Hello all! This thread is dedicated to feedback about Fire Mages in patch 11.1 - announced changes, remaining issues of the specialization and so on.
Feedback about announced changes:
- Reduction to number / cooldown increase of instants compensated by buffs to Fireball, Pyroblast and Phoenix Flames has its pros and cons in PVE (less instants, but more meaningful damage from them), but might require additional compensation in PVP. The only thing Fire has in PVP over Arcane and especially Frost is hard to disrupt / mobile rotation and less instants can reduce viability of a spec that already is performing not that well there. Fireball buff does not mean much in PVP since opponents would simply not allow to cast it, so there could be additional PVP only buffs to Fire to compensate for reduced number of instants. And now requiring a PVP talent slot just to enable old behaviour of Heat Shimmer in PVP is also a not needed nerf in PVP (10% damage buff to Scorch is not enough to be worth the price of additional PVP talent slot now required to be taken to use instant Heat Shimmer) and should be compensated too.
- Pyroblast and Flamestrike mana cost changes are a good change to address Fire’s latest mana issues. Consider also giving an option to cast Flamestrike centered on target like you did for Rain of Fire and Earthquake to address another annoying issue with Flamestrike - necessity to manually target or cursor it every few seconds in AoE rotation.
Unaddressed issues:
- Living Bomb situation is still not resolved and it still provides too low value for amount of talents required to invest into it, especially against low target count of enemies. That leads to recently reworked right side of Fire’s talent tree being severely underplayed and should be addressed.
Suggestion: Remove spread of Living Bomb and buff its damage and proc chance accordingly. The only thing this spread mechanic does is creating headaches for its balancing for several expansions in a row and it is the main gatekeeper to keeping its base damage and proc chance low to prevent it from scaling crazy against larger packs. No spread would allow to tune its proc rate / base damage to meaningful values without worrying about such scaling issues and allow to additionally better tune its single-target value via Convection. - Fire Mage’s specialization has moved from big chunky hits to damage over time based playstyle that is heavily based on Ignite. Some people like that playstyle, so it should be kept, but there should be a more direct damage focused alternative for people who like that and don’t want to play a Destruction Warlock for that feeling of directly damaging fire focused caster.
Suggestion: Create multiple choice nodes between existing talents that booost Ignite damage and new talents that would instead provide a boost to direct damage abiltiies. For example - Controlled Destruction could become a choice node with talent that would instead make Fireball / Frostfire Bolt and Pyroblast apply stacking debuff that makes target more susceptible to direct damage hits, Intensifying Flames could become a choice node with talent that would boost direct damage of Fireball / Frostfire Bolt and Pyroblast against enemies below 50% of health and so on. Goal of such choice nodes would be to provide players with possibility to customize their build’s profile themselves via picking between bigger direct / bursty damage and bigger spreadable damage over time and letting them pick either or mix of both to the extent that would suit their playstyle. - Ignite itself could use gameplay / QoL improvements too. Its 9 seconds duration and no possibility to quicken or consume it lead to most of Fire Mage’s damage being stacked and infinitely delayed - you can have big amount of damage stored in Ignite but that does not matter much since all targets would take only a fraction of it before dying. That could be improved too.
Suggestion: Create a new choice node in Fire talent tree that would allow to address this Ignite delayed damage issue in 2 different manners (for better player choice options and build diversity):
Quickened Burn - Ignite now does all its damage over X seconds (where X is accordingly tuned value that is lower than 9). Such option would allow to make Ignite damage passively trigger faster and accordingly each target to get more damage from stacked Ignite before dying.
or
Fulminate - active instant ability with Y seconds cooldown that allows to consume Ignite on selected target(s) and deal X% of stored Ignite damage to its wielder instantly. Such option would be fitting for players who want to both get more benefit from Ignite and have more control over that than simply faster tick rate and can be useful to make more value from Ignite against enemy that is close to dying (where dying would make most of remaining stored Ignite damage wasted) or enemy that is about to enter invulnerability period. - Fire Mages also have several talents in their talent tree that are undertuned and could use improvements or boosts. These include:
Inflame - provides 10% damage increase to Ignite triggered only by Hot Streak affected spells when its analogues often provide 15-20% damage increase to Ignite in general with some manageable conditions. Needs a buff.
Fevered Incantation / Fire’s Ire - for 2 third gate talent point cost provide comparable value to second gate talents Wildfire and Critical Mass. Need a buff or even better - just make Fevered Incantation and Fire’s Ire into 1 point investment with full current effect for their price to match their value and better build diversity in third gate.
Pyromaniac - as a third gate talent provides average 3% damage increase to Pyroblast and Flamestrike which is lower than some other first gate talents like Surging Blaze. That makes its value too low for a third gate talent and it needs a buff, preferably both to proc rate (for better reliability) and proc value.
Hyperthermia - is not reliable enough and being RNG based is badly compatible with high Combustion uptime that while active negates most of its benefits. Maybe some players like such RNG proc implementation, so it could be kept, but there should be an alternative for people who want to use it more reliably and don’t mind additional managing.
Suggestion: Make Hyperthermia proc a choice node with Hyperthermia as active ability with X seconds cooldown. That seems like a viable compromise - players that don’t want additional management and don’t mind its RNG nature can continue playing proc version and people who want to use it more effectively or have high Combustion uptime that reduces value of RNG proc can play the active version instead and use it when it is suitable for them.
Deep Impact - provides too low value for Sunfury builds and its secondary Living Bomb effect provides too low value after all the nerfs to Living Bomb. Could use a boost.
Firefall - still has odd design where it is located in AoE part of tree and procs an AoE ability, but is stacked and triggered exclusively by single-target abilities. Consider adding Flamestrike to its spells list to make it more compatible with AoE situations too. - Fire Mage also has several undertuned or too niche PVP talents (including changed in 11.1) that could use work. These include:
Glass Cannon - you sacrifice a PVP talent slot and 30% of health to deal 20% more damage with Fireball, Scorch and Ignite which translates to 5-10% total damage increase at most, so pretty much pay a PVP talent slot to make your general PVP performance worse. This talent simply occupies a PVP talent option slot / design space and can create a trap for new players, so should be removed and replaced.
Ring of Fire - another talent whose redesign made its purpose very questionable. Even as a Fire Mage - why would you want to spend a PVP talent slot to replace Ring of Frost with longer crowd control duration with pretty much similar ability, but with lower control duration and minor damage over time attached? Some players might advocate that it also changes crowd control type from incapacitate to disorient, but that does not change much, since it would simply share diminishing returns with Dragon’s Breath (which you often use first to even be able to cast Ring of X and which would likely put Ring of Fire itself on diminishing returns) instead of with Polymorph. This talent does not seem worth a PVP talent slot and should be buffed or redesigned again.
If you have additional feedback about Fire Mage in 11.1 and beyond - you can post it in comments below. Thank you for reading!
Links to feedback post(s) about other Mage specializations:
Frost Mage - 11.1 Frost Mage Feedback Thread
Arcane Mage - 11.1 Arcane Mage Feedback Thread