Flame On should be baseline and bring back Cinderstorm!

[Aÿmanx-zuljin]

Hello! This is my first discussion post so please go easy on me

For Fire mages, it really feels like there is no choice among the talent rows. Searing Touch, Shimmer, RoP, & Flame On are pretty much the standard picks for Mythic+ and Raids. Flame On should be baseline, so that talent row can finally be freed up.

Alexstrasza’s Fury received a significant buff, but still pales in comparison to Flame On.

From the Ashes is a really cool concept, but most of the Fire Mage’s powerful Ignites and single-target DPS comes from the availability of Fire Blast. This talent will not be chosen over Flame On in almost all scenarios.

This may sound rather silly, and please stop me if I’m pushing it or flat-out wrong, but I think Conflagration should be either baseline OR removed, and where it was on the talent row can be replaced with Cinderstorm.

If Conflagration becomes baseline, then it can just be renamed “Ignite Rank 2” and it pretty much works the same way, but Fireball no longer applies Conflagration.

Since every class will have AoE caps to a certain degree, large trash pulls won’t be as encouraged in Shadowlands like they were in Legion and BFA, thus making Living Bomb not nearly as impactful as it was in the previous two expansions.

Flame Patch is a decent talent overall and really strong in cleave-heavy boss fights, but with the changes to Ignite, most Fire mages will be reluctant to replace their powerful ignites (post-combustion) with the weaker ignites from Flamestrike despite the effects of Flame Patch. Flamestrike is great for finishing off trash/adds with low health, since the mage won’t get much value from the remaining Ignite on targets with low health.

By adding Cinderstorm to the AoE talent row (Row 6), it allows the mage to deal consistent AoE/Cleave damage to targets outside of the Combustion window. Flamestrike will be used more often, since all that matters is applying Ignite to a group of enemies before casting Cinderstorm on them.

These are just a couple suggestions I had to make Fire more of a dynamic threat without the use of borrowed power, and allow more player agency throughout the talent tree. Thank you!

[Zhuldan-nemesis (Zhuldan)]

I like your suggestions, I just disagree that the new From Ashes talent is a cool concept. In my opinion, From the Ashes makes no sense. Why would there be a talent that encourages you not use an ability? Worse, when you need the benefit of the talent (ignite spread) is when you lose it 'cause you need your charges of PF to do so.

TBH, I think any time spent in designing talents for that row is lost development time. As long as we have Flame On, nothing else will be considered. It came to a point now that they are overpowering Alextraza’s Fury to make it competitive. Flame On is always picked not just because of the dps throughput, but mainly because Fire Mage without FO feels alwful to play.

Cinderstorm was a great talent! I’d really like to see it back! If Flame on was made baseline, maybe we could have an interesting AOE row:

• Cinderstorm: high damage, medium cast time, no cd
• Flame patch: medium damage, high cast time, no cd. ALSO CONTRIBUTES TO HOT STREAKS (this would make the fire aoe rotation feel much better)
• Alextrasza fury: high damage, instant, medium cd, disorient. Replace the buff to other abilities for a higher range.

Make living bomb baseline or remove it.

We removed Flame On, Living Bomb and Conflagration. The dev team could get creative here and build an entire new row of talents. I saw many good ideas online, one of them would be to create a Blaster Master row, increasing mastery, haste or versatility depending on the talent picked.

About the RoP row. This is a complicated one. RoP is a polemic talent, while the other two are just boring. The previous talents are much more problematic in my opinion and if they got changed, I’d be happy already. Now, if they would be willing to go as far as modifying 3 talent rows, I would suggest the following:

Assistent row. I actually like RoP, but maybe it’s time to let it go. This row would give us the choice between 3 raide-wide auras and an ability with a 30s cooldown to activate/deactivate it. Each aura would have a good and a bad effect, so a good mage would know when to enable or disable the aura.

• Focus Magic: Increases critical strike rating by 3%. Also increases the chance of being critically striked by 6%.
• Amplify Magic: Increases magical healing effects received by 10%. Also increases magical damage taken by 20%.
• Dumpen Magic: Reduces magical damage taken by 10%. Also reduces magical healing effects by 20%.

The effects are all good, as long as you know your enemy, which could be a great game play addition to the class. Of course the numbers are just hypothetical and should be balanced.

[Kaest-akama]

I will paste a quote with my suggestions on PVP Fire Mage I did in another post:

@Kaest-akama

Hi all,

I want to start a post, to make fire mages interesting to play again on PVP ( interesting is different than op! ) , so I will put my thoughts on Talents, Spells, and General Gameplay, focusing on the aspects I would change. As Arcane got some love, I hope fire gets too!

Consider that, with the removal of all borrowed powers, Fire Mages feel not smooth to play, as we lose our tools to be dangerous and make “smart” decisions.

Talents:

LVL 15: It seems ok, as you can choose to enhance one of our tree iconic spells (Fireball, Pyroblast, Scorch).

LVL 25: The only viable choice here is Shimmer, so I suggest:

• Add as a talent here Blazing Speed: Suppresses movement slowing effects and increases your movement speed by 150% for 1.50 sec. 25 sec cooldown. It was an iconic Fire Mage Spell, and can compete on the mobility tier with Shimmer, to add other playstyles.

• Make Blast Wave baseline. That was an iconic fire mage spell that no one uses nowadays, and we can get back with the unpruning. I would make it a bit longer knockback with a 50% slow only.

LVL 30: It seems ok.

LVL 35: Flame On outperforms everything else. Instead of “From the Ashes” I would suggest, as possible options:

• Tinder talent: If you have not cast Fireball for 8 sec, your next Fireball will deal 30% increased damage with a 50% reduced cast time. I would add too “that fireball will always crit too”.
  By doing this, you get a guaranteed crit each 8 seconds if you do not cast Fireball, and 3 doable crits when start a combat, the same as with flame on.

