Fire Mage Shadowlands

[Mofoe]

How bad is Fire mage in shadowlands? Am I setting my self up for failure if I only play Fire?

[Depakote]

How bad is Fire mage in shadowlands? Am I setting my self up for failure if I only play Fire?

seems like you're setting yourself up for failure if you play shadowlands tbh.

[Foszil]

Frost is good

[Aggrophobic]

How bad is Fire mage in shadowlands? Am I setting my self up for failure if I only play Fire?

As it stands right now, it's a dead spec.
It's not like previous expansions where "bad" specs were a few % behind the top. Fire will litteraly do 20%-30% less than the top specs if not more at times.

[Cosmic Janitor]

While it's busted now and probably won't reign supreme anytime soon, Blizzard will usually balance via some half-assed hotfixes after the first raid ID, until then everything will come with the caveat of "currently".

[Nehem]

How bad is Fire mage in shadowlands? Am I setting my self up for failure if I only play Fire?

frost >= arcane >>> elemental shaman > fire...

[mrgreenthump]

After the beta buffs it's somewhat decent from what I've heard, but it's still not fun to play.

[Obelisk Kai]

After the beta buffs it's somewhat decent from what I've heard, but it's still not fun to play.

There's definitely a clunkiness to it now, or at least a more pronounced clunkiness than existed in the past. Frost and Arcane by comparison are butter smooth in their rotations.

[Kumorii]

Fire tends to get better mid / late expansion due to stats... so we'll see what happens later on.
Decided to go frost after they decided that ignite spread should be on fireblast which is odd since you are always fireblasting... so what's the point?

[Obelisk Kai]

Fire tends to get better mid / late expansion due to stats... so we'll see what happens later on.
Decided to go frost after they decided that ignite spread should be on fireblast which is odd since you are always fireblasting... so what's the point?

It does, but they've also implemented the scaling tax AND they are reducing the upgrade between each tier slightly, which will have a cumulative impact by expansion end. Fire might not be able to pull away as comprehensively as it has in the past.

That and fire just feels really clunky now, Phoenix Flames is now the ignite spreader but the same tension exists between saving it for a Combustion and saving it for an ignire spread. It's lengthy cooldown also means it is impossible to keep the ignite going on all targets continually, which I have to assume greatly devalues mastery as a stat.

Fire just doesn't play as well as Frost or Arcane do, the changes have increased the clunkiness of the spec considerably and I don't really understand what was gained by doing so.

[Kumorii]

It does, but they've also implemented the scaling tax AND they are reducing the upgrade between each tier slightly, which will have a cumulative impact by expansion end. Fire might not be able to pull away as comprehensively as it has in the past.

That and fire just feels really clunky now, Phoenix Flames is now the ignite spreader but the same tension exists between saving it for a Combustion and saving it for an ignire spread. It's lengthy cooldown also means it is impossible to keep the ignite going on all targets continually, which I have to assume greatly devalues mastery as a stat.

Fire just doesn't play as well as Frost or Arcane do, the changes have increased the clunkiness of the spec considerably and I don't really understand what was gained by doing so.

Ah yeah, forgot about they swapped that. The introduction of phoenix flames is also not that good... never liked it since legion due to it being a Fire blast but more clunky so it's just weird to have fireblast and a worse fireblast in the rotation. They should make 3 fireblasts standard and make that talent row have different kind of talents to change fireblast, regen, cd, damage or other things. If they want the AoE from phoenix flames they can just have it as a talent that makes it desireable in AoE situations where FB targets everyone near the target etc etc...

What to do with phoenix flames I'm not sure, they could scrap it for all I care.
purpose of FB being off gcd is because it's a reactionary playstyle and you can't do that with phoenix flames due to gcd. If they remove it from gcd it would be a fluid spec again, but then they can just increase FB charges instead.

[mrgreenthump]

It does, but they've also implemented the scaling tax AND they are reducing the upgrade between each tier slightly, which will have a cumulative impact by expansion end. Fire might not be able to pull away as comprehensively as it has in the past.

That and fire just feels really clunky now, Phoenix Flames is now the ignite spreader but the same tension exists between saving it for a Combustion and saving it for an ignire spread. It's lengthy cooldown also means it is impossible to keep the ignite going on all targets continually, which I have to assume greatly devalues mastery as a stat.

Fire just doesn't play as well as Frost or Arcane do, the changes have increased the clunkiness of the spec considerably and I don't really understand what was gained by doing so.

Fire usually doesn't get better because of stats though(or hasn't since they removed hit from talents and gave us a lot of free crit). Fire gets so much new systems added on top of new systems that make it work. Like this expansion it was pretty bad all the way till we got Mechagon Bracers together with Lucid Dreams.

Edit: was talking about wrong stuff.

[hambone2626]

Ah yeah, forgot about they swapped that. The introduction of phoenix flames is also not that good... never liked it since legion due to it being a Fire blast but more clunky so it's just weird to have fireblast and a worse fireblast in the rotation. They should make 3 fireblasts standard and make that talent row have different kind of talents to change fireblast, regen, cd, damage or other things. If they want the AoE from phoenix flames they can just have it as a talent that makes it desireable in AoE situations where FB targets everyone near the target etc etc...

