Ignite contributes too much to overall DPS but it too feels passive to warrant this much focus.
Suggestion: Shift some Ignite damage to Pyroblast and Flamestrike.
Over-reliance on Combustion
Combustion dominates the spec’s DPS potential, leading to significant DPS drops during its cooldown.
Suggestion: Reduce Combustion’s impact and redistribute damage to baseline abilities.
II. Gameplay Concerns
Ignite’s Role
Ignite being passive should mean it contributes less to overall DPS.
Suggestion: Consider changing Fire Mage’s Mastery to enhance core abilities, and scrap Ignite as a Mastery entirely. (Ignite could still remain in the game as a passive.)
Pyroblast vs. Ignite
Pyroblast should be more impactful; currently, it feels underwhelming.
Pyroblast numbers should be bigger. Big numbers on the screen feel good to the player.
Suggestion: Decrease reliance on spamming Hot Streak procs by a bit, and make Pyroblasts more powerful to compensate for fewer spammy casts.
III. Ignite’s Effect on Other Abilities
Impact on Flamestrike
Flamestrike is often ignored due to Ignite’s strength.
Impact on Other Abilities
Meteor is underused; its damage is too low for its cooldown.
Living Bomb’s DPS is majorly too low to ever be effective.
IV. Combustion Adjustments
Cooldown Adjustments
Nerf abilities like Kindling and Unleashed Inferno. Cooldown Reduction enforces a hyper spammy, excessively high APM playstyle. This can lead to each individual spell cast doing less DPS per cast in order to maintain overall class balance.
Shifting focus to Active Spells
Increase the prominence of Pyroblast and Flamestrike in the rotation so that they can stand on their own without the hard requirement of Combustion to feel good to use.
Moments without Combustion should still feel good for the Fire Mage— rather than the nosedive in DPS experienced currently without it.
I’d love it if ignite were a bit more interactive (e.g. letting you re-consume/bank it for application to the next target, extend/actively enhance it, or choose to explode it) - but then we’re basically just an Aff lock on the side. Problem is that Hot Streak is our only real mechanic, so we’re still just fishing for/forcing it outside of Combust. Would be great if ignite (or any Mastery to replace it) gave us something to do ex-Combust, especially with UI/Sunfury being the current go-to…
Living Bomb is currently way too low, and Meteor should be reverted to doing flat damage instead of splitting between targets.
Flamestrike is fine though, y’all just don’t know how to math. Ignite is better for AoE IF you talent it. With lower mastery (5-10%) and no talents, Flamestrike has higher damage per execution than Pyroblast/ignite on 4+ targets. With just Quickflame (25% increased FS damage) Flamestrike outperforms Pyroblast/ignite on 4+ targets until around 20% mastery. With Quickflame and Mark of the Fire Lord (Double ignite damage on FS) Flamestrike outperforms Pyrostrike/ignite past 40% mastery. If you take both of those and use Mastery of the Phoenix properly, ignite will never outperform Flamestrike. None of these talents are particularly out of the way, it’s easy to play with Flamestrike if you want to. (and this is before the 10% buff to FS announced today)
The key issue is not that the DPS disparity between Flamestrike and Ignite is so large. It’s that Ignite being such a passive option— and such a massively effective one— it makes it the most compelling choice. An effectively passive DoT (Ignite) that does as much damage as it does will allow for globals to be pressed elsewhere. (Though I will say, it’s not like Fire Mage has many periods where they aren’t absolutely spamming their keyboards as it is anyway.) I hold the opinion that Ignite and Combustion dominate and suffocate the spec.
I completely agree that combustion is oppressive to the rest of the rotation, and would like to see the Fiery Rush talent put in place of both the Improved Combustion talents to remove the impact mastery has on Combustion. (though, that would require crit to gain value elsewhere. personally I’d like to see crit scaling on Pyroblast.)
I wouldn’t say ignite opens up globals, as Hot Streak is a choice of either/or between Pyroblast and Flamestrike. What ignite does bring to the table is making your non-pyroblast damage cleave as well, so all the ignite from Flame Blast, Phoenix, and Fireball gets to cleave too. And because Flamestrike has to be clicked on the ground, you can’t hardcast into it and have it hit the target at the same time like Pyroblast to double your chances of setting up another Hot Streak.
Absolutely. Problematic talents like Improved Combustion and Unleashed Inferno only serve to further exacerbate the oppressiveness of the Combustion cooldown and even Ignite.
