Do you enjoy the double stack hot streak mechanic for fire?

[Lazy Gecko]

After the prepatch I decided to dust off my horde mage and try running a couple of dungeons as fire to get a feel for the new changes. It's not a spec I have touched much for the run of several expansions now and was hoping that maybe they had alleviated my issues with it. But nope, I still find fire to be thoroughly unenjoyable and a constant exercise in frustration, and I suppose I should just resign myself to the fact that this is how the spec is going to be forever now.

I've surmised that the main thing making the spec feel so aggravating is the way the hot streak mechanic works. More specifically, how it requires you to get 2 crits in a row in order to actually trigger it for real, and thus if you don't get that second crit off after you're halfway through, it just resets which is the worst damn feeling in the world. Those downtime moments when you don't have any fire blast charges available and you're just resigned to spamming fireballs and praying for enough rng to not reset the counter has such a profound psychological effect on how the gameplay feels.

What makes this such a bummer for me is how my main point of reference for the spec is always going to be how it worked in Cataclysm a decade ago, where IIRC hot streak worked nothing like this. This was when I first started playing fire mage and was basically the most fun time I ever had playing mage as a whole (I've heard anecdotes that fire was even better in WotLK and I suppose I'll just have to take their word for it). All I can remember from the switch to MoP was this feeling of complete alienation when trying the revised fire spec, and I think this is also when the 2 stack hot streak mechanic was first introduced.

[mrgreenthump]

Fire feels more more fun with high crit, but it's not optimal to stack crit because of the burst nature of the spec and combustion being free crits. Mastery conversion during combustion helps a small bit, but overall not that much. And even worse we get more free crits during our normal rotation with talents and passives, devalueing crit by a lot.

[Ticj]

I love it.

[Gotural]

You remember things wrong, Hot Streak always required two crit in a row.

https://wotlk.evowow.com/?talent#o

In my opinion every specs felt better in previous expacs because the game was less of an action game. Hot Streak was new, you didn't have 100% crit Combustion, 100% crit Fireblast or anything like that. Spells took longer to cast, Ignite only occured on critical strikes, etc.

All of that made it so that every spells had more impact. Casting a Fireball in PvP for example was hard but rewarding, and an instant Pyroblast was rare but definitely devastating.

Nowadays every specs are ultra spammy, which leads to every spells of every specs to hit like white noodle. Although the game is a lot of fun too nowadays, but on differents areas I feel.

[Powerogue]

I had thought they had made it great by making the artifact ability baseline, giving effectively 5 charges of guaranteed crit then whoops, they removed its guaranteed crit, making it feel wimpy.

Literally just give that back, Blizzard.

[Gestopft]

I had thought they had made it great by making the artifact ability baseline, giving effectively 5 charges of guaranteed crit then whoops, they removed its guaranteed crit, making it feel wimpy.

Literally just give that back, Blizzard.

Their first plan was for Fire Blast to spread Ignite. Then they got feedback that having your "Hot Streak" button be the same as your "AoE" button created a conflict in the rotation that was not a fun choice for players to have to make, so they switched it to PF, and took away the guaranteed crit so as to avoid the above problem.

[blankfaced]

Their first plan was for Fire Blast to spread Ignite. Then they got feedback that having your "Hot Streak" button be the same as your "AoE" button created a conflict in the rotation that was not a fun choice for players to have to make, so they switched it to PF, and took away the guaranteed crit so as to avoid the above problem.

They should've left it alone or just tied it to flamestrike instead of bringing an old button back just for the sake of bringing an old button back. They dropped the ball hard with mages and the "un-pruning."

I agree with the OP to a degree. It's yet another expansion where i'm not touching my mage. Another expansion of the same stagnant rotations. Nothing new or returning that's worth the time. Then again they needed to change shadow priests, shaman and druids again so it's understandable Mages got the red headed stepchild treatment yet again. But hey! We aint broke right!

We're just boring and stagnant and bland.....

[Lazy Gecko]

You remember things wrong, Hot Streak always required two crit in a row.

https://wotlk.evowow.com/?talent#o

In my opinion every specs felt better in previous expacs because the game was less of an action game. Hot Streak was new, you didn't have 100% crit Combustion, 100% crit Fireblast or anything like that. Spells took longer to cast, Ignite only occured on critical strikes, etc.

All of that made it so that every spells had more impact. Casting a Fireball in PvP for example was hard but rewarding, and an instant Pyroblast was rare but definitely devastating.

Nowadays every specs are ultra spammy, which leads to every spells of every specs to hit like white noodle. Although the game is a lot of fun too nowadays, but on differents areas I feel.

