Is fire mage viable at all?

[Crudence]

I just got to 120 yesterday with my mage. I lvled him as frost, since fire just seemed really weak to lvl with. I have some low lvl azerite gear for both frost and fire, but I notice frost is far better in dungeons than fire. I know with the new blizz system they want us to equip highest ilvl, but it feels weird not stacking crit, since I often get 5 fireballs without a crit. I get procs faster with frost than I get crits as fire. Feelsbad. Does fire get better with gear? I see no one playing it, but it has always been my favorite spec. Anyone tried fire with gear? Is it decent? Right now it seems frost outperforms fire on both aoe and ST. I don't feel like playing fire if I won't get into raids and m+ because the spec is bad.

Sidenote, which spec is best of frost and arcane? I quite liked arcane in Legion, but haven't given it a go in BFA. Is it still fun?

[Diggster]

Fire does get better with gear, although for me that's more to do with how it feels to play than raw damage output, which overall feels very low at the minute

[Clozer]

If you ask these kind of questions every spec is completly viable for any content you do. Just play what you enjoy.

[Deleted]

Not sure what "viable" means to you, but at the moment Warcraftlogs shows Fire as the best mage spec.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/19

[Crudence]

Not sure what "viable" means to you, but at the moment Warcraftlogs shows Fire as the best mage spec.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/19

Huh, that is very interesting. Viable to me just means I contribute rather than pull down the group. I don't need to be the top dps, but I don't want to be below the tank either. In the start of Legion I played fire for EN and Nighthold and it felt great. I was usually top 3 dps and felt I contributed to progression. If I can only hope to do half the dmg of a frost mage forexample, it feels like I am sabotaging myself playing fire. But if these warcraftlogs are anything to go by, all specs seems kinda close and fire is apparently much better than I thought. So thanks! I'll think I'll stick with fire and see how it matches up when I get some gear.

[Onizuka]

Fire is indeed the best spec but ONLY with End game gear.
Reason behind is simply because it scales better than the other two.

According to Logs and personal experience Fire is the LAST spec in the entire Normal and Heroic Uldir content.
And there's a really good reason for it...

If you care about bringing the best possible dmg, then its a one way road till Mythic.
Otherwise, play whatever you want, as long as you doesn't hinder your group / friends.

[CptEgo]

Fire is good on G'Huun apparently

[davesignal]

Not sure what "viable" means to you, but at the moment Warcraftlogs shows Fire as the best mage spec.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/19

Are you familiar with the phrase "small sample size"?

[Fayenoor]

Are you familiar with the phrase "small sample size"?

Yes it is a small sample size; but those logs are with at least 50 public kills on the fights. (~15-20K parses per spec)
Note: public kills not include logs which are private or unlisted in WCL and many high end guilds dont log publicly for various reasons.

Now the question is - how big a sample size would you want given acc to wowprogress only 2% of the guilds doing mythics clear all mythics anyways (e.g. only 893 Kiljaeden kills in Mythic last expac)?

We can wait a couple of weeks and gather new data. But that log summary implies that all mage specs are fairly close to each other at the middle of the pack and they all suck bigtime compared to Aff lock or pretty much most melee classes that seem to dominate Mythic Raiding (yet again).

But hey, at least we arent shaman, whose all 3 specs are pretty much worst of their kind in everything.

[davesignal]

But hey, at least we arent shaman, whose all 3 specs are pretty much worst of their kind in everything.

This is the kind of thing that puts it all into perspective. Poor fuckin' shaman.

[Nikkaszal]

The thing about "viable" and "competitive" and all that, is that this only applies when you progress so far that your raid looks at removing classes from their STRICT MYTHIC ROSTER OF 20 in order to stack others

Or when M+ groups pushing high keys look for very specific group comps.

Otherwise, everything is fine. As long as you're a decent player and you know your spec, you'll get into groups and kill bosses no matter what you are.

My alt is an ele shaman, and we all know how much ele shamans love to moan that they are worthless, the spec is currently garbage and no-one wants them. With that all said, I still output very high damage in my raid group, and no-one in the guild is going to say "Sorry Nik, you can't come to alt runs because you're an ele shaman".

