[FIRE] Legion Beta Megathread

[Shangalar]

FIRE overview (updated 13 Feb 2016)

I BASE SPELLS

- Frost Nova, Polymorph, Counterspell, Dragon's Breath
- Blink, Slow Fall, Invisibility
- Ice Barrier, Molten Armor
- Fireball, Pyroblast, Hot Streak, Inferno Blast, Scorch, Flamestrike, Mastery: Ignite
- Combustion
- Enhanced Pyrotechnics, Critical Mass
- Time Warp
- Spellsteal
- Refreshments, Teleports and Portals, Arcane Linguist, Illusion

II TALENTS

Level 15: Pyromaniac // Conflagration // Fire Starter
Level 30: Shimmer // Cauterize // Ice Block
Level 45: Mirror Image // Rune of Power // Incanter’s Flow
Level 60: Blast Wave // Flame On // Controlled Burn
Level 75: Ice Floes // Ring of Frost // Ice Ward
Level 90: Living Bomb // Unstable Magic // Flame Patch
Level 100: Kindling // Cinderstorm // Meteor

III Artifact Weapon - Felo'melorn

- Highblade's Will (equip)
- Immolation (equip)
- Phoenix Reborn (major)
- Molten Skin
- Blue Flame Special
- Great Balls of Fire
- Everburning Consumption
- Scorched Earth
- Aftershocks (major)
- Cauterizing Blink
- Pyroclasmic Paranoia
- Fire at Will
- Pyretic Incantation (major)
- Reignition Overdrive
- By Fire Be Purged
- Burning Gaze
- *missing minor*
- Blast Furnace (major)

IV PvP Talents

Tier 1: Gladiator’s Medallion // Adaptation // Relentless
Tier 2: Train of Thought // Mind Quickness // Initiation
Tier 3: Netherwind Armor // Burning Determination // Prismatic Cloak
Tier 4: Kleptomania // Dense Ice // Temporal Shield
Tier 5: Tinder // World in Flames // Flare Up
Tier 6: Firestarter // Flamecannon // Greater Pyroblast

V T19 set bonuses

2-set: Enhanced Pyrotechnics provides an additional 10% critical strike chance from each application.
4-set: Mage T19 Fire 4P Bonus (New) Hot Streak also grants you 30% haste for 10 sec.

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Shang's commentary for Fire. Don't take it too seriously if I write something totally stupid as I'm neither experienced with Fire nor very interested or dedicated to it. I'll also do my best to treat it separately instead of comparing it to Arcane.

The base toolkit is well-rounded with the only outlying issue being the defensive spells. One strong active shield and a passive which reduces physical damage taken. That passive is moderately strong for solo play in the world and even decent in raids as Mages don't have any armor worth mentioning. It's further increased by the Molten Armor weapon talent making it quite a strong passive. However, there is still an issue with survival as there is only one active defensive cooldown and the only way to increase this number is to take Ice Block as a talent. This has been a major topic ever since Greater Invisibility was shifted to Arcane-only and is something that needs to be fixed during the beta process.

Other than that, Fire has a lot of damage spells and passive dps buffs as part of its core toolkit.

Moving on to talents:

The level 15 row offers a decent choice between Pyromaniac, a single target dps increase and Conflagration which seems like a strong passive aoe increase. Fire Starter, as was discussed before, is very bad as the first 10% of a target's health typically goes down very fast. I am rather confident that this will be changed because it can't compete with the other two, but also because there's an identically named PvP talent in the last row, just without the space between the two words. :P

To save myself from some redundant writing, I'll copy over exactly what I wrote for rows 30, 45 and 75 in the Arcane thread:

Level 30 talents focus on survival. The choice is between a weak Blink buff completely unnecessary for Arcane Mages, Cauterize which saves your life passively and Ice Block with two charges. I honestly don't think anything will ever be able to compete with Ice Block on this level and my opinion is still that one charge of Ice Block should be baseline and the other one can be talented for PvP. Shimmer will practically never be used by anyone and has to be changed or removed.

Level 45 talents are strong primarily passive dps buffs. Images still seem the weakest of the set for Arcane, Rune was changed again and now gives an insanely strong damage buff while standing in the rune and seems like the best choice on all encounters it is usable on. Putting aside all the "we have to stand in a small circle" issues that have existed for years, in the current form it looks quite impressive from my perspective. Flow is the same as it was, providing a varying damage increase over time and will still be the choice for mages when Rune is unavailable due to increased movement. I feel like the 50% on Rune will be reduced at some point, but we'll see what happens and the smart mages will do the math to determine the best choice.

