Fire Mage Feedback

In Development Midnight: Curse of Ula'tek Public Test Realm
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Unlike the class and Arcane reworks, Fire at least has some good to go along with the bad. If it were tuned better (more on this below) I think the Midnight rework would be hailed as mostly being successful, so I thought I’d start with the main positives:

The role of combustion

Having Combustion be a proper burst cooldown again feels great, particularly with the ability to flex timings a bit by talenting in and out of Firestarter. Two minute BFA type burst was definitely silly, and minute mage burst hit just the right spot in terms of damage profile and combustion uptime. The Apex talent playing into Combustion but being implemented in a way to avoid uptime creep is a nice touch also.

Spec tree flexibility

In principle the spec tree allows us to branch out to different flavours/talents like Meteor vs Scorch, or Firestarter vs Molten fury, without compromising (much) our ability to do single target or AoE, which is nice. Ish, more on this later.

Obviously if we had just pros the spec would have a bit more than one fiftieth of the Frost raid parses and next to no participation in keys, so on to the stuff that needs looking at:

Gameplay and button count

The removal of Phoenix Flames in Midnight was much criticized, and while nobody is sad to see that exact version of that button go because of how janky it was, it has left the spec feeling rather empty. This is true both inside Combustion (more on this later), but also outside of it - the spec just needs something more going on for it, and the spec tree doesn’t have enough of that. Heat Shimmer procs are too rare, as are Meteor casts (even with Blast Zone, which is too hard to talent into). In principle playing Sunfury Execution, Pyroclasm, Meteor and Blast Zone has a bit more going on, but the tuning just isn’t good enough and picking that route is just too restrictive. Fire has had plenty of these in the past, whether they be a Legion-era active (and strong) Living Bomb, or Legion-era Phoenix Flames (why has Strafing Run never made a comeback??), or Legion-era Dragon’s Breath (notice a trend?), or some combustion minigame a-la Infernal Cascade/Blaster Master…we just need a little more going on.

Resource overflow

Getting good value out of Combustion historically required managing our crit generators like Inferno Blast and Phoenix Flames carefully. Since TWW however we have received more and more cooldown reduction on IB, to the point where now it is optimal to enter Combustion without any charges, and to then basically just spam IB and pyro back to back. This much cdr also forces active abilities like pyroclasm out of possible talent builds, because time spent doing stuff that isn’t consuming IB is time spent not gaining value out of so many of our talents. Between Fiery Rush, Spontaneous Combustion, From the Ashes, the tier set, and the Apex talent, we could remove the first three and the spec would be better off, particularly if they were replaced with something worth actively playing around. This was a goal of the Midnight rework that was missed completely, and if anything it has worsened.

Relative ability tuning:

The relative tuning of our abilities is very, very off as well. Ignite is tuned to be extremely mediocre, and as a result the spec is about 30% behind say Frost in low (think 2-5) target cleave - and that’s when running cleave talents, which begin gaining damage from Flamestrike at as few as 3 targets. This is caused partially by Ignite being bad, and partially by Pyroblast itself being extremely mediocre - as a comparison, it currently does roughly twice the damage per execution time of a Frostfire Bolt, while back in Legion it was about 5 times that of a Fireball. Meteor is similarly undertuned (despite a ~1000% SP coefficient!). This was also a stated goal of the Midnight rework that has missed the mark completely. Beyond the impact on talent choices, this also means that optimizing the spec’s damage in raid involves delaying combustion in order to Flamestrike a bunch of adds. A spec just being a mass AoE merchant is just not enough for it to be fun or worth playing, you just never feel like you’re contributing meaningfully. Much of this feels like it’s caused by the devs being afraid of Ignite spread, but if it’s such a big problem why can’t we go back to tuning the talents designed to reign it in in the first place (more later)?

Unfun, bad, or forgotten talents:

Because every tree has some of course

Mote of Flame: a 3% flat fire damage buff is the single most boring talent to have ever been introduced. This thing has no reason to exist other than to pad out the tree
Critical mass: this talent is not bad per se, but with Overflowing energies being buffed (which was very positive for the filler rotation, so it should stay) fire’s crit scaling is atrocious, and optimal gear involves having literally zero crit on it if possible. This scaling would easily be fixed by returning to a 1:1 crit: mastery conversion during Combustion
Controlled Destruction, Intensifying Flames: these aren’t bad talents per se (although CD makes target swapping annoying), but why are they not being used to tune Ignite properly as they were intended to, and instead the whole spec has to suffer the fear for our cleave to scale out of control? Also, IF contributing zero damage at 4 or more targets feels awful; it should just always deal damage to 3 and no more than 3 targets, no matter how many have Ignite on them.
Flame accelerant: this talent is just a one point tax for Pyroclasm, which makes that talent even more un-appealing
Burn it all vs slow burn: we do not need two talents that both passively increase the damage in combustion, pick one and stick with it

