With the new Spell Impact, FM, and maybe even World in Flames, deep fire mages seems to be leaning towards a deep fire/ arcane build again, instead of going frost for icy veins.
However, in order to max single target dps for fire mages, there becomes a shortage of talent points for Elemental Precision. Consider this build:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...00000000000000
Taking all the talent points that increase single target dps (excluding incineration for scorch crit and assuming LB is spammed on the boss for additional dps), that leaves only 6 points to put in frost (1 point in elemental precision). This build excludes BW, DG, and even Flame Throwing.
By having Elemental Precision on the 2nd tier of the frost tree, Blizzard promotes 3 negative occurences (maybe more);
1. Deep fire mages has an innate disadvantage against all other caster dps
- In all the WOTLK talent trees for casters, hit can be accessibly talented. Even Destro locks, who had no talented hit pre WOTLK, are now given 3% talented easily. In fact, the fire mage is the only caster spec that has to spec into another tree for hit. And since EP is T2 frost, thats 5 wasted talent points as compared to all other caster specs.
2. Fire mages will never reach their aoe potential
- In every deep fire build I have made throughout the different builds, I've always found myself skipping BW or DG. There's better options for spending the talent points, but unfortunately they all have unnecessary prerequisites. Firestarter is a neat idea, but other than pvp, I don't forsee any mage talenting into it. If the bloat was lessened, then maybe Blizzard's idea of a aoe niche for mages will be achieved. Otherwise, mages will be a mediocre aoe class (compared too all the other casters who got buffs in aoe and the points to spend).
3. Itemization for fire mages will be skewed towards hit
- With the merge of Spell Power and Healing, it seems that Blizzard is trying to promote flexibility with gear. However, seeing that fire will need 2-3% more hit that both frost and arcane, fire mages will value gear with hit more than other stats. This makes it rather cumbersome to change specs at will, since the excess hit for arcane or frost mages will be a detriment towards the fluidity of specs and gear.
Thus, I propose the following change to solve these issues:
Make Elemental Precision a Tier 1 talent, and make Ice Floes a Tier 2 talent (swap their positions).
This way:
1. Deep Fire gains accessible hit like every other caster dps. This lessens the fire mage's innate disadvantages.
2. Deep Fire gains 3 talents to put into aoe abilities (Assuming the build stated above and 3 points in T1 EP). Getting BW and DB will finally be possible again, or maybe skipping BW for DB and 2 points into Firestarter. Lots of flexibility is gained. Flame Throwing might be another option.
3. Itemization for mage specs will be normalized. Fire mages won't have as many deterrents for switching specs for the raid's needs.
Making EP a T1 talent is a fair decision. The mage class will become much more flexible and competitive with such a simple change. It achieves not only Blizzard's goals for fire mages, but it also falls in line with Blizzard's goals for the next expansion.