Man I feel like its the same vicious cycle, try fire at the start, feels meh. Gets some buffs, new tier set and they say fire is going to be really good. Go in to a dungeon and just feel like im doing nothing compared to other classes.
TLDR wish i was good at fire mage lol
I have 2 piece, havent been #1 in any of my dungeon runs. Shaman always takes that spot by a mile in anything im running. 633 ilvl and around 1.8m ish overall
Fire is still extremely feast or famine in the sense that you do most of your damage with Combustion. I personally don’t like Unleashed Inferno for this very reason, much preferring Sun King’s Blessing myself. Don’t get me wrong I love Fire, but I much prefer specs that do good damage in the neutral instead of hyperfixating on buffs and modifiers, so I usually try to build for the way I prefer to play.
Also, Power Infusion massively props up Fire Mage in high level play. I don’t like Power Infusion for the same reason I find Augmentation Evoker problematic. It is what it is.
Well that was fast lol
catalyst plus normal tier piece, nothing too crazy
We got a catalyst charge this week?
Probably best to hold it. Wait to see what you get for vault next week or two so you can catalyst the missing pc for 4 set
All your damage is in combustion and tier set. Outside of that you won’t be doing much damage. Blizzard are utterly clueless.
Fire does some pretty decent damage with the 2-piece new tier set. But really needs all 4 pieces to show its potential. As for fire being on top of the dps charts, that depends on who you are pairing with. In my guild, fire mages will get decimated. Frost mages are the only ones able to keep up to some degree; but they are not near the top at all. Everyone is pulling over a million dps. It is just a fact that Dk’s, Monks, Hunters, spreists, shammies, and locks will always out dps a mage. Mages should be able to out dps the other classes.
Fire has long been the spec that’s really, really good in high keys where you can get PI and the tank will pull around your Combustion, but sub-mediocre in your average PuG compared to other Mage specs.
Dunno if that still the case today, at least to the extreme it’s been though.
I have been topping my guild in raids as frost mage and we are already 2/8 heroic
Came here because I’m running into a similar issue. I played hunter of all three specs last season and never found my damage lacking, but after swapping to mage since we needed the spot filled for raids this season, it’s been pretty miserable.
I was optimistic at first because all the talk about mages seems to put them in really high regards, at least for mythics, but was quickly humbled when I actually played it. For context, my main (this char) is 640. My mage (Dakeus-Garrosh) is 636 ilvl. Both have S1 4 piece. Should be pretty similar performance right?
I pushed hard to learn Sunfury Fire on my mage for the start of this season, read many guides, geared according to guides and sims, practiced rotation, etc. Even when I feel I am nailing the rotation though, damage was just very weak, so I decided to go back to sims to just sanity check myself.
For context: If I sim my hunter as Marks on a normal dungeon slice, I get about 2.186M dps. My mage? 1.589M. Woof. That’s more than a quarter less damage for only a 5 ilvl difference!!
I would link sims if I could (links not allowed), but if you look up my characters, you can likely run the sims yourself to see (assuming you do so before my gear/spec changes in the next few days). I’d love to just be wildly wrong on something, so if I’m missing something, please let me know.
edit After researching a bit more, I decided to sim what I would be doing as frost. 2.088M dps on the same sim setup. Guess I’m ditching fire for now and will try again once I get 4p of the new set.
Same here. But I’ve always struggled with mage. I want to be great but it’s just one of the harder classes to play at high level.
Looking at the 99th percentile in heroic logs, Fire is barely edging out BM and MM, which are tied. So, your fire mage should be doing about the same amount of damage.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/42/?difficulty=4&dataset=99
Using 99th percentile because I only wanted to look at people that mastered the classes.
Sounds like you did more due diligence than me in practicing and research. I spent some time after raid doing this and already found several issues that’ve helped. There’s a lot of a little nuances though and it really feels like something that’ll take a ton of practice to get it all down.
Like just the opener.
Precast Pyroblast → Queue Phoenix Flames → Fireball → Cast Combustion and Fire Blast (if not Heated Up!) during Fireball but not near the end so you can queue a spell → queue Pyroblast.
During combustion (every time probably) remember to cast Fireblast during the GCD so you can queue Pyroblast. Also remember not to spam Fireblast cause it will use your charges without even realizing it.
I mean, reading it sounds simple but in application it’s easy to forget something or delay something or just be consistent throughout the fight without having all of that down to where you’re not even thinking about it. And that was just some it. There’s still making sure your Heating Up phishing and what to do during Hypothermia.
I play hunter better than I mage 100% and I’ve played both about the same amount.
P.S. I really like your hunters mog 
Fire is just broken (bad) without combustion and the tier sets. Blizzard has thrown fire mage in the dumpster.
I do feel like fire is probably the most gear dependent spec in the game.
I know that’s hurting my dps, but didn’t want to just blame it all on that. Definitely check things like wowanalyzer to make sure it’s just a gear issue.
See, and that’s the problem. There are many new players getting frustrated and thinking “what is wrong with me.” I feel like all classes should do consistent DPS and cool downs and tier sets only imporve that damage. Not make it so they’re completely reliant on CDs and gear.
I assure you some of these new mages are not playing it correctly. I would wager it’s more than you think.
And yes, gear adds issues on top of that.
You have a lot of mechanical issues. Being a fire mage isn’t the problem.
It’s not difficult to cast fire blast, pyroblast and phoenix flames while under the effects of combustion. The spec is fundamentally broken. What are you talking about?