On the 12.1 changes:

Moving towards Pyroclasm is welcome as the spec desperately needs something extra going for it, but it should not require a tier set, two capstone points, and one hero talent point in Sunfury Execution. This is particularly true when the spec desperately needs to invest in Burnout to provide any semblance of cleave or aoe damage - and even then, it’s thoroughly mediocre between 2 and 6 targets, despite that talent investment. More work needs to go into tuning the relative power of the toolkit, and Ignite/Intensifying Flames/Controlled Destruction in particular need to be looked at.

Moving damage outside of Combustion is a double edged sword. On the one hand, flexible one minute cleave is what gives the spec power in raid. On the other, depending on the pacing of a dungeon the spec may either feel completely amazing or completely terrible. A better design would be to give players choice through tuning hero trees or builds - for example, like in s2 of TWW we could play Frostfire Unleashed Inferno to lean into burst, or Sunfury Unleashed Inferno/Frostfire SKB to lean into consistent damage.

The spec tree is filled with bloat talents like 3% more fire damage, 10% more damage on hot streak, etc.

2 Likes
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Can’t say the changes for midnight was “hailed as mostly being successful” when hardly anyone is playing the spec.

The lack of talents (since 50%+ goes to fireblast) that buffs anything and inconsistent damage outside of combustion does not make the spec fun.

And how does moving to Pyroclasm is a welcome? its pretty much with that change SKB without the combusion added to it.

The changes in season two is not fixing the lack of damage or anything to do outside of combustion.

These changes for fire in midnight are just bad and its so bad that most people who does love the changes for fire doesn’t even play fire…

2 Likes
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Please just give all three mage specs 2 charges of barrier. Whichever spec gets that talent is overwhelmingly likely to be the one that’s got the most potential to live.

5 Likes
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Re pyroclasm - personally I just desperately want the spec to have something more going for it other than fishing for crits outside of combustion, and mindlessly spamming ib/pyro inside it. Just…some form of some active button, or resource management, or just anything please God. Having pyroclasm at least achieves that, in theory. Yes, it’s a low bar, but hey we’re playing Mage in Midnight, the bar is on the floor. It worked well with minute mage builds back in Legion/BfA, I don’t see why we can’t back to that when their stated goal is for Fire to have that vibe anyway.

I agree with a bunch of your points though - talents are boring, the placement of Pyroclasm in the tree is awful if it’s going to be a fundamental part of how the spec plays, etc etc. The only thing I don’t disagree on is on Fire’s popularity, I think if it were tuned higher (or overtuned) it would be much more popular, it just sucks it’s been left to be a meme for most of the season.

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Here is my fire mage feedback.

To start with the glaring issues fire has have not been even remotely addressed.
Key issues are :

  • Survivability and Defensives
  • Lack of meaningful downtime
  • Lack of ability to meaningfully cleave
  • Talents in both mage and class tree that are uniteresting,bad, or placeholder nodes like hypothermia , or mote of fire .

Onto 12.1 now .

With the introduction of the 12.1 tier set , its obvious that we are required to invest talent points and path our way to pick pyroclasm which is a capstone. Disregarding tuning for now since its always subject to change, pyroclasm does not adress any of the outstanding issues and on the contrary, it creates more.

  • Build variety now is even more forced, which will become apparent once you try to spec into Pure ST or ST/cleave etc etc. m+ build with pyroclasm appears to be a pathing nightmare.

  • Anti-synergy with half the capstones that favor mastery but are also tied to Fire blast and cleave. Pyroclasm appears to favor versatility/haste but most of the capstones want mastery or are actively providing mastery which we might want to avoid.
    Pyroclasm only has one choice pick synergy with hero trees in form of SF Sunfire Execution. Frostfire appears to have 0 interactions with pyroclasm.

  • Trying to fit in pyroclasm inside a combust is something very counter-intuitive, especially for FF but SF also. Both want to maximise the window and extend it to maximum while also dumping as many spells possible. Pyroclasm casting inside combust actively hampers this. On the other hand , not interacting at all with your main power gain ( tier set) inside your one and only big damage cooldown is very weird.

