Fire mages aoe needs buff

Classes Mage
#1

Doing mythic pluses with my guild.

At 256 ilevel tier 2 piece. I roughly pull 4 to 5k on aoe packs compared to my raid leads warlock who is also at 256 ilevel 2 piece. He pulls roughly 20 to 21k aoe.

My mage is built around single target and i burst for 13 up to 14k while sustaining 6k to 7k on bosses. Flamestrike and phoenix flames just isnt powerful at all for packs in mythic pluses.

I still have a ways to go to get my best in slot gear and my four piece bonus from my tier but…i just feel useless in mythic pluses and dont see myself pushing 15s much less ever getting into a plus 20s.

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#2

Having similar struggles… Yeah if I’m with a group that pulls multiple packs I can sorta keep up on damage (if i dont rip threat :frowning: ) but standard “pug” pulling my dmg is dismal… especially when im having to interrupt my rotation to deal with explosives this week.

I just do way better as frost/arcane – not giving up on fire but the only thing I can say that helped me a little on AoE is better usage of Flamepatch and using combust on cooldown… it doesnt help my bracers usually hits 7 stacks towards the end of pulls wasting it… sometimes i feel like disciplinary command might be better.

making a macro to autocast flamepatch at curser helped me a bit but as a consequence sometimes miss the mark as well.

Doing like 12-14k overall as frost,
9-11k as arcane
7-8k as fire

My gear stat breakout unfortunately favors frost as well. hoping more mastery can eventually bring up fire because id prefer not to embarrass myself when playing it.

ilvl 260 w/4pc

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#3

Yeah, it just sucks because i always remembered fire being king. Not anymore and 9.2.5 isnt helping either.

Its like blizzard themselves said, “You can either be built for single target and your aoe is going to be dismal, or you can balance yourself around aoe.”
… like can we be decent at both?

I just love fire too much to play anything else. I hate frost and arcane… arcane is just way too boring to play.

#4

I’d just add, that fire is completing the highest keys possible- The answer I’ve been given is that it needs a group that pulls around its damage profile :frowning: .

#5

Id like to know what im doing wrong then. Because right now im just chalking it up to gear.

I can push really well on m+ bosses but trash? Thats another story.

Mirrors of torment pre pull. Mirror image, time warp, fireball… at 1second during cast combust, fire blast, pyro and do combust rotation keeping infernal cascade up, at 8 stacks of sun kings hard cast pyroblast and then combust rotation again. That states me about 14k on details.

#6

I’d suggest trying out Nightfae w/dreamweaver for M+… this helps ensure you have combust up for most pulls - Mirrors is only for single target raid.

#7

I would Jae. But im only running m+s for my helmet and chest. When i get my 4piece im going to start raiding tueday night.

Raid lead wants me 4p before i start raiding heroic and mythic sepulcher. Which is why im venthyr right now. But i mean…i could and still raid.

Mirrors just synergies really well with combustion.

#8

There is no penalty or wait for swapping covenant now and you can boost it to lvl 40 for 500gold - especially with a good fortified/push week coming up tomorrow you will really want to go NF for M+ —trash damage will be much much higher and nearly the same for single target.

you will farm the flux much faster to get the pieces and can swap back to venth for raid time with a clique of a button.

It really is night and day different in M+ venth vs NF>

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#9

Hard agree, night fae + disciplinary command is definitely the better play for keys in the 1-15 range. Feels so much more consistent and straightforward. Nothing lives long enough for SKB and you can’t guarantee the tank is gonna pull around you so you may be dropping stacks no matter how big brain you play it. Swap covs on your down time and get some night fae renown, then swap back for raid content.

#10

But will i have to swap leggos? Im hard locked to 1-6 keys. I dont even want to do 10s and the only reason i got to do a 16 was my raid lead and his group carried me.

Talk about feeling sick.