I had actually checked in old videos to see if hot streak worked the same way but couldn't notice anything. Didn't think to check for legacy talent calculators. At any rate I felt like I just got hot streak procs a lot more often in Cataclysm. I mostly played pvp and had specced into shatter in the frost tree, and it was the synergy from that talent which made the playstyle so damn satisfying (along with the insane uncapped dot spreads from combustion). Didn't even cast fireball very often. I just spammed scorch for the sake of the mobility.

[Army Dreamer]

I'd prefer 1 stack and a low cooldown.

[Lodravel]

They should've left it alone or just tied it to flamestrike instead of bringing an old button back just for the sake of bringing an old button back. They dropped the ball hard with mages and the "un-pruning."

I agree with the OP to a degree. It's yet another expansion where i'm not touching my mage. Another expansion of the same stagnant rotations. Nothing new or returning that's worth the time. Then again they needed to change shadow priests, shaman and druids again so it's understandable Mages got the red headed stepchild treatment yet again. But hey! We aint broke right!

We're just boring and stagnant and bland.....

This has been mage since MoP. Up to that point, it felt like fire was growing in a certain direction, getting better and better... It was absolutely delightful to play with Cata blastwave and scorch that did decent damage. Old combustion was a bit wonky, to be sure, but I fully expected them to improve it after Cata.

But then, nothing happened. Mage got watered down further with every expansion. And now, with SL and the supposed great unpruning, they again have the chance to give the specs a bit of a touch up... but nothing happens. Again. They don't even bother to fix the hole that essences are going to leave. What's more, the only thing they attempt to change, ignite spread, they half-ass so thoroughly.

It's the definition of a band-aid fix, except that they're gonna leave it on for the rest of the expansion, probably.

[Gotural]

I had actually checked in old videos to see if hot streak worked the same way but couldn't notice anything. Didn't think to check for legacy talent calculators. At any rate I felt like I just got hot streak procs a lot more often in Cataclysm. I mostly played pvp and had specced into shatter in the frost tree, and it was the synergy from that talent which made the playstyle so damn satisfying (along with the insane uncapped dot spreads from combustion). Didn't even cast fireball very often. I just spammed scorch for the sake of the mobility.

Shatter with big spell combos was definitely a great source of fun. I miss those.

[blankfaced]

I had actually checked in old videos to see if hot streak worked the same way but couldn't notice anything. Didn't think to check for legacy talent calculators. At any rate I felt like I just got hot streak procs a lot more often in Cataclysm. I mostly played pvp and had specced into shatter in the frost tree, and it was the synergy from that talent which made the playstyle so damn satisfying (along with the insane uncapped dot spreads from combustion). Didn't even cast fireball very often. I just spammed scorch for the sake of the mobility.

Yeah fire is faaaaar from that point now. And our AoE just took a big hit as well, I guess unless you stack mastery? And thank you for that walk down memory lane. Old Combustion! Old Living Bomb! Old Blastwave! Flame Orb! Wards that absorbed and REFLECTED!! Fire was a destructive force! Those days are long gone though.

Even if you go to Blizzards forums it's all talk of Frost and Arcane. No one's in beta fighting for Fire.

[ablib]

I miss the days of landing a big ignite and firing off combustion, on a big AOE pull. Fire is still fun for me because I seem to just spam Pyroblast's non-stop. That may be due to higher gear level, but it always seems that way regardless of ilvl. I very rarely spam fireball fishing for hot streaks.

In fact, my top 3 damage abilities are Pyroblast, Fire Blast and Ignite. If anything...fire is more boring now because instant cast Pyro's are too common now, and because of this, seem to hit like a wet noodle.

[Biomega]

The best part about the new Fire mechanics is that I can now finally play Frost

[Stickiler]

Fire plays basically the same as it did since I started at the end of Wrath, and I'm so glad it has. I've played a fire mage and a demo lock almost since I started, so I lived through the almost every expansion rework of Demo lock, and I'm super glad Fire has been in an acceptable spot and relatively unchanged(with some additions).

Even the Combustion change was a good change, because you went from having to pray for a good string of procs, to just being able to force it, even though it removed the hilarious 10x DPS moments from spreading a good combustion to a heap of ads.

[jeokaleo]

I am a mage in retail wow, mostly frost for M+ and it's pretty awesome IMO, but this is my first expansion. Since the systems are pretty terrible this expansion and overall the game is getting boring, I was wondering how mages are in previous expansions. I am willing to play up to Mists of Pandaria.Tutuapp 9Apps Showbox

[Bumkin]

Does any1 remember at the end of wotlk when you would get hot streak from living bomb crits, and you could put living bomb on unlimited targets, that was fun

[D3athsting]

Does any1 remember at the end of wotlk when you would get hot streak from living bomb crits, and you could put living bomb on unlimited targets, that was fun

I remember multidotting Nether tempest in MoP and frost bomb was totally awesome in combo with pet's freeze

[Hsakount]

I kinda like it