Anyone able to get Fire to really work?

[Bullettime]

Trying to find something, anything, but the spec just feels...blah. T6 and T7 talents are mostly useless except for Meteor, Fireball, Pyro, and Flamestrike basically tickle, Pyro damage so unrewarding that sims even at 335 ilvl are showing Mastery and Vers stacking to be the best to jack up Fireball damage, etc.

The damage just...isn't there and I'm struggling to find any other combination to make it work. Meanwhile, Frost and Arcane are blowing things away.

[Qnubi]

Does the specc feel blah or are you just unhappy with the numbers? Because tbh fire is the most enjoyable specc out of all 3 in my opinion. Numbers aren't everything and cleave fights are pretty good for fire and there are a ton of them in mythic dungeons . Even on single target fights I am finishing around 8k with ilvl 329 which I would rate pretty good considering I can get consistent 10-15k on thrash mobs.

Also my healer I am running dungeons with said that the group takes considerably less damage when I am around with alex breath which is basically an aoe interrupt with good damage.

[Nefarious Tea]

Fire is generally garbage until about 3/4 through an expansion when the crit rates are high enough to make it functional.

[mhdoe]

Fire has always been slow but builds fast as the expac goes on.

[LoopyLoop]

Fire has always been slow but builds fast as the expac goes on.

Not very likely with the low secondary stats scaling this time?! Also fire already has a lot of crit protection. At the moment it feels like every spell just doesnt deal enough damage.

[Bullettime]

Fire has always been slow but builds fast as the expac goes on.

As Loopyloop pointed out though, they're trying to rein in the secondary stat inflation this time around and implemented some forms of crit protection back in Legion. The problem I find right now is that nothing really does damage. Pyro for example only seems to hit like 2000 harder than Fireball. It's also likely a big reason for Mastery and Vers being so high in priority right now when historically it's been Crit, even at lower levels. When Hot Streaks don't reward much of anything, better basically building for Fireball/Ignite.

Flamestrike, Pyroblast, and all of our T6 and T7 talents minus Meteor just seem to do fuck all for damage.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Not very likely with the low secondary stats scaling this time?! Also fire already has a lot of crit protection. At the moment it feels like every spell just doesnt deal enough damage.

It always felt that way tbh.. it was just masked in legion by being "high octane" and firing spells on the GCD pretty much. Personally I just can't get over flame on and phoenix flames being in the same tier... especially for 5-man content. Flamestrike is a joke..

[stevenho]

Fire has always been slow but builds fast as the expac goes on.

Except it wasn't like that in the last expansion.

[Neolarva]

It always felt that way tbh.. it was just masked in legion by being "high octane" and firing spells on the GCD pretty much. Personally I just can't get over flame on and phoenix flames being in the same tier... especially for 5-man content. Flamestrike is a joke..

Same here, since I lost the leg ring to have both, I've switch to frost.

[antelope591]

Fire was trash numbers wise in beta too....everyone kinda assumed that blizz would put in a +% damage aura buff before release. Knowing blizz, we probably should've known better though.

[Bugg]

10-15% crit... good luck.

[Bullettime]

10-15% crit... good luck.

I'm sitting at 335 ilvl right now and have a couple different gear options. At 25% crit and at 32% crit, I don't see or feel a difference in my DPS. People get hung up so much on Crit and Hot Streaks that they forget that Pyro has to actually do damage for the Hot Streak to matter.

I'm finding sims are correct in that, whether I'm at 300 or 335 ilvl and no matter what gear set I run, Mastery and Versatility are the best outcome I can get out of Fire just to jack up the raw and Ignite damage, pairing with Searing Touch for execute Pyros and Meteor. Crit chains don't matter because Pyro is only a little better than a Fireball. Talents like Kindling, Pyroclasm, and the entire T6 row do fuck all for damage either.

That's not to say Crit is useless at all. It's still a decent stat. Double damage and Hot Streaks are still bonus output. But picking other stats is showing higher output, especially when stacking Crit comes at the expense of another stat. So if I'm say losing Mastery or hell, even Vers, to gain Crit, I don't feel the reward when Pyro hits 2k higher than a damn Fireball while having conditional usage.

