[11.1] Fire mage feedback, lingering issues and odd design limitations

[Zommoros-azshara]

To start it off I’ll go with Sunfury lingering issues since the inception of this Hero tree, in a descending order by magnitude of gameplay impact:

• Forced Hyperthermia (Memory of A’lar):
  while this node is generally accepted as a fun one because of the deterministic nature of said Hyperthermia proc, it poses a major design flaw when coupled with Blessing of the Sun King talent. To elaborate: Pyroblasts cast while Hyperthermia is active can not trigger a ready_to_go Sun King’s Blessing (Fury of the Sun King), so we are left with 2 permament problems - either “munching” stacks by launching Pyroblasts until Hyperthermia expires, or we have to /cancelaura the Hyperthermia in order to proceed with the hardcast to activate the already stacked up Sun King’s Blessing.

• Synergy with class talent capstones is practically non-existant other than Unleashed Inferno. This is very odd and some in-depth math (as of the latest hyperthermia rppm fix) shows that no combination of class capstones other than Unleashed Inferno is worth more than 2% dps.

• The Phoenix pet can be outranged(!). If the only available target moves out of range, the pet will just remain stationary until it expires, please let it move in to avoid this issue.

Moving on with Frostfire:
while the recent changes to the loop of Excess buffs was unwarranted (unneeded? completely unnneccessary???), it already happened so now we have to deal with the aftermath of fixing something that wasn’t broken.

• We appreciate extending the Excess Fire cap to 2, it helped solve a major overflow of the buff.
• However, Excess frost still has a major overflow: approximately 5 procs per minute go to complete waste, mostly due to the reduction of the available Phoenix Flames charges. I am not sure that further increasing the cap would do anything, but reverting the CDR component of Excess Fire (Phoenix Flames cooldown reduction) would certainly help.

[Ravenborn-azralon]

Sun King’s Blessing

• It would be really appreciated if we could continue building stacks of SKB when we already have Fury of the Sun King buff (the buff we get at 10 stacks). Other classes work like this with similar buffs.
• Like mentioned in the OP, please let Hyperthermia activate SKB.
• I would really love it if Flame Accelerant was either baked into SKB or if it completely excluded Fireball since it feels extra bad if we need to press Fireball to effectively continue our rotation but we will have SKB ready shortly after that will take a lot longer to cast because we already “wasted” our Flame Accelerant buff on a meager Fireball.

Sunfury

• It was already mentioned in the OP, but I can’t stress this enough: please allow the phoenix to move! We already have this with Water Elemental, so please, make adjustments to the phoenix as well.
• Reverting Gravity Lapse back to a stun was a great change, although still frustrating that this change was excluded for PvP. I just wish it affected more targets instead of only 5 total.
• Merely a Setback is an impressively useless talent. The avoidance doesn’t work with all damage sources and the leech is incredibly underwhelming both in amount and how it’s activated. Please, rework this talent or offer us a desirable choice node.

Frostfire

• I just can’t help but question the decision behind neutering the CDR (and fun) of this hero tree. The changes to both Excess buffs were completely unnecessary, especially to Excess Frost since it affects both specs that make use of this hero tree. Going from (live) 10s to (PTR) 3s is such a massive gameplay nerf it’s not even funny. Even going from previous PTR build of 5s to 3s was already a huge nerf. The 50% nerf to Excess Fire was also too much. Please, don’t nerf the gameplay.
• Maybe rework Frostfire entirely if needed, but please keep the Meteor/Comet Storm concepts if/when doing so. I don’t really even care about Frostfire Bolt, but Isothermic Core needs to be protected. Imbued Warding is also pretty cool.

[Pusple-thrall]

The idea of getting procs that you straight up can’t use before they’re overridden/wasted just feels like baked-in frustration and a failure in design. If the goal is to get us to use our filler more often, it seems like enabling you to alternatively spend Excess Frost via FFB or Scorch or something (perhaps at some lesser damage modifier) could at least solve the issue of being helpless to react to the proc in a meaningful way…I dunno, it’s a thought.

[Zommoros-azshara]

@Linxy

Fire

• Frostfire
  • Excess Frost now reduces the cooldown of Meteor by 5 seconds when consumed (was 3 seconds).
  • Isothermic Core now causes Comet Storm at 250% effectiveness (was 200%).
  • Flash Freezeburn can no longer trigger from Combustions granted from Sun King’s Blessing or Time Anomaly.
    • Developers’ notes: Flash Freezeburn combined with Sun King’s Blessing was a large contributor to the resource and proc overflow Fire Mages can experience while using this Hero Talent tree. To remain consistent, we’ve also adjusted the effect for Frost Mages as well.

While this is a most welcome change in order to regulate the Excess Buff overcap issue, it sadly also resulted in another major (~5%) nerf to all builds using Sun King’s Blessing.

Please consider buffing the Pyroblast effect modifier in Sun King’s Blessing, as this would not disrupt the flow of the rotation but would provide a much needed “oompf” that a hardcast being built by 10 hotstreaks is just critically lacking right now.

As proof of concept all I can do is provide a simulation which shows that buffing the Pyroblast component of Sun King’s Blessing to +500% (currently sitting at +260%) would result in a ~5.5% buff to Sun King builds:
https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/dgr2xzf5i42Y1pqRC7jjF8