The nerfs are probably overkill from a balance perspective. However, they do nerf simply to shift the meta, that’s something that’s very clear. The psychology of the average player wants to see this rotation in specs outperforming others. It’s also difficult to just balance the game, so here we are.
Also, for average players it’s probably not going to matter. After this last patch cycle of people complaining about Fire mages, I say let them have their win in getting the spec nerfed. They’re still going to complain even after Fire is set to middle of the pack/third among the mage specs. Truth is, it’s not going to matter much in the end. If you’re the average player, improving mechanics/DPS uptime is going to be the bigger deal than blizzard’s class balance. I’m sticking with Fire regardless, because I enjoy the spec and like the utility of its burst to burn down difficult trash packs in M+.
My issue / argument with that is, we already farmed all of our crap for fire. I do not like them forcing us to refarm everything if we wish to be competitive. It truly is a horrid game design forcing players to do tedious crap without end.
I am honestly surprised they have not realized this with their perpetually dwindling numbers and Final Fantasy’s growing population.
Farming can be fun and give you a ‘eureka’ moment, but forcing us to literally refarm something we have already completed just because of a class tuning or balancing patch is genuinely how you lose people.
I get the aoe nerfs. Even with them, fire is still expected to be S-tier for M+ (with frost sitting at A-tier according to predictions).
Nerfing the conduit … fine, ok. What made me switch to frost is the Kindling nerf. Fire outside of combustion is boring to me. Chaining crits for not much damage. I find it even more boring than the conserve phase for arcane (which isn’t even that bad anymore).
With the nerf to Kindling initially expected to turn “minute mage” into “minute and a half mage” I said buh bye Fire and went Frosty. Never really enjoyed fire anyway and wasn’t even committed to playing it well for a long time this tier.
Well that’s the thing, right? They nerfed combustion twice yet did nothing to their sustain.
Double the damage of fireball or something and I will agree with the double nerf, but IMO fire will be relatively unplayable in raid with the two combustion nerfs.
Also, with fire taking a back seat to raiding, I doubt you will see many in M+ unless they are purely dedicated to M+. Changing specs and farming 3-4 legendaries is just a giant pain in the butt, needlessly so, I might add.
These nerfs were entirely because of Fire’s dominance in M+, not with regards to anything it was doing in CN.
Fire absolutely destroyed every other DPS spec in the game by a wide margin in higher M+ in Season 1. It was a requirement for every competitive team in MDI as well. It just offers too much output every minute via Combustion and an uncapped AoE in Flamepatch with the benefit of being virtually unkillable given its survival kit. No matter how much you enjoyed M+, you do have to admit that from a balance perspective it was absolutely broken.
It wasn’t necessarily strong in CN because of its kit, it was strong because the fights favored its kit and cooldown lineup.
Did it need a nerf? Yes. Is this overkill? We’ll see. I don’t think Fire is going anywhere with regards to its M+ dominance.
Also, given how they’ve still left it with an uncapped AoE their intention is probably to make it be the AoE spec for mages. They probably don’t want it to be broken for both the ST and AoE phases of a key (which it basically is right now).
This is true when the group is able to pull above average number of packs at once, keep that in mind.
This is what they should have changed if they wanted to nerf Fire for balance reasons. However, they didn’t do this. It’s also hard for me to believe they didn’t just do this to shift the meta when we have blues using language like this in their posts:
Most above average groups with some degree of coordination pushing 20s do this though, because they have to in order to time stuff.
There’s no point talking about spec balance with regards to pugs or lower keys. Any combination of the standard 5 (1 tank 1 heals 3 DPS) specs with any cov can do any +15 in time with any affix setup.
They didn’t directly target the problem though. So now, VDH is still the best tank because it can kite better than the other tanks. Uncapped AOE is still a problem while other classes/specs without it can never hope to achieve the same damage per mob ratio. What they did was not balancing the game. The only reason to have some classes have uncapped AOE while others do not is to ensure people can press higher and higher keys, but only with those specific classes. In this case, they should just uncap everyone’s AOE and have a return of melee DPS being top again. At least melee has more mechanics to deal with. Fits right in with keeping MDI “exciting”.
