Hello all! This is the thread for feedback about latest changes to Fire Mages and suggestions for additional improvements. Initial post would be split into PVE and PVP subsections for better readability and would also have a link to the old thread (which is a bit outdated now) to keep feedback from it accessible too. There is also a link to new Fire tree in alpha for people who have not seen it yet.
Changes to Living Bomb are interesting, but its damage is undertuned and for some reason keeps getting nerfed. It needs a buff and to prevent its damage getting out of control at larger packs you could consider just removing the spread mechanic.
Phoenix Flames are more relevant now, but that led to opposite problem - now you can have too low amount of their charges for all their usages, especially for AoE situations like Majesty of the Phoenix playstyle. That could be improved.
Suggestions:
Reduce base cooldown of Phoenix Flames to 20 seconds.
Split Alexstrasza’s Fury and From the Ashes and make them separate talents. Picking between better interactions between Phoenix Flames and Hot Streak / Fevered Incantation and having enough charges for other usages is not good.
In a similar manner, picking between massive QoL in Spontaneous Combustion that allows to freely use Fire Blast and Phoenix Flames between Combustions and its duration increase that also affects duration of Arcane Phoenix for Sunfury is not good. Please consider making them separate talents.
Fire’s Blazing Barrier is inferior to barriers of 2 other specs - its secondary effect both does very low damage and is very niche. Consider buffing Blazing Barrier a bit to bring it more in line with others, for example via making it also reduce physical damage taken while active like it did in some earlier expansions.
Scorch does very low baseline damage that requires crazy modifiers like 300% increase in PVP and 300% increase from Down in Flames just to make it viable enough. Please consider increasing its base damage and reducing modifiers if needed to make it more viable on its own. Consider also making Scorch stack and be affected by Pyrotechnics stacks for better synergies.
Fire already had a set of maintenance buffs and now has even more, which is opposite to its stated goal. Consider removing some other maintenance buffs from the spec, like Improved Scorch.
Critical Mass was severely nerfed in alpha. That is controversial, since it affects almost all procs and CD reduction effects outside of Combustion and now its baseline value is too low. Consider buffing it a bit again (for example to 8-10% crit chance increase + 10% more crit stat from all sources to make it have comparable value to Winter’s Blessing).
Positions of Convection and Ashes Feather seem out of place - they are disconnected from related talents like Alextstrasza’s Fury and Focused Fury, require taking 2 point talents that are not related much to them and don’t progress down the tree. All of that could be addressed.
Suggestions:
Move Ashen Feather below Alexstrasza’s Fury choice node, make them connected and create a path from Ashen Feather to Fevered Incantation.
Move Convection below Lit Fuse, make them connected and create a path from Convection to Flame Patch choice node.
Such changes would address most of issues mentioned above.
Hyperthermia is not competitive enough and is also badly compatible with latest Fire’s Combustion heavy design and Sunfury. Consider just changing it into active ability with X seconds CD, so that players would be able to manually trigger it when they need and avoid both reliance on RNG and potential compatibility issues with Combustion and SKB.
Meteor is more accessible now and that is a good change, but Deep Impact is still not competitive enough - it provides too low increase for most builds and is directly harmful for AoE situations. Consider buffing its damage increase and making it a choice node with some talent that would boost Meteor for AoE situations.
PVP feedback and suggestions
Fire Mages are still unjustifiably squishier than most other specs in PVP - Blazing Barrier is nerfed by 25% in PVP because of Shadowlands talents / effects that are no longer present, Glass Cannon has too large health penalty for its effect after the latest nerf and so on. That could be addressed.
Suggestions:
Remove PVP nerf from Blazing Barrier.
Remove Glass Cannon and tune Fire’s damage to be competitive without it (and if needed also remove health bonus from Flamecannon to compensate). If for some reason Glass Cannon needs to stay - reduce its penalty to 10% to make it more in line with the boost it provides, especially since it also takes a PVP talent slot.
Flamecannon has countersynergy with Dragon’s Breath - its range threshold is 15 yds while DB has 12 yards range, so if you try to use DB offensively you would break your stacks of Flamecannon yourself. That could be addressed.
