If they do this it would make Fire more down to the level of other dps and nerf their big uncapped combustion aoe. I feel like they’d have to give something back tho because Fire mage dps outside of combustion is piss poor
With the state of Frost and Arcane (Frost has of course improved with the buffs they have had to implement, but neither spec is in a “great place” . . . more viable than at the beginning of SL? Sure. But not sitting where SPriest/Bal/Aff is comfortably). Because of the overall state of the class and how Fire is essentially carrying the class, I don’t think they would nerf IC—but if they do—it wouldn’t be by much.
I think if anything they would nerf Flame Patch (which could make Living Bomb potentially competitive or at least more attractive—that is a guess though—admittedly I haven’t even looked at what LB’s damage is this entire expansion lol) or put a cap on Flamestrike. Nerfing IC to balance out M+ AoE pulls would be pretty punishing beyond the intent of reducing the AoE Damage Output, as this would also be a chunky nerf to ST.
That’s the thing though. Fire mages are kinda oppressive in all content (not nearly as much as boomkins but still) something that can get traced to infernal cascade because it gets traced to combustion. In raids they’re really really good because their burst window is able to be executed while remaining completely mobile. In arena it’s the same thing. Because of the plethora of blinks combustion is the one burst that can’t be interrupted or really lined well. In dungeons it allows for big big damage on large numbers of adds. All this happens due to infernal cascade. 20%+ buff to fire damage is pretty big when added up. I’m not complaining about any of this mind you because all of it is really fun and imo more specs/classes should be designed this way to make the game more multivariate and fun. Just blizz has a tendency to go the other way and this is where I think they’d hit :<
Also I think a flame patch nerf could be possible, just I really don’t see why blizzard has such a complex about uncapped aoe. If someone can pull a large number of mobs together and control them, more power to them. It doesn’t affect a majority of people that do said content. A large majority even. Most dungeons are done with one large pull which almost never exceeds 10 mobs followed by several 2-5 mob pulls. The groups I’m in sometimes stagger 8 mob pulls to use my combust as optimally as I can. That’s 8 mobs though and most classes cap out at 8 mobs anyway. To create this cap on AOE pretty much just nerfs one small niche set of content: MDI. And it doesn’t even do that because people bring the classes that can work around it anyway. If anything it limits MDI because you see more of the same comps rather than variety.
I don’t think so and frankly I don’t want to see any nerfs even though Fire is incredibly overpowered rn. If anything I want them to buff EVERYONE to the same level of Fire, not just mages, EVERYONE. That will finally break the game completely like it almost did with the corruptions at the end of BfA.
That’s what it will take to show the willfully blind devs that they can’t do anything else before they fix class balance. Going into SL they went out of their way to nerf the hell out of most classes because they got scared of the Pandora’s box they unleashed with corruptions in BfA but only slapped those nerfs on some classes leaving others completely uncapped.
You can’t take away the candy from every kid in the class only to then turn around and hand it out to just several kids and expect the classroom not to get burned down. This is exactly what’s happened in SL with close to 50% of subscribers jumping ship.
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So I am going to preface this with the fact that I don’t really disagree with the majority of what you have said.
This absolutely is one of the perks of Fire. However, and I know that it is not up to you or me, rather, Blizzard in their Ivory Tower . . . but nerfing IF for this reason should not be the issue. If anything give Arcane’s Slipstream talent be Baseline. Frost already has strong mobility during a good portion of the bursty point in their rotation with the Freezing Winds legendary (granted I don’t think it should be tied to a legendary, but it is better than nothing).
Sure it can’t be interrupted but there are other ways to deal with it:
Hard Stuns, Spell Steal, Purge, Dispel, Consume Magic, Spell Reflect, Nether Ward, Root—Beam, Vanish, Cloak, Silence, Mind Games, Bubble, IB, Turtle, Psychic Horror, Psychic Scream, the list goes on.
