Are fire/frost getting buffs in 10.0.5?

Classes Mage
1

I thought, over a month ago, I saw some buffs to fire and frost. But now that I’m looking for them I can’t find them anywhere.

3 Likes
2

Jan 11th hotfixes:

  • Mage
    • Fire
      • [With weekly restarts] Flamestrike damage increased by 15%.
      • [With weekly restarts] Living Bomb damage increased by 25%.
    • Frost
      • [With weekly restarts] Frostbolt damage increased by 20%.
      • [With weekly restarts] Ray of Frost damage increased by 40%.
      • [With weekly restarts] Glacial Spike damage increased by 10%.

December 19th hotfixes:

  • Mage
    • Fire
      • [With weekly restarts] Pyroblast damage increased by 12%.
      • [With weekly restarts] Ignite damage increased by 5%.
      • [With weekly restarts] Fire Blast damage increased by 12%.
      • [With weekly restarts] Fireball damage increased by 12%.
      • [With weekly restarts] Scorch damage increased by 12%.
    • Frost
      • [With weekly restarts] Ice Lance damage increased by 12%.
      • [With weekly restarts] Flurry damage increased by 15%.
      • [With weekly restarts] Frostbolt damage increased by 15%.
      • [With weekly restarts] Glacial Spike damage increased 15%.
      • [With weekly restarts] Splitting Ice, Icicles, and Ice Lance hit another nearby target for 80%, (was 65%).
        • The tooltip will not be updated to reflect this change but will be updated in the future.
3

I thought some of those were going in for the patch. We’re still parsing that low despite those hotfixes? Unfortunate.

3 Likes
4

If people are parsing low its not because of the spec I hate to say. They are slowly showing up in logs. Not as good as Arcane but definitely playable.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/rankings/31#class=Mage

5

Literally all of those are arcane… lol Fire is unplayable, change my mind.

11 Likes
6

Scroll around there are some fire and frost parses in there too.

7

I don’t think that frost and fire are underperforming as much as other specs are overperforming. There shouldn’t be such a huge difference between the top and bottom at this point in the game with this many expansions. You also have to remember some are good for single targets and some excel in AoE. Some bring support buffs. Is it okay that assassin rogue is near the top? I’d say yes because they don’t really bring anything but DPS and can easily be subbed out for another DPS that brings buffs to the group.

3 Likes
8

actually the beginning of the xp is when the bigger gaps occur. The specs with the highest base damage start off ahead compared to those that require ramps and what not.

9

All I know is that Fire can put up decent damage but that’s not the issue. The issue is how it goes about putting up that damage. The entire specs design is disgraceful and it needs a complete rework from top to bottom. Literally every single aspect of Fire mage needs looked at and genuinely reworked.

5 Likes
10

I haven’t played fire in a long time because I never liked how it was so dependent on RNG, Crit, and gear. I didn’t like that it was only good at the end of an expansion.

2 Likes
11

I would recommend not playing Fire until you see a blue post about a Fire mage rework.

3 Likes
12

it should be buffed somehow, absolutely.

2 Likes
13

I hard disagree.

1 Like
14

Every class is dependent on gear.

Fire has never stacked crit since BFA. It’s all haste and vers/mastery

2 Likes
15

I respect your opinion but the numbers don’t lie. Fire mage was one of the most played specs in BFA and SL because it could put up obscene numbers that few other specs could compete with. Look at the playrate of Fire now, it’s the least played mage spec and one of the least played dps specs because it’s not fun enough to play unless there’s huge numbers attached to it.

As of right now, based on Heroic Logs for Vault, Fire is the 2nd least played dps spec in the game, only ahead of Survival hunter. Remember Sepulcher? Survival turned into one of the most played specs in the game purely because it has obscene numbers with tier. Now look at it, nobody finds the spec actually fun or they would be playing it in droves.

Proof is in the pudding

4 Likes
16

Most people are playing arcane because it’s performing better.

That doesn’t mean fire is trash

Heroic logs mean absolutely Nothing. They are never a good place to look at a specs performance.

17

I wouldn’t use mythic as any kind of indicator of anything. Mythic raid has such a small pool of players that anything there is irrelevant in my eyes. Nothing should be tuned, designed, or balanced around the top 1% of players. Also trying to look at one particular boss like Kurog where Fire might excel isn’t a good representation either.

Even being the 3rd highest dps, it’s still the 2nd least played spec. If we look at all bosses which is what matters to me atleast, it’s still the 2nd least played dps spec as well despite its good performance on Kurog.

3 Likes
18

It’s the best indicator of specs performance because heroic and below are all cheeses with short fight windows that don’t show anything.

I mean mythic logs are much better indicators of a class performance over what people are doing in normal and heroic.

Actually it should be.

If accountant Dan can’t get his rotation correct he doesn’t deserve to do good damage

Period.

I linked one fight where fire was in the top three.

It’s actually performing well on 3 bosses. Mages are a pure dps class and you should be changing spec based on the fight.

The amount of people playing xy means absolutely nothing.

19

That right there pretty much wrapped this entire discussion up for me. You should never, ever have to play a different spec or class in an MMORPG. If I wanted to change my spec for everything I fought, I’d go play OSRS where every mob has a different weakness and I need to change between Melee, Ranged, or Mage.

We are in two totally different dimensions and that’s ok.

Also it means everything. Hypothetically, if all of a sudden there were 10k people playing wow down from 4 million in a 2 year period, that doesn’t “mean nothing”.

6 Likes
20

You’re not forced to do anything. However fire is a ST spec so it’s not going to do as good on a multi addnfight as arcane which has priority damage funnel.

Good players who min max will switch but you aren’t forced too.

Ok let me say it slowly for you.

The amount of people playing or not playing doesn’t change a spec’s strength.

Arcane is one of the best caster dps in the game right now and yet mages are one of the lowest played.

It’s not because the spec is weak.