Suggestion: Reduce Flamecannon threshold to 10-12 yds or increase range of Dragon’s Breath to 15+ yards.
Fire Mage still has some other PVP nerf modifiers with some of them inherited from different expansions that might no longer be needed in The War Within. Please take a look at Fiery Rush (40% nerfed in PVP since Shadowlands, might be no longer needed), Unleashed Inferno (67% nerfed in PVP, might be too large nerf especially since Season 3 tier set bonus would be gone in TWW), Fevered Incantation (its PVP nerf might be no longer needed with changes to Wildfire) etc and consider whether their nerfs are still needed in TWW.
Fire Mages have underused / potentially undertuned PVP talents that could be boosted to make them more competitive: Greater Pyroblast - its cast time is too long, since other classes / specs often have abilities that can deal similar damage but have much lower cast time and / or other benefits like Sniper Shot, Glacial Spike etc.
Suggestion: Reduce its cast time to 3.5-4 seconds. Ring of Fire - might have become too weak after the nerf, especially since its damage is dispellable and done over time and it deals mostly pad damage to begin with. Could use a small boost again, for example deal 20% of total health damage over its duration - it is still lower than pre-nerf, but a bit more competitive.
As always, doing god’s work with these posts. Agree across the board. Reaaaally hate that Spontaneous Combustion is a competing choice node with an all-but required talent. The spec is basically designed around a secondary stat, and to have to choose between QoL and making crit entirely worthless kinda sucks. Way rather it were a capstone to compete with e.g. Phoenix Reborn (more Phoenix Flames vs more impactful ones).
I really feel like Alextrasza’s Fury should just be fused with some other PF talent tbh and From the Ashes should be retired. I’d merge it with Call of the Sun King because that auto crit shouldn’t be something we should have to opt in so late into the tree. They gave back Scorch’s auto crit when under 30% HP and extra movement speed to the baseline spell after all, so they could do the same to PF. There are way too many talents dedicated to making PF feel like a good spell now and even more on both hero trees that Fire has access to.
I don’t really mind Scorch’s base damage. It’s really only there to enable Heating Up/Hot Streak or not to have empty globals on the move so the damage it deals isn’t that big of a deal really.
This is the general consensus really. Fire is probably the spec that is utterly impossible to play without WeakAuras, and it’s looking way worse in TWW with more stuff to keep track of. Improved Scorch is definitely one I’d be happy to do without and after even more nerfs, even Feel the Burn is leaning towards irrelevancy.
I don’t know what other stuff they could get rid of to make the situation better, but it’s obvious that something needs to be done and urgently. It’s getting way out of hand the amount of buffs, debuffs and procs we need to keep track of to play this spec properly and makes the usage of AddOns practically mandatory at this point.
It’s funny that they made Critical Mass a 1-point talent but split part of its functionality with Fire’s Ire, a 2-point talent for another 5% crit chance and still nerfed the original Critical Mass immensely. I’d be happier if at least those 5% were given back to Critical Mass and Fire’s Ire changed towards making crit chance also increase crit damage so we’re incentivized to stacking more crit.
Hyperthermia should probably just be retired as well since it really doesn’t work as a random proc. Sunfury makes it work fine but still doesn’t synergize well with SKB at all.
I’m conflicted with this opinion tbh. Frostfire forces us to pick Meteor, so in a way we are shoehorned into 2 capstones already if we choose this hero tree, because let’s be honest, no one is making a build without either Unleashed Inferno or SKB.
We have way too many capstones as it is, so I’d really like to see Meteor and its modifiers moved way up in the tree for better accessibility, maybe at the level of Commet Storm at the 6th row instead.
The stated goals for fire mage that the devs have givin us so far are really good the problem is the first draft of talents feels like they are failing on the reducing complexity part of things and sort of failing in the reducing maintenance buffs category even if not technically but i think they should change the idea of maintenance buffs to just stuff the fire mage wants to keep track of which would include debuffs and stacks of a buff that lead into another thing.
