The last round of nerfs on the PTR to fire mages put them in a very bad spot, especially for M+. We now flamestrike at 8+ targets and our AoE damage plus the “pad” profile is very bad. Our ignite focused build also does not perform well either in M+. I believe the last nerf to ignite + flamestrike was too much. It was fine before the last change.
I feel as if the devs are very scared of tuning fire to be good because very good (and also very few) players will make it seem OP. Either way, this class is very bad in both raid and more so M+. Not to mention that picking Frostfire Fire would actually be considered trolling because of how bad it is right now. I’m not even sure if I consider Sunfury to be viable right now for the harder content.
It feels appropriate to give fire a small aura or ignite buff back given how Arcane and Frost are outperforming it in almost every scenario. There is no reason to play Fire over the other 2 specs right now, and it makes it very unfortunate if you plan to mythic raid or do high keys for 11.2
5 Likes
I was kind of fine conceptually with increasing Pyro damage and tempering ignite damage a bit - it’s wild that even in raid Ignite does the vast majority of our damage. For the millionth time, though, reticle/@cursor-based abilities are just not compatible with a cooldown like Combustion - babysitting your cursor while having to target something to keep it going is some of the worst design imaginable. Meteor and Flamestrike absolutely need an @target option.
Ideally I’d like to see Unleashed Inferno lose the CDR component and instead buff your spells outside of Combust so you’re not useless without it, giving Combust the “big cooldown” feel. SKB should be reverted to 8 stacks and be the Combust-chasing uptime build, with the interaction with Frostfire Empowerment also brought back to lift FF out of the gutter. Both tuned accordingly.
6 Likes
Fire feels fundamentally flawed and like a mechanical mess. Really hoping the lack of significant changes to it means they are working on a long term rework similar to the treatment Arcane has been getting.
I do not like how much of a focus Ignite is for Fire. Boring and passive mastery that saps damage away from your direct damage spells (Fireball, Pyroblast, etc.). Feels like tons of talents are in the tree for it to prop it up. I feel the same way about what they did to Living Bomb. Why would they make this ability passive when Living Bomb was one of the most fun active abilities to press for Fire?? Not to mention again the multiple modifying talents that (passive) Living Bomb has in the right side of the tree. It’s like they had no good ideas for Fire talents and just made a bunch of boring filler ones to get the product out the door.
I’d love if Hyperthermia was actually good. That talent is one of the most fun Fire has to offer. But it sucks. I also cannot stand the CDR they force us to play into because Combustion is “all or nothing”. Stop putting CDR on big cooldowns please. It does not feel good! Delete Unleashed Inferno!!!
3 Likes
The biggest problem with Fire right now is its tuning is atrociously low on several departments.
I do wish they’d change a few talents though. I used to be a big fan of Living Bomb, but at this point it’s just clear they are unable to properly balance it, or at least the version where it spreads. Better to just remove it and replace it with something else. Hyperthermia should also be removed from the spec tree, but the Sunfury version is totally fine.
CDR/uptime need to be addressed asap. Even after reducing the resources available, we’re still inching towards more and more Combustion uptime every patch. This waters down the damage way too much to compensate for the increased uptime.
At this point it’s probably better to just remove it from Mastery and make it a standalone talent. It’s way too problematic and they can’t balance it right. They wanted to make Ignite less of a focus and possibly avoid Ignite cleave builds, but at the same time make the FF tier set solely based on Ignite. Then nerf it to the ground when they realized it couldn’t be balanced.
5 Likes
when it comes to both the fire’s flawed design concept, failed tuning across the board and a plethora of unimaginably bad code for almost 3 years now ~ there is only one thing left to say:
the developers can eat a bag of sh*t
8 Likes
I think it’s simple. Dump the whole arthritis inducing minute mage concept, make comb a proper 2 minute cd again. Make skb baseline just for something to do in between cd’s. Damage profile would be similar to arcane with a bigger cd but with lesser mini’s in between.
