Blizzard make up your minds. Is fire going to be a sustain DPS caster with some burst or a giga burst 100-0 caster with minimal sustain outside combust?
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Problems to consider
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Passive Rele + trinket for all- Fire since BFA has relied on landing CC/Cross CC and sending a giga combust 100-0 on someone on a go. Now CC is much shorter additionally to fires multiple ways of resetting combust taking a pretty steep nerf.
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SL fire was pretty tanky with triune/blazing soul. Both are removed so fire in general is pretty squishy and still has a smaller shield then frost/arcane due to SL nerfs not being lifted (Oversight by blizzard)
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With shorter CC for everyone and minimal to no sustain damage and being gated around combust in order to fire to even return to meta it would have to be able to 100-0 someone in a combust CC window since it has nothing outside of it.
So this leaves us now with current fire. It doesn’t have any killing power with combust and the damage delivery is really slow. With talents like TA giving periodic combusts it could be problematic to buff fire into a 100-0 combust spec. It would be no different then current ele with Ascendance procs randomly gibbing people off RNG.
Sustain caster would route could also potentially be fine it would just need really big buffs across board with less emphasis on combust and CC reliance. Blazing Barrier also needs a buff or rework and not just giving it normal values. 1.3k DMG a hit on it returned vs Prismatic Barrier or even Frost Barrier isn’t even close for comparisons sake.
TLDR: Make up your mind if fire from here on out is going to be a sustained DPS caster or a combust kill bot that does nothing outside of it and buff accordingly. Without that decision the spec is doomed to fail.
Fire mage in my RSS group went 6-0 and destroyed everyone.
I think mages in general are actually struggling a lot with this expansion. Both fire and frost seem to be so reliant on casting which is really troublesome in a meta where virtually every other spec except boomkin/devoker feels WAY more tanky and does WAY more PvE damage.
Fire doesn’t need casting to kill but combust isn’t strong enough to really threaten with a single use and resetting combust in this faster meta where everything feels so much more potent can be rough.
Think across the board mages could either use further tuning or a genuine look at design options as it just feels like a class with virtually infinite mobility that doesn’t really mean much in a meta like this.
Just go frost and one shot everyone like MitchJones and call it good
Yeah its a bit of a tough fix tbh without a design rework if they don’t wanna make it toxic or keep fire the BFA/SL meta same.
Would have to do a large amount of unhealthy damage in 1-3 GCDS in combust to justify no damage outside of combust which I don’t think anyone wants to revisit that meta again.
Atm Fire is the weakest DPS spec in the game burst/sustained and devs just need to decide what exactly they want fire to be moving foward and address it. Are they the ele shamans of mages with sustained and periodic rng burst with TA/Hyperthermia? Or is it as useless mage outside of combust that pops combust and 100-0’s you in 1-3 GCDS.
Or do they want a more affy styled focus of buffing ignite to the moon and fire just cleaves/ignites everything and has moderate sustained. Especially with everyone having passive relentless + trinket which harms setup comps.
Current design is a failure. No damage sustained no damage with combust its still talented core as SL Fire Mage 100-0 combust but all of its nerfed to ground and damage is watered down so in general it feels really meh
I really enjoyed the wrath iteration of fire. Not sure how well it would hold up to today’s standard. It felt fast and it literally felt like you were designed around just burning and blowing everything up. Mana was just way too harsh from what I recall
When Living Bomb actually packed a punch and worthy of a cap talent?
That’s the time! Flame strike procs, pyro blast flying everywhere, living bomb blowing up and spreading like a wild fire.
Honestly idk how a spec that focuses on fire which spreads and consumes things ended up getting tunneled into a single target Go build. Makes no sense
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