Level 75 talents are a weird set - there's only one choice for raiding which is Ice Floes and we like to be able to sometimes cast while moving. The other talents are crowd control and will be used in PvP. I haven't decided if this is good or bad yet, but if they want to keep it that way, the choice is clear.

Now, the level 60 Fire talent is a choice between a strong dps spell, adding to the number of buttons in the rotation, an active spell which assists with either gaining Hot Streaks or with spreading dots and a passive choice which might be a strong contender for single target encounters. It will be up to math and tuning to determine what's best used in which situation. The issue with Controlled Burn that I see is that it's exactly the opposite of Controlled - it's more RNG in a spec that focuses on Critical strike chance. Again, if nothing changes (and I'm not sure it has to) we'll see the math as we get closer to release.

The level 90 talent row are various buffs to aoe. It will be up to math to determine whether LB or UM is better for single target or which of the three is better for specific aoe situations (long living adds vs short living adds vs positioning of adds).

Finally, the level 100 talents offer fun gameplay choices for dps. I don't know what the positional situation will be with Cinderstorm, someone who plays Alpha should know more, but Kindling and Meteor function as they did until now. I can see something like Cinderstorm being best on single target until we get enough Crit to make Kindling superior and any of the three being a contender for aoe encounters, based on math. Again, I don't want to speculate and say something stupid so whatever I wrote there might be wildly wrong.

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Felo'melorn, on the other hand, is more easily commented. This is the first time I actually took a deeper look at the weapon and I am at the same time disappointed and not disappointed. I am not disappointed by some of the fun passives like dispelling and multiple flamestrikes. I also like the Scorch talent because it provides an alternative to Ice Floes + Fireball. Will it be needed exactly because we have Floes + Fireball available? I don't know, but it probably will. For fights involving a lot of movement when you don't always have Floes available definitely. Also, it will be very useful in PvP.

The thing that disappoints me is that everything is passive and completely out of control of the user. Ok, Flamestrike adding more flamestrikes great, but in those situations you'd cast Flamestrike anyway. Everything else just does damage on its own as part of the normal rotation. However, in practice I don't see this as a terrible problem as there are multiple actives available as primary talents which will be used to a lesser or greater degree. I think the final Fire product won't be either too simple or too complex, quite possibly even at a nice middle spot accessible to everyone with a moderate learning curve. Fire, after all, is historically the most popular mage spec and I don't think it's supposed to be too complicated anyway.

Finally, Cauterizing Blink. I think this is a cool idea and I know there's been a lot of criticism of coupling mobility and survival, but I don't see it as problematic or bothersome. Might be just me.

That's it, enjoy the thread, discuss, and again, tell me if I failed on linking something properly, missed some information or have to change something.

[Obelisk Kai]

Still putting my two pennies in about Cauterizing Blink.

I personally think coupling a survivability cooldown with our main mobility move will make blink a counter intuitive move. You won't want to use it for it's main purpose, mobility, in case you need to use it as a heal.

In raid environments where positioning is everything, you may find yourself compelled to blink out of your ideal spot just to squeeze out a self heal which will in some cases lead to the ridiculous spectacle of Fire Mages blinking into walls.

Arcane was recently given a weapon trait that boosted the effectiveness of Ice Barrier. Frost has something similar. I say if Ice Barrier is to be our main baseline defensive, to hell with it. Just give the same trait to each spec and call it a day.

[Deleted]

Still putting my two pennies in about Cauterizing Blink.

I personally think coupling a survivability cooldown with our main mobility move will make blink a counter intuitive move. You won't want to use it for it's main purpose, mobility, in case you need to use it as a heal.

In raid environments where positioning is everything, you may find yourself compelled to blink out of your ideal spot just to squeeze out a self heal which will in some cases lead to the ridiculous spectacle of Fire Mages blinking into walls.

Arcane was recently given a weapon trait that boosted the effectiveness of Ice Barrier. Frost has something similar. I say if Ice Barrier is to be our main baseline defensive, to hell with it. Just give the same trait to each spec and call it a day.

It reminds me a bit of the combustion stun, which I found quite akward to use. It's not actually that bad but there surely must be better options.
I'll think of one.
Hummmmmm...
Bathed in Flames - Flamestrike will heal you for a small amount if you are in the targeted area. Boom.
No? Too clunky? Anyway, I'd prefer a different option for self healing, should we receive one.

If they'd gave everyone that trait, then what's the point?

[Sarm]

How long has Felo'melorn had that passive that burns the corpses of your enemies? And does anyone have a screenshot? I'd like to see the effects. This is the first time I've heard of it.