This is a huge reason why I deeply dislike Ignite being the Mastery for Fire spec. Perhaps it’s just a talents issue or a talent scaling (values) issue, but to me— it seems easier to change the Mastery completely, rather than each individual talent. Then remove or scale back the CDR provided by Kindling and Unleashed Inferno. After that, each spell’s baseline damage could be buffed up to stand on its own. They sort of did this with Frost Mage around the time Rune of Power was removed, and it has worked out flawlessly.
Honestly, if I had it my way, I would outright delete Unleashed Inferno. I really believe that talent has no long-term redeeming qualities and would be very hard to nerf in order to make playing outside of the Combustion cooldown feel good. I believe Blizz is intentionally going for an all or nothing playstyle for Fire Mage (Combustion) and I just don’t feel like it’s really working.
I think they just need to make combustion mean something again. It used to be one of the better cd’s in the game to the point tanks would pull mobs based around it. Raid leaders would assign targets for you to nuke down in raids. now its just basically average and barely makes up for the little damage we do while it’s on cd. Like where is our niche now? Late game M+ and just play something else for raid?
also playing fire mage at 14% crit feels like something a masochist would like.
Let Combustion be a CD again, and not a baseline for the spec to constantly be toiling away, trying to have nearly 100% uptime on. Let Fire outside of the Combustion CD stand on its own and not be doing tank damage. Nerf or remove Combustion CDR talents, and make it so Pyroblast does more damage than a Fingers of Frost empowered Ice Lance.
300k-330k (crit) damage on a Pyroblast is embarrassingly low for such an iconic, traditionally high impact ability. Especially when you consider the health pools our characters have now. If that would mean lowering Fire’s high APM, Hot Streak turret gameplay by a little bit so we can see big numbers on our baseline spells per cast again then so be it.
I’d rather attack the target with huge meaty hits on Fire spec, rather than the “death by 1000 cuts” the spec has become.
It really bothers me that you have to hit the target with 3-6 Pyroblasts over and over again to do 1 Glacial Spike worth of damage. Pyroblast is the main character of Fire spec. It currently feels like how an instant cast Fireball should feel.
I agree with many of your points. However, Flamestrike does have its purpose of AoEing down mobs that won’t be alive for long, such as mobs in 0-12 keys in m+. That’s quite a wide range where it’s optimal—the vast majority of players play in this range. Furthermore, removing Ignite in favor of empowering Flamestrike entirely removes our main strength: priority damage while still doing AoE damage. If Ignite were removed, it is important that something replaces it to retain our strength. Also, Flamestrike would have to feel better to use, as using a @cursor spell every global during Combustion really limits the use of our mouse, hindering our movement and ability to do things such as mouseover interrupts. Though I guess it is unique that this is the only spec in WoW in which my Kovaak’s Aim Trainer playtime has carried over lol.
Now onto just my personal opinion, I absolutely love Ignite. It’s the main reason why I am so drawn to fire, even more than the VFX/SFX (and that’s saying a lot)! The ability to, for example, pull some trash mobs onto a boss and then just sling fire at the boss while also burning down the mobs around it feels so great to me. Or, nuking down a dangerous mob while still being able to help out with AoE. Ignite is a passive, but at least it’s tied to how much damage you do to one target. It’s such a special mechanic and captures the fantasy of Fire mage so well for me, like I’m sparking up a massive fire before spreading it; in contrast, Flamestrike always has me feeling like a Destro lock with their Rain of Fire. There’s nothing quite like Ignite.
You might not believe me when I say that I also like Ignite and find the passivity of the spread damage pretty fun as well. I completely agree with your assessment here. Regarding Flamestrike as well.
Do you think we could still have Ignite at a reasonable power level in the spec, but also have the Mastery completely replaced with something else? I confess I wouldn’t know exactly what might be a more healthy Mastery replacement, but my instincts tell me Ignite as the Mastery is just not working for Fire. I’m open to hearing other considerations if anyone has more to say about this.
I still hold that Pyroblast should feel like it nukes our foes with big hits per Hot Streak, rather than the current “machine gun” death by 1000 cuts gameplay Fire has become. In the same token, I wouldn’t want the spec to be slowed down too much, or to lose its mobility. Hyperthermia gameplay can feel pretty fun and mobile, but I also really actually love when we use Sun King’s Blessing at the same time, since we can actually taste over 1 million damage on a Pyroblast.
