Without trinkets or good stats fire feels clunky and boring. The entire specialization in Legion was designed around having these extra crits to fall back on during combustion, and not having this ability just makes the specialization feel boring baseline.
Also, the ignite change on the Alpha in shadowlands is awful please don’t do that.
One PF cast outside of Combustion every 2 minutes will not change the rotation in a significant way, and inside Combustion it’s identical in its use to Scorch. The ability itself is actually clunky and cannot capitalize on HU procs without cancelling casts unless you’re at point-blank range.
If you think Fire is boring without PF, you will think it’s boring with PF.
I disagree. I believe Combustion should reset your Fire Blast and Phoenix Flame charges. If this were done, I don’t think making Phoenix Flame baseline would be necessary at that point.
Feel clunky and boring is a personal opinion. Legion is a moot point because the entire Legion expansion required you to have legendary weapons we simply don’t have anymore. Not having the ability isn’t the problem, fire is playing as it did before Legion existed. So you either loved Fire back in the WoD days or you preferred Legion’s version. But really there is nothing wrong with fire. You just are a fan of the Phoenix. So you are trying to make it viable. Say that next time.
Fire mage representation is gonna drop faster than WoWs sub count in SL.
With Phoenix Flames baseline and slightly faster traveling time, gimmicks like Lucid and Bracers will never be required.
That said they’ll keep it the way it is because they want you to chase the same abilities tied to items again and again, over expansion and expansion…
They’ll keep it the same as it is because blizzards has minimum wage class designers that don’t give a 5hit about the game. There’s like 2-3 specs tops that are mildly okay with their SL class design and there’s plenty of feedback good/bad across platforms but they refuse to address any of it. I really would love to have a q and a with the mage class designer and absolutely torch that moron.
A good fix for Fire Mage in SL is to give Phoenix Flames baseline, tie the ignite spreading to Phoenix Flames, and allow ignite damage to lower PF cooldown (like in legion).
I agree 100%. Phoenix Flames should’ve been baseline in BfA. I have little hope now that blizz is gonna ever make Phoenix Flames at this point.
Fire in WoD (BrF specifically) was a beast. That 4pc set bonus was amazing, and ignite was spread through Fireblast. BfA Fire is nothing like that. I’d go so far as to say it’s no longer a fun rotation, and the reliance on RoP, cooldown stacking (yay, all your damage is done in 10s) and very very specific gear makes it worse.
That said, PF would not fix that in any way. It was decent in lower keys where you could burst AoE, but like Keestus said it felt so bad to use as part of the normal rotation.
WoD for all its faults (garrisons and lack of non-raid content) had good class design and Blizzard would earn a lot of brownie points if they took classes back to that and/or MoP levels of fun.
Fire in WoD had fights where it was a gain to literally AFK until cleave windows to stack up RPPM BLP, with some logs have 90%+ the player’s damage dealt within CD windows. The spec was also entirely reliant on a crafted ICD crit trinket to be playable. A lot of WoD was fun but it’s not a pillar of class design.
It’s not really meant to be used reactively, like Fire Blast is. Use it where you’d normally use a Pyroblast, right after a Fireball cast. It has the same missile speed as Fireball, which means that they’ll impact aligned within the grace period. You’re guaranteed a HU, and it might go full to a Hot Streak. Obviously, only do it when you have a Fire Blast charge ready to follow up if it’s just a HU. But trying to use it like Fire Blast, to react to HU procs, isn’t how it’s meant to be used. That’s why it’s on the GCD. It can and should be thought of as having a similar rotational slot as Pyro.
It cannot be thought of as having a “similar rotation slot as Pyroblast” because it does not impact simultaneously with Fireball.
But it does. It has the same flight speed as Fireball, as far as I can tell (test it yourself). Even from 40yd, they both arrive well inside the HU grace period.
I agree, flame on or phoenix flames should be baseline.
To give you the benefit of the doubt, I went ahead and tested. It’s the same. It’s significantly slower than Fireball and misses the window.
https://giant.gfycat.com/CheeryFrigidBobcat.webmHmm, playing with it naked on a target dummy (oh baby), it actually appears this isn’t a travel speed thing. Graphically and in terms of combat log events, Phoenix Flames actually lands much closer to Fireball than Pyroblast (which is rather noticeably slower than Fireball) does. Try it yourself, at 40y shoot a Fireball and instant Pyro, and observe travel speed and impact interval, then do the same with Fireball and Phoenix Flames. The latter travel and impact noticeably closer together.
They both land well inside the grace period, but clearly this grace period is not applying to Phoenix Flames. The grace period is a full fifth of a second (200ms), and they clearly land within this even in your GIF, so this is obviously just an issue of Phoenix Flames not benefiting from it. So I stand corrected, can’t use it like that, which is a shame. If they added the grace period to it, though, it could be used as such.
That does leave Phoenix Flames without a clear role in a single target rotation, however, which is concerning. It also makes the talent much worse than I thought it was (and I already thought it was pretty bad, competing against Flame On as it does). I wonder if we can get Blizzard to change this, it seems reasonably clear to me that this is the intended role of Phoenix Flames in the single target rotation, since it cannot be used like Fire Blast.
The thought occurred to me if they decide to go ahead with making mirror image a talent across all mage specs instead of baseline to alleviate gcd, they could have it replace either flame on or phoenix flames. Either one should be baseline tbh.
|00:00:05.314|[Keestus][Fireball] 21148
|00:00:05.314|[Keestus] [Pyroblast] 24317
|00:00:02.135|[Keestus][Fireball] 11632
|00:00:02.245|[Keestus][Phoenix Flames] 29570
I misunderstood the root of the travel-time issue. It isn’t a speed issue for sure, because PF travels at 50y/sec, Fireball at 45y/sec. This means there’s a start time or a delay somewhere, making it a travel-time issue and not a travel-speed issue. PF is >100ms late even when cast at point-blank ranges, and if the grace period is a 200ms window, then PF is unaffected by the window or the window is smaller than reported.
This behavior forces a point-blank, reactionary playstyle where you only use PF once to generate a HS from a HU after a Fireball+Pyro, and the decision to use PF is made during the GCD incurred by Pyroblast.
I can only assume the delay is intentional after 4 years of complaints/bug reports. A fix or mechanical overhaul that preserves the neat aesthetic while making the spell either more interesting or more usable would be great, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Fire Mage also needs to have their balls returned. Their Flaming ones from Legion.
You know?