  • Does not address the problem outside combustion. The gameplay isnt the least more exciting which was a main pain point for fire. You are victim of RNG. Sometimes you might get many pyroclasms but sometimes you might not get any in a downtime period.

Moving forward, Survivability has not been adressed AT ALL! the 4% ““avoidance”” talent its actively nothing and completely irrelevant. After the midnight pruning in s1 , it was obvious that mage in general, but fire also ( although misrepresented and not played at all due to outstanding problems, literally being the spec at the bottom of class/spec played in all content but pvp ) that the defensive situation is dire. Mage is prone to dying and is the weakest class in all pve content.

Suggestion : Introduce again some form of DR to Mirror Image , which we desperately need. Remove talents like hypothermia that do absolutely nothing and must have been an AI slop, and introduce an active button that adds DR. Mage has always been a high floor high ceiling class, and piloting it well was rewarding in the defensive sector. It was a running joke till midnight that pug mages are terrorists due to poor defensive cooldown management and most of them were dying left and right, but skilled mages could survive.

Petition : Please oh please double think the new 12.1 tier set. It creates more problems than it solves, its uninteresting, anti-synergestic and forced. Instead consider Meteor as a candidate for a tier set . Meteor fits in quite nicely in both combustion and downtime, has the ability to adress the issues of boring downtime by tweaking or providing less cooldown via tier set and amp the downtime damage but also combust damage. Pathing with meteor is actually quite nice and can support many capstone combinations depending on tuning and target situation ( for example meteor does not work against picking either burnout and left side or pure ST in cinderstorm. cinderstorm though suffers from terrible tuning even in ST).

3 Likes
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Fire Mage Feedback

I wanted to provide my feedback on Fire Mage after reviewing the 12.1 changes. I have primarily played Fire Mage since WoD, with some time on Arcane and a break in Dragonflight for Devastation Evoker. Two weeks ago, I changed to Unholy DK. I was hoping these changes would make me want to return to Fire, but currently I am planning to continue playing Unholy DK instead.

Spellfire Spheres Visual

Reducing Spellfire Spheres from five to three is an improvement, but I would still strongly prefer an option to disable the visual entirely.

Players care a lot about how their characters look, as shown by systems like transmog and the barber shop. Having a permanent visual effect active 100% of the time works against that. A glyph, toggle, or barber/transmog option to hide Spellfire Spheres would be very welcome.

Pyroclasm Gameplay

I do not enjoy Pyroclasm.

Even with cast time reductions, it feels like it interrupts the core Fire gameplay loop. Fire is most fun when it is fast and fluid, especially during Combustion. Pyroclasm creates awkward tension between spending Fire Blast charges quickly, avoiding overcaps, maintaining the Combustion flow, and finding time to hard cast Pyroblast.

The result is that pressing Pyroclasm often feels bad because it slows the spec down, but not pressing it also feels bad because you are wasting value. That is not a satisfying gameplay decision.

Build Diversity

Pushing Fire further into Pyroclasm also reduces build diversity in a tree that already feels limited.

Fire Spec Tree

The Fire spec tree has too many talents that feel low impact. Some may provide throughput, but they do not meaningfully change how the spec plays or create interesting decisions.

I would like to see more talents that support distinct gameplay styles rather than mostly passive damage increases.

Mage Class Tree

The Mage class tree still has several talents that feel outdated or low value. Examples include mana reduction talents and multiple talents required for a short speed boost.

These nodes often feel like filler rather than meaningful choices. The class tree would benefit from cleanup so more talents feel relevant to current Mage gameplay.

Defensives

Mage defensives feel weak compared to other classes.

For example, in Skyreach, getting targeted by the beam on Mage feels extremely dangerous without Ice Cold, and still threatening with it. On my Death Knight, the same mechanic feels insignificant.

A 4% avoidance increase does not seem sufficient to address this. Mage either needs stronger active defensive tools again, or better passive durability. The trade off of having the best defensives in the game in TWW was that they were all active and required planning. Being a “glass cannon” does not feel justified when Mage damage is lower or comparable to other classes.

Damage Outside Combustion

Fire’s damage outside Combustion feels especially bad in solo content.

The burst-focused Combustion playstyle is the main appeal of Fire, and I do not want that removed. I enjoy Fire being defined by strong Combustion windows in competitive content.

However, I would like a choice node that allows players to opt into a flatter damage profile for content where extreme cooldown dependency feels bad, such as solo content, world content, or delves. This could come with lower overall tuning, but it would make Fire feel better when Combustion is not available.

