Fire mage combustion impact/design

Classes Mage
1

I wanted to start a discussion about how combustion has been feeling less and less impactful over time. When I press combustion or enter it through skb or a random temporal anomaly proc it doesn’t feel like i’m in an exciting or impactful burst phase. Even with UI it does not feel impactful, I think this is in part do to how high of an uptime we have with combustion now. With skb you can get combustion uptime over 50% of an encounter depending on how good you are with it. UI/SF does not get as high of an uptime but it will still get quite high with how much cooldown reduction we get and random TA procs. I bring up the uptime because I feel that we are now balanced around our uptime of combustion and since we have it up so often the damage/burst window of combustion has been lessened and now does not feel exciting/special/impactful. Downtime is necessary to make these exciting moments more impactful and fun, if you spend half of an encounter or more in combustion suddenly the downtime moments have more impact and make you feel bad. Instead of combustion being the highlight in an encounter the downtime moments become magnified and highlighted and combustion feels like it has less impact compared to those downtime moments. I would prefer if combustion uptime was reduced and more damage was baked into those few or couple combustion windows in an encounter. With reduced combustion uptime too, perhaps another look at our mastery would be necessary and a buff would be nice.

TLDR: Combustion uptime is way too high, and only serves to magnify downtime moments. Combustion no longer feels special or fun. I think combustion uptime should be drastically reduced so that it once again becomes impactful and the highlight of encounters rather than it being a given to be up for half or more an encounter.

2

No thanks.

If they decreased the uptime of combustion back to what it was in like bfa I would just not play fire ever.

Combustion is when fire is really fun, decreasing the uptime won’t make the rotation more impactful it would just make it less fun.

Also since fire does literally no damage out of combust, going back to lower uptime would mean that fire is literally unviable for 90% of people due to every pull needing to be catered towards fire.

This is just a bad idea that would result in the gameplay being worse.

Fire has 2 options UI and skb, both are fine.

Can’t you just be ok with having good to even very good burst? Must every spec in the game have a rollercoaster type damage profile? Just stop.

Fire is more fun than ever just fix a few things and buff st a bit

3

play something else other than fire, it has a unique gameplay and style compared to other classes, why would you want to change it?

4

Discussing the merits of varying uptime percentages on Combustion versus the overall tuning of the spec both inside and outside of Combustion isn’t a talking point that warrants “reroll lul”.

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5

I started playing fire mage in late bfa (when I first started playing wow) and fell in love with that version of fire mage. Coming from ff14 where blm was my main and a flat damage profile was what I was used to, fire mage felt novel and fun. I liked that type of payoff, knowing that when I press combust I will absolutely destroy this pack or pop off against a boss. Currently I am playing arcane since it gets close to that type of style with the big burst rotation and trinket combo. What unique things do you like about fire right now? could you go into detail about it?

6

bfa fire is what I fell in love with funnily enough. I agree that combustion is fun but since I came back after leaving part way through shadowlands I found this version of combustion to not really be fun. I disagree that every spec in the game has rollercoaster types of damage profile, I only took a cursory glance at some specs and sure many have burst phases but only a few seem to have some really big peaks and valleys. Arcane has that type of profile and is what I’m currently playing. What things do you think fire needs to be fixed?

7

More than anything else, I would say Fire has a few issues currently (not speaking to a Mythic/high key experience level, just what I’ve heard talking to people about it):

  1. Living Bomb has received focus, yet is neutered in terms of output. For how many nodes center on it, it’s just not impressive.
  2. Flamestrike is still in a somewhat awkward space. Better than it used to be, but it still feels somewhat off rotationally.
  3. Combustion uptime keeps increasing, which means the entire spec is tuned around having and expecting that higher uptime.
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8

Yeah, LB is not really impressive or used right now. LB should get the nerfs reverted to really see play, but if that happens then it probably just exacerbates the issue with your second point, which is flamestrike. Right now priority damage and cleave is a really good damage profile to have for m+ and if LB is good then I could see people entirely focusing on prio damage and only taking LB for that extra aoe and continue ignoring flamestrike.
Maybe LB should get reworked to be a damage buff for flamestrike? Cut down on the LB talent choices and perhaps add some more for flamestrike, although this could create a situation where you have to choose good aoe and bad st or good st and bad aoe.

You already know my thoughts on your third point, I agree and have my opinions on it.
Also, Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

9

UI had the opportunity to fill that niche, but I think the issue is that we don’t really have any other mechanics/cooldowns outside of Combust (rng Hyperthermia procs ain’t it). All for it if we had some other core thing to do besides spam Fireball and fish for crits, but as it stands Combust is the only fun part, so I’m all for it being up most of the time.

I think Fire is in a pretty good spot mechanically right now, and it’s nice that SF and FF are competitive. As others have said though, the main issues are the lack of choice around target-based spells that need not be reticle-based, and LB being kind of a dud.

10

how different would you say the class plays in combust and outside of it? On pull with firestarter you essentially play as if you had combustion up. I do not think combustion gameplay is that different from non combustion gameplay besides doing more damage and having guaranteed crits. Why is combustion for you so much fun compared to non combustion?