• Memory of Lucid Dreams kind of talent: Your spells and abilities have a chance to refund 50% of the charges of Fireblast / reduce 50% CD of fireblast for 10 seconds.

• Other: Your critical Pyroblast have a 50% chance to refund one Fireblast and Phoenix Flames charge.

LVL 40: Ring of Frost outperforms everything else. I would suggest:

• Ice Ward: Now your Frost Nova does not break on damage (but only one charge).
• Frenetic Speed: Replace it for something like “Ignite now snare your target 30%”

With that, this row of talents brings some kind of cc / utility cc related, and we could choose and not always pick RoF.

LVL 45: Three options are just bad at PVP, as we do not want anything spread and break CCs. So, I would suggest here:

• Living Bomb: *The target becomes a Living Bomb, taking (X) Fire damage over 12sec. After 12sec or when the spell is dispelled, the target explodes dealing (Y) Fire damage to all enemies within 10 yards. Final explosion can be crit and contribute to Hot Streak, but no longer spread to enemies. *

Reasoning on that is simple, old Wotlk Living bomb. We can play with final explosion to fish Hot Streak procs (not a guaranteed one!), it can crit on multiple enemies so it can charge 2 procs if you are lucky enough but if you use it on a non CCed target, he can run to your poly target and break it, for example. Useful too as dispel protect of ignite. Maybe to not affect PVE, it could be spread on PVE with Phoenix Flames too.

• Conflagration: Remove the chance to deal damage on nearby enemies. Maybe to compensate, it could reduce a bit the Fireball cast.

LVL 50: It is ok taking in account the other changes proposed.

PVP talents:

• I think that can be a bit controversial but… Remove Greater Pyroblast. It affects the whole gameplay as fire, and while its available it is a nightmare to balance the rest of the mage kit. We do not need a 35% hit spell if other spells/options are balanced correctly. And, as an opinion, it is no fun in use a 4 sec spell. Put it on 15 sec CD solves nothing, as you can balance correctly other spells like Fireball and Scorch if we have GPyro.

• Controlled Burn: It have no sense with Ignite spread changes.

• New talent: Make Phoenix Flames does not spread ignite, nor hit nearby enemies. It’s necessary to have control over CC.

Baseline abilities:

• Make Fireball and Scorch deal some damage. On BFA scorch hits for 2k, with 500k hp pool. I should cast fireball to do real damage (not GPyro!! And not 30% hp ofc), and Scorch when I need to damage while moving and can’t / shouldn’t use my instants.

• Make Blast Wave baseline. That was an iconic fire mage spell that no one uses nowadays, and we can get back with the unpruning. I would make it a bit longer knockback with a 50% slow only.

TL;DR: Make fire fun again. With my suggestions, we could get enough sources to fish Hot Streak procs, and not depend on borrowed powers for that, nor only on Fire Blast and Combustion, while balance all our damage, and be able to make “smart” moves to be creative playing.

I would appreciate any kind of feedback, and more ideas from the mage community to put fire in a good spot. Balanced and fun!

PS. English is not my native language. If you notice a big grammatical mistake, let me know and I will edit the text.

[Fajra-chogall]

@Aÿmanx-zuljin

Flame On should be baseline, so that talent row can finally be freed up

Hear, hear! This is so long overdue at this point.

[Abdulhamit-akama]

I agree. It should be baseline!!!

[Emeryqt-zuljin]

@Aÿmanx-zuljin

Flame On should be baseline, so that talent row can finally be freed up.

THIS. 100% this.

[Cortran-kargath (Cortran)]

It’s not that flame on is always mathematically superior, there were times in Legion when other talents were chosen, but it just makes the spec feel so much smoother to play. Numbers could be tuned so that other talents could be chosen but it makes game play less fun.

[Aÿmanx-zuljin]

I understand what you are saying, but I politely disagree. In Legion, only Alexstrasza’s Fury was picked other than Flame On because it paired really well with the Legendary Helm in Mythic+. Controlled Burn was usually never picked because it was unpredictable and just wasn’t super impactful when it proc’d.

Flame On is mathematically superior (at least in my opinion), because it synergizes really well with the best Fire Mage leggos and Conduits like Infernal Cascade, Sun King’s Blessing, and Fevered Incantation. Add Shifting Power to the mix and you got a 24 second Combustion!

From the Ashes might see some play in Mythic+ since Sun King’s will be a bit hard to control moving from trash pack to trash pack, and 6% Mastery is always welcomed.

Alexstrasza’s Fury just doesn’t seem good in general without something to pair with it (like the Legendary Helm in Legion).

As it stands, Flame On is much more than a ‘feel good talent.’ It is definitely going to be a necessity for big damage in SL because of the legendaries and conduits, just like it was in BFA because of Blaster Master, Lucid, and Mechagon Bracers.

[Cortran-kargath (Cortran)]

As it stands now, yes, it is superior. My point is that it doesn’t have to be as we have examples of times and ways that it wasn’t taken. Mathematically, it’s not difficult to buff the other talents to make them competitive or even superior.

The point was, this singular talent has a much greater effect upon our play style than the raw dps numbers would indicate. Fire just works and feels better with it. It was an argument for making it baseline, not for keeping it as a talent.

[Cassatella-stormrage]

i wish they would take pretty much all whole spells off talents and make them baseline, and then use talents to change how those spells work.

[ßensolo-daggerspine]

Flame On is not just the most desired Talent in that Row by miles no matter how good the alternatives are, it is IMPERATIVE for an enjoyable gameplay.
It makes the rotation so much smoother.

Its been asked already by all the cutting edge players in their streams to make this Talent finally baseline for the sake of the spec.