The goal would not be to replace Fire’s burst identity, but to provide an option for content where that profile is less practical.

2 Likes
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Well they could give us a builder spender spec with spells tied to it instead of the nonsense we got in midnight. As it stands will be switching to gw 3 when it comes out and tera 2 . It doesn’t look like blizzard cares what players are telling them

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On the state of combustion - I think it’s important to be realistic about the state of this cooldown, primarily the fact that the intended design conflicts with the necessary balance to make it work.

Combustion RIGHT NOW

Firstly, let’s talk the current state of this ability. In 12.0.7, fire mage has quite impressive and competitive burst damage in M+ scenarios… for about 20 seconds, for your combustion and then the residual ignite. Every other somewhat decent spec is still going long after fire mage has begun to fall off. With the changes to ignite, the only way that the combustion cooldown is doing competitive damage in this way is through flamestrike, which is quite possibly the LEAST useful way a class could do damage. You are basically competing with UHDK to aoe pad down mobs, but you do it way worse, and you don’t have 40 epidemic hits on the primary target.

In TWW and DF, this was handled by combustion having an uptime that increased directly with your ability to play the spec. The better you were, the more and more time you spent in combustion. This meant it was alright if fire mage didn’t have absurd peaks because the next combustion was right around the corner. However, it is very understandable that this heavy-CDR uptime focus is not compatible with the Midnight class design.

In BFA, this was handled by making the time in combustion so absurdly powerful that it didn’t feel so bad to be relatively useless outside of it. This gave mage a powerful identity as a class that could be played around, and is something that also lingered in the public perception of our class for a long time (eg. people still saying “pull around combustion” many YEARS after that was not a thing anymore).

As of right now, mage has neither the value in their cooldown to justify being useless outside of it, or the frequency of their cooldown to justify its mediocrity along the lines of Frost Mage’s flatter damage curve.

Blizzard’s stated goal for Combustion

The changes made in Midnight and further now in 12.1 suggest that Blizzard wants the combustion peaks lower, and the no-cd lulls to be higher. Quite frankly, without massive changes to the way fire functions, this goal is pretty much impossible to hit without it feeling terrible. If you buff pyroblast/flamestrike, combustion just means you are getting MORE of these spells. There’s no way that getting one pyro every 2-4 seconds is in any way competitive with a pyro every second.

If flamestrike is ever tuned so high that a non-combusting fire mage hardcasting pyroblast is competitive DPS, then quite frankly something is very wrong in the game. And regardless of any tuning, the non-combustion gameplay is simply MILES less fun. The stated goal is to make damage outside combustion something you care about, but it is inherently cared about because it is 75+% of your spent time. If you do nothing outside of combustion you will still do awful damage.

Proposed Solution

While I loved the insane uptime of TWW, I understand that the game as a whole has moved away from CDR and uptime-based gameplay (somewhat). Because the non-combustion gameplay is simply less engaging, I believe the best tradeoff is to make combustion feel valueable enough that you are comfortable being low value for the time it is gone. In the same way that elemental shaman has been allowed to be a 3/2 minute titan, I feel as though fire mage should be allowed to be a slightly more flexible 1 minute powerhouse. The highs of Fire Mage have ALWAYS been at the peak of one extreme, either a cooldown so strong you get excited for it, or when kindling has had enough value that you know the next one is coming up as soon as one ends. Trying to land in the center will simply leave the spec feeling like it is never the best option for any situation.

2 Likes
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One thing I never even considered swapping pyroclasm for meteor based set bonus, actually sounds pretty cool. I dont mind pyroclasm personally but at the moment even on the beta it still seems likely we will be playing frost/arcane just due to double barrier and the damage on both specs seem pretty ok. I really wish they would consider moving some talents around. Pyroclasm could be somewhere in the middle of the tree to help fix build diversity but also give you something else to do outside of combustion. I almost wonder if they should just swap pyroclasm and meteors places and the related talents on the talent tree. Make meteor worthy of being on that pinnacle tier level then make pyroclasm somewhere in the middle pathing to combustion or keep it in the same place that meteor is currently at. I just wish we could have something that would be useful at all times regardless of what hero talent choice you pick and doesnt have weird pathings. We are still basically forced to take burnout.

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you will be surprised how inaccessible burnout is for raiding, or cleave/ST talents for m+.

Basically being forced 2 points for pyroclasm ( the previous node is useless ) makes pathing weird for all content.