I think people will probably always prefer instant casts and mobile casting for Fire, and I think that niche works out. But it’s pretty weird we hardly use Fireball at all anymore? Maybe give Fire a talent to proc free Fireball casts at this point similar to Frostfire Bolt instant procs. Then, juice up Pyroblast so it feels less like a Fireball.
Then, finally I always have to say. Combustion is such a problem. Regardless of how anyone wants Combustion to work and feel, it shouldn’t come at the expense of doing literally tank DPS outside of the cooldown. And constantly chasing the cooldown is exhausting.
TBH I would rater have BIG HITS than play like I’m playing guitar hero. I’ve leveled a warlock to 70 today and Chaosbolt feels like what pyroblast should be. I’m struggling to kill normal mobs as a fire without combustion while I can cast 2~3 skills as a warlock and kill the mobs.
Yep. The “epic” high APM style they wanted to push Fire spec into has done nothing more than water down big hitter spells like our Pyroblast. Yeah, the idea of machine gunning Pyroblast is “EPIC” but in practice, it makes the spell hit like wet paper to remain balanced. I would happily trade for fewer Pyroblast instant casts (fewer Hot Streaks) if that meant Pyroblast had big numbers on my screen again. Fire has many instant cast spells as it is anyway (3 charges of Phoenix Flames, 3 charges of Fire Blast, proc Scorch, etc.).
Funny how Destruction Warlocks can machine gun their Chaos Bolts relatively close to the amount Fire Mage does Pyroblast (still much less I think), yet Chaos Bolt still is a heavy hitter. If you still want to keep playing your Mage, Glacial Spike is kind of a builder spender ability, but it can somewhat scratch the itch of Pyroblast being a big hitter again (it’s not the same of course though).
Random side thing. I was target dummy testing my Mage today. Pyroblasts hitting for 280k-310k on the dummies. On my Frost Mage, Frostfire Bolt was hitting them for ~220k. I don’t know what kind of wonky business is going on with Fire, but this is just wild to me. I will say that I didn’t test for a long time or anything. I’ve been on my Devastation Evoker and massively enjoying seeing every spell actually do big damage.
I do like the idea of Ignite, being an extra burn on top of up front damage and spreading like a wildfire. But it has 2 main issues: it’s very punishing if enemies don’t live long enough, and it’s entirely passive (liked by some, hated by others).
So, how’s this for a suggestion(s)?
First, Mastery’s scaling needs to be pulled back by about 30%. Sorry, given the rest of the suggestion, it would be needed.
Next, Pyroblast does it’s damage AND an AoE% of it’s single target damage based on your crit chance (if you have 20% crit it does 20-30% of it’s single target damage in an AoE as well). This allows much needed crit scaling on Pyroblast in single target, that then lets Combustion’s tie to mastery be severed without dumping crit’s value for Fire.
Then, replace Flamestrike, with a new version of Cinderstorm. Cinderstorm requiring Hot Streak to cast and doing a flat amount of damage in an AoE (8-10sec CD), then causing Ignite on all targets in the area to tick 200% faster (doing it’s damage over 3sec instead of 9sec), and increase it’s damage by 120-150% if it effects 3+ targets (maybe the increased damage effect replaces the current Intensifying Flames talent and lets Controlled Destruction be buffed a little, since they basically serve the same purpose currently).
This would solve a lot of problems. First and foremost, it blends the passive Ignite/AoE playstyle with an AoE ability that actually feels impactful to press. It removes the “Have to click the ground in a high AMP Cooldown, while also probably moving” Flamestrike comes with. It gives Pyroblast a little more heft, as well as crit scaling. It lets crit be tied into Conbustion without it also double dipping in Ignite, while also keeping Ignite’s value for AoE. And, last but not least, it gives players a way to mitigate the punishment that comes with enemies dying too quickly for a 9sec DoT to build up and spread.
We just need to have back our cata playstyle minus the combustion debuff, let it be the buff as it is right now, 1 min coldown and focus on the crit/big damage and let the ignite work for 30%/40% of our direct damage, tweak the numbers not to be too crazy but not to be utter crap and voila!
I’m in the camp of just a full rework they need to remove combustion and just start over period. The spec is literally tuned around mages having that big 100% crit window, when you are out of it you hit for wet noodle damage. I’d prefer the damage to be solid without the cd then you get a slight bump when you have your 2 minute buff up.
