is the point. On single target fights fire could use some help, RNG can be a real pain, but I enjoy Fire so I play Fire. I am not in a cutting edge progression guild, only 8/13H but we still take our progression serious enough that if my playing Fire was holding us back, I would change specs or class. It doesn't..
Fire is still very reliant on gear and definitely on Critical strike. The T18 4 piece is really nice and I have seen a real nice jump in my dps since I got the 4 piece.. That being said, RNG is RNG and it can be a bit frustrating.. I am at 52% Critical Strike and around 41% Mastery raid buffed. But I like the mobility that fire offers.

Running around in the world I tend to play arcane, just because it has much better burst. Fire takes a while to really get going since it is more of a dot class. But when we jump back into the raids, I go Fire.

Don't be a fan boy, play what you want, and master it... This is a game and is supposed to be fun after all.

[Woobels]

Fire performs well if you are looking to get ridiculous parses but getting those is frustrating to say the least, and also requires lots of gear, and especially very fast kill times (from my experience.)

Also you can absolutely beat arcane or frost on certain fights you wouldn't expect, it's just something most people don't have the means to do.

Come end of the expansion, when most people are blowing bosses up in a few quick minutes + loads of gear I expect fire to be extremely dominant on a bunch of fights.

To answer your actual question though: If you are a new mage, play frost/arcane.

[Seatoo]

With great sadness fire is likely dead until Legion, with the frost buffs and arcane...well being arcane it just doesn't make sense to play as fire

[Deleted]

Fire is bad since early MoP. It was a fun spec when it was viable in Cata but then they also nerfed Combustion and made it dull. It's unpredictable but easy to move around and the rotation average difficulty.

Frost isn't a bad spec, it needs skill to rotate perfectly, especially with some complex talent combinations lately it's almost impossible to rotate perfectly but at least you can move around a little.

Arcane is one of the easiest specs in the game to rotate, especially with some more uninteresting talent choices, but, it does not forgive rotational mistakes. Needs knowing the boss.

[Exostential]

Fire is bad since early MoP. It was a fun spec when it was viable in Cata but then they also nerfed Combustion and made it dull. It's unpredictable but easy to move around and the rotation average difficulty.

This is wrong. Fire has been viable if not the best spec at least a few times since the beginning of MoP.

[Deleted]

Fire is bad since early MoP. It was a fun spec when it was viable in Cata but then they also nerfed Combustion and made it dull.

fire has been the best mage spec on single target or on par with arcane several times in mop. since wod thats true though. fire has been a cleave/aoe spec since this expansion way behind arcane and frost on single target. in hfc fire is pretty much useful for aoe only. so overall rather useless now.
lets hope they change it for legion so i can play fire again

[Wilderness]

Its viable. Its just not nearly as good as Arcane or Frost on most fights, especially for progression. You can put up some really good numbers with Fire on at least a handful of fights in HFC but its a lot of padding. Those same fights generally have priority targets that need to be focused and that's why Arcane or Frost is a better choice for progression than Fire even on fights where you see some really high parses from Fire mages.

But its still a viable spec and you can progress through just about anything with it if you play well. You're going to want to use either Arcane or Frost on at least a couple of fights - you'd really be doing your raid a disservice trying to progress on M Gorefiend playing Fire.

[Deleted]

you can reach a 100% crit on main spells with the stuff you can get now, your fire mage abilities and trinket procs.
It just means that you can rely on high dps values more than before.
Of course, if you do not have enough crit, it's just shity spec.