My point being that it’s not like you turn into this unstoppable force that is immune to CC/stuns/roots/etc, that can break through immunities, that’s damage cannot be negated, that cannot lose the Buff. Everyone knows Fire’s capability, and there are numerous ways to deal with it—sure it can’t be interrupted like Convoke—but I also can’t Poly a shape-shifted Druid; however, the Druid can hard root-beam me the second I press combustion.
(Ultimately, I get what you are saying, I do, but it’s not like a Fire Mage is a Boss NPC that spawns in an arena . . . it is a spec with strengths and weaknesses like the other 23 . . .) I mean I hate Pally Bubble, I hate that normally I have to Combust to force the Pally to use their Bubble. Yet, it’s just something that has to be dealt with. Sure, a paladin may have to bubble and sacrifice an immunity to survive the combust—but I had to sacrifice the largest portion of my source of damage to force them to use that immunity. There is always a way to counter.
Part of PvP is knowing your own class and its capabilities and prepping for what you are about to face during the 20 or whatever second countdown when you are behind the gate . . . change talents, have a game plan to deal with a Fire Mage when they pop combustion.
And like you stated after your initial post, it depends on the amount of mobs pulled. Undergeared tanks, oblivious tanks, kite happy tanks, tanks who pull 3 adds at a time, pug groups, etc . . . all greatly contribute to whether or not Combustion truly is God-Tier that pull. I think you stated something similar, that the AoE cap doesn’t actually affect most groups since pulls aren’t usually huge in an average group.
On paper, on streams, and in familiar groups . . . sure, Combustion is 4*€%!NG amazing in M+. However, it isn’t always bonkers when you have a tank who decides to pull 3 mobs 75% of the dungeon, a pack of 5 near the end, so you decide to combust since obviously he isn’t going to pull a pack more than that, and then he decides after you’ve used combustion to go ahead and pull two packs of 5 at the same time.
But don’t forget you still have RoP anchoring you to an 8 yard radius.
A spec being in a good place does not make it incredibly overpowered. The main reason fire is so competitive right now is its uncapped aoe. Without that, they would be knocked down a few pegs in the meta.
It isn’t just the uncapped (and I would add overpowered because of Flame Patch) AoE though. It’s also the unrestricted movement during Combustion; the synergy Combustion has with soulbinds, conduits, legendaries, and covenant abilities; as well the almost unparalleled (certainly among the other mage specs and most other casters for that matter) execute power provided by the Searing Touch talent which on top of everything else also provides unrestricted movement at the most crucial phase of any boss fight. Additionally there is the utility provided by Dragon’s Breath which is a baseline ability not to mention not being completed locked out if silenced in PvP. I am sorry but Fire has literally got it all and has no real downside. If you don’t call that overpowered I don’t know what is.
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I don’t think IC is the sole reason for high fire mage combust damage. Yeah it helps a decent amount but its not the end all be all of fire mage. And what they should do is uncap every other class.
I think they should give db and cauterize to the other 2 mage specs as well. Too powerful of abilities especially for high level play to be restricted to one spec. At the very least db since frost does get access to 2 iceblocks. Still though, cauterize often comes most useful when you aren’t planning to die and it saves you.
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Oh right, Cauterize… I forgot to add the cheat-death Fire gets. It just gets better and better, dont it? But no, not overpowered at all. /s 
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I think Blizzard’s idea was that each spec gets its own defensive. Frost gets a 2nd ice block, Fire gets cauterize, and Arcane gets greater invis. For most content, I obviously prefer the cheat death but there’s a few spots where a 2nd immune can be extremely useful. I kind of wish this was a talent tier instead.
Oh but Cauterize WAS a talent. But then someone at Blizzard decided to make Fire god tier and made it a passive instead.
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The only thing that will happen if/when Fire gets nerfed is the top end keys will go down. If people are doing 24/25s then they’ll be doing 22s/23s (example). It won’t suddenly make your preferred spec the new go-to or meta option.
That’s right. Nerfing Fire won’t suddenly make Arcane more appealing.