#11

I mean yeah, swapping fae wouldn’t make sense w/o disc command. Which i understand is a pretty big buy-in. At the end of the day you can absolutely make venthyr work in keys. Always mirrors the target with most health,
Hardcast flamestrike and use fire blasts in between to generate insta flamestrikes,
Ask your tank to keep mobs in the flame patch whenever possible,
Run kindling instead of pyroclasm.
Beyond that just expect that outside of combustion you’re always going to do more minimal damage.

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#12

Do i want to spam flamestrike on mobs with flamepatch?

#13

3+ mobs hardcast flamestrike with flame patch and use your fire blast charges to build your extra hot streaks. If a target is below 30% then prioritize scorch to build your hot streak procs for flame strike.

Sun King’s can work with Night Fae, especially if your tank is chain pulling single packs. DC works better on big pulls if the tank is pulling big about every 1-1 & 1/2 minutes.

Another tip and this is mostly for M+ bosses, but try to save your Shifting Power until you get the Urh buff, then spam fire blast as fast as you can press it (off gcd and usable while casting or channeling) while using Shifting Power, you’ll get a lot of cooldown reduction on your combust that way.

But during AOE with combust, you cycle Fire Blast and Phoenix Flames while using your hot streaks on combust, and when you’re out of charges on both, use your shifting power (benefits from combust) and finish off your combust with normal rotation.

Fire is one of the weakest classes outside of cooldowns, so don’t be disappointed if a tank beats you on pulls where you don’t have cooldowns.

#14

No, I run NF with SKB and am pulling around 10k overall in a key-up from 7k now at 260… getting more haste helped … I have Disciplinary command but its pretty much for pvp for me rn. -swapping to Venthyr for ST raid fights. burst large trash packs for 20K+… 10-12k on bosses…then in the gutter on small packs without coolies.

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#15

Well i just got my chest out of the vault today which gave me my 4p tier and put it through its paces with everything popped combust, mirror, pots i burst for 17k and sustain 10k on a good fight and it goes down to 8k with a lot of movement.

#16

For Mythic+ fire, you run Night Fae/Dreamweaver with SKB in almost all situations. There are some unique situations in 25+ keys where you may need to run as Venthyr or use Pyroclasm in place of Kindling, or if you need to fill in as the venthyr on HOA or SD, but if you’re just doing keys high enough to get 278 gear (ie. just your 15’s), the basic setup is set it and forget it.

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#17

So just for 15s night fae/dreamweaver?

I am venthyr/skb in my raid group and can barely keep up in dps in SOTFO. On most fights im 7 to 8k dps sustained while everyone is pulling 10 to 14k dps which puts me last on the dps charts.

Makes me depressed and want to quit raiding. Im 260 ilevel with 4p if you want to check my armory. I simmed my character and raidbots showed 12,660 dps on a 5min patchwerk fight and i cant pull anywhere near that.

#18

Fire and Frost mage are very very weak ive been trying to push for a change but everyone believes mages are OP and S tier above everyone else yet I haven’t seen a single mage top the meters in heroic raid or in 20+ keys. They need a buff, like when in combustion buff our damage by 10%, and revert frozen orb change and we should be at least competitive. Arcane I know needs a better burst setup as well.

#19

Fire isn’t actually weak, it’s just a lot more complex to do well than most other specs. The best buff they could give to Fire currently imo is reduce [Flame Patch] duration and increase its damage to match the current duration so it isn’t as much of a detriment if the tank moves a lot, increase [Flamestrike] damage or reduce its cast time by like 0.3s. That’s the only thing I can see happening before the next expansion.

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#20

I mean it’s pretty clear you’re not doing something right if you’re that far below your sim dps. Fire is far from god tier but it can easily keep up with basically any other dps class. It’s also one of the harder dps specs to play and is very punishing if done wrong. Try reading through the class guides on wowhead or fire mage discord. Also google Toegrinders mage sims he has a lot of good data and guides for all three mage specs.

Realistically all 3 mage specs are very hard to perform well with right now, if you want easy mobile ranged dps then I suggest playing BM hunter or destro lock.

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