We all know frost mage is crazy rn, it always has been. And arcane mage, despite needing a diploma to play it well, can also pump out some impressive damage.
However their fire mage is really lacking at the moment.
Firstly, BURST. Our burst seems to really be reliant on meteorite and frostfire bolt. if meteor misses half out opener dmg is gone right there. I though out burst wa supposed to come from Pyroblast (when i tested it i could only get 870k dmg but averaged more like 670k) which does not seem to be the case.
Secondly our sustain. the sustain on fire mage is absolutely horrible. i hit 230k fire blasts, 300k phoenix flames, 320k pyroblasts outside of combustion. Frost mage hits 1 millions dmg lances outside of icy veins.
To add to this we have out ROF removed which was a core dmg ability and now we get this stupid gimmicky overpowered shields which is just a counterstrike totem baked into a 5 second dispel able shield.
I reckon some Pyroblast buffs would help out a lot as well as buffing dmg outside of combust. Fire mage is just getting brutalized atm
Pyroblast hasn’t been your burst in a long while.
But our burst is scary.
Fire blast > fire blast > pyro > ice nova > meteor > combust > frostfire bolt > fireblast x3 > pyro > phoenix flames to finish.
You can 100-0 someone in short order with that, or force major defensives and it’s up again in like a minute to a minute thirty depending on how you’re playing, plus if you get lucky and get some frost fire bolt procs of you time it with when your free meteor drops you can absolutely clobber people. The best part is this cleaves too, which is great.
Yeah it feels bad to be a combust bot but what can you do? 2 set next season should fix this some, and maybe we actually have to run mechagon bracers for PvP since they’re so insanely over powered.
A lot of people for every mage spec didn’t like that 30% of their damage came from Ring of fire. That felt bad and was bad for the game.
Would be nice if they shifted that elsewhere in the kit, which they sort of seemed to with overpowered barriers, but that’s also another cheap gimmick and I’d like to see that shifted into actual rotational damage, sort of like arcane is getting.
Yea no fire doesn’t need a buff lmao. I saw a fire mage pop combust and use whatever their comet storm stuff is and global 2 people in a second lmao.
People don’t treat combust as scary and face tank my damage all the time. It’s hilarious watching warriors blow DBS at like 15% thinking they’re gonna make it.
Oh I know I see bad stuff all the time. This though legit overtuned. All it was was combust then whatever makes comet storm and meteor and al that come down and I’m fairly sure the comet storm alone did like 3 mill damage. It killed 1 and damn near killed the other it was wild. I think it was markers it happened to.
I get that but on the other hand 1 button did 90%+ of someone’s health and aoe at that but idk maybe they have to press multiple and it’s not obvious or something since it’s new im assuming? Just seemed a bit much.
fires damage prior to the patch was pretty lackluster if I remember correctly. Which sucks cause I personally think every spec should be viable (aside from tanks) in arenas atleast until they can find a way to include them and them not be disgusting.
Comet itself doesn’t do 90% of someone’s health.
Pears #11234 add up and I’ll show you.
And no, nothing new. Some fire blast and pyro buffs like 10% in the patch, but the big changes were overpowered barrier and removal of ring of fire from the damage profile so. Yeah. Maybe these people were also hitting the mage and eating the shield reflect? Which is also nerfed Tuesday
I gotcha I’ll add when I get on cause I am curious to see what it looked like since it’s completely new to me and I’d like to know so I can hopefully avoid the murder I witnessed
Ahh I gotcha yea it could have been that this was prior to the barrier nerf. It happened fast so All I caught at the time was the meteor and comet storm deleting them.
Yea comet storm and meteor is pretty gimmicky but is so easily countered. hunters can feign death, priests can meld, shamans can ground, warriors can leap etc. It would be much more dangerous if it acted like the frost mage comet storm where it hits the target rather than the location.
But my biggest problem is after this gimmick is over, fire mage does jack sh!t dmg. Like almost every other spec has some meaningful filler apart from like sub rogue
I mean otp fires making it work isn’t really indicative of the spec being good.