2 Likes
Everyone here has good suggestions, but I currently LOVE the playstyle of fire right now. It’s tuning is just awful. I am doing less overall damage then I was in S2. Meanwhile, I watch 1 video of Arcane, a spec I haven’t played in several expansions, and am doing more damage in AoE and ST. I’ve been playing fire every patch since BFA. Awful.
6 Likes
I saw Preheat go over those nerfs and its bad. I’m a fire mage through and through, I’ve disliked Frost from vanilla regardless of the changes its not for me, I don’t mind arcane but want to play it. I’ve been a Fire mage since Vanilla. I raid in a guild where everyone is friends its super chill and casual. We did the hardcore thing back in the day now were too old for that lol. So I’ll still keep playing Fire but I think Mythic + will be waste of my time.
I get to at least raid but Mythic + ? If you want to push keys and want to be doing 10’s or 12’s as a Fire mage with these nerfs you will need to run your own keys or play with friends or else M+ will be an unfun grind because were ranged DPS not tanks or healers and if DPS is lower than others(when its outside our control) and not meta using that group finder means wasting most your time trying accepted. Getting declined for 30 to 45 min before getting into an M+ does not sound like a good time investment. It’s like Blizzard’s telling me not to play.
The first two weeks of the beginning of a new season of M+ is the most important especially if you want to push keys. You start doing M+ slow and steady and you cut your legs out from under you turning M+ into chore and a grind. I learned that the hard way in Shadowlands. And thanks to Blizzard they just made it worse its like being kneecapped. Now I get to sit and hope we get buffs in timely manner and not when the race to world first over…
2 Likes
Bingo about 10-12s and the beginning of the season. Although we are still basically at normal ilvl for this patch (I think I am high 680s) I am doing non-competitive DPS vs any other spec when I am doing 10s this week.
I’ll repeat again. I played Arcane, a spec I haven’t played in SEVERAL EXPANSIONS, and I am doing SIGNIFICANTLY more overall dps in m+ (and boss damage too) than Fire. Fire is my main spec I have played for 4 EXPANSIONS.
Not to mention one of the hero talents is SIGNIFICANTLY WORSE than the other for Fire, rendering one hero spec ACTUALLY UNPLAYABLE in competitive content.
The tuning needs to change. Screw the RWF, tuning needs to happen ASAP for this spec.
2 Likes
Yeah just adding onto the dumpster fire here. The developers flopped embarrassingly hard with fire mage this tier. in raid it’s basically scraping the bottom of the low end of playable, and in m+ it is literally trolling to play the spec.
I have no idea what the hell the developers do every tier where fire ends up in a near emergency buff situation, but holy hell. What the actual hell. We had one tier in undermine where we started out in a great spot, and then we immediately get kicked to needing to wait to play the spec.
10s are noticeably harder when I play fire mage. With a massive gear advantage in raid with loot luck? im barely scraping by on the meters.
The developers need jesus for their pre tier tuning process for fire. I have no idea how this is considered acceptable in any way, and the fact that it keeps happening is embarrassing.
Am I just supposed to Stay in liberation of undermine where this level of dps would be acceptable?
4 Likes
Listen here Blizzard. Kael’thas would be disappointed with how weak fire is this patch, however I know this is merely a setback. Fire should be the fear of all 5+ packs in mythic dungeons with our glorious flamestrike. Fire is a genuinely incredibly fun spec and Ive played it exclusively since i first started playing it in Legion and never looked back. This was the season that broke me though and now Im playing arcane. Which is fine, but its purple and sounds like a plane taking off and requires many weak auras. I want to cast massive fireballs that chunk the health of my enemies and when i literally set myself on fire I want it to feel badass and not like i just singed my nice fire themed transmog for no reason. If you want nuanced takes please read above. Pls fix fire - sincerely a otp fire mage and frost mage hater.
4 Likes
Also it would help if this was posted on the right character, pls read all of this in this characters voice instead, this demon hunter was abandoned in legion and sacrificed everything so i could become a beautiful nerfed fire mage you see today 
Yeah I also somehow just noticed that the tier set for Sunfury seems…really lacking? The 2-set is just unimaginative, and the 4-set strictly amps up your post-Combust Hyperthermia and does nothing for Combustion itself. If you use Combustion towards the middle/end of a pack - which is already dicey - and you can’t get the full value of the Hyperthermia, the 4-set bonus is doing next to nothing. I fear this makes the calculus of deciding whether or not to hold Combust even more frustrating/punishing, since (as always) holding it means you’re just dead weight for the remainder of the pack.