I agree with alot of the previous points here in the thread don’t really disagree with any of them so ill just put my perspective/expand on a couple things.
I agree with retiring this talent completely devoid of tuning the reason i dislike this talent is its just disruptive and feels bad. To clarify its just the randomness around it happening leave you in an oh crap gotta stop whatever i was doing and spam to make use of it and its just weird.
Honestly my first suggestion would be cutting the seemingly planned addition of the abberus set as talents its just 2 more things to keep track of even if they arn’t technically maintenance buffs per say.
I think Spontaneous Combustion should just be a separate talent, so that Fire Mages don’t have to pick between QoL and performance. Spending a separate talent point on it is already a decent cost on its own.
Also, it kinda feels that Controlled Destruction might have been overnerfed in latest build. 1% Ignite damage per Pyroblast up to 50% sounds decent, but when you compare that to 25% Ignite damage against 3 or lower number of enemies with no need to stack or something like that it feels kinda meh. Could be buffed a bit again.
Yeah, it also doesn’t indicate how long the Controlled Destruction debuff lasts. Since it’s basically designed for longer fights, would be really disappointed if it dropped off during an immune/intermission phase.
I’m not a big fan of Controlled Destruction as a talent but what I dislike about it the most is that it’s locked behind Improved Scorch/Down in Flames. I really wish they will remove Improved Scorch because I don’t want to have another thing to keep track of.
Re: Spontaneous Combustion, this feels like it would be better suited as a replacement to Temporal Warp - just granting resources/charges back for all 3 specs on a shorter CD.
Looking this over again and I really hope they give this tree another pass. From a raid/pure ST perspective, there is virtually no choice despite a ton of new nodes:
Up to the 7th gate, you’re stuck taking all but one node (or taking a LB/Flamestrike talent that you won’t use). With Flame Accelerant losing the damage buff it’s all but a dead talent, so that’s 20 locked-in talents with zero flexibility. This means you HAVE to play Firestarter.
Progressing down, after taking SKB or UI, you now have to take the S2 tier talents, or you’re leaving 6% damage and additional (precious) Phoenix Flames charges on the table. (I curse whoever voted for this for S4 tier since I guess that was construed as our wanting an annoying maintenance buff in perpetuity.)
Since it’s an ST build, kind of have to take Ashen Feather. Pyromaniac also seems like a lock-in as an 8% doublecast chance on hot streaks.
We’re now down to exactly one talent to play around with. If you’re Frostfire, you HAVE to take Meteor, so that’s 0 choices. If you’re Sunfury, you’re down to Meteor (really hope this isn’t the play as it’s annoying to have to randomly weave in a ground spell during ST Combust), Hyperthermia (ick / still counter-synergizes with everything), or one point in Fire’s Ire.
Ultimately I guess there isn’t that much choice right now either…but as someone who dislikes this both this tier set and Firestarter, sucks that there is nothing even remotely competitive as an alternative…
*Editing to note that I guess you’re supposed to take the Living Bomb talents for ST and give up Critical Mass/Firestarter, so that’s slightly better in that there’s somewhat of a choice depending on tuning. Based on current tooltips LB does…less than a pyro on one target…with a 10% chance on hot streak…requiring a Phoenix Flames…so…
Amen brother. So much wrong with that poll as it was, and now if they are making design choices based on it they are just doubling down on a horrid decision making process.
Ok, with Living Bomb getting another 100% buff (lol) and Lit Fuse/Phoenix Meteor now activating on Fireblast, you can potentially sidestep the S2 tier talents and go for the Living Bomb talents in ST - which actually looks kinda fun and I hope is a viable way to go.
Alextrasza’s Fury’s auto crit with Phoenix Flames should be moved to Call of the Sun King, so it grants the 100% crit + 3rd charge and forget about the Dragon’s Breath contributing to Hot Streak so we can once again separate utility from damage. Redesign From the Ashes if necessary or better yet, just move Ashen Feather to its place and it will even make the tree symmetric again.
