I have to really struggle to maintain 1st or second as fire in non mythic content. Only way to even stack up is to pad damage.
I understand fire shines in top tier mythics, (especially with SKB) but what would ya’ll recommend if I’m not really doing M0 or + content?
I can grasp complexity in rotation so I’m not afraid of arcane, but I’d like to know some opinions on what really works well to parse high damage outside of mythic content?
*Short edit: Goal is to eventually play m+ but until then, it’s a struggle to maintain top damage!
I really only play fire on retail, and right now I’m a LFR / heroic dungeon only enjoyer. I run a flame strike build w/incendiary eruption + meteor in heroic dungeons. Yeah sucks when tanks kite mobs off flame patch but usually can get one or two living bombs on them when that happens. I’m also very liberal with triggering hot streak for instant cast flame strikes. I’m usually near the top of the meters, but that’s also probably due to the fact I’m over 480 ilvl on the two mages I usually use.
A non trivial amount of your damage comes from ignite and in heroic dungeons in particular, things die so fast it may not have a chance to show up on meters. It could just be a symptom of how fire is designed and how quickly things are dying. LFR will probably showcase your abilities better.
You can always look up content creators and famous fire mages just to sanity check you’re not doing anything wrong but i think it’s because fire’s mastery damage is a dot whereas alot of classes have masteries that do damage upfront.
1 Like
Well you don’t need to maintain top damage. You’re not the only damage dealer, each group has 3, and there is no reward for coming out on top of a chart generated by a third party addon that isn’t even an official part of the game. As long as everything is dying and your damage is not so low that you feel like you aren’t meaningfully contributing to the group there really is no problem. Now if the tank is doing more damage than you and he isn’t some obscenely overgeared DH, then yeah, there would be room for concern. Otherwise it’s all in your head. Just ignore the damage meter and have fun.
1 Like
What if my version of fun was coming out as top dps? And by not being on top, I feel like I’m not contributing correctly to the group?
Then I’d advise playing a different class because casters have historically performed worse than melee in Heroic dungeons or lower content. Frost does a lot better in lower level content if you are interested or even Arcane if you get lucky with some Orb Barrage procs, although it sucks that targets died too fast for Touch of the Magi to reach its full potential.
You can do big damage if your tank pulls 10 packs at the same time and you have Combustion ready, but considering how fast Heroics are just ran over and that you have virtually no damage outside of Combustion, you just aren’t ever going to be able to compete.
2 Likes
Yeah that’s tough. At the lower end content casters, especially mages, are typically not going to come out on top assuming everyone is on an equal footing. It’s just the nature of the caster damage profile which relies on longer cooldowns that aren’t up for every pull and on damage that takes time to ramp up which won’t happen since everything dies too quickly. But that “problem” is also kind of a solution because it really doesn’t matter since everything is dying and dying quickly, lol.
1 Like
Couldn’t agree with ya’ll more. I have fun as a caster, I should get out of the “need to be top” mentality for now and focus on being top for my class. Switched to frost yesterday and noticed a lot more damage short term with lower level dungeons.
1 Like