- - - Updated - - -

Let's compare Fire to the other two specs. Pyroblast is still a conditional usage that hits for like the same amount as a 2 stack Arcane Blast. It hits for comparable damage to an Ice Lance while not being the only proc and burst spell Frost has. I can play Frost and shatter Glacial Spikes for 40k, spam 15-25k (depending on crits) Arcane Blasts, or hit.....6500 on a Pyro.

[Vargarii]

Does the specc feel blah or are you just unhappy with the numbers? Because tbh fire is the most enjoyable specc out of all 3 in my opinion. Numbers aren't everything and cleave fights are pretty good for fire and there are a ton of them in mythic dungeons . Even on single target fights I am finishing around 8k with ilvl 329 which I would rate pretty good considering I can get consistent 10-15k on thrash mobs.

Also my healer I am running dungeons with said that the group takes considerably less damage when I am around with alex breath which is basically an aoe interrupt with good damage.

Is that considered successful with fire? I'm ilvl 299 and new to mage for BFA, but I do comparable at my ilvl as frost.

[junkshop23]

I felt very weak in dungeons when I first hit 120, especially compared to Frost. Now, though, Im iLevel 325ish and I feel like I can keep up in most fights. My DPS isnt outstanding, but it's not so weak I feel like I'm playing the wrong spec.


I suspect we'll scale up fairly significantly as we start to gear up. I've got about 35% crit now, which feels like it works mechanically, so I may start to think about focusing on other stats. Gotta run some sims first.


The advantage we have over other specs in this expansion is that a good portion of our DPS can be instant cast, and we have Scorch. This expansion, so far, has a TONNE of movement in its fights, so we can do pretty well over other casters in that regard, even with our lower pure numbers.

[TheWorkingTitle]

Fire is amazing right now in Mythic dungeons. 30k+ ST burst, 8-15k ST sustained, 12-17k AoE sustained, 20-30k AoE Burst. I'm 342 ilvl, 34% crit, 16% mastery, 5500+ spell power.

PvP is a different story, we're absolute dog shit right now. We need a huge damage boost in PvP.

[Shuffled]

Fire is generally garbage until about 3/4 through an expansion when the crit rates are high enough to make it functional.

Fire was the top spec for the first two instances of Legion and competitive with frost going into the third.

[Qnubi]

Btw, is it normal for fire that almost all my secondary weights are equally useful atm? My personal /simc weights are:

0,94 crit
1,03 vers and mastery
1,04 haste

I find gearing up as fire extremely easy because of that, especially for rings.

Though, I do find it sad that our class fantasy of fire crits in reality means not stacking crit. :/
We have too many 100% crits and that's why our baseline abilities don't deal as much damage imo. If they took away crit protection they could buff base damage and also make crit on gear more valuable again.

Especially since we have the 30% HP execute 100% crit phase which devalues crit a lot.

Call me paranoid, but do you have any logs to back it up? Something tells me that people won't believe you

His ST burst seems a bit high as well as ST sustain, I am only ilvl 336 but my sims show 18k burst and 6-10k sustain. His AoE values are about right though.

Note: I am not playing with RoP, so he might be which drastically increases ST burst.

[Pufster]

Fire is amazing right now in Mythic dungeons. 30k+ ST burst, 8-15k ST sustained, 12-17k AoE sustained, 20-30k AoE Burst. I'm 342 ilvl, 34% crit, 16% mastery, 5500+ spell power.

PvP is a different story, we're absolute dog shit right now. We need a huge damage boost in PvP.

What a giant lie.

[Qnubi]

After multiple Mythic dungeons I can safely say fire is in a good spot on movement boss fights. Frost seems to suffer heavily in movement bosses and fire can just pull out more numbers while moving around especially when you reach 30% you are basically a pyro throwing flaregun. I am happy and if Blizz decides to buff fire because of lacking DPS on fights where you just standstill it's gonna be amazing.

Beat multiple frost mages with similar ilvl by ~5% damage done. Haven't seen a single arcane mage yet tho. Only saw one other fire mage and masses of frost mages.

Atal Dazar for example is amazing for fire, 4 heavy movement bosses, so much fun as fire.

[Riistov]

Fire is generally garbage until about 3/4 through an expansion when the crit rates are high enough to make it functional.

Did you forget Legion? Fire was the top Mage spec for the first two raids.