VDH got a nerf towards 9.0.5 as well. I think their goal isn’t necessarily to make these specs lose their niche, but to make it tougher for them to get their numbers/niche across in said setup. Which is why Fire retained its uncapped AoE.
It is also absolutely impossible to make sure all specs perform equally as well in all aspects of PvE, because that would also defeat the purpose of picking a spec in the first place.
I think what they’re trying to do is basically have different specs shine in different aspects of the game, but at the same time make it slightly more difficult for them to scale/perform in their setups. It’s no different than when they nerfed Splitting Ice cleave & Ice Bite for Ice Lance on Frost; Frost still dominates in 2 target cleave, but it’s just a bit tougher for it to get its numbers out there.
You are right about arcane, but did you see the new kyrian rotation? I find that super clunky and zero fun… I can’t accept that mess as meta at all. I hope blizzard reverts kindling nerf, and keep everything else
I get that. I’m irritated with their logic because they doubled down on something that I believe is causing more problems for everyone.
Without uncapped AOE:
There’s suddenly a cap for everyone that puts a limit on the number of packs pulled.
That limit makes it easier for tanks to stay in one position and actually tank. Increasing the effectiveness of non-kiting tanks
They can now tune the numbers so that the gap between classes/specs for AoE never gets too large.
They can now balance the game more effectively at the top without hindering those at the bottom as much.
To explain more on that last point, the nerfs they have done are only going to hurt people that cannot make large pulls in M+. Uncapped AOE will continue to scale as more packs are pulled, overriding any form of tuning unless that tuning makes the class/spec unplayable or not worth playing.
Having specs shine at different aspects of the game to the degree that they are doing now is also wrong in my opinion. People should be allowed to choose one spec for all forms of content and not be heavily punished for it. I know some like to play all the specs, but there are plenty that like to focus on one. Additionally, covenants more or less lock people into playing one spec, so locking them into one form of content is also a poor decision. It really just hinders people that like to play one character, are still improving their performance in the game etc.
To be clear, I’m mostly arguing that their motivation for the nerfs was to simply knock the spec down and to not to actually balance the game. To claim they are balancing the game is wrong, because it’s clear that the game would be much closer to being balanced if they had changes revolving around removing uncapped AOE first and additional tuning thereafter. What these changes effectively do is: 1) make it harder to raid as Fire. 2) make it harder to run M+ as fire in 2-3 pack pulling groups. By how much? We’ll see. Maybe the changes are fine. In this situation blizzard is wrong no matter what the end effect is though.
I mean unless you’re pushing for like 3k io, world top 100 to CE, etc. this is still very much possible. If what you’re looking for is every single spec to be absolutely viable for the top 5% of players, it has never happened and never will. If what you’re looking for is a place where every spec can clear content, but each spec has its own niche, we have it right now. And that’s not changing in 9.1.
Also the definition of “heavily punished” is extremely vague/arbitrary and changes from person to person
I don’t think anybody is arguing about this. But the spec needed to be knocked down, absolutely. Whether or not this was too much of a knock down remains to be seen.
Just like CN, if a fight design favors Fire, it will still do fine in raid. I doubt one’s spec will be a major hindrance for clearing Heroics though. The last 2 fights in particular look good for Fire, as they have timed periods where high AoE burst is needed. Fire slips in perfectly for such a setup, especially since borrowed power systems aren’t going anywhere.
So pull more groups? I mean really, part of progression into higher keys IS trying to come up with better strats/routes/pulls instead of hoping for a broken spec that lets you face roll everything.
Don’t forget Fire (like all specs) will still scale with new gear, an extra potency slot, new Soulbind traits, etc.
True, it’s probably a non-issue for heroic raiding. Raids are a bit different than M+. You’ll still be able to do it fine once you’ve learned the mechanics without needing to hit hard DPS breakpoints. At this level, raids are more driven by mechanics, but doing below average damage will still make it harder.