Infernal Cascade is not the reason why Fire is dominating. Flamestrike is soft-capped alongside multiple abilities across multiple classes, so that’s not the issue either (Blizzard is soft-capped at 20 too). What’s making Fire so strong in AoE is Flame Patch (which is uncapped) and the sheer frequency of being able to Combust with Kindling and Shifting Power. If anything is changed, I suspect these two talents will be modified in 9.1. Flamestrike might be nerfed as well, either in it’s cap (i.e. soft-cap of 20 to a cap of 5 or 8) or it’s damage reduced, though after multiple expansions where Flamestrike was essentially unused I don’t think regressing too far and making it useless again is the ideal situation.
Pretty sure everyone knows that. Speaking for myself, that’s why I said I don’t want to see anyone nerfed, even over-performing specs like Fire. Just buff everyone so they’re on the same or at least similar level thus making them all viable.
Problem is, hotfixed damage increase auras won’t do anything. We need major overhauls on quite a few classes and frankly if there was a survey put out among the player base I am positive the overwhelming response will be in favor of getting all that taken care of first before wasting time and resources on more meaningless new content just for the sake of saying they put out something new to meet their quotas and metrics in time for shareholder meetings.
Fire isn’t actually good imo, it’s just that a lot of things are designed in a way that benefit it right now.
If a tank isn’t pulling large enough groups based on combustion’s timing, fire is poop. Uncapped AoE only matters if the groups being pulled aren’t 3-4 mobs.
And combustion seems to line up with a lot of dps windows in raids, the downtime between windows hurts fire mages waaay less because their dps is already poop during that time.
I think fire is succeeding less because the spec is good and more because everything else is lining up in their favor.
Oh, I completely agree. There’s a lot of specs/classes that need certain aspects to be revamped or redesigned, to some degree.
I totally get the borrowed power systems and why Blizzard has gone this route since Legion. But many classes/specs have, over the years, fallen by the wayside and these powers now complete classes instead of complementing them. It’d be nice to get an expansion without 3+ temporary power systems and instead Blizzard take the development time to revisit base class/spec design.
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No. There’s literally nothing accurate in this post. Aside from a half thought out “well combust lines up with dps windows in raids” and like…yea, it’s on a 1m cooldown. That means fire spec is…good. rofl.
That’s like saying “well balance druids aren’t very good because they have convoke and starfall doesn’t pull mobs that aren’t aggroed.” Like…ok.
Just wait until they realize that the dampening system they added to secondary stats – the “tax” system – will dampen damage faster than damage reduction from versatility. And you’ll see the same problem by 9.2 (unless, and this is my prediction, they change the gear strategy for PvP items to incorporate LOWER versa amounts in exchange for higher crit/haste/mastery – that is, 9.1 to 9.2 will not add additional versa, only higher “alternate” secondaries on PvP gear).
I believe a separate, second class of damage reduction needs added for Versatility called “Damage Resistance”, and functionally it “Increases the amount of damage you can withstand by x%.”
The difference? Withstanding 100% more damage is a 50% damage reduction. A 100% damage reduction is simply “immunity”. Mathematically, it changes the upper boundaries of the function from 100% to infinite… And halts exponential scaling in lieu of linearly reduced damage intake.
Literally every other damage resistance measure scales this way (e.g. you can go to infinite armor). Once they do that, they can remove this poorly thought out tax system altogether.
No thanks, there is no need for more homogenization between specs.
Frost needs to get back deep freeze and arcane be able to use PoM with all spells as in the past, when you could land an instant poly using PoM. This will bring Frost and Fire in point with Fire in pvp.
I think that when Cauterize was a talent, scorch was a talent also, in WoD I think. It made no sense to me.
I’m fine with each spec having their own defensive, I like it. Greater invisibility could use a buff though.
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Fire doesn’t have anything outside of combust. There is no real rotation outside of pressing fireball. Take away combust and you have a husk of a spec. Take away convoke from balance and they still have an actual spec to play.
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