Preface; I’ve been a hard casual mage player since wrath, picked up mage then, and have mained it since. I’ve loved fire as a spec since I started playing and all of it’s iterations have felt similar but the most recent version is probably my least favorite.
PVP fire mage can be bitingly strong if procs line up and you stay mobile but with crit damage nerf rolling down I can imagine the class doesn’t see nearly as much viability.
PVE fire mage seems to have trouble balancing between a good AOE build and a single target decimater with little overlapping to make a strong hybrid build. my suggestion may have consequences for both, a single target emphasis with strong cleave potential and a new burst damage option for PVP that may even out the damage loss on crits.
First off, Living bomb is an underutilized ability across the board, it’s hardly ever taken by any guide which I feel is a shame. Living bomb is Iconic and I think with a tweak or two it could become a much more viable option. My take is that living bomb should operate closer to how radiant spark works, applying a debuff that amplifies fire damage and consumes ignite. At the end of duration, living bomb could explode for stored ignite damage + int modifier percentage. I would suggest removing the spread and replacing the next lower most talent; Conflagration, with the option to make this spread, eating ignite on those targets for a shorter duration before exploding and ceasing the spread.
I think the goal here is to allow a more viable cleave option for smaller packs or bosses that aren’t going to rake in hundreds of thousands of damage off of spamming out flamestrike. Speaking of, I wouldn’t be against losing the living bomb chance off of flamepatch from flamestrike either if these changes were applied.
As for PVP, a talent that makes dispelling living bomb causes it to auto explode for ignite+int modifier would be great to replace greater pyroblast which arguably doesn’t need to exist. This would make for a great swap target cooldown when you get your hypothermia procs and your main target takes a couple of blasts and then pops some CD’s to ignore the damage. instant cast this on a new target and see less damage loss potential or mix up an opener for a bit of burst potential we’re losing out on with the crit nerf.
With these changes I could see an increased CD being warranted, pushing it up to 30sec-1min wouldn’t be unreasonable in my mind.
I could rant further but I had this idea and thought it would be nice to shout it into the void rather than just let it sit in my brain.
I don’t pvp so I can’t speak to that, but PVE fire needs some love. As it stands, assuming no changes going into 10.1, we’re on track to be a countdown (count-up?) simulator, with our new tier bonus adding yet another thing to keep track of via weakaura and further solidifying our one viable build.
Agree with you that Living Bomb needs a revamp - they seem to want to keep its old functionality but are terrified that it will spiral out of control again - in which case they need to pick a direction. More importantly, I think, our AoE needs to have some semblance of a feedback loop with our core functionality (heating up into hot streak) or it will always be a clunky rotation that relies on Shifting Power to pull off with Combust.
Convinced no dev has played this class in quite some time and looks purely at raid log numbers - there’s zero reason that single target modifiers (conflag, pyromaniac - which is also awful in feel) should be on an AoE side of the tree. Nor does Hyperthermia really fit there - imagine having it proc without a castover macro and expecting us to move the Flamestrike reticule repeatedly within 6 seconds?
There are some simple QOL changes (e.g. not having SKB proc last 15 seconds less than the stack, having hyperthermia proc from an active ability vs randomly during your combust) - but these are bandaids over some very flawed, very questionable mechanics.
1 Like
*Mage is in an awkward place for pvp, all our damage seems “burst” oriented but our numbers can be pretty middling. I dont pve much beyond the occasional key and doing raid with random invites, but I frequently have to swap specs to actually keep up relevent damage between encounters.
some of this issue is probably skill/gear related I have no doubt, but fire used to be a very simple spec, which was appealing to a casual like myself, but had some depth if you wanted to probe deeper. I’m not sure I want to go back to the days of flamestrike granting heat up stacks, but I would like to be able to have a stack of heating of up and hot streak just for more consistent rotation. I would also like to go back to the days of not ever considering hard-casting a pyroblast. it’s neat in concept, but unless it’s literally hitting for 100k+ it’s a feel bad. I think the difference between playing destro lock and fire mage should be this “I never cast pyro normally” but this is my personal preference.
Edit: Fire mage specificly, though the changes to frost may shake up our class entirely.
1 Like
fire needs love in general, leveling this character to 70 was not that fun in the last few levels due to a lot of quests being heavily saturated with mobs that I couldn’t burn quickly, fire barrier doesn’t seem to last as long as the other barriers do and I feel a lot of stuff could be condensed in the talent tree, why the heck cauterize isn’t baseline is beyond me…