This is the problem. Why would I ever take a Fire mage through progression up to 15+ keys as a tank if I know they won’t be able to compete with damage until x amount of mobs are pulled now? If the other DPS are not interrupting important casts yet and the tank/healer are not able to push through large trash pulls yet, the fire mage is now more of a hindrance if anything. Even now I much prefer Frost mages to Fire mages when our group pugs for damage because we haven’t gotten to the point where we can reliably handle larger pulls for that fire mage to do their damage. (Though it may just be true that the Fire mages we pug are bad due to just playing the meta and not appreciating the spec.) My point is: For M+ the nerf looks like it mostly affects the low-end to average portion of the player base (> 50% of the players are not getting KSM) and minorly for the the high end.
So if balancing is supposed to be about adjusting the top end of the players, why not nerf areas that specifically target them and how they play (e.g., Uncapped AOE)?
No, it affects the higher end player base more than the lower one, because they have to time their bursts, pulls, CCs and DPS to the absolute second or else everything goes wrong and they wipe just as quickly as they can kill things.
Whereas if you don’t push for KSM you don’t even get all the affixes (depending on key level) and really it’s more about mechanics over the actual DPS. All SL dungeons have extremely lenient base timers at levels below +15. The total DPS from the group to time such a key is very low. Base Fire Mage AoE/3 target/ST sims right now put it comfortably ahead of a quarter of the requirement, which is very good, as usually each DPS is expected to more or less pull somewhere around that with the final quarter coming from any excess DPS they do + tank dps + healer dps.
Because this gives lower end players no incentive to improve if their spec has no potential to do anything in the game ever. If anything, the better change would be to give the other specs uncapped AoE instead of removing it so that better strats could be formulated for higher keys because of the side utilities specs with capped AoE provide. Also the nerfs to Fire do target higher end players more than they do the lower end players, because these are primarily DPS nerfs with no changes to playstyle. And numbers matter more as keys scale up.
When enough packs are being pulled:
Fire mages at the top end for M+ before the nerfs are S-tier and will continue to be S-tier after the nerfs (according to people that don’t like the spec especially).
When not enough packs are being pulled:
Fire mages are potentially dropping down a tier in damage after the nerfs.
So you’re telling me that the nerfs hit the top-end harder, yet Fire Mage will continue to be S-tier at the top end in M+? Lowering the ceiling doesn’t change much when people will still need the uncapped AOE to push their higher keys. It’s going to be slower, sure, but Fire mages will continue to be a requirement for a very gimmicky reason. Meanwhile, Fire mages at the low to average end are now having a much harder time meeting the DPS requirement (it’s currently ~5k for each DPS) to achieve KSM.
How does this check out?
For top end, Fire mages go from S-tier to S-tier
For low-average end, Fire mages drop down a tier in damage.
The nerfs do little to drop fire mages down a tier in M+ at the top end. At the medium , I’m not taking them outside of guild members when I’m tanking/healing because I know they are going to be worse off than a Frost mage at the level that I play.
This has been a good discussion though. I don’t mind the outcome of who is right or wrong here. If you’re right, that means that every person complaining about Fire mages being too good needs to stop now. If I’m right, then Blizzard has continued to screw up their balance changes for the sake of having a subset of classes have uncapped AOE instead of all or none. Maybe we’re both right? Maybe people need to stop complaining about Fire and start complaining about the uncapped AOE more (i.e., make it all or nothing).
I mean that’s your PoV though, and you’re entitled to it.
Ultimately, I don’t think dropping a tier, if true, for the lower player base is a big deal. At this point, a full group of C-tier specs can time a +15, so honestly I don’t see how dropping from S to A or even B for the lower-ended players will be a massive issue. If anything it will make literally no difference in the grand scheme of timing keys that are <= 15.
Neither do I. Refreshing to see your perspective on it. All the best for 9.1 <3
I dont think you need 5k for each dps to get KSM, it’s way lower than that, like 3k-4k is enough. I sell rushes and most of the time the buyer stays afk on the entrance and we still +2 it.
That was my experience at least when I got it, at least for the harder dungeons. It allows for a wipe or two at least. Usually the problem occurs when the DPS aren’t helping with interrupts/CCs/dispels (decurse is a very useful spell btw) or they’re dying to avoidable damage.