I hate that we are tied to spamming phoenix flames and fireblast to spam flamestrike and pyroblast so we can do damage
I hate we need combustion to do…anything to stay relevant on the meters
They honestly need to sit down and try harder with another rework of firemage. The pre-nerf firemage rework with Aug was overpowered, but still suffered the gameplay loop issues of above.
I feel the current playstyle is …degenerate for lack of better words. I love the theme and class fantasy of fire mage but loathe the playstyle, especially when you have to try harder than other ranged and melee classes to do the same or less dps as them.
My only gripe with SKB, now that its merged with Pyroclasm, is that the UI is still garbage. You basically need a WA to effectively buff track. It really should be on the resource tracker and the final buff icon should be a significantly different color than the building buff colors. When I’m mousing over buff icons to understand if I’m building or burning, the UI design failed.
You could try frost. We don’t really have burst windows. Icy veins is technically a damage boost, but nothing like combustion. It’s more like you do your normal burst just a little faster lol
Also glacial spike hits like a truck so that’s fun. Knowing you can take out adds or players with a decent chunk of health left in one hit is amusing.
Sometimes you can split a glacial spike and they both crit. It’s like 700k+ damage in one strike, very satisfying
SKB and combust playstyle is terrible and I understand the PVP crowd likes the instant spam to stay relevant, but the whole spec needs an overhaul back to the roots that made it compelling to play in Vanilla>Cata
100% agree OP. I play Fire in Wotlk classic and even though it doesn’t have a complex rotation, it feels smooth and fun. Similarly, Fire felt really good in WoD and was fun for AoE in Legion when we still had Cinderstorm. Since then, Fire has felt kinda blergh to play and every time I give it another try I remember how much I dislike SKB and how Combustion works. I’m not saying they need to take it back to a 3-button rotation but it’d be nice to look at Fire in a positive light some time this decade.
Ha! Arcane is even worse than Fire because it is expected to play the exact same way (i.e. only doing any real damage during its major cooldown) but without any of the tools that Fire has to maximize uptime of their major cd and also requires the stacking of half a dozen cds at the same time whereas Fire just presses Combustion and can go to ham right away.
Frost on the other hand has become a bloated mess going from doing nothing but spamming Ice Lance or Frostbolt until your fingers fall off to playing wack-a-mole and keyboard piano with a dozen rotational abilities.
And the real sad part about all of this is that all 3 specs actually play better after the mage rework from a few months ago and yet they still feel terrible to play compared to virtually any other caster. It’s so jarring to switch to a Devoker or even a Destro lock alt and see how much smoother and more streamlined a caster’s rotation can be. The mage rework was a step in the right direction but it didn’t go nearly far enough and the class as a whole needs a tremendous amount of work to be brought in line with what is expected from a modern game.
Worse not in terms of damage but execution. This entire thread is not about performance at all but about how unfun the rotations are for all the mage specs.
What fun? I am not talking about enjoying it or not I am just saying that Arcane is objectively worse than Fire because as Arcane you need to line up half a dozen cooldowns in a precise sequence before you can even begin your burn phase, whereas with Fire you only need to press one button: Combustion. There is absolutely nothing subjective about that statement.
Same thing with Frost now having half a dozen rotational abilities. Whether you enjoy that or not is irrelevant, the fact is that it’s much more complicated than the rotations of other caster specs for no discernible DPS gain and that makes it objectively worse any way you look at it.
Arcane isnt that complicated. 6 buttons? stop exagerating. Its 4. You are also incorrect about Fire. Fire builds up stacks and then skbs into combustion. Fire is also harder to play than Arcane
Fire was my favorite spec until they introduced the hot streak mechanic. I wish they would give Fire a more basic rotation, even if they keep the current mechanics as an option. Lighting stuff on fire never gets old. I don’t think we need any sort of complicated mechanics.
I don’t get the point of this thread. Basically it’s saying “I hate fire spec because I hate fire spec.”
Which, that’s okay, that’s why we have multiple classes and specs to choose from. I myself am not crazy about Arcane Mages or Outlaw Rogues or anything Priest. That’s why I don’t play them. What I don’t do is ask that they scrap the core design of every spec I dislike, which is what is happening here.
More like “hate fire spec the way it is now” most of these complaints seem to be coming from long time players (or classic players who switched to retail). Over the years virtually all of the original classes and their specs have changed dramatically and oftentimes for the worse. It’s a perfectly valid desire to want things to go back to a time when you thoroughly enjoyed your favorite spec. What’s more the newest class in the game, Evoker, has been lauded precisely because of how streamlined and smooth its playstyle is. We need more of that and less of the complicated mess that each spec has become over time and especially since Legion.
Honestly, to me Fire now is in the best state it’s ever been since WoD and having [Flamestrike] be part of the [Hotstreak] loop as well as finally incorporating [Meteor] into an actual AoE rotation feels great. It feels a bit bad though to lose the tier 30 bonus that gave us free [Phoenix Flames] when it comes to gameplay though.
I actually like how all 3 specs play currently except for Arcane going back to s1 rotation for a bit more damage, but that can be ignored in M+ at least.