I can see how one can argue about flow as well. Of course, general throughput is what drives the sims, but one of the reasons Pyroclasm isn’t good is because it clashes with our apex that keeps spamming us with Fire Blast charges. By making both the apex proc a bit less (I don’t know by how much they reduced it, though) and speeding up the hardcast with the tier set, it’ll have a better place in the rotation. That is to say, throughput is what dictates what’s good and what’s not in the end, but I can see how someone could interpret it not flowing well in the rotation.
I’m not a fan of the tier set for mostly because it’s another guaranteed crit mechanic devaluing the stat even further. We’ll get to a point where getting crit will actually turn into a literal negative since its value is already so incredibly low.
I wish we had a tier set that interacted with Meteor instead.
They move forward without adressing any issues we have and forcing a capstone which is boring,anti-synergestic with half the kit etc etc etc.
Why does it have to be freakin pyroclasm…Why couldnt it have been meteor which is actually something that is more fun and flows well with the spec? Plus both hero trees can use meteor, pyroclasm has only one synergy with SF and FF is dead in the water…
At this point it makes me wonder what is this major incompetence that has persisted since Midnight alpha for mage. How can they be so tone deaf? Do they want money actually or they simply dont care?
I also thought that they had mentioned somewhere previously that they had been moving away from tiersets that were forcing you to take specific talents.
If I’m remembering correctly, then this is a blatant retcon in a spec that has already been feeling neglected for a while.
It is interesting, because people also complain about combust being slowed down by having to cast scorch of all things, yet here you are suggesting that longer than Fireball isn’t disruptive.
Maybe a better tier set would be to simply have our crit damage tied to our crit rating.
2PC: Critical damage of your spells is increased by 25% of your critical strike rating.
4PC: Critical strikes out of combustion give you one stack of Fiery Rage. Upon entering combustion, consume all stacks of Fiery Rage to gain 1% Critical Strike rating per stack consumed.
Well… people have. Quite a few people complained during pre-patch and beta about the loss of Phoenix Flames and that we did not have enough Fire Blasts, and that we had to use scorch during combustion which felt bad.
Why? I understand not having it work like that as a general stat, because it creates an exponential strength to it that would lead it to being the best stat for every class, but I do not see why it would be an inherent issue as a tier set bonus for Fire Mage specifically. The exponential benefit would lift the damage out of combust (as their stated intention), and would keep the burst identity of Fire in tact. The crit chance already does nothing in combust where most of our damage comes from, anyway.
Obviously, as with any tier set and changes to specs, you would need to adjust tuning.
Functionally scorch and PF is the same. You spend 1 GCD getting another crit for hot streak and you can move while doing it. It’s really not that big of a deal imo.
It causes the damage to scale quadratically with crit rating. Having a fixed higher crit damage amount can be balanced around but for one class to scale quadratically with a stat would cause a mess.
It would break how it scales the class so you’re either balanced at low gear and broken in full bis or your balanced in full bis and a wet noodle at low gear.
Yeah sorry, quadratic not exponential. Though, my meaning was the same.
I think you overestimate the issue here. Critical Rating works like this in FFXIV and FFXIV has less of an issue with balance and a much more moderate damage growth than WoW.
That said, you are correct that you would do more damage when you have better gear.
As for scorch and phoenix flames, I mostly agree. My comment on scorch was to be illustrative, but I think you are caught up on the pedantry of it rather than understanding the meaning of my point.
If they made this change to crit rating and not just as a tier set for one spec then that’s a whole different discussion.
In a perfect world, each spec is balanced throughout a season. If crit rating also gave just fire mage crit damage then having fire mage be balanced throughout a season would untenable imo.
I think the best thing blizzard could do for fire is remove anything that guarantees a crit and then tune the spec around that change. They can have the spells that guarantee crits just give a stack of heating up.
You don’t even cast it in Combustion afaik, so no, I’m not suggesting that.
Some drama kings here are suggesting that a 1.8 second cast is somehow the end of the world, even though that’s only a marginally slightly longer cast time than a regular Fireball. Like this makes them unplayable and ruins the feel of Fire Mage, even though again, it’s just a suped-up Fireblal you’re casting. And other specs (Frost Mage with Glacial Spike, Arcane with Prismatic Bolt, and especially Devourer for those who played it) manage their cast times just fine.
Not a fan of mandatory pyroclasm. I understand that noone PvPs but that talent has been dead in PvP since its inception so this tier set is completely DOA.
Fires total lack of spec identity is so bad I can’t believe were trying to make pyroclasm work. Just take this spec out back and finish the job so I can stop having hope it’ll get a rework.