So as fire has fallen, so to speak, what needs to be done to balance it back out with the other specs?
The single target buff was really nice. But the spread off of our mastery might need to be reverted back to our old spread. Think our aoe is suffering a little because of the new spread with PF, and the heavy handed nerfs to our legendaries, flame strike and flame patch.
Also, I’m curious, with the buffs to Fireball and the new necro Legendary being around casting fireball to increase it’s DMG, does that in anyway play viable?
I think in terms of design, all of the nerfs were good.
In the short term, I think the following changes would be great:
1: Fix Sun King’s Blessing so it does what the tooltip says it does, that will help our sustained damage.
2: Keep PF spreading Ignite, but make it so that ignite spreads via PF increases mastery by some large amount for 10 seconds that our ignites don’t tickle in cleave situations and flamestrike is not our ‘2 target’ rotation -_-
3: Buff Fireball/Pyroblast baseline damage and improve mastery scaling.
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Play what you like. Unless you are a top tier mythic raider fire is just fine. It’s also still best for pvp. I mainly pvp but I enjoy pve and swapping has never crossed my mind. I will get aotc as fire and I won’t be holding anyone back.
flame strike damage now is less than a good boomies or hunter’s cleave.
Increase their single target a bit, but buff flame strike a little and that’s probably all it needs
The flame strike conduit helps bring us up some but our actual spell and flame patch need to be buffed back up a bit.
Either buff our aoe back slightly or, give death born and Necro lords, a bit of a bump, with a conflagration buff, and we can build off of that. I will say, running Necro just for fun, and I love having three fireballs going off, while running conflag, is a lotta fun(this build would make it worth building the Necro legendary for sure)
Revert the kindling nerf & make it base line. The other two talents on 50 row are fun and we never get to use them.
Adjust pyro damage down a bit to compensate.
Fire has settled in nicely in the high M+ scene, and its nerfs were absolutely warranted given how it was completely gating the other specs out of the meta completely and was an absolute requirement for any serious group pushing high 20s in Season 1.
It was never a strong raiding spec by design, but the fight designs of CN made it viable there, especially given the timings of the fight mechanics and the fact that it always managed to get its burst off without any fail. It also scaled well with conduits as they progressed to Rank 7 in 9.0.
Obviously the fights in SoD didn’t follow the same setup, but the recent ST buffs make it so it no longer sand bags a team on ST. Still a relatively mid/low ranking spec there, but given how it’s doing so well in both PvP and M+, I don’t mind this.
It’s currently sitting at #3 in M+ at the 95th percentile.
In the grand scheme of a class, this is the closest the mage specs have been both in terms of representation and performance since like late Legion.
I wouldn’t tune down anything until we saw how kindling baseline affected things
Idk I still play it and enjoy it
I’m still playing and enjoying too. But I like to be competitive. Im 215 and usually a bit behind people my ilvl. Just looking to keep up and improve gameplay a bit
I think they need to apply diminishing returns to Flamestrike and Flame Patch while restoring at least some of the damage. I’d bet the majority of players are casual or semi casual and never see these high keys with enormous pulls where balance was an issue. Having the damage diminish past 8 targets still keeps Fire’s AoE uncapped while allowing restoring some of the specs performance for those of us not participating at a level with enormous pulls. Right now hard casting Flamestrike feels very underwhelming for the cast time vs damage.
I have switched over to looking at more of a crit/haste build to try to offset the kindling nerf. So far it seems to play more smoothly. I know crit is generally not valued highly with the sims and I’m sure that still holds true, but for a filthy casual like me it’s been more fun to play. And the damage in keys seems fine compared to similar ilvl DPS. Probably helps that I’m running the legendary that favors crit.
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At the same time, these players wouldn’t be affected by the nerfs at all, since their specs would still be good enough to time whatever key they’re doing.
While to true to a certain extent, attempting to use Flamestrike AoE to take down multiple mobs while doing other things definitely feels weaker (questing for example). And damage in lower keys did suffer even with smaller pulls.
That’s why I think DR past 8 mobs is a better idea. Those people in the high key/high pull scenarios would see the nerf as we have it today, while us scrubs wouldn’t feel the hurt.
At least the single target buffs were nice.
Of course it feels weaker, because it’s no longer broken like it was in Season 1. Doesn’t mean it’s actually weak when you compare it to what other specs are doing in the same key right now.
Even at the 50th percentile, Fire is in the middle of all other specs for M+. As you improve the percentile it moves up the scale. Its overall positioning across all percentiles is in the top half, not the bottom half.
Seriously go back and look at videos from season 1 where fire mages were in normal/PUG groups. It did not pull crazy numbers. The only time the numbers got nuts was when the group pulled a lot of mobs and coordinated around combustion. I’m not at all suggesting that the nerfs are reversed. Just that the solution actually address the problem and not be a blanket nerf that is step back for those that never abused it in the first place.
Maybe fire at higher gear/conduit levels will start to feel like Flamestike/Flame Patch isn’t meh. I don’t doubt what you’re saying as far as the numbers. Just from a player perspective I certainly didn’t see crazy numbers in the lower keys I’d run in S1 and having that nerfed hard doesn’t feel all that great. Sure it helped get rid of the issue, but the blanket approach to the nerf rather than adding a penalty for more and more targets past 8 seems the wrong way to approach it.
I will say that the master of flame conduit makes it feel decent. And I’m pulling higher numbers than anyone else in 0-5. I’m pushing higher keys tonight. Gonna break 10.
After that I’ll be able to put in a better opinion of where it’s at
0-5 keys isn’t really even close to high enough though.
The Flame Patch nerf was definitely warranted, no question about it. The Kindling nerf might have been a little over the top, especially when combined with the other nerfs, but frankly that’s more to do with how bad the spec feels without a 1 minute Combustion since you barely do any damage outside of it.
They tried to address that some by buffing base damage of spells to boost sustain but even though those buffs were all double digit %s it still didn’t make up for the lost of minute mage Combustion.
I would say Fire’s extreme dependence on its major DPS cooldown should be revisited but honestly I don’t trust them to do it properly. Besides, the spec is otherwise functioning fairly well and if they try to fiddle with it chances are they will just break it.
That said, Fire without the SL borrowed powers is going to feel pretty terrible, not Fire without the BfA corruptions level terrible, but still pretty bad. I hate how dependent specs always end up being on the borrowed powers and then when those go away Blizzard have to try and reinvent the wheel again. It’s just such a flawed design philosophy, imo.
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It did, because it was the most broken spec in the game with regards to synergy with Prideful buff. It was guaranteed to get Combustion off both on the Prideful mob itself and the pack that followed, with uncapped AoE via patch.
I think we both agree the main abuse was with large pulls and uncapped AoE. My suggestion was to either cap AoE or start aggressively limiting it’s damage past 8 targets. So it wouldn’t be a negative to people who weren’t playing in groups that were exploiting this.
Yes it did pull crazy numbers, but not if you look at videos where a normal pug group is not coordinating huge pulls around combustion.
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