[Talon8669]

I just got to 120 yesterday with my mage. I lvled him as frost, since fire just seemed really weak to lvl with. I have some low lvl azerite gear for both frost and fire, but I notice frost is far better in dungeons than fire. I know with the new blizz system they want us to equip highest ilvl, but it feels weird not stacking crit, since I often get 5 fireballs without a crit. I get procs faster with frost than I get crits as fire. Feelsbad. Does fire get better with gear? I see no one playing it, but it has always been my favorite spec. Anyone tried fire with gear? Is it decent? Right now it seems frost outperforms fire on both aoe and ST. I don't feel like playing fire if I won't get into raids and m+ because the spec is bad.

Sidenote, which spec is best of frost and arcane? I quite liked arcane in Legion, but haven't given it a go in BFA. Is it still fun?

With the reduction of secondary stats (Crit) you still have crit protection on spells like fireball I believe but overall with the drastic reduction of crit it has negatively affected fire. I believe sims are showing mastery over crit for all situations. Secondly while all spells seem to hit like a wet noodle pyro seems to be very weak and with the reduced crit rate you already have few pyros. In short the spec is viable but the shift from Legion to BfA has left the spec feeling like something was seriously lost in translation.

[Deleted]

Instead of looking at logs from "All Bosses", look at individual bosses. There is a clear reason why Fire is best on Zek'voz and Frost is best on Vectis, for example. It becomes quite clear if you look at the given timings and how the fights are designed.

[Crudence]

With the reduction of secondary stats (Crit) you still have crit protection on spells like fireball I believe but overall with the drastic reduction of crit it has negatively affected fire. I believe sims are showing mastery over crit for all situations. Secondly while all spells seem to hit like a wet noodle pyro seems to be very weak and with the reduced crit rate you already have few pyros. In short the spec is viable but the shift from Legion to BfA has left the spec feeling like something was seriously lost in translation.

I played and geared up my mage yesterday, got to ilvl 330ish. I think fire is fine, but it is no doubt not as good as the legion version. It feels weird with the short combusions and the lack of power I had in combustion before with the dmg and crit dmg boost from consequtive crits. Also, not having phoenix flames feels a bit weird, mostly during combustion. However, with pyroclasm I find the play style satisfying, although everywhere I try to get some info they all say meteor is the go to. Still more fun than frost. I gotta say though, casting 5 fireballs without a crit feels really bad and it happens way to often. I remember hating losing my tier bonus from nighthold in Legion because I could go over 2 fireballs without a crit, which rarely ever happened with the tier bonus. This is like 10 times as annoying as that.

[Deleted]

No its not viable . dont bother spending time on fire go frost or arcane mate.

[Nikkaszal]

Instead of looking at logs from "All Bosses", look at individual bosses. There is a clear reason why Fire is best on Zek'voz and Frost is best on Vectis, for example. It becomes quite clear if you look at the given timings and how the fights are designed.

I'm curious, as I'm not raiding Mythic currently. Why those specs for those bosses?

[Deleted]

I'm curious, as I'm not raiding Mythic currently. Why those specs for those bosses?

Zek'voz: Long-living adds spawn with an interval of 2 minutes throughout phase 1, lining up with Combustion. Not necessarily useful, but it looks nice on logs and tricks ignorant players into thinking fire is best for single target. Fire is viable on some fights because of Searing Touch, making fire insanely good for hectic execute phases. Like G'huun, for example.

Vectis: A single long-living add spawns throughout phase 1 on a fixed timer. This is the precise niche for frost with Splitting Ice and Glacial Spike.

[Deleted]

What do you guys think of fire with the new buff coming on oct 2 ?

[CptEgo]

What do you guys think of fire with the new buff coming on oct 2 ?

That's a 11% damage buff all in all recently, or am I wrong? Sounds good.

[Kokolums]

I learned fire mage at the very end of Legion in order to do its Mage Tower and boy it was REALLY fun. Then I felt sad that it would probably be redesigned in BfA. Interesting reading about its future in this thread. I loved the chaos of bouncing around, dodging things, and healing by blinking. Felt REALLY good. Here's the video of how it hooked me.

https://vimeo.com/292512696