Fire definently suffers the most out of all 3 specs. Frost was just leagues above, and arcane is just doing its thing as per usual
Don’t think there’s any world where you look at the 3 mage specs and think “I’m gonna play fire because its great!” when both frost and arcane exist currently.
Honestly it wasn’t me it happened to it was markers I believe. 1 sec he was full the next he was dead and all I saw was comet storm and meteor lol. It was surprising to say the least
Normally I’d agree with this, but I think it depends. Petkick is gonna get his 73rd r1 on unholy dk even when it’s bad (like last season).
That being said, I think that oftentimes -especially with pure dps classes- multiple specs are fine, but one is better/easier/fits into more meta comps, even when the other specs are all fine and good.
Aff was obviously the best warlock spec last patch, but murk and thug both got r1 as destro. Cloud was also in r1 range as demo.
All 3 rogue specs saw r1 play and representation even if sin was the easiest and outlaw wideley considered the “best”.
I think that mage also falls into this category. Despite frost being much more popular and arguably better all around as it could play for burst and better sustained damage wincons, the highest rated mages were fire and arcane.
I don’t think frost is or was leagues above. I think they just have different damage patterns and needed different comps whereas frost was more self sufficient and versatile.
At the end of the day, fire has the most useability of all 3 schools and needs to cast the least while also having a baked-in cheat death, all of which were extremely important in an ele/feral meta that caused the other mage specs to suffer where fire wasn’t as impacted by the meta.
I think it really depends on what you’re Qing with and into.
I don’t think that’s even remotely fair to compare to, and I also think shuffle is a bad way to look at any thing. SOMEONE has to get the title, and when you no life the game as if it’s a job then of course someone with 73 DKs will get them.
I don’t see how you don’t think frost wasn’t just the absolute best mage spec by a mile. It had better defensives, was able to peel for itself and its team, and if left untouched it would just take over the game. On top of this, even if it’s trained into the dirt it still has extremely dirty one shots that don’t require it to be a situational CD timer.
Usability, sure, but not viability comparatively. Cheat death is a massive bait last season, and while not casting can def be great, it also hinders the spec when you know exactly what you’re looking for. Frost/Arcane could find different ways to do their setups/kills in multiple situations, but Fire was always 123 go. Granted, if it works it works, but it doesn’t mean that that is definently better than the others.
There’s also a point to mention that even in fire or arcane metas, mages will still gravitate towards frost even if it’s worse by a mile because it can do things that the other 2 specs can not (make melee hate life)
And this is just weird. Fire suffered just as badly into those specs as all 3 specs. And it was worse into everything else because frost/arcane had everything I listed above for itself, where fire did not have similar. If you didn’t absolutely pop off on fire, you just simply weren’t useful. Every single time I saw a fire mage in 3s or shuffle it was just auto win, the spec just didn’t do anything if it didn’t take over, which simply requires a response on your end to not lose to.
Sure, I could think there’s like 2 comps in the game where I’d definitively say fire is better than both the other specs, and then my counter arguement is that you just adjust to the other specs needs and have more reliability if fire isn’t absolutely god tier by comparison
I wasn’t talking about shuffle. Unholy dk was arguably the worst melee last season and petkick had 2 dks in r1 range with different comps and teams.
I think it was definitely the best overall, but I don’t think it’s level of peel was significantly different from other specs, especially when there’s a rogue with permanent crippling poison. Also, its only real kill pressure was during veins which was INSANE as a cd, but less frequent than totm/surge/bust.
I don’t think you can argue comparative viability when “worse” mage alts did better than mage mains playing the “off meta” specs.
How do you figure? People talked about it on stream from multiple povs that fire was better into all the ele shaman and feral teams because it wasn’t as dependent on slows or casts to stay alive or deal damage. Kalvish specifically talked about how fire was the only spec with 3 real schools so you could always guarantee your own cc and damage where arcane and frost only had 2. Also, yeah combust is super visible, but you can swap targets way better on fire than arcane because you’re not limited to your totm target.