It’s nice that we now have plenty of options with capstones but we now have way too many of them. Hyperthermia and Majesty of the Phoenix seem way underpowered and I doubt anyone would miss them if they’re gone. On top of that, Meteor is way too crucial for Frostfire Fire to stay as a capstone, which makes for 2 of them already locked in since nobody will not pick either SKB or Unleashed Inferno, so it’s probably a good idea to move it up the tree a bit like where Comet Storm is for Frost.
Only issue I see there is that if you -want- to continue playing SKB, it sort of locks you into the S2 PF talents as AF is a pretty convenient bridge to getting your next SKB in a pinch. The auto crit/3rd charge are also pretty useful otherwise if you want to play the LB build for general hot streak generation, and you’d be locked out of that as an option if it were moved to that capstone.
Generally agree though - we now have 7 capstones and 3 of them are just DOA (Hyperthermia, Deep Impact, Majesty of the Phoenix). Firefall continues to exist in an awkward space where you need to commit to an AOE talent (where your remaining points are limited) to get to a spell that only procs off single target spells.
Not just to continue playing SKB, the auto crit is good in general even for UE since it helps bring Combustion out of cooldown earlier and without it greatly devalues PF outside of Combustion since it basically does nothing if not playing Charring Embers. I don’t there should be this many PF talents just to make it a good spell and thank god they dialed it down a bit by changing Lit Fuse and Glorious Incandescence to trigger with Fire Blast.
On top of making it a useful spell early on without investing too many points into its related talents, it would remove the interaction with Dragon’s Breath that ties utility to throughput that’s widely disliked.
I can think of a world where playing Frostfire Fire where Deep Impact is good in ST where you constantly spam meteors but I still think it’s bad to have it as a capstone since Meteor itself is mandatory for Frostfire.
After further analysis, it seems that some capstone talents and even their prerequisites still need work / tuning.
Pyromaniac sounds fun, but after a bit of analysis - it is just equal to about 8% damage buff for Hot Streak affected Pyroblast or Flamestrike. That still might seem decent until you compare it to something like Surging Blaze, which buffs both by 10%, affect non-Hot Streak usages too and is a 1st part of tree talent.
Hyperthermia - I still think that if it should stay, it should become an active ability. Not only that would solve its compatibility issues like mentioned in posts above, but would also give a tool to hasten Combustion CDR for Unleashed Inferno or getting next SKB faster if needed and a decent alternative to other capstones.
Majesty of the Phoenix - idea is decent, but just needs a buff, mainly to number of affected Flamestrikes, as there are not enough PF charges to frequently weave PF - 2 Flamestrikes. If needed, damage bonus could be buffed too.
Deep Impact - could just provide a bit bigger damage bonus and be a choice node with some AoE focused alternative, so that there is an upgrade option that is not harmful during AoE fights.
Firefall - should just get stacks and trigger from Flamestrike too, so that it can have usage for AoE situations too.
I like that we can get to Firefall without having to pick up Meteor.
Surging Blaze loss is a fairly substantial hit but is ultimately just a tuning knob away from fixing
With Fevered Incantation and Controlled Destruction now being pretty underwhelming, we’re increasingly pushed into picking up the PF talents which I really would have liked to avoid, as someone who continues to loathe this tier set. Compare the flat 6% charred embers damage buff with one point to the max of 8% critical strike damage requiring 4 consecutive critical strikes to maintain with two points. Perhaps if Hyperthermia gets replaced with something competitive we’d get some choice on this front.
Removal of Surging Blaze is acceptable and its damage bonus can be compensated by tuning, but its cast time reduction needs some compensation as well, otherwise it is an additional nerf to SKB and Majesty of the Phoenix Flamestrikes (which are now 2 seconds cast time)
Suggestion: Reduce base cast time of Flamestrike and Pyroblast by 0.5 seconds and buff their damage baseline to account for the removal of Surging Blaze.
Buff to proc rate of Living Bomb is a good change that makes it more impactful now.
