But the point is why are you trying to complain about the state of the spec based on what THESE groups are doing? They’re clearly not even serious about the key when they’re pulling whatever they want and not looking at the group comp. That’s no different than a Frost mage’s DPS dipping when a tank just pulls stuff out of Blizzard in a pug. Not getting optimal numbers due to suboptimal setup applies to every spec in the game.
When you’re talking about balance you can’t look at the people who are playing a spec towards the lower spectrum with minimal effectiveness in a random pug & use THAT as a justification that the AoE nerf was an overkill
The truth is Fire was absolutely categorically BUSTED in M+ in Season 1 to the point where it completely walled the other 2 mage specs from ever being a viable option in higher 20s and to the point it was an absolute requirement for any serious group regardless of the key/affix combination.
I’m not saying that fire wasn’t broken in the scenario outlined. All I’m saying (and have been saying) is the nerf needlessly negatively impacted people not exploiting it. But instead of using a scalpel to actually tune the class and target the nerf towards the abusers, they applied a blunt instrument.
Of course you can look at people not pushing content. There’s a lot of us and our subs do count. The truth is Blizzard could have addressed the high end with DR or a flat out AoE cap while leaving everyone else pretty much untouched.
I’m not advocating that Fire be broken and I certainly don’t want one spec being sidelined because of another.
You’re right. Fire was broken. And then they smashed it really hard in the face with the nerf bat. Tuning is really all it needed.
Now fire can perform(in higher keys), on par or ahead of arcane and frost. But having a little haste tuning and fixing the cleave and aoe caps would’ve been better
Holy sh*t what a troll… the other guy is 100% right, stop trying to argue simply because someone disagrees with you. Fire was not OP below +15 in season 1 when you are pulling below target cap, it was only OP when you pulling multiple packs.
The point is using these folks/group as justifications for complaining about a nerf is pointless. They were timing keys even when they weren’t utilizing the spec’s uncapped AoE so it really makes no difference.
Also, Fire’s dominance in Season 1 wasn’t purely due to uncapped AoE - since it wasn’t unique in this aspect. Fire’s dominance was due to the fact that it had a guaranteed Combustion burst every minute, scaled the best with Prideful, and had/has a survival kit that rendered it basically unkillable.
If you seriously think a game that has multiple e-sports events that have sponsors, cash prizes, and races for 1st need to balanced around the folks who don’t even play a spec to the best of it’s potential, then go ahead and enjoy believing that myth.
There will always be casuals in any game. Balance shouldn’t be centered around these players because a: they aren’t even playing as intended and b. it gives them no incentive to improve if they can play subpar and still faceroll anything.
It’s not pointless if you’re one of the people impacted. Yes fire feels weaker for me in dungeons and open world. No I didn’t ever see crazy numbers in S1. The only videos (and I watched several throughout S1) that had fire insanely ahead were those with a coordinated group that could pull multiple packs. Otherwise it wasn’t anything crazy.
I play the spec fine for the time I’m able to give to the game thank you. Also, my comments have been centered around the AoE nerfs and not the kindling tweaks.
The point your missing is it was possible to address the problems in a much more elegant way that wouldn’t impact the player base that wasn’t abusing things nearly as much. No one is saying that fire didn’t need adjustments, just that Blizzard handled said adjustments poorly.
Okay, but on 5 target AoE (which is very much possible on the groups that don’t pull multiple packs together), Fire sims ahead of any iteration of Arcane and lags behind Frost because Frost’s baseline sims use GF for 5 target. If the Frost mage uses FW (which most Frost mages do) he will lose roughly ~36% of their 5 target AoE damage, which would put the final numbers as:
NF Fire: 25.5k
Venth Frost: 25k with FW, 39k with GF
Arcane: 24.9 or 23k depending on your cov
So how exactly is Fire weak on AoE? Those are based on Toegrinder’s sims. Just because you’re not busted doesn’t mean you’re weak
I don’t have any point of reference as to what the numbers there mean. I PUG dungeons, execute my combustion rotation well, avoid mechanics and put up similar numbers to the people playing the class at a similar ilvl. I certainly don’t push content.
If the numbers are close, the conduits and gear must even it out. I’ll be curious to see as more and more videos come out this season where fire is in reality. Hopefully it’s where those numbers put it and it simply feels weaker at lower gear levels. Odd they buffed single target if AoE ends up a wash.
On all percentiles for M+, Fire is #4 across all specs, and beats Frost. Even if you drop down to something like +10 keys only, Fire/Arcane/Frost are all dead even at ranks 13-15, Arcane > Fire > Frost.
On something like +20s, Fire is #14 and is tied with Arcane which is #13. They both do better than Frost which is lower down in the ranks.
If anything, the spec deserving attention right now for both M+ keys and mythic raid is Frost, because it is the worst performing mage spec in both these formats.
Hopefully they’ll give it some love then. I realize some specs will do better than others due to the mechanics in a given encounter, but for the life of me I can’t fathom why Blizzard isn’t internally shooting for something like a 2% delta on average. They’ve needed to work hard on balance for such a long time, yet we just never seem to get there.
You’ll always have some class doing better than another, but if they could get them that close than clearly the player would make much more difference than the class. Which is how it needs to be.