[Shangalar]

How long has Felo'melorn had that passive that burns the corpses of your enemies? And does anyone have a screenshot? I'd like to see the effects. This is the first time I've heard of it.

It has a very high spell number in the database so I'd say it's fairly new.

[Imnick]

The weapon's lack of durability and new corpse-burning passive are very small touches but they make me smile.

[Kretan]

With the glyph of polymorph that removes dots now gone in legion.... How is fire mage going to prevent ignite from auto spreading to polymorph targets?

I feel like this is a game breaking flaw for fire mage which otherwise looks quite excellent. Thoughts?

[WarcraftMages]

With the glyph of polymorph that removes dots now gone in legion.... How is fire mage going to prevent ignite from auto spreading to polymorph targets?

I feel like this is a game breaking flaw for fire mage which otherwise looks quite excellent. Thoughts?

I think since the spec is revamped from the ground up they thought to not necessarily include it at first. But that does not mean they were right at first. They might include it.

[Kretan]

I think since the spec is revamped from the ground up they thought to not necessarily include it at first. But that does not mean they were right at first. They might include it.

Agreed. I think it is an oversight, but there is PLENTY of time to correct it.

[Deleted]

I think since the spec is revamped from the ground up they thought to not necessarily include it at first. But that does not mean they were right at first. They might include it.

By revamped you mean stripped it to its bare backbone, added a couple QoL improvements and slapped on some cosmetic changes?
That's a bit harsh, but we'll get:
Combustion rework
A healing Blink
Pyroblast! affecting Flame Strike
Fireball purging magic
Did I forget anything? Probably. I'm a bit salty that most of our "new stuff" is minor additions to existing spells or solely visual (which is appreciated). They could've done so much more.

[Sarm]

Won't that fireball purge trait interfere with Spellsteal? Generally, if something has a magic buff that you want to get rid of, there's no reason I can think of why you wouldn't want to just take it for yourself.

[Kretan]

Purge is more than removing a single ability that is strong. If you are fireball spamming someone against a restore druid, that restore druid is going to have a bad day. Sometimes, instead of stealing for a buff, you just want to spam dispel someone to keep them buff naked while still doing damage.

[Triggered Fridgekin]

WTB new Fireball and Pyroblast animations.

[Champagne Supernova]

WTB new Fireball and Pyroblast animations.

Believe they already updated them along with flame strike.

[Triggered Fridgekin]

Believe they already updated them along with flame strike.

Ouuu this I hope to see!

[Zenny]

Ouuu this I hope to see!

Fire looks really good now, although the Phoenix animation can still use some work:

[TheWorkingTitle]

WTB new Fireball and Pyroblast animations.

I miss the gigantic Pyroblast from Classic. The current Pyroblast is pretty underwhelming size-wise.

Combustion is sick (despite it being a massive give-away for focus targeting and purge/dispelling) and I really like what they've done to Flamestrike.

Compared to Comet Storm, I think Cinder Storm still needs a lot of work. Maybe a more full wave of fire, rather than a few side-ways fireballs.

[Shullski]

Really hope they try a different implementation with the Phoenix's.

Being an instant cast that just replaces Pyro is boring, unrewarding, and clunky to me. So much more potential for something that is actually interesting.

[Polarthief]

The weapon's lack of durability and new corpse-burning passive are very small touches but they make me smile.

The new who's-a-what now? Sounds fun!

Pyroblast! affecting Flame Strike

Not that your post is wrong or anything but I just want to clarify to people that live's "Pyroblast!" and Legion's "Pyroblast!" are two separate effects. Live "Pyroblast!" is Legion's (and previous expansions') "Hot Streak". Legion's "Pyroblast!" is a trait called Scorched Earth in which using Scorch 4 times in a row procs it. It's similar to Hot Streak, but rather than being the normal proc, it will make your next Pyroblast instant and deal a crapton more damage instead of a crapton more Ignite damage (like Legion's Hot Streak will be). More used as a nice mobility and PvP perk (though now I'm curious what happens if you have a HS+Pyro!. Do you get a ridiculously stronger Pyroblast that also deals a lot more Ignite damage, or would the two be used separately?).

Though yes, I'm also extremely salty about Fire (and Frost, but that's not out yet and this is the Fire thread!).

All I know is they gave us a trait called "Blue Flame Special". If I don't see Blue Fire in this expansion, I will be beyond pissed.

Ouuu this I hope to see!

They're pretty magical. It looks very nice, at least compared to live.

Though the effect from Fireball/Pyroblast look nicer than the actual Fireball/Pyroblast, sadly.

[Aceveda]

I want my huge vanilla/tbc Pyroblast animation back

pretty pls