1 Like
Oh the tier set is quite good, and TBH it feels good as well. Fire needs maybe a small single target aura buff. it’s really not that far off on pure st from the ideal/well tuned band.
The real problem is they nerfed ignite, and even the nerfed ignite is completely dominating aoe because flamestrike is hitting for zero lmao. In an ideal world you would choose between flamestrike and pyro at around 4 targets…but right now its nearly 8. The entire right side of the fire mage tree is dead. You need to sacrifice something like 20% single target damage to gain like 5% aoe…living bomb and flamestrike need jesus.
2 Likes
Fire mage is terrible right now… No damage outside of combustion windows, and even during combustion windows I still do less damage than a tank… out of combustion windows I do less damage than a healer… doing rotation fine, watching some vids, following guides, doing all the work…something needs to be fixed it needs some tune up
1 Like
The biggest thing is blizzard needs to stop forcing so much CDR on to fire mage. It has flattened the damage profile severely, and is in some ways analogous to shadowlands frost mage. The spec plays fine, but the cooldown on combust is so tiny that it must do no damage to be balanced. You are then balanced by simply pressing your cooldown more than everyone else.
If they cut out cdr or changed it so combust was 60s MINIMUM cooldown? You’d be in a lot better place.
2 Likes
Combustion as the only window where you can actually deal acceptable damage should never have been approved. I don’t know why the spec has devolved so much. I had a ton of fun with fire during Legion and haven’t been able to enjoy it since even though mage is my most-played class because it feels so weak. Pyroblast should hit hard. Fireball shouldn’t be so wimpy.
2 Likes
One of the only dps specs I haven’t really dabbled in that much since coming back in bfa. Not a fan of all dps power being squeezed into combustion which can easily get messed up and having huge cdr on it as well.
It is fun, because I’ve played Fire since MoP, and back then it was very enjoyable, with the only downside being the need for a critical mass to actually deal damage. But once you got it, it was a lot of fun. In WoD it was almost the same, except they empowered AoE at the expense of single-target damage, and HFC didn’t have good crit gear. So my suggestion back then was to create a cooldown that empowered critical rating, because you needed to stack a good amount of crit to make use of MoP Combustion — and in PvP it was dispellable, lol.
Well, they changed Combustion to the spell it is today in Legion, and for me, the spec became very boring to play. Too many guaranteed criticals, and the big DoT of Combustion disappeared. In the other way, without cds, spells were weak. I switched to Arcane in Legion because I found it much more fun to play with the mana mechanics. I wanted to try Fire again this expansion just for Phoenix, but it feels so boring: cooldown- and crit-dependent, and I never liked using Shifting Power — and now Blizzard forces all mages to use it, lol. I was reading a guide the other day, the rotation was Fire blast, phoenix, Pyro, fireblast, phoenix, pyro, fireblast, phoenix, pyro. Not interesting at all and without any twist that make it enjoyable. I just hope they redesign the spec again, maybe something in between Cataclysm and Legion.
Combustion needs a fixed CD, not cdr. This is a lesson learned from ele elementals, unholy dk, havoc eye beam (still problematic) and fridgin frost mage. The variance in uptime, and ever increasing uptime in later seasons is a problem almost every patch since shadowlands season one.
My hot take is combust becomes a thirty second CD, like ret, but that’s certainly not to everyone’s taste.
Ignite is another problem, much like psychic link, that blizzard can’t settle on tuning. It ranges from being oppressively good to egregiously bad, and right now it’s bad AND flame strike is tuned low. Frankly, part of the fault lies in how the spec tree is set up.
Fire needs to invest so many points in flame strike talents to use it, that single target becomes anemic, if ignite isn’t more powerful. More talents that affect aoe and st would improve this situation, in which case ignite can be lowered across the board.