11

Living Bomb can actually do decent damage but it requires the Blast Zone talent for it to even show up on meters. That’s just too many talent points invested at the cost of too much single target damage, thus making it an extremely unviable option.

As for Combustion, I think there should be an option to decrease its uptime and increase its damage. Or conversely, increase all of Fire’s damage by a certain amount and then Combustion’s by a higher amount while keeping it at a longer cooldown. I do like high Combustion uptime, but at the rate its going we’ll just turn into red Frost when it used to be balanced around 100% Icy Veins uptime, which isn’t very fun outside of simple almost Patchwerk-like bosses.

12

It’s neat for blasting out low keys, but it’s still just not impressive for the raw ST drop and talent cost, yeah. Even in the raw AoE blasting department it’s still easily blown out of the water by several specs that do not take such a similarly devastating ST loss.

I love the gameplay of high uptime Combustion, but I don’t like the damage profile of high uptime Combustion. Maybe Blizzard is just trying to keep Fire from going nuts, but I just genuinely prefer Frost overall.

I think Ignite, Combustion and Flamestrike just genuinely need reworking.

  1. The entire spec gets adjusted to Ignite because it’s essentially a rolling spreadable DoT.
  2. Combustion functionally works, but like you said its expected uptime (and low opportunity cost due to Fire’s mobility) kneecaps the design of the rest of the spec when uptime is high.
  3. Flamestrike feels off in the kit as a whole. As opposed to Blizzard, which has a cooldown, Flamestrike just replaces Pyroblast in the rotation at certain thresholds/in certain conditions. That’s a lot of ground marker placements. I don’t think making it akin to Earthquake is the answer either, but I’m not sure what I’d say should be done with it.
13

Has flamestrike always felt weird like this? I dont know how fire mage and flamestrike felt prior to late bfa. I don’t think every spec needs the same tool (leads to homogenization, which does not feel good to me, this is a huge downside to ff14 imo.) so fire mage could just be THE cleave spec and eliminate flamestrike and let other specs pad on big aoe. The reverse could also be done I guess, eliminate ignite and just all in on upfront damage and force flamestrike to be aoe. I was also thinking that maybe flamestrike could be a big cooldown that consumes all ignite damage in an area to make one big hit and see where that goes…

14

(Before any of yall argue with me I’m talking about choice nodes and options here, not taking away anything from anyone.)

I know what you mean OP. In Dflight, feral Druids could pretty much keep Tigers Fury up nonstop. Instead of it making you more powerful, it actually just created your new baseline.

In TWW they changed that and you can no longer have near-permanent uptime of tigers fury. I like how they did it too. They made a choice node that either made it last longer and have a much higher uptime, or you can choose to make it have lower uptime BUT provide bigger buffs in that smaller window.

Outlaw rogue has felt similar to what you’re saying too—you pretty much can keep adrenaline rush up all the time. However, I think it works for outlaw because it doesn’t really change your rotation. It just makes everything go faster. It basically feels like your baseline, though. Compared to subtlety which has big burst windows but then chill low damage waiting periods. The big difference between sub and fire/outlaw though is that fire/outlaw are punished for not having high uptime in the lull periods. They’re both defined by “the faster you go, the faster you go” play styles.

All that to say, I’m no fire pro. But I would prefer it and like the spec more if there was maybe a choice node that favors a lower uptime on combustion playstyle, that either makes combustion windows less frequent but more potent, or increased damage outside of combustion (I know there’s one talent that already has a mechanic like that).

Because yeah, I like classes that don’t oscillate between hitting like a wet noodle one second and then doing massive damage the next to compensate for the wet noodle periods. Feast or famine.

I also like the design of survival hunters two cooldowns in coordinated assault and spearhead. They both buff different parts of the rotation, making it so ya don’t get good value over stacking both of them on top of eachother. Just spit balling here but I could see fire mage having room for a second cooldown that buffs non-instant spells during the duration, making it mutually exclusive from being useful with combustion. Imagine if Shifting Power were replaced with a cooldown like this… you’d want to use all your instant spells before going into this cooldown (because you won’t use them during to maximize the buff) so it would effectively be your “recharge your resources for your next combustion window” phase of the fight (just like shifting power), but it would slow everything down a bit, and make it so there may be reason to not just pop combustion immediately after it’s off CD.

I like fire a lot but I really wish there were some talent options to make it a bit more forgiving and not so go go go. But that just might be what it is.

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15

What you’re pointing out already exists, it’s called unleashed inferno, if anything skb is should go back to 8 so it’s competitive for sunfury.

Or at least fix the interactions, like how you can get both hyperthermia and combustion with skb due to hyperthermia proccing after the normal non skb extended combustion, instead of just proccing after the entire combustion window has run out

The damage profile of fire is completely fine, whether you are using skb or unleashed it’s just slightly under tuned.

16

No, the point of nerfing SKB was because it completely overshadowed UI, bringing it back to 8 stacks would just be df 2.0 fire mage. Sunfury itself needs some buffs if blizzard does not want to buff UI for fire mage.

17

Buff Ui slightly, it’s not like fire is overperforming anyway.

Sunfury might also need some very slight buffs

And yes i do know that skb was nerfed for ui, but i don’t think that was the best approach.

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