What to do with phoenix flames I'm not sure, they could scrap it for all I care.
purpose of FB being off gcd is because it's a reactionary playstyle and you can't do that with phoenix flames due to gcd. If they remove it from gcd it would be a fluid spec again, but then they can just increase FB charges instead.

nothing wrong with phoenix flames just needs to be guaranteed crit and make ignite spread automaticaly, fire blast is boring so having another crit mechanic that is visually appealing is a plus in my book

[Cosmic Janitor]

nothing wrong with phoenix flames just needs to be guaranteed crit and make ignite spread automaticaly, fire blast is boring so having another crit mechanic that is visually appealing is a plus in my book

Not so sure about that. Imho it shouldn't count towards hot streak, since that just causes it to be "worth" to use during combustion , while also being extremely awkward to use due to the traveling time and the pooling of charges you need to plan around. Theres also the weird ping-pong interaction with ignite on multiple targets. It would be cleaner to just have it deal decent damage* and spread your dots.

*(enough that you might also want to weave it in for ST to spice up the boring ass hot streak fishing between comustion phases)

- - - Updated - - -

Fire usually doesn't get better because of stats though(or hasn't since they removed hit from talents and gave us a lot of free crit). Fire gets so much new systems added on top of new systems that make it work. Like this expansion it was pretty bad all the way till we got Mechagon Bracers together with Lucid Dreams.

Edit: was talking about wrong stuff.

It think it's mostly broken by design due to the extreme dps window that is at it's basis and that can be abused by stacking various borrowed power effects. If you can somehow break one of the interactions and gain a disproportional gain during combustion you pretty much have fire being way ahead again. Corruption for example worked that well because haste and crit are largely without impotance during combustion, while you can gain an extreme gain on ignite by just having a ton of mastery. Add to that RoP, Trinkets, pots etc and you see why it keeps happening. An effect like lucid that enhances your basic rotation during that window, by giving you even more instant hot streaks, just let's it completely spiral out of control then.

[vlange]

I've always like fire as a concept and that concept has not changed much. The ability to cast fireblast while casting other spells makes this spec click for me. I love how a good chain of crits even outside combustion periods can lead to spamming pyroblast every two seconds. But as with every start of the expansion, this quickly happens less often after each level-up as the stats will decrease in value and you can't get enough gear to catch up. Usually this lack of stats seems to carry through till after the first few raids of the expansion.

Don't mind the change to phoenix flames except that it doesn't crit anymore. In fact it feels they've taken away two things by changing this ability, extra crit builder for hotstreak and automatic aoe cleave to replace it with a manual cleave ability. Whenever you need to AOE you need to do more things and when you want to do single target nukes there's less you can do. Together with the lack of secondary stats and lost azerite powers it feels very weak compared to the Arcane spec (which is still extremely boring) or Frost which is excellent for AOE control during leveling to 60.

I hope they will give some buffs and maybe a slight change in the way phoenix flames now integrates in the rotation. It feels clunky like someone and they should indeed look into the problem of becoming overpowered because of the synergy between borrowed powers.

[blankfaced]

nothing wrong with phoenix flames just needs to be guaranteed crit and make ignite spread automaticaly, fire blast is boring so having another crit mechanic that is visually appealing is a plus in my book

Nothing wrong with PF except the exact reason they added it and changed it.....

It feels horrible in dungeons now. By the time you have an ignite worth spreading they're dead. Fire the king of aoe is pretty much ST. I really wanted to come back and play my fire mage again! And what they've done to living bomb.... It used to make groups in pvp scatter!!

[GKLeatherCraft]

I've played Fire every expac since TBC, I'll still play it in SL, never seem to have any issues, If it honestly is "20-30%" worse then that'll get patched so NP.

[Nynax]

Not so sure about that. Imho it shouldn't count towards hot streak, since that just causes it to be "worth" to use during combustion , while also being extremely awkward to use due to the traveling time and the pooling of charges you need to plan around. Theres also the weird ping-pong interaction with ignite on multiple targets. It would be cleaner to just have it deal decent damage* and spread your dots.
.

Isn't that exactly how it worked in Legion though? If I remember correctly, it was originally a longer CD Hot Streak generator with 3 charges that lined up nicely with cumbustion windows. Also during a time when Ignite spread automatically.

I'm fine with having to spread Ignite manually with Phenix Flames, but I just think the Legion form of the spell should have stayed. (It's not like Fire ever really unseated Frost dominance during Legion)

[Lodravel]

I'm fine with having to spread Ignite manually with Phenix Flames, but I just think the Legion form of the spell should have stayed. (It's not like Fire ever really unseated Frost dominance during Legion)

This actually used to be the case in one of the earlier beta builds. Maybe even alpha, whatever. Anyway. The gameplay that came off it was incredibly clunky, even more so than the current iteration. Guaranteed crit Phoenix Flames made it so that you were torn between using it to spread ignite and using it during combustion. Either way, felt like you were gimping yourself.

[dileria]

Maybe make Flamestrike the ignite spreader.
Of all targets hit - the highest Ignite is being spread to all targets hit.

There is a balance between using HotStreaks for Pyroblasts on the Focus Target with the occasional Flamestrike to cleave some ignite damage and using HotStreaks for Flamestrikes only for pure aoe damage.

Furthermore i like the idea of finishing with a big flamestrike after combusting my load.
Yes good idea.

The only thing i dont like about flamestrike is that it has no generating effects on the hotstreak mechanic, only a consuming one.