This was such a low effort tier set, half of it is irrelevant ( the always crits) , and the other half is just fluff.

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Also as a note since clasm is getting love, I am once again asking that the clasm proc gets the greater pyro size just like spriest has mind flay morph into insanity graphical enhancement. Right now there is basically no visual distinction on the proc, and that is pretty disappointing. Its just another pyro.

On the feel side, I think the entire key to make clasm work in the fire kit is to reduce its cast time to the GCD in combust. having a long cast time to break up the flow in combust is feels bad, but a quick cast for a big nuke is really satisfying. AGAIN very similar to mind flay → insanity. Spending big damage on a quick cast makes the brain cell activate.

Right now we have a high damage long cast nuke that clashes with our apex and the flow of fire blast pyro spam….it doesn’t matter how much damage it does if it looks bad and feels bad tbh.

2 Likes
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I still can’t believe Warlocks got Greater Pyro animation in PvE before we did.

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I like Pyroclasm. There, I said it. Hard-casting a hard-hitting massive spell like Collapsing Star is a lot of fun to see.

I’d like to see Pyroclasm splash for damage around the target, creating a Flame Patch underneath. Mostly because I want the visuals on the proc to be noticeable, it needs to stand out from other Pyros. Alternatively, let it use the same Missile Greater Pyroblast does?? Or maybe make it hotter blue fire.

Some people think it’s awkward the Tier set isn’t useful in Combustion, I think that’s just their goal to make Fire better outside of Combustion. Use pyroclasm outside of Combustion, not in it. It’s a guarateed crit already.

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It wouldn’t make sense because it also includes Flamestrike.

100% should happen. I think even Flamestrike should have a different visual when casting it with Pyroclasm, maybe even increasing the radius.

I like Pyroclasm as well, but I don’t like yet another form of guaranteed crit. And yes, the crit being useless inside of Combustion is a bit awkward.

1 Like
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The tier set is a dud and lemme explain.

I also like a bit fat pyro like the days of yore but current iteration is not it.

It forces you to pick expensive talents, severely limiting build diversity

It forces you into haste versa which is a major handicap. Half your capstones want mastery, aoe and cleave want mastery , even burnout wants mastery. Basically this tier set invalidates half your tree and mechanics. Its anti-synergestic.

It also invalidates gameplay inside combust where procs happen most often since there are very few and strict conditions where you cast pyroclasm.

It invalidates a whole hero tree in FF which does not offer ANY pyroclasm support or adda to its gameplay. The only saving grace might be tuning to just blatantly ramp up numbers to the point that a disjointed gameplay can perform .

It its current iteration, the tier set actively fights fire mage, with the promise of a better downtime ,but from testing that is not the case. The damage profile is the same, downtome is the same or lower, proc chance in downtime is rng and can be extremely feast or famine( i ddnt have a single clasm proc outside combust for 2 whole minutes and inside it i overcapped and wasted it. ) its also a dps loss to cast clasm in combust for FF and SF struggles heavily to fit it in.

All and all while the idea of pyroclasm is always good and can feel impactful, its current pathing, implementation and synergy with how fire is designed leaves a ton to be wanted.

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I agree with this. I also kind of like the idea of building Vers because clearly Blizzard doesn’t think Mages need any more defensives.

Yeah I’ll admit it feels awkard ignoring them in Combust. At least Heat Shimmer is instant cast.

They should make Pyroclasm x2 proc after Hyperthermia but not inside it similar to Heat Shimmer, increase its damage so Fire isn’t dead last again, and grant it synergy with Mastery/Hot Streak/Inflame etc.

Oh and make it a big giant fire ball too. I’ve already unsubscribed and just waiting for days to run out so if they don’t do anything for fire, that’s fine too, I kind of stopped caring

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I have never seen Devs actively trying to destroy a spec like they do on Fire.

2 lines of changes for 12.1, awful tierset and ghosting. Its like the company itself is begging for players to abandon the spec and unsub.

Unsubbed and out. This is a travesty and i dont want to be a part of

4 Likes
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As a newer returning mage main, last time I mained a mage was in Legion, I’m not a fan of the tier set focusing on Pyroclasm. It really does suck to play when you’ll go like a full minute without a proc and you’re just praying for one. The tier set or the talent need to increase the chance to 20-25% imo and maybe increase the damage more. Frost is just easier to play and does more damage without any locking into talents. I think if you wanted to you could also make the cast time faster on it as well. But increasing the proc chance is a must. It just doesn’t feel good to not get a proc.