While the nerfs to fire (balance and Aff as well) may well be numerically justified, I really think there might be an overall nerf to fun, mechanically, as well. Even a nominal nerf feels bad, but changing the gameplay (for the worse) ought to be avoided no? It really seems that proposed nerfs are almost a punishment to players who enjoy the nerfed classes—not so much balancing.
Fire for instance needs it’s uncapped aoe to be checked. Some kind of diminishing return, target cap, whatever. But fire is incredibly barebones, and without a minute combust will feel horrible to play. Keep the fun gameplay, tune accordingly.
Likewise for moonkin, the stellar drift “rework” seems like it would be a damage loss to take. Absolutely terrible design for a talent, but having the mobility in starfall was fun, it feels good. It’s damage isn’t usually problematic until you get crazy spread cleave value, but it could be tuned, without ruining the fun gameplay element.
Afflock… Well Aff needs a lot of help in everything outside of raid, you’re really just taking it out back “We’d rather you didn’t play Affliction” and putting it down. This really feels punitive. If the nerfs went through today, I legitimately don’t think anyone could make a case to play Aff as an optimal pick in any form of content—possibly bordering on unviability. Why? Why nuke from orbit when actual balancing could be done? Nerfs to focused malignancy, deleting SE, but no. The proposed changes are a universal nerf to a spec which struggles in most game modes.
Balancing ought to be balancing. Nuking a spec from orbit and effectively deleting it is terrible practice. Bring outliers in, or make those outliers the new center. But heavy handed mechanical changes feel so bad