Hey everyone, first season back at M+ since shadowlands. Im noticing lots of big aoe packs this season and my numbers as fire feel underwhelming, combustion used to be the part where you burst harder than anyone else, but now im usually a good 100k dps lower then other specs even during burst windows.
Is fire just in a rough spot? Seems like ret, bm, ww, destro all smoke my aoe dmg and a little higher single target depending on mechanics
Is there anything i might be missing?
Following this. I’m new to mage, but I’m for sure not digging my numbers are fire or frost at ~500ilvl
Fire is meta because it has good defensives and a cheat death. It does great damage in the god comp because you have an aug and are being fed pi. It also performs well in high keys because mobs live longer and the tank is pulling big around your cooldowns.
If you dont have the perfect group combo, if you dont have a tank pulling around cds, and if youre in a low key where things die fast, you’re going to do bad damage.
I play arcane and exclusively pug. I often join groups with frost or fire mages. Its rare frost beats me and i dont think ive ever had a fire mage even come close.
Its frustrating when you bring up issues with mages (especially arcane) and people say “fire is meta and god comp”. … you’re right but unless you have a dedicated group playing for you to do well youre not going to reap the benefits of being meta.
As mentioned, fire has for years been difficult to pug at even mid-high key ranges. Between things dying too fast and not knowing your tank/route it’s tough to maximize combusts and consequently even harder to tell if you’re the problem or not
Fwiw I noticed an even bigger gap with ilvl this season though. I started at 480 pulling 200ish overall as frost, now 505 and can easily clear 350k in low keys even after mis-timing CDs. Gear isn’t everything but it’s felt more impactful now than any other time this xpac for me
Fire in its current state is a steaming pile of overly complicated trash that just isn’t worth playing. Play Frost. I’m having way more fun. Doing more damage in both AoE and ST situations… huge bonus that I don’t have to keep track of a bunch of crap on the backend. Visuals and class fantasy are both superior IMO. Anybody who plays fire is a sadomasochist holding on to a fading past glory that just isn’t there anymore.
To me ignite build ruined fire, it has been this bad since the last patch of shadowlands, when talent trees were introduced.
A build that depends on key level to even work is a fail, in my opinion.
Fires strength in m+ lies in its priority targeting capability, not it’s overall damage performance. The higher the key level goes and the tighter those timers become, it becomes abundantly clear that certain mobs in each dungeon are living longer than the rest in a pack. These mobs are often more dangerous, pose bigger threats to group etc, but the biggest obstacle they pose to the group is how much time they take to kill compared to the rest of the pack.
For example in Nokhud, there are mobs called Lancemasters. These mobs have significantly more hp than the rest in the pack. If you had aoe blasters like a ret pal and a BM hunter, they would destroy the majority of the mobs quickly, leaving you now with a lone Lancemaster who has probably 20-30% hp left. Now you’ll either chain pull that mob into the next group which could actually be very dangerous or you commit and single target them down, slowing the key down and eating away at the timer. This adds up over the course of the dungeon, costing previous minutes.
Now, going back to fire mage, having an entire rotation that is purely single target focused, really helps minimize the time difference it takes between killing the prio target and the rest of the pack. Ignite of course enables our ST DMG to cleave the other mobs, but it won’t have the same damage ceilings that aoe specialists bring to the table.
Finally, someone else mentioned it, fires DMG is very lacking until mobs can live long enough for ingite damage to really ramp up and shine. Tyranical keys that are below a 10 are not ideal for ignite spreading.
Overall dps will always be lower, but that’s not what fire is brought for to begin with.
And thats why this build breaks the fantasy for me, how a FIRE mage is not strong aoe anymore?
Its FIRE, it spreads and eats everything it touches!
You’re not alone. The only time I’m top damage is during bosses. Multiple combustions and SKB’s. Outside of bosses, tank damage.
Fire is way more complicated now than it used to be. If you’re grabbing builds off wowhead, do NOT play the ignite build. A long post above me went into prio damage during high keys with the ignite build and it does perform really well, but we’re talking keys over +10s.
You should see decent numbers with a flame strike build in mid range keys but you’re going to do more as frost and most likely arcane if you can play the spec correctly.
Play flamestrike for sub 10 keys, it’s actually still very strong for trash padding, whilst still doing strong boss dmg.
If you play ignite, it’s best to play with a a DH tank and an aug. That’s when your overall dps will accurately reflect what fire mage is capable of. Dh for the magic debuff and aug more for the fact that you aren’t competing with 2 other bursty dps who kills trash before you really get going. Just know that even with this setup, youll still lose against most meta DPS on the overall meters, namely spriest, lock and ret.
Do ya’ll consider fire to be one of the most niche m plus dps specs right now?
Ran a 6 or 7, can’t remember, Algareth Academy yesterday. The destro lock on the first big pull was doing about 60 million damage at 489 ilvl and I could barely do 40 at 504 ilvl. Even on the boss fights he wasn’t too far behind me. Yes, aug + PI makes huge difference.
Dest has uncapped aoe potential and im sure at least 50% of that locks damage was from rain of fire.
Its a boring spec, i wouldnt play it if it did 3xs the damage it currently does.
As arcane im able to do 1.5-2M dps on that first pull and 600-800k dps on the tree boss.