Nerf to Fevered Incantation was a bit too much - it now as a 3rd part of tree talent has less value than Wildfire (2nd part of tree talent). In addition, both Fevered Incantation and Fire’s Ire seem just point dumps in 3rd part of tree and could be reduced to 1 point with full current effect - that would make them more fitting their value and provide more choice options there. That would also remove all 2 point nodes from the tree and bring it in line with Demonology Warlock tree.
Making Convection connected to Explosivo was a good change, but there is still one talent with weird position - Ashen Feather. It is gated behind 2 points of Fevered Incantation while having nothing to do with crits and disconnected from other Phoenix Flames talents that can be much easier accessed from Kindling / 2nd part of tree. That could be improved.
Suggestion: Move Ashen Feather to 2nd part of tree and make it accessible from Alexstrasza’s Fury node. If you want to keep it in 3rd part of tree, it should at least be connected to other Phoenix Flames talents, for example be accessible from Charring Embers instead of or in addition to Fevered Incantation.
Firefall is in a weird position now too - while you can now take it without Meteor if you want, you need to spend 2 points of Fire’s Ire instead, which is not necessary an improvement. There is a compromise solution for its accessibility.
Suggestion: Move Firefall to capstone area and make it accessible both from Meteor and Fire’s Ire nodes, allowing Mages to pick the preferred prerequisite. In addition, consider making Firefall get stacks and trigger from Flamestrike too to make it more compatible with AoE situations.
Since there is no official Sunfury feedback thread, here is also feedback about latest Sunfury changes:
Making Arcane Phoenix prioritize your target is a good change.
Spellfire Spheres generation is still too slow outside of combat and could be boosted a bit. Something like every 20-30 seconds seems fitting - it would allow to get 3 spheres every 1-1.5 minutes outside of combat and would be in line with recharging Combustion.
It is still extremely hard to get 5 spheres for Rondurmancy both in and out of combat, making the choice option inferior to Ignite the Future. To address that, Rondurmancy should additionally reduce period of Spellfire Orbs generation outside of combat and number of Hot Streaks consumed for in combat generation.
Lessons in Debilitation change is decent, but Gravity Lapse change is very bad and I really hope it is an oversight. Replacing its stun effect with root is a massive downgrade both in PVE and PVP - why would you need to sacrifice your Supernova or Dragon’s Breath to take a 3 target root if you can just take Ice Nova that also has no target cap? Please revert it back to stun (which is fitting for a hero talent that replaces other CC / utility effect) and if needed for balance just increase its cooldown.
I’m very unexcited about an RNG proc of living bomb being a relevant part of our damage, I play two mages and currently one of the things that’s making fire my favorite spec of the three is how consistent it feels where RNG doesn’t really affect it too much. It’s not like other specs I’ve tried out this expansion where it feels like my damage relies too much on getting RNG procs or crits. If they’re really doubling down on living bomb being a relatively major part of our damage then I hope they rework the right side of the current talent tree to give us more control of our living bomb instead of just making it a random proc.
Feedback about latest changes with some additional suggestions:
Splitting Alexstrasza’s Fury and From the Ashes and making FtA much easier to use is a good change. Could we also get similar split for Spontaneous Combustion and Improved Combustion, which is a similar choice between QoL and performance?
Both Fevered Incantation and Fire’s Ire provide too low effect for their cost after the nerfs. At the same time, after tree position changes they just gatekeep left and right parts of tree’s 3rd row talents with their overpriced cost and seemingly the new trend for spec trees is having only 1 point nodes. All of that could be addressed simultaneously.
Suggestion: Reduce both to 1 point cost with full current effect. That would both make their effect fit the cost, match the trend for spec trees and give Fire Mages more options to pick between capstones after taking the mandatory picks.
Inflame is extremely weak for a capstone talent, even for a Mastery build. It is also very niche and could use a redesign.
Suggestion: Change Inflame to cause Ignite’s damage be done over 6 seconds instead of 9. It would allow to make better use of it and increase its dps, which would be helpful in both PVE where packs can die with a lot of stored Ignite damage and in PVP, where dispels are quite common. If for some reason there will be people that prefer longer duration of Ignite, they can just skip this optional talent.
