So I was bringing my mage through the undermined story getting gear and I realized how we do literally no damage outside of combustion. It’s hilarious, I can be casting and getting a couple hot streaks outside of combust but as soon as I hit combust everything dies immediately. It is absolutely laughable.
2 Likes
Welcome to fire mage my friend, just how it goes.
We go from a walking flamethrower during combustion, to a dude throwing flaming marshmallows at their enemy outside of it.
If you want a spec with more consistent damage try frost, even outside of icy veins they can do solid damage with shatters. Not to mention all the roots and slows makes it so even if you kill a little slower you’re still safe.
4 Likes
Fire is what it is right now. It’s extremely cooldown and context reliant. It also needs the gear to successfully cycle through combustions.
If you don’t want to deal with that, play a spec that isn’t gimmicky. I play frost, accept it’s awful in raids and only okay in M+ and do fine.
1 Like
This is a major problem with blizzard’s designed philosophy around dps buff cooldowns. Frost DK suffers from the same problem with Pillar where so many essential talents are spent in it just to be nerfed so as to not allowed “too much” burst.
The end result being medium damage during the buff window and pitiful damage outside of it.
Blizzard has to change the philosophy around this to favour consistent damage for those of us who prefer to at least have the option, rather than relying on cooldowns for our bulk damage.
A reminder that Frost Mages essentially get a baseline 65% crit chance due to Shatter without ever having to waste a single stat on Crit rating, not that I’m complaining about it. It’s much easier to balance classes who’s damage doesn’t fluctuate wildly and Frostfire Frost I’d just so much fun.
2 Likes
What bugs me about it more than anything else is that your gameplay changes during the cooldown. During combustion I’m getting more charges and everything is critting and it’s fun and it feels “right”. But as soon as it ends I immediately stop having fun. Same thing with marksman as trueshot injects more fun into the gameplay.
I am going to pull something out my butt and say that I imagine a majority of players would say they feel better when most of their damage comes from outside cooldowns.
6 Likes
God forbid you use a global or two for spells other than Pyro, FB, or PF during Combustion, now your damage is gimped.
5 Likes
That would be an accurate intuition, my personal experience tells me the same.
There are always exceptions, which is why it would be a good idea to have talent builds that cater to preferred individual playstyles. Otherwise we end up in arguments with a minority of players who think dps should rely heavily on cooldowns and don’t want their spec to change.
2 Likes
I concur as well. There is a minority of folks, which sadly includes the devs, who think optimal cooldown usage is “skill expression” but the vast majority of people play games like WoW because they want to have fun and feel powerful all the time not just for a few seconds once every minute. Cooldowns still have a role to play, particularly when it comes to defensives and utility but when the overwhelming damage output is tied to DPS cooldowns like it is with Fire (but other specs as well to a lesser extent) it loses all meaning and you cease feeling powerful when you activate the cooldown and instead just feel weak, borderline useless, when it’s not up.
I’ve said this before but Combustion has become so integral to the Fire Mage gameplay that it may as well be a toggle skill like Warrior stances or Paladin Auras at this point. Obviously, the damage boost it provides would have to be scaled down accordingly to compensate but the fun playstyle of instant casting would be preserved. I would even go further and say that ultimately hard casting (really any spell but specifically filler spells like Fireball) just feels incredibly outdated and like a vestigial aspect of online games of yore that no longer makes sense, especially in WoW which prevents movement while casting unlike most other modern games and yet demands constant movement to counter virtually all mechanics the game throws at you.
3 Likes
I did a couple quests on my fire mage in Hyjal yesterday and it FEELS sooo much better than retail. Obviously, it’s dated for sure, BUT fireball hits HARD, pyro blast crits are doing more than 50% hp to a mob (my mage isn’t very geared at all.) When I’m not critting in Cata, I don’t feel as bad because my fireball and fire blast and even scorch are doing decent damage!
You want every ability to feel strong and have purpose and with current fire it’s not the case at all.
1 Like
Wish I could find this magical damage. My fire mages dps is garbage to frost and arcane spec…
1 Like