In a similar manner, both Pyromaniac and Hyperthermia are too weak for capstone talents. Pyromaniac could just get a chance boost to address that, but Hyperthermia just has a flawed design that is badly compatible with latest Fire profile. Making Hyperthermia an active ability with X seconds CD could address most of its issues and make it quite competitive as a controlled tool to hasten Combustion CDR or get next SKB.
Ashen Feather is too niche for a capstone talent - while it has a decent effect, any adds or enemy addition phases would just often make it provide no value. It could use a more extensive use case.
Suggestion: Borrow idea from Focused Fury and just make Ashen Feather cause Phoenix Flames to deal increased direct and Ignite damage the less targets it hits, up to X% (like current 50%) if it hits only 1 target. That would make its effect more reliable and can make it a much more competitive capstone.
Firefall could still use better compatibility for AoE situations, since it triggers an AoE spell only from single-target spells. Making it get stacks and trigger from Flamestrike could address that.
While you are looking at Fire spec, it is definitely time to look at Blazing Barrier. Not only it is already inferior to barriers of 2 other specs, in TWW Frost gets a buff to barrier value and Arcane gets Improved Prismatic Barrier baseline, making the gap even larger. And why does it as a CD based effect do less backlash damage that Shaman’s Lightning Shield that is permanent?
Suggestion: Buff its backlash damage and make it also reduce physical damage taken while active like in some earlier expansions. Also please remove its 25% nerf in PVP that is inherited from Shadowlands where Fire had Blazing Soul and Fire does not have it anymore and is already squishy enough in PVP. These changes would bring it more in line with barriers of 2 other specs.
Nerf to Controlled Destruction is odd. It was already inferior to many other Ignite talents like Intensifying Flames and now the gap is even larger. Consider reverting it and maybe even buffing the talent instead.
In a similar manner - Inflame is too undertuned even for a 2nd tier talent and could be buffed.
Heat Shimmer is a decent addition, but consider also making its proc instant cast to make it match most other procs and more viable in PVP, where its cast will just get disrupted. Additionally, baseline Scorch is still undetuned outside of execute phases and procs and could use a damage boost to become a decent movement cast ability on its own. If needed - reduce execute damage bonus to compensate.
Moving Ashen Feather to 2nd tier is good, but it still could use a bit of scalability added to make better use of it if boss has adds / mobs spawn mechanics that can just negate its effect.
Suggestion: Implement Focused Fury scaling mechanic into Ashen Feather - Phoenix Flames does X% increased direct and Ignite damage the fever targets it hits, up to 50% more against 1 target hit. That would make this talent much more versatile and less affected by unlucky add spawns or stackings.
Spontaneous Combustion is a massive QoL feature that should not require to sacrifice throughput to get (especially for Sunfury whose Arcane Phoenix and Memory of Al’Ar uptime are dependant on Combustion duration). Consider just splitting Spontaneous Combustion and Improved Combustion and making them into separate talents.
Both Fevered Incantation and Fire’s Ire have too low effect for 2 point investment and serve as unnecessary gatekeppers for 3rd part of tree where there is already a decent amount of choices to pick. Consider just reducing both to 1 point investment with full current value - that would make them more match their value, allow to make more choices in 3rd part of tree and would be still in line with reformed spec trees of some classes that have only 1 point investment talents.
Hyperthermia and Pyromaniac still need a boost for competitiveness, even more so now that Phoenix Flames capstone talents don’t require Fevered Incantation but they do, leaving 2 weak capstone talents gated behind another weak 2 point investment capstone talent.
Suggestion: Buff proc chance of Pyromaniac and turn Hyperthermia into an active ability with X seconds CD like suggested earlier. In addition, consider reducing Fevered Incantation to 1 point investment like suggested above to make them more accessible.
Firefall is odd to be positioned in AoE part of tree when it stacks and triggers exclusively from single-target abilities. Consider making it also stack and trigger